WHEN DINOSAURS WALKED THE EARTH

The 60's *8-)

MONKS (USA)
- "black monk time" CD 94 (Repertoire) includes the LP and singles (Polydor '66)
One of the hundreds of bands credited as "the 1st real punks". MONKS claim to the title would apart from the harsh, stripped down garage-rock be their odd hairstyles and untimely, aggressive lyrics. The band consisted of 5 american soldiers stationed in Germany who in their boredom decided to form a band, spitting their venom towards the war, mean women and life in general. Keeping with the image of their name they shaved the tops of their heads into classic monk-hairstyles, dressed in black robes and declaired their live appearaces "The Church of the Unholy Gigs". The pumping, primitive rhythms & riffing combined with songtitles like "shut up", "I hate you" and "drunken maria" made them one of the rawest acts of their time. Sure they had pop-qualities as well, but aggression was their musical trademark and at their best they remind me of the most psyche-influeced bits of DEAD KENNEDYS (oh yes, they had alot of them!). All this goes for their one full-length album "Black Monk Time". The 2 following singles where, as it usually happens with even the coolest of bands, a lot more "uppety" and pop-friendly. Not that they totally stunk as a pop-band - the flipside of the last single, "he went down to the sea", is a pretty powerful, semi-psychedelic pop anthem, but they were still a totally different band than before. Dog bless them.

PIERRE HENRY (FRA)
- "psyche rock/jericho jerk" 7" 6? (Philips)
Just a one-off single project that I thought worth mentioning. Mr Henry was (is?) a fairly known avant-garde musician/artist, whose most famous work include an album with pieces performed on a squeeky wooden door (!). More or less as a joke (my own estimation) he made this single to try out yet another thing out of the ordinary. The A-side is basically a heavy, fuzz-guitar infested, very typical instrumental psyche-rocker drenched in electronic noises and bleeps. It is lightened up somewhat by a jolly melody played on what sounds like some kind of flute. The flipside follows the same idea, but in a more laid back, jazzy manner. 100% crossover that would fit the Pebbels comp reviewed below perfectly.

V/A
- "Pebbles - volume 3: the acid gallery" CD 92 (AIP)
For those of you unfamiliar with the Pebbles series they were a series of compilations which re-released 60's Garage Rock/Psyche 7"-oddities on LP in the 70's/80's (and later re-re-relesed them on CD in the 90's w/ bonus trax). They sometimes had different themes on the records and vol. 3 compiled some really rare examples of crossover bands between the garage rock/60's punk and acid/psyche sounds, sort of like a predecessor to the prog/wave crossover bands more than a decade later. Of all the 20 or so Pebbles albums this is the wildest one I've heard (OK, I haven't heard all of them..). It displays a wide array of acid crossover possibilites. Some "pure" (?), rockin' garage/psyche borderline cases like TEDDY & THE PATCHES, BEAUTIFUL DAZE's cool midnight-psyche of "city jungle pt. 1", the awsome punk rock anthem "five years ahead of my time" by THIRD BARDO and the screaming, rambling, lyrical nonsesnse of DRIVING STUPID. JEFFERSON HANKERCHIEF and WILLIAM PENN FYVE does brilliant caricatures of the acid-soaked ideals of the time, in themselves creating ingenious psyche-ploitation. Some of the coolest acts is usually the ones who make totally undefineable, WARPED, free-thinking music. Like the booming, eerie "flight reaction" by CALICO WALL, MONOCLES' hypnotic, nightmareish "the spider & the fly" (no, not the STONES song), ADJEEF THE POET's flipside "squafresh lemon comes back" and the complete psyche-art of OSHUN's "rattle of life". HOGS start out with a toung-in-cheek klicéed love ballad intro and them explodes into non-structural freak-o-rama. If you want your illusions of the 60's music scene as lame, underdeveloped and repetetive shattered, I strongly suggest you check out this album. I myself would really appreciate any tips on more collections dealing with the more "far-out" underground rock of the 60's, i.e. NOT the typical garage punk & psyche of most of the Pebbles, Nuggets and Back From The Grave-compilations. (OK, most of that stuff is pretty cool to, but who's got time for "pretty cool"?)

WHITE NOISE (USA)
- "an electric storm" LP 69 (Island)
This is by far the best album I've heard from this decade. 101% groundbreaking and original! The music is so beautiful, so etherial, so OUT there it almost brings tears to your eyes. Not even the most experimental of the "Kraut" bands came close to the originality of WHITE NOISE, and still, when it comes to captivating pop-extravaganza, they managed to give even the migthy BEATLES themselves a run for their money. What's so special with "An Electric Storm" then? It is the music of the spheres, my friends! They were decades before their time in their use of advanced electronics and primitive sampling. Instead of doing something introvert and avant-garde, they used these ideas in real songs, and what Songs! Every single one of the 7 trax is incredible. Opener "love without sound" is a cool and friendly song with a chorus that turns totally abyssmal at the last notes. The highly sensual "my game of loving", spiced with suggestive, multi-lingual dialogues and what sounds like very genuine sounds of lovemaking is one of the most erotic pieces of music I have ever heard. "Here comes the fleas" is another story completely. Totally insane sound-collage cabaré pop which is just mad, Mad, MAD! "Firebird" is one of the true 'hits' of the album and here you truly wonder why WHITE NOISE never conquered the world. Incredibly catchy! They close the A-side with the epic "your hidden dreams" and you wonder "when will this insufferable ecstacy end!?" Surely not on side B. The 1st 11 min+ piece "the visitation" is a dark, moving saga of love and death, with sufficiently strong musical/noisy material to match. The last cut on the album, "black mass: electric storm in hell" sounds exactly like it's name. Pure ecstatic, occult, avant-garde mayhem - deep vocal chanting, electronic noise, modulated screaming - not music in the traditional sense, but a fitting ending to a very special album. They share alot of with CARDIACS emotionally - they make their kind of otherworldly and incredibly beautiful music so intense it saddens you to the point of despair that they never recieved the recognition they deserved. Bands like WHITE NOISE is the main reason I want to smack people in the face when they say stuff like "there's a perfectly good reason underground bands stay underground - they usually suck". Blam!! EAT WHITE NOISE AND DIE, YOU FUCKS!!!!! Yes, even serene and beautiful things can aggravate you.

The 70's X-)pre-New Wave

SLAPP HAPPY (UK)

...It is however of extreme importance that you check out PHILEMON ARTHUR AND THE DUNG!

And then what?