THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ACID PUNK

A short primer of some essential Acid Punk albums from the 80s and early 90s, as recommended by Johnny and Christian from TRICLOPS!
Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere, you are probably aware that so-called „psychedelic“ music has been experiencing a resurgence as of late. From „Freak Folk“ to clichéd vintage Acid Rock to note-for-note copies of earlier prog-rock explorations to Hyphy music, a lot of noise currently welling up from the supposed underground reflects some serious influence from the ingestion of hallucinogenic substances, whether by the musicians, the audience, or both. While Hyphy music can be said to be breaking some new sonic ground (as is often the case with underground movements in hip hop), the stuff currently coming out of guitar-based realms tends to be pretty devoted to the music of the 1960s and early 1970s as far as inspiration goes. Of course, rock has been endlessly repeating itself for decades now, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet there are a few complications that we see with bringing ersatz reproductions of the music from these long-past times into the modern era, as a result of three primary factors:


1) The world is a very different place now than it was in the 60s and early 70s, and people simply aren’t naive enough anymore to have such a „sense of wonder“ about the world about them. Way back when, this was fueled by a long-vanished optimism for the upcoming revolution, coupled with the wide availability of clean, strong acid and magic mushrooms.
2) The mid- to late-70s altered the music scenes permanently with the deep cynicism of punk, metal, rap, and noise/industrial music fueled by hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, and pills. Psychedelics had long become limited to pot, which was mainly used to chill you out after speeding on reds for 3 days.
3) By the time the 1980s rolled around and acid made a comeback, NO DRUG was clean anymore. Any psychedelics you could get were cut with something horrible, or wonderful, depending on your point of view. This state of affairs has continued well into the present day, consistent with the cultural understanding that we definitively left the 60s and 70s, but never really left the 80s.

Any modern „psychedelic“ or „prog“ musicians (dead sober or loaded to the gills), if they do not take these factors into account, are just indulging in nostalgia for their (grand)parents’ record collections in an attempt to produce cheesy pop music that is unchallenging in our modern musical landscape. In our context, nostalgia for the still-unsettling acid music/freak-out underground of the 80s and early 90s is far more relevant to people today than the 60s and early 70s are in general. Frankly, just being a hippie does not make one a freak.

These are just a selected few of the best freak-out albums that we like from this era, made by real, honest-to-god wingnuts, and enjoyed primarily by other wingnuts. Some have mind-bogglingly complex musical and lyrical structures and some are downright Neandertal in their plodding repetitive attack, but all have the capacity to be transcendent. Please note you will have to get all old-school and listen to these albums AS albums – they ain’t gonna make any sense as scattered singles yoinked off of BitTorrent or LimeWire, sorry.

Johnny’s list:

BUTTHOLE SURFERS Psychic ... Powerless ... Another Man’s Sac | Locust Abortion Technician | Rembrandt Pussyhorse | Hairway To Steven | Pioughd || Yes, that is basically all of their Touch And Go full-length output from the 80s and early 90s, but the fact that this is over 3 and a half hours of music should be a big plus to the true mind-bending music warrior of today. Just listen to these Austinites’ albums back to back and you will have experienced the quintessential post-post-hippie, acid punk freakout music. This is the soundtrack to some really speedy acid you bought from that FUGAZI shirt-clad kid on Haight, followed up with a chaser of the methadone you stole from your ex-hippie uncle who became a junkie in the 70s but then voted for Reagan in 1980 and „cleaned up his act“. The Buttholes’ output previous to these records (two EPs on Alternative Tentacles) was fine, at least in the snarky punk-noise assault sense, but it is not necessarily music you want to use as a full soundtrack for blowing your mind. The same caveat goes for their major label output after these classic records, which is creatively uneven and displays an uncomfortable tendency to rip off newer bands that got their start by ripping off the Buttholes (i.e. BECK). Even „Pioughd“, which the band supposedly hates, is a masterpiece that sounds like what the GRATEFUL DEAD wanted to do when they were REALLY high at their shows, but too chickenshit to actually do anything about it, so they just played „Dark star“. Again.

