Psychic TV/PTV3 recently played dates in Chicago and Detroit and band frontperson Genesis Breyer P-Orridge posted these comments on he/r FB feed:
“So we made it back from Chicago and Detroit. Audiences in both places were beauty full and so wonderfully into the music. Thank you especially to Gus and everyone at the EL CLUB in Detroit for creating a clean, modern, friendly green room and effective stage and PA. Alex and Kate did a great job mixing with no real idea in advance that our music is joyful and celebratory hyperdelic rock. You’d think that after ending TG in 1981 people would have worked out long ago that Psychic TV is not at all “industrial” but TOTALLY different with very unique song structiures rooted in the mid-1960’s when innovation was Queen and structures that allowed improvisation were King. Getting the maximum expression from traditional instruments and effects. We can’t count the number of times people say, after seeing us, “I had no idea your music was like this! ” Even now after around 200 records later…but this is changing radically worldwide quite suddenly. Most bands develop a style and then write all their songs constrained within that style. So it is familiar, easy, predictable and their audiences like it that way. No surprises. No changes gig to gig. It’s a form of SONIC BRANDING. (ugh!). PTV3 create songs, or feel an affinity with other bands songs, and we explore the lyrical content to DISCOVER EACH SONG’s UNIQUE VOICE AND STORY. Then we create music to expand the intimate meanings of that song regardless of style. If we DO cover a song it is partly also to suggest those hearing it played will go away and seek out the source, explore that musician’s catalogue and expand their knowledge and flexibility as a result. In that way we act as a signpost too. Why has it taken so long? That’s a too long answer for here. apart from the obvious shift from searching for new, unique and CREATIVE music that evolves and CHANGES as a band continues to explore, which was the older way we grew up with ( just see how the Beatles changed over time! In my view a conservative band in the context of the sixties). A shirt from that to the present where a band creates an image first, their intention a CAREER and MONEY, which requires acceptance by the totally controlled into mediocrity “entertainment industry”, the “business”. Huge sales demand appealing to the lowest common denominator. In the past if you discovered a new totally original band you awaited a second album, assuming and hoping it would have evolved, surprise you and push your boundaries of musical structures. Now NO SURPRISES, very little growth or evolution, bigger budgets. And with yound people just listening to streaming pap chosen by the companiers that manufacture it…no point. BUT there is another reason that Psychic TV is growing and communicating so much more everywhere in the world we go and that is the members themselves. We used to dream of my idea of a perfect band back in the later 60’s and could hear the music it would play in my head. For a while Throbbing Gristle supplied a realisation of that dream and named and conceived Industrial Music back in 1975 on September 3rd, London Fields Park, Hackney. Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and myself worked as a loving family, determined to destroy the ever decreasing content of music at that time and shake the status quo. Our experiments spawned an entirely new genre, INDUSTRIAL, that has continued globally to this day with countless variations and sub-genres, just like jazz. By 1981 however, it was getting too easy, too predictable and to our endless credit. NOW, with Psychic TV/PTV3 we have around me my absolutely perfect musical family. Alice Genese, Edley ODowd, Jeff Berner and John Weingarten and myself. This is the dream we had in 1967 and because there is no style in and of itself, it has endless permutations of sound, song, lyric and style to continually trawl for VARIATIONS…We want to take a momeant here to thank my bandmates for nurturing and believing in our dream of what WAS possible without sucking on the teat of the “business”. The last time we received a small budget to record an album was 1995. Before that it was 1983. In between and after…nothing. Truly independent and truly free. We have survived and continued for the sake of exploration itself. Thank you to my present band and thank you to all of you who GET what and why we are doing things the way we do.” Djin GEN
