Saturday, February 11, 2006

Motorpsycho 1993-09-02

motorpsycho - democrazy, gent, belgium - september 02, 1993
source: Front-of-the-house recording made with a tape deck.

1 intro/home of the brave [aborted] (6:20) / 2 home of the brave (7:32) / 3 sheer profoundity & flesh harrower (7:31) / 4 nothing to say (6:10) / 5 giftland (7:53) / 6 demon box (19:16) [incl. "step inside again"; "walk on guilded splinters" & "free your mind"] / 7 the golden core (14:50)

"Hello, we're Motorpsycho and we fucked up again." says Bent after Home of the brave is aborted due to being out of tune. They restart it after getting in tune, and we're treated to a thick, heavy and wild version! In the middle they suddenly play some sample of Matt Burt reading one of his poems, one I've never heard before. I don't know if that was normal back in '93. After the song a banter-happy Bent tells us that he broke a string, and "Okey, this gonna be one of those nights, huh?" He continues talking about that he's having a cold, so the audience shouldn't stand too close to him. "Sheer Profoundity" is introduced as "a little song" which I find most inappropriate! It's a heavy metal beast! Anyhow it's not too exciting for me personally, except Bent's hilarious lyrical twist in this performance: "I've waited all my life, sir, to tune my guitar for you, sir!", keeping up with the out-of-tune-guitar theme which seems to become a running joke of the night. The following "Flesh harrower" continues the heaviness and screaming, and there is something about this quite simple and angry song that catch my attention!

Btw, the sound of this recording is very good for a MP audience recording.

"Nothing to say" is introduced by joker Bent as a song from Demon box called "Nothing at all" and kicks off just like it's supposed to do. It moves along with no major fuck-ups of any kind. Finally, after a while, Snah goes into a short solo, and they take it down "to the river". Nothing big happening so far, as opposed to later versions where they went into great impovisational spaces. This night though, they keep it safe and close to the album version, perhaps because they are afraid of fucking up more...?

"Giftland" is a real treat - still banter-happy Bent informs us that it's a new thing "we've never ever played live before"! The intro is different, it lacks the deathprod-noise-loop, and it's somewhat fast. For some reason Snah sings lead, and confesses before that chorus that he can't remember the words! Snah's voice back then wasn't very good, so it's nice when in the chorus Bent joins in, and after that Bent keeps up singing, doing lead on the next verses, which gets strangely funky, mainly driven by Gebhardt serving us some delicate drum-work! The big climax kicks in just as expected, but Snah's solo/playing is slightly different from the finished version, but that's no surprise. but then comes something I've never heard before! An ending part that fits nicely into the known climax, with Snah singing, unhearable words, but a very nice melody! They must have dropped this afterwords, or maybe it was improvised there and then?

"Let's party!" Bent says after "Giftland", and then they kick into "Demon Box", which is a good 19 minutes long this time. It starts like one expects, it's an angry & heavy piece! It's a screamer, and a great one! The "Demon Boooox!"-part kicks hard with backup vocals probably by Snah. Bent delivers a very rythmic second verse, like "I - saw - you - carve - Love - on - your - knuckles"! Now I expect the space out portion of the song to emerge, in the post-chorus aftermath which for a while here continues grooving on, before things fall down into unknown territories. They seem to go for space this time. Noise. Space. Synth. Aia! I suspect Deathprod is there. And whaddaya know? "Step Inside" emerges from this spaciness! And it's a very space rendition of this multi-faceted tune. After a bit Bent converts the lyrics into "I walk on guilded splinters" & further quotes Hawkwind (?) - "Free your mind & your ass will folllow!" - and then, after some ad lib vocalization, they jump back into "Demon Box" to finish it! A truly wonderful version of this motorpsychodelic anthem!

After that excursion, Bent announces that they'll finish with another unreleased thing called "The Golden Core". Why on earth Snah sang that song back then is uncomprehensible to me, but he did. Too bad he couldn't sing particularly good back then! Nowadays he's improved his voice a lot, but back then it was quite ... uhm ... not good. The song picks up when Bent kicks in on backup vocals though! Those moments are magnificent and witness of times yet to come! The structure of the song was at this point in time very much as we have come to know it through "Timothy's Monster". The build-up is quite glorious, it's very impressive to hear what this band was capable of as early as 1993! A strange memory just popped into the consciouspart of my1 mind, btw. Strange. Anyway, they build up "The Golden Core" into something extraordinary, and it becomes clear why they quickly gained a great reputation/audience after releasing "Demon Box" and the subsequent touring. What a band!

Email me if you want a copy of the show!

1 kommentarer:

kisshermind said...

i think this is a sbd (of some kind), like someone patched into the FOH cable or something like this...

--alex

12:04 AM