PSYCHIC TV Themes IV || One of the legends about Genesis P-Orridge’s old 70s band, THROBBING GRISTLE, concerns a time when they were asked to play a shi-shi art opening in London. The story I read went like this: They showed up with only one piece of equipment, a big, horn shaped subwoofer with a built-in amp they made themselves. When the well-dressed guests arrived and showtime rolled around, all they did was plug in the horn and make a hasty exit. The horn blared so loud and vibrated so heavily that it bounced all over the floor having the electronic equivalent of a seizure, and before anyone could pull the plug it had managed to smash a bunch of bad, overpriced sculpture and knock paintings right off the walls. Years later, in PSYCHIC TV, P-Orridge adopted a more introspective methodology of musical terrorism, aiming his bombs towards the eager psyches of a new generation of young psychedelic degenerates. „Themes IV“ is carefully engineered to confuse the troubled mind with dreamy ambience liberally jarred about by arhythmic attacks of noise. It sounds like the doors of perception are slamming shut right in your face, with monkeys laughing at you from behind them for an uncomfortably long time. The LP comes with detailed instructions on how to set up a series of blinking red and blue lights to correspond with the music, just to make absolutely sure that you get some form of lasting brain damage.

MELVINS Ozma || Currently, about two million one-dimensional stoner rock bands are getting rich making sludgy comfort music for aging metalheads and stoned hipsters worldwide. Most of these state that they are heavily influenced by THE MELVINS, yet none of them actually seem to understand what THE MELVINS were, and still are, actually doing. While I am not sure I really understand what THE MELVINS are doing myself, I can say with certainty that it is not comfort music in any sense, and will give the discerning psychonaut a serious run for his mind-melting money. Just about all of THE MELVINS’ output is top-notch, but the current CD available of 1989’s „Ozma“ combines the original record with a bunch of tracks from their 1987 LP Gluey Porch Treatments. The result is 33 tracks of Melvindom that cover a wide range of this singularly-heavy band’s crazed reinvention of loudness and the most brutal prog in existence, which is difficult to describe and not truly replicable by anyone but THE MELVINS themselves. Despite the psychedelic and progressive qualities of their music, THE MELVINS are simply not hippies, while BLACK SABBATH and KING CRIMSON, and their stoner rock grandchildren, for the most part, are.

NINA HAGEN Nunsexmonkrock || This record (and Nina’s output in general) has been marginalized as goth-y dance rock for decades now, mainly due to her black-frills-n-lace fashion sense. To my mind, however, there are a million miles of distance between almost-cheerful Nina and, say, THE MOPEY CURE or SISTERS OF MERCY. „Nunsexmonkrock“, her best album, is ensconsed much more firmly in the genderfuck freak-disco renaissance in Berlin of the late 70s and early 80s along with contemporaries such as Klaus Nomi. Though much of the music is simple, repetitive dance funk, Nina herself expresses a profound range of vocal freakouts, with layer upon layer of gibbering, operatic altos, shrieks, mumbles, groans, German-intoned pop pontification and more, all going on AT THE SAME TIME. Nina’s presence itself renders this music psychedelic, and unlike her more morbid, super-serious peers such as Diamanda Galás (who is excellent regardless), Nina maintains a sense of bizarro irreverence throughout that catapults her into the outer realms of extraterrestrial weirdness, making for a soundtrack appropriate for substance abuse.

SCRATCH ACID The Greatest Gift || I am neither old enough nor hip enough to own copies of the incredibly rare original S.A. records compiled onto this „Touch And Go“ CD, and that is just fine with me – this comp pretty much has it all. The early- and mid-1980s in Austin, Texas produced a gnarly progressive-psych revolt in music that never got co-opted, and continues to sound totally weird and amazing to this day. Along with the BUTTHOLE SURFERS, Ed Hall, Daniel Johnston, and a few others (including, in the Bay Area, our bassist Larry’s old band VICTIM’S FAMILY), SCRATCH ACID were at the forefront of this new form of noise. Like a triply freaked-out Texas version of Australia’s BIRTHDAY PARTY, SCRATCH ACID were nothing less than a full-on Acid Punk assault, drenched in delay, razor-sharp guitar explosions, psychotic vocals, and complex rhythmic textures that David William Sims (bass) and David Yow (vocals) continued to explore later in the JESUS LIZARD, and also in Yow’s current band QUI. SCRATCH ACID’s reunion show in Chicago this past year was seen by over 7.000 people, probably more than the band played for during its entire existence. To my ears, this is what arena rock should be.

