[E.O.M.S.]

Friday, 3 July 2015

Thighpaulsandra - The Foot Garden

Psychic TV - Unclean / Terminus / Moonchild

As Michael says: Three videos showcasing what might be the pick of the bunch of Psychic TV videos. 1984's 'Unclean' the first video and the first records that was released on Psychic TVs' own Temple Records after the escape / release from Some Bizarre (and of Geff Rushton and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson) is directed by Cerith Wyn Evans with help from Leigh Bowery. One of the video stars is Nicky Crane, the early 1980's poster boy for the thuggish UK Nazi organisation, the British Movement, and who also marshaled the security for the Nazi band Skrewdriver. How did this peculiar alliance form you ask? No idea I reply. Unless, the story I did hear in the mid 1980's was the truth. At the beginning of the 1980's Nicky Crane had a double life. His extreme hatred for anything he considered non British (or specifically non English) and his deeply hidden homosexuality. Aside from marshaling security for the band Skrewdriver he also had a little moonlighting going on as part of the security team in clubs up the West End of London. Derek Jarman a left field film director (Jubilee / Sebastian / The Tempest / Angelic Converstion) was a semi regular visitor to the openly homosexual club 'Heaven' in Charing Cross and one night met up with Nicky Craine in the club. Nicky Craine ended up in this video for Jarman's old friend Genesis P-Orridge. I have no idea what happened at 'B' in this story from 'A' to 'C'. Derek Jarman and Nicky Craine would know and they are both dead. I truly hope that is the correct story and Jarman or Genesis P-Orridge had no clue of this guys recent past of White Power street fighting, and they only knew of him as a rent boy up west. I prefer that option to the other obvious option. 'Terminus' the second video directed by Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson is from the debut Psychic TV album' 'Force The Hand Of Chance'. 'Terminus' starts with a long 'spaghetti western' type musical introduction with Genesis P-Orridge reciting a story of depression and suicide in an almost dream like fashion. On the video we see Mr Sebastian inking Genesis P-Orridge and a load of wolves separate to the young boy who is central to the story line. At the point of a naked Geff Rushton sitting in and pulling around him a petrol soaked bed sheet and then 'setting himself alight' the 'pleasant' long 'spaghetti western' type musical introduction disappears to a wall of noise of feedback and effects. That music break makes me think of a similar idea in the Velvet Undergrounds 'I Heard Her Call My Name' around two minutes in at the lyric "and then my mind exploded" a split second of silence and the Velvet Underground's wall of noise begins. There has to be a link there somewhere. This wall of noise part of the video has some (but certainly not all) of the more unpleasant parts of the 'Eden' 1 video edited in. The wall of noise diminishes to an Spanish acoustic guitar reprise with Genesis P-Orridge completing his reciting masterpiece.
'Moon Child' the third video and features Paula P-Orridge and John Gosling filmed at Beck Road in Hackney by Genesis P-Orridge. The audio is a looping pulse accompanied by what sounds like a tattoo gun and a recorder along with some spoken word in a different language (Spanish maybe). All these three videos are genuinely moving, hard to watch in parts, interesting and above all for eighteen year old browsers only!