Acid Mother's Temple, 8th Nov
There is a man standing on one side of the small cramped galley toilets in the Thekla Social, peeing across the room into a urinal about a metre away from him. Yes, yes, I think, Very impressive, but get the fsck out of the way! These things really deserve a picture, but you can't just go round taking pictures of drunk people peeing can you? Can you?
The Transpersonals are well under way when I arrive, playing mod psychedelia in a way only hippies in the sixties with more acid than sense could have done. It is so deliberately weird and contrived that the whole thing doesn't really work any more, especially as this band obviously aren't off their tits on hallucinogens, which makes the whole shrieking out of tune with everything else seem a lot less, well genuine.
Towards the end of the set they play a brilliant rock song though, and the one that the bass player shouts in is also great, so it's all okay, really. It's the shocking lack of decent beer that really annoys me. And the fact that they might as well be playing songs of those Nuggets collections for all I care.
Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, a band who change their name more times than [insert clever analogy here] are a whole different side of the psychedelic spectrum entirely. The music here is less about odd chord progressions and strange singing and more about playing a kick-ass riff over and over again, developing it slightly, improvising around it, letting the guitarist go mental with solos and sucking you into your own personal reverie.
There is a lovely period in the set where everything is minimized down to a bit of gentle singing, throat-singing, harmonies, a slow melody, which layers and builds and launches into one of AMT's greatest musical creations, the song Pink Lady Lemonade, a song which can range in length from anywhere between 20-60 minutes, or even longer I guess, depending on how the mood takes them. Every minute of which is beautiful genius.
Unlike the previous band, you don't feel like AMT are trying to be something, trying to copy, recapture - whatever they were trying to do - a bygone era, you feel that this is what music has always been like, just four guys seeing what they can do with their instruments and coming up with something incredible, just playing for the sheer joy of it. Whatever it is, I've seen them quite a few times now, and even though there are a few songs that they always play, each time the interpretation is different and it is always brilliant.