BORN AGAINST Nine Patriotic Hymns For Children || While it could be argued quite convincingly that Sam McPheeters’ post-BORN AGAINST outfit, MEN’S RECOVERY PROJECT, is far more hallucinogenic and just plain weird, it did not match the influential impact of the utterly distinct brand of noise and fury that BORN AGAINST perfected. With McPheeters’ bizarre, self-aware, humor-filled yet bitingly political lyrics and psychotic delivery, the band’s completely over-the-top hardcore replete with quick-tempo severe musical changes, and an utterly filthy overall sound, BORN AGAINST was the only band that truly embodied the concept of psychedelic hardcore. Rather than just incorporating discrete elements of hardcore and more „artsy“ music into a mixture that steadfastly refused to blend (i.e. later BLACK FLAG), BORN AGAINST managed to actually break the boundaries of hardcore from within itself – something that seems antithetical to the whole idea of hardcore to begin with, yet they made it seem natural. They turned the whole concept of hardcore on its head. Lots of bands have tried to do this since, and none have really succeeded. I don’t think you can actually try to do this sort of thing, it just has to happen on its own, and it does not happen often. Honorable mention: BORN AGAINST’s underrated contemporaries MAN IS THE BASTARD were also some serious psych warriors in their own right, possibly exceeding BORN AGAINST in the weirdness department. M.I.T.B., however, never had B.A.’s overall impact on music that came after them.

Christian’s list:

An ex-Florida Kitchen worker’s guide to essential acid rock listening, or „How I survived washing dishes in the 90s without Peyote“

Some necessary history for the readers of this list is to know the backdrop for my exposure to these now classic records, which at the time were all on dubbed cassettes. Like all Florida surfer bums, I worked in kitchens for most of the 90s, the most important one being an acoustic live music bar/grill in St. Augustine called Mill Top Tavern. The kitchen was run solely by rockers, who were all 5-7 years older than me. They snuck me into bars, gave me mix tapes, and I gave them all rides home. I owe it all to them and our manager „Handsome Hands“. Here’s a typical day at the Top:

10:00 a.m. (Kitchen opens) | SHOCKABILLY Heaven || We’d get right to our hangover/McDonald’s and crank this insanity as loud as possible. Between the blend of totally fucked covers, like „Instant karma“ and „Life’s a gas“, came Eugene Chadbourne’s beautiful medley of back porch sunburn jams and totally destructo acid thrash. I couldn’t believe they were from New York. I swore them boys must be from Texas, but that was just Kramer’s future on the boil, like the beer we cooked the hot dogs in.

12:30-2:30 (lunch rush hell) | SONIC YOUTH Confusion Is Sex || Every hipster, including the band (the ultimate hipsters) said that this was „No-Wave“. A rebellion, I get it, but to us stuck in the middle of 250 chicken fingers, 500 melted cheese sticks and 5.000 lubed chicken wings this was Acid Punk at its finest. This band is my GRATEFUL DEAD, and I’ll follow them into the abyss, but I still can’t believe that these dark, ominous swirling guitars sounds were all high E-strings. Melts my mind. This record scared the hell outta me for years, and I still can’t put it down. At this point in the lunch rush, we’d take turns on a carrot pipe in the walk in cooler, just so we wouldn’t go insane from the 195 degree, 4 microwaves on at all times kitchen.

2:30-4:00 p.m. (home stretch, a.k.a warm draft beer time) THE GRIFTERS So Happy Together | One Sock Missing || At this point we all realized that we were not gonna die, and we revisited the carrot, and started singing along to one of my all time favorite bands, THE GRIFTERS. This band is pure psychedelic genius, and the sounds of these records were captured on 4-tracks in the flower shops and god knows what other cracks Elvis used to piss in of Memphis. All the hits, „She blows blasts of static“, „Corolla hoist“, „Love explosion“, they’re all blended into these two bubbling opuses. THE GRIFTERS pulled together full on rock assault riffs, with break your heart ballads of acoustic and outta tune violins, replete with walls of shredding noise mixed really high for no reason. We used to joke that all their songs were the same story lyrically, which was THE GRIFTERS being beamed up into a spaceship to drink whiskey on the rocks and flirt with hot alien chicks. Not too far off the map of the sun. A big rock moment for me was I once smoked a joint with Dave Shouse and it got me sick with Flu for almost 2 weeks. YEAH!!! Rock germs!!

So another shift ends, and my last duty is to put on a fresh batch of chicken wings (about 100) on the grill for the night cook. As I bring the bucket of butter out to the grill, humming a line from „One Sock Missing“, „One thing I’ll never know now“, I go to light the gas and I notice it’s already been turned on, and at that moment someone has successfully lit me on fire. Shift over.

Johnny and Christian, singer and guitarist of TRICLOPS!