5. German ShepherdsMusic For Sick Queers
I don’t really get sentimental or nostalgic towards records, generally. But, for me, this album felt like the culmination of a lineage of discovery within a certain perspective of music-making, i.e. "We don’t give a fuck how you react, but if we did it would be that you are repulsed. But, hey – your problem." Anything other than being compliant, a feeling of empowerment and individuality, which I never really got from punk for whatever reason.
In terms of a light going on in my head concerning eighties industrial/noise/synth/tape gubbins, I can’t really beat the one-two of hearing TG’s ‘Hamburger Lady’ and ‘Total Sex’ by Whitehouse. Both those songs and their albums are quite key to a certain parallel universe being unlocked, which I still regard as quite crucial to me.
But, for some reason, I love this record way more. It’s not as if it’s a great record on first listen. Or at all. It doesn’t seem like there are any good songs on it at all until you reach the start of side B. ‘I Adore You’ puts the whole album into context and from then on it was a keeper for me, a go-to touchstone. Nothing else really sounds quite like it, as a whole, and that certainly is a remarkable feat. It’s so sarcastic and creepy, withering and funny. A couple of guys taking too much acid in late 70s San Francisco with nothing but a couple of Korg MS-20s, a battered dime store guitar and a microphone. Heaven in the right hands. A reminder that the real psychedelic isn’t some record industry idea of a group ploughing through the same sub-Brian Jonestown Massacre chord sequences. It’s a thumb in the eye to convention or what is expected next. Remember that, fuckos.
Paul Sykes
