A hip Reg Presley with a Joan Jett beat.

epub or mobi

I called the article "Tales from the Drug Attic" and laid into all the lame contemporary shit that called itself Psychedelic in 1983. Terrible retro groups were recasting themselves as replica-psyche, in response to the Howard Jones-ness of the Like-to-Get-to-Know-You-Well '80s. But, unlike the English northern scene's coy refusal to ever accept a tag of Psychedelia, a crass new US scene was dubbing itself (get this!) The Paisley Underground. These deadly obvious groups were not pioneer music freaks, but cosy A-to-Zetros who had evidently modelled themselves on The Byrds. I had even bought an album called (get this again!) Emergency Third Rail Power Trip by the greatly championed Rain Parade. With a title like that it had to be the fastest most manic thing since Love's 'Seven and Seven Is' ... surely ... Track 1 began at 5 mph and got stuck in cross-town traffic even before the chorus. The vocals were by Raga Knobshiners from Hell, occupying far too much Anglophile 'Bells of Rhimney' airspace. For the article, I decided that my mission was to kick all these psychedelic bandwagoners into touch, arrogantly dismissing whole chunks of '60s music as a waste of hippy time. Instead, I focused on 1965-66 as the classic period. I loved the idea of the young American beer-drinking Rolling Stones copyists taking acid and losing their minds. It was so fucked up, so unintellectual and so innocent. I wrote short intense hagiographies for The Seeds, The Misunderstood, The Chocolate Watchband and The 13th Floor Elevators, littering the article with lies and made-up bits to pad out the paucity of real information.