There are several albums that grab listeners by the scruff of their necks and set their twilight minds reeling —— CDs that can be considered as musical counterparts of amphetamines or equated with the psychedelic experience. The great thing is, you can buy them from the counter without fear of cracking up, overdosing, or landing in a Camp Crame cell. Some albums are as mind-altering as literature, cinema or great pieces of art. Thus, they can be substitutes to any of the following: 1) hemp; 2) The Naked Lunch; 4) hell designed by Bosch; 5) poems from the Symbolists who have systematically-deranged senses; 6) a ride on Albert Hoffman’s white bicycle; 7) A Clockwork Orange or Apocalypse Now; 8) coffee and correspondences with Leary in the cosmic chat room; 9) snacking on peyote with Don Juan; 10) or eerie fieldtrips to the dream country. We could just play these suckers and drift…
A reader asked what albums could be substituted for illegal hallucinogens, or at the very least help us forget our inevitable future under a wannabe president and his merry pranksters hell-bent on "blacksmithing a new tomorrow" – whatever that is. Albums that would help us forget our comfortably numb, emotionally bankrupt, socially doomed lives for a while. Allow me to rehash my Top Ten list.
1) Jane’s Addiction — "Ritual De Lo Habitual"
Night is shelter for nudity’s shiver.
Listening to a Jane’s Addiction record is like hitchhiking through the galaxy or across one’s own psyche since its mood ranges from "despair to transcendence." "Ritual," the band’s second major release, showcases singer Perry Farrel’s warped worldview framed by Dave Navarro’s —— at times heavy, at times atmospheric; metal meets Eighties post-punk —— guitar. Farrel, the androgynous frontman, touches on topics such as pleasure-and-pain ethics (Ain’t No Right), obsessive need to steal (Been Caught Stealing), sadomasochism (Of Course), as well as the world’s inevitable end (Stop).
Thematically, the band explored the cultural underbelly and man’s shocking darksides rather than discourse on clichés such as sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, what its poodle-haired contemporaries (Motley Crüe, Poison, Warrant, etc.) did to death and disbandment.
Three Days – the first cut on the album’s more atmospheric B-side – is Jane’s Addiction’s trippy and twisted Stairway to Heaven.
2) Pink Floyd — "The Dark Side of the Moon"
"It is the space rock album that launched a thousand trips."
Pink Floyd’s tribute to their fallen leader, Syd Barret, yields loony tunes, ambient soundscapes and eloquent meditations on time, insanity and alienation. Although other Floyd album stretches musically with more aplomb ("A Saucerful of Secrets," "Meddle" and "Wish You Were Here"), none of them approach the twisted rock opera and majestic melancholia of "The Dark Side of The Moon" with tracks like Time, The Great Gig in the Sky, Us and Them, and Brain Damage.
Hanging on in quiet desperation, indeed, is the English way.
3) Radiohead — "OK Computer"
I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake, some carbon monoxide/No alarms and no surprises.
Thom Yorke and company were dismissed at the onset by critics as creepy self-loathers riding on the coattails of grunge and nothing more. Radiohead responded by creating big, ecstatic music on albums like "The Bends" and "OK Computer," the band’s long, hard stare into a dystopian and over-technologized future.
Tracks such as Paranoid Android, Airbag, Karma Police, Let Down, among others are Radiohead’s aural montages dealing with pain, menace and isolation —— favorite themes of the Existentialists, Pink Floyd and persistent Bible-brandishers/Armageddon-announcers mulcting love offerings from poor bus passengers ("Leave us in peace, please!").
Music about man’s postmodern malaise never sounded so uplifting.
4) Velvet Underground — "Velvet Underground and Nico"
I don’t know just where I’m going/ But I’m gonna try for the kingdom if I can.
You heard this before: not many people bought the Velvet Underground’s debut album, but those who did formed their own bands. What can this writer —— another one in an infinite line of pseudo-critics —— say about the group discovered by Andy Warhol that hasn’t already been written to death?
Well, the music in "Velvet Underground and Nico" is schizophrenic: sometimes soft and ethereal (Sunday Morning, Femme Fatale), and sometimes heavy and earsplitting. Black Angel’s Death Song and Heroin – Lou Reed’s montage of feedback, drones, sledgehammer drums, slapdash guitars and stream-of-consciousness lyrics —— come to mind.
This VU album will leave minds forever altered.
5) The Doors — "The Doors"
As in the case of Lou Reed, the monolithic hype machine has spun uncontrollably for The Doors’ Jim Morrison to the point one can’t even distinguish between the man and trashy myth. The best recourse is to let the music do the talking – and The Doors’ self-titled debut speaks in ecstatic volumes. "The Doors" contains Light My Fire, Break on Through, Soul Kitchen, The End (Morrison’s drunken take on Freud’s Oedipus concept), as well as The Crystal Ship.
Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss.
6) Soundgarden — "Superunknown"
Words you say never live up to the ones inside your head.
This album is dark, moody, filled with spiraling melodies, weird riff shapes, as well as cryptic, metaphor-heavy lyrics. There is Chris Cornell’s version of the Apocalypse (4th of July), the Beatlesque ballad (Black Hole Sun), the ode to Seattle’s Artis the Spoonman (Spoonman), and The Day I Tried to Live with its odd time signature, harmonized guitars and the frontman’s screwy meditation on existence.
Also mind-blowing about Soundgarden’s follow-up to "Badmotorfinger" are the oddball tracks that pop up now and then, particularly bassist Ben Shepperd tunes – the Syd Barret-inspired "Head Down," as well as "Half," which sounds like a spaced-out Mahavishnu Orchestra accompanying verses by John Berryman ("Mr. Full, Mr. Have Kills Mr. Empty Hand").
The garden of sound is one bleak yet mind-altering place to be.
7) John Coltrane — "A Love Supreme"
This 1964 album by shamanic Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane taught me more about spirituality than all of the fire-and-brimstone sermons of priests put together. This four-part suite (Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm) was a musical and religious turning point in Coltrane’s life and the start of his exploratory phase; he even dedicated the piece to God ("God" in the cosmic and non-sectarian sense, not in the stupid televangelist sense). Coltrane’s saxophone slithers over the rhythmic bedrock prepared by drummer Elvin Jones, bassist Jimmy Garrison and pianist McCoy Tyner —— more restrained and more illuminating than the sax-playing in the majestically dissonant "Ascension," "Sun Ship" and "Om."
Yes, the album is purely instrumental (save for the "A Love Supreme" chant at the end of Part One), but Coltrane proved that you don’t need words to speak in fiery tongues.
8) Miles Davis — "Bitches Brew"
Trumpeter Miles Davis was as protean as painter Pablo Picasso. "Bitches" —— along with other electric opuses like "Agartha," "Live Evil," "Black Beauty," "On the Corner" —— was an outgrowth of one of Miles’ incarnations. Inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, James Brown, Stockhausen, Miles came up with an album in ‘69 that fused the best elements of rock, jazz, funk, Indian raga, and avant-garde.
Miles’ follow-up to the ambient "In a Silent Way" is mind-bending fusion at its best with tracks like Pharaoh’s Dance, Sanctuary and the epic Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, an obvious nod to Jimi Hendrix.
But even if producer Teo Maceo took out the absolutely "evil" rhythm and lead parts (snarling Wayne Shorter saxes, celestial Chick Corea/Joe Zawinul keyboards, as well as crash-and-burn John McLaughlin guitars and Jack DeJohnette drums) and isolated Miles’ trumpet, the resulting track would still be mind-blowing melodic fire. Miles at his most meditative.
9) Yes — "Tales from Topographic Oceans"
"Nous sommes du soleil/We love when we play."
Imponderable, symphonic, lush, otherwordly —— yes, on all counts. Let the first strains of The Revealing Science of God take you straight to the lovely gates of delirium, to a mental institution or to the House of Representatives.
10) I have deliberately left out the 10th slot. I couldn’t think of what album to put: Ornette Coleman’s free jazz musings; Led Zeppelin’s "The Song Remains the Same" (wherein Jimmy Page plays his Les Paul with a violin bowl on Dazed and Confused); John Zorn’s Downtown outings; or electronic meanderings from DJ Shadow or UNKLE. I also thought about crazy diamonds like Eric Dolphy, Return to Forever, Syd Barret, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Igor Stravinsky, etc. Oh well, maybe a new album will be released and rise above the cacophony of a thousand and one acoustic guitar-wielding sycophants lording over our airwaves.
Maybe one of these days we’ll wander into a record bar and buy the album that will turn our minds to mush.
Hey, the aural pandemonium happens at Amoranto Stadium, Quezon City on April 30, Friday. Gates open at exactly 12 noon, and the show starts at 1 p.m. The PULP gig features Stonefree, Grass, Copper Pop Thrill, Violent Playground, Nerve Line, Cover Me Quick, Cakewalk, Six Cycle Mind, Barbie’s Cradle, Imago, Bamboo, Sugarfree, Kapatid, Urbandub, Twisted Halo, Pan, Wuds, Sandwich, Parokya ni Edgar, The Mongols, The Dawn, Kamikazee, Skychurch, Slapshock, Moonstar88, Cheese, Greyhoundz, Chicosci, Death By Stereo, Sin, Powertools, Drastic Intent, Mortal Grudge, Pentavia, plus other surprise acts.
Tickets sell at P150 (which include entrance, one Red Horse beer, two Pepsi X, one slice of Pizza Hut pizza, plus P50 discount on tees by Tribal Wear), and are available at all Odyssey Records outlets and at the gate.