{"id":217,"date":"2007-02-02T13:05:53","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T18:05:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-02-02T13:27:13","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T13:27:13","slug":"the-night-i-freaked-out-and-lost-it-on-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-night-i-freaked-out-and-lost-it-on-p\/","title":{"rendered":"The Night I “Freaked Out” and “Lost It” on Psychic TV"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some of you may remember me telling this story before, but I’ve never had the chance to tell it as I plan to do now. You may want to click on the following song as you begin reading this tale. It’s a pretty number that sets the initial tone of Psychic TV’s<\/strong> 1983 release, Dreams Less Sweet<\/em><\/a>. Go ahead, check out “The Orchids”<\/strong><\/a>. It’s really pretty.
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\nOK. Now some of you may recall that I have a taste for Throbbing Gristle<\/strong>. Talk about your killer album covers and album titles! The day freshman year in college I saw their “Greatest Hits” collection subtitled Entertainment Through Pain<\/em> I had to take a leap. I dug the mix of purposefully annoying, creepy, subterranean garage music and hypnotic synth workouts. I dug the evil humor. Throbbing Gristle would be one of those bands the young me wear as a badge of hard-earned honor when trying to make my way into tougher, more advanced rock circles.<\/p>\n

The whole freaky side of the members of Throbbing Gristle and leader Genesis P-Orridge’s next venture, Psychic TV, never appealed to me – the tattoos, the pierced genetalia, the hints at Nazi imagery, the sex change operations. I was never a fan of KISS<\/strong> growing up, so I wasn’t about to give in to shock-rock theatricality in my college years. It was the true evil<\/strong> within the grooves that interested me. It still does regarding my Throbbing Gristle albums, but I had to rid my life of Psychic TV’s Dreams Less Sweet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

By now I hope you’ve heard side 1’s track 2, “The Orchids”. Lovely, wasn’t it, if creepy? That day I first drew the shades and laid on my bed to hear this Psychic TV album for all it was worth I also drew from my fresh stash. As Dan Rather<\/strong> might have said, I was “loaded for bear.”<\/p>\n

I was getting all the requisite dreamy creepiness out of the album I could have hoped to get, and then came a song on side 2 that started with an ominous whooshing<\/em> sound. At this point I encourage you to click on “In the Nursery”<\/a>.<\/strong> You’re probably not on your bed in a dark room, but you may get the idea. <\/p>\n

I’ve got a high tolerance for psychologically scary things. Gore’s not my bag, but psychological terror is usually a blast. I was probably 4 minutes into the song when I did the unthinkable: I freaked out<\/strong> and<\/em> I lost it<\/strong>! I finished out the song, listened to it again to make sure I didn’t overreact, and then promptly filed the album away, under T<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Over the next few months I’d try to enjoy what I could from the album, but inevitably I’d peek “In the Nursery”. Finally, I had to sell the album. I wasn’t willing or able to cross this line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you may remember me telling this story before, but I’ve never had the chance to tell it as I plan to do now. You may want to click on the following song as you begin reading this tale. It’s a pretty number that sets the initial tone of Psychic TV’s 1983 release, Dreams […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}