Wednesday, September 21, 2005
when a love song has gone wrong, where does a sad girl go?
St John Green : "7th Generation Mutation"
St John Green : "One Room Cemetary"
St John Green only put out one record, and that's a shame, because the supreme hippie nonsense of that single album reveals a band with an unimaginable potential for the sublimely ridiculous. I guess there's no telling how much of the awesomeness is due to the band, or the drugs, or the work of their producer, all-time freak Kim Fowley. Wherever the inspiration came from, it was a powerfully idiotic source, and led to the creation of one of the finest mind-zapping lp's around. I've got no idea how sincere they were about this, or if the whole thing is a big larf on the hippie stereotype that, when the record was made in '67 or '68, was already calcified by overzealous media scrutiny. But no matter the intent, the damn thing is amazingly laughable, and laughably amazing, and also a good fair chunk of some dark, ominous, psychedelic bullshit. I whole-heartedly endorse it. These two songs are probably the most extraordinary on here, as the "mystic sage at a grim carnival" schtick basically trump any and all notions of producing pop music. Full of cosmic-slash-existential dread, a fundamental disgust with humanity, and devils and Venutians and shit, these two songs sound sorta like White Noise. Maybe that's what this is, the California equivalent to those more rational / less emotional Brits. Anyway, there are some more traditional sounding late '60's psych-pop stuff on here, but nothing touches these two exercises in in(s)anity.
St John Green : "7th Generation Mutation"
St John Green : "One Room Cemetary"
St John Green only put out one record, and that's a shame, because the supreme hippie nonsense of that single album reveals a band with an unimaginable potential for the sublimely ridiculous. I guess there's no telling how much of the awesomeness is due to the band, or the drugs, or the work of their producer, all-time freak Kim Fowley. Wherever the inspiration came from, it was a powerfully idiotic source, and led to the creation of one of the finest mind-zapping lp's around. I've got no idea how sincere they were about this, or if the whole thing is a big larf on the hippie stereotype that, when the record was made in '67 or '68, was already calcified by overzealous media scrutiny. But no matter the intent, the damn thing is amazingly laughable, and laughably amazing, and also a good fair chunk of some dark, ominous, psychedelic bullshit. I whole-heartedly endorse it. These two songs are probably the most extraordinary on here, as the "mystic sage at a grim carnival" schtick basically trump any and all notions of producing pop music. Full of cosmic-slash-existential dread, a fundamental disgust with humanity, and devils and Venutians and shit, these two songs sound sorta like White Noise. Maybe that's what this is, the California equivalent to those more rational / less emotional Brits. Anyway, there are some more traditional sounding late '60's psych-pop stuff on here, but nothing touches these two exercises in in(s)anity.
