Acid Mothers Temple for beginners (like me!)

by Doctor B in Concert Reviews, Opinion Posts, Reviews, bands to watch

I’d only heard a few of Acid Mothers Temple’s recordings before I saw them last April 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 ex-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 London in 2003, as Acid Mothers Gong). 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-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. I’m told that the show was unusually long, clocking in at just under two hours. I got in pretty late, but it was so worth it!

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.

Doctor B. is a DJ at free-form radio station WHRW in Binghamton, NY. Playlists can be found here.