I'd only heard a few of Acid Mothers
Temple's recordings before I saw them last April [2009] in Philadelphia. One
of them was a seven-inch which sounded much to me like the output of
any number of Japanoise bands, such as The Boredoms or The Machine
Gun TV. Another was a live recording from 2004 which had them
sounding like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd jamming with Blue Cheer with
members of Pere Ubu sitting in. This turned out to be merely a
fraction of a fraction of the output of this extremely prolific
Japanese psychedelic-rock band One day while I was in Philadelphia
visiting friends, I heard on the radio that Acid Mothers Temple's
2009 North American tour would bring them to a club in Philadelphia
called Johnny Brenda's. So I decided to make the trip and check them
out.
Johnny Brenda's has two levels. The
first is a typical bar/restaurant, pool table next to the bar, tables
in the back. The second level, the performance space, well, it's
actually two levels. You go up a narrow staircase and arrive in what
looks like a 1960's recreation room. That's where AMT and the opening
act, Sonic Suicide Squad were selling their vinyls and CDs. Go a bit
further, past the end of the bar and you're on an intimate
(read:small) dance floor in front of the stage, itself an
elegantly-appointed number with a backdrop of lights and reflective
beads. Across from the stage is a staircase which takes you upstairs
to yet another bar, and the balcony. This is the vantage point from
which I watched and photographed the show (photos here).
The only clues we got that the main
event was on was the wail of a lone, rising, then falling synthesizer
note. Next came the microphone-check-like vocalizations of the band's
bass player in front of the first tune of the evening, Are We
Experimental? A sing-songish “Philly...Philly...Phillllllyyyyyyy!”
is how he saluted the city which hosted them that evening.
Immediately, the band broke into free-form freak-out mode, slipping
into Sabbath-ish stoner-dirge-rock mode, then cranking up to
speed-freak tempo before ending the piece.
In the middle of the whole thing,
between numbers, the bass player asked the audience jokingly if
former baseball manager and Phillies team member Pete Rose was still
playing. That got a few laughs before the band launched into still
another high-wattage jam. I must say, these guys sure learned a lot
from their apprenticeship with Gong (whom they shared a stage with in
2003). At times I could almost picture Daevid, Gilli and the rest of
the Gong crew on the stage with them. AMT have described their music
as “extreme trip music”. Loud and fast rave-ups were punctuated
by slow, languid stoner-blues with a Japanese-language speed-freak
rap/poem in the middle of it all, followed by a distant, dream-like
trip-to-the-center-of-the-power-spot drone, powered by the wail of an
e-bowed guitar. The show was unusually long, clocking in at just
under two hours.
There were many flavors in this mix.
Permit me to drop some names - Hendrix from his Band of Gypsies
period, Paranoid-era Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane circa ...Baxter's or
Crown of Creation, (dare I say it?) The Grateful Dead in full Dark
Star mode or Can's Soon Over Babaluma. But flavors are just what they
are. AMT is no way a cover band or a nostalgia act. Youthful
headbanger, aging acid-head and all in between are welcome in the
presence of Acid Mothers Temple.
Wanna hear some live Acid Mothers
Temple for yourself? For free?
