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  • Monday Comics: Psychic TV

    Monday Comics: Psychic TV

    Resident cartoonist and CatSynth TV co-host J.B. shares his 1992 “special guest appearance” with the band Psychic TV.

    The text from the story in the comics:


    CIrca 1994, Psychic TV were one of my tavorile bands. was really Inspired by The lechno-Acid-Trance-Rock Thing They were doing at The time. As fate would have it, the band had moved their base of operations from London to the San Francisco Bay Area (long story…), and were playing around town a lot.


    On 29 May, 1992, Psychic TV played at 177 Townsend in San Francisco. Surprisingly, They then had a saxophonisi, Gamall Awad, playing some Free Jazz improvised lines over their thundering electro beats.


    This was a revelation. I had a cassette That I would listen To over and over – It had the Pat Metheny /Ornette Coleman album Song X on one side, and PTY’s Towards Thee Infinite Beat on The other. I daydreamed about what it would sound like to weave those two threads together. And here it was!

    Jus over Iwo months laler, on Augus 5th, Psychic TV played at The Edge In Palo Allo.

    Once again, Gamall was playing with the band. During the performance, Genesis P-Orridge spotled someone in The audience holding up a sitar.

    Genesis signalled to this person to join the band onstage.
    The sitarist, Chandra Shukla, joined the band onstage for an improvisation.


    A few thoughts came to mind. It seemed like audience parlicipation was an option here. And, since the band now had this saxophonist doing some Ornette-flavored alto lines, why not add some Eric Dolphy-type bass clarinet?

    decided That I was going to play with The band.

    My bass clarinel was in my Truck; I had gone siraighi lo The gig from a Vacuum Tree Head recording session.

    I went and grabbed The insirument.

    I Told the bouncers,

    “The band said that I could play with them”.

    Unbelievably, they let me back in.

    Chulzpah? Definitely!

    When the moment felt right, I “invited myself” onstage, went up To a mic, and look a brief solo.

    The band seemed alternately confused and amused by this.

    I finished up and jumped off.

    Later, Genesis waved both Chandra and I back onslage. There was an Improvisalion wilh myself on bass clarinet, Genesis on shehnai, and Chandra on sitar over one of Fred’s programmed beats.

    There is a recordng of all of his out there.

  • Psychic TV and Moira Scar, The Independent, San Francisco

    Psychic TV and Moira Scar, The Independent, San Francisco

    By Jason Berry and Amanda Chaudhary

    L’Shana Tova! To start the new year off in a sweet way, we headed down to The Independent on Divisadero in San Francisco to check out Moira Scar and Psychic TV.  The Independent, as we soon learned, is housed on the site of the former Kennel Club. We were quite pleased to run into quite a few friends amongst the audience from various communities, including the local experimental and electronic music scenes, and Kearny Street Workshop.

    First up was Moira Scar. We saw them about a year ago, and they have continued their musical growth into something most weird and wonderful.  The always visually captivating group is headed by Roxy Monoxide (guitar, saxophone, vocals) and LuLu Gamma Ray (synth, vocals), together with Monica Ramos and Aimee Schott on bass and drums, respectively.

    Moira Scar

    With a sound that hearkened back, to these reporters at least, to the great synth-punk bands of yesterday – Tubeway Army, leavened with a dash of 45 Grave – we enjoyed their energetic set. Some elements of spiky, Crimson-style prog seemed to be peeking into their new sound. We counted a 15-beat riff (subdivided 4, 3, 4, 4) and quite liked the way tenor saxophone worked in their sound.  Did we mention that the band’s presentation and stagecraft were top-notch? We’ll be keeping an ear out for more of this group.

    After a brief intermission, Psychic TV took to the stage.

    Psychic TV

    We will admit a bit of uncertainty on our behalf on how this would turn out. The last time we saw PTV, in the late 90s shortly after the release of Trip Reset, they were, shall we say, less-than-inspired, and certainly unrehearsed. Genesis P-Orridge disbanded the group shortly thereafter for a time. This was the new, improved PTV we saw, or PTV3 as they are now billing themselves. Just as each edition of the band is driven along by the primary composer and musical director (Alex Ferguson, Fred Giannelli, Larry Thrasher), this edition is piloted by drummer and graphic designer Edly O’Dowd. His aesthetic is something new for PTV; gone are the rambling improvisations and sound collages of days past, replaced with a tight, solid band sound. The group focused on material from the recently-reissued albums A Pagan Day and Allegory and Self, starting with a guitar-and-voice rendition of the classic tune “Translucent Carriages”, originally by Pearls Before Swine, before moving onto “She Was Surprised / New Sexuality”, “Just Like Arcadia”, and others. Genesis stuck close to the script, reading the lyrics from a music stand.

    The band delivered, and the crowd loved it! We headed back to CatSynth HQ satisfied and exhausted, still worn out from our recent return from NYC. But, more about that soon….