Sunday, December 28, 2008
My Psychotic Reaction to the death of John Byrne.
Quote: They were a bunch of young guitar slappin’ brats from some indistinguishable California suburb. Unquote, “Lester Bangs” 1969?
Come of all you young ones and gather around the campfire toast some marshmallows and if you got em, then smoke em. Grandpa punk does not have a ghost story to tell you but a war story. What war was that? The war against uncool! It was the year of 1966 in the tepid spring of a Southern California spring. The family’s garage became the training camp of pimple-faced teens that wanted to moon the tyranny of parental guidance. Armed with Sears’s guitars and second hand drums the result was: The golden age of garage rock and the first assult by punk rock warriors. Various names emerged to take the local record charts, names like, The Seeds,? Mark and the Mysterians, Standells, Leaves, Music Machine and Count Five. A quintet of garage rats from San Jose California whose leader hailed from the working class hood, “Dublin Ireland. They called him Sean but his birth name was John Byrne. If he’d stayed in his native land, he would have given Van Morrison and his band, “Them” and run for his money. He wrote the mainstay garage anthem, “Psychotic Reaction”. Well the song hit pay dirt in 66 and became well known song nationally. They made 3 more L.P’s after that and faded into garage oblivion.
Even garage band in 66 played that song. To say that they ripped off the Yardbirds was selling them short. Psychotic Reaction was an original tune, which had great elements of a rock song of that era. You had your nasal vocals; fuzz tone guitar