The Sonics
Listen – The Sonics – Psycho – MP3
Greetings all.
This will be brief, as I just got back from three days on the road doing the funk and soul deejay dealie and I’m am so f*cking tired I think my eyeballs are about to fall out and roll somewhere dark for their own good.
First off, I’d like to thank all of you for playing along last week. You’ll all receive a copy of the Iron Leg home game as a parting gift*.
The tune I bring you today is one of the greatest from the indisputably savage discography of one of the truly great (in a decade where the notion of greatness is bestowed willy nilly by a pack of goons who know not true greatness when it crawls up their legs etc etc etc…) bands of – in the words of the champ – “all times”.
If’n you aren’t hep to the Sonics, you mi amigo ought to climb out of your bomb shelter and back into the sunlight, on account of the fact that Gerry Roslie and his gang of thugs tore a hole in the Pacific Northwest during the 60s that shall not soon be mended by either time or anyone’s good intentions.
It was as if Satan himself pulled up to a mental hospital, handed out a truckload of geetars, organs and drums, plugged it all in and sat back and laughed as his creation ran amok.
The Sonics were – to borrow an unfortunate but entirely apt phrase – the musical equivalent of “retard strength” – in which pure, unbridled animal energy, mixed with an electrified libido and marinated in grain alcohol is reduced to a serum, injected into Little Richard, who then went to the zoo, mated with a hyena in a swimming pool during an electrical storm then took their unholy spawn into a recording studio (during a tornado) and whipped up something very, very heavy.
One of the heaviest products of this union is the song ‘Psycho’, which opens with a drummer who sounds like he’s playing with his feet, followed soon by Roslie’s howling and the rumblings of the frat band from hell.
Honestly, there were moments when the Sonics made Screaming Jay Hawkins sound like Bobby Short (look it up…).
It’s powerful stuff and shouldn’t be taken on an empty stomach, lest you burn a hole in your feedbag and end up attached to a series of tubes somewhere.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I just did.
I’m going to bed.
See you all later.
Peace
Larry
*Note to readers. There is no such thing as the “Iron Leg Home Game” so stop staring at your mailbox waiting for the mailman to bring it (to your mailbox)
PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a recap of this past weekends DJ festivities!
All hail the Sonics! None other than Iggy himself listed them among his influences.
She A Witch and Strychnin are other samples of the gold they mined and their live sets were legendary.
Love The Sonics – the header on their myspace is” waaaaaaahhhh!!” – which is about right
They truly rock; saw them on their first European visit last Easter & hell they tore it up. Cinderella is my personal fave. Legends.
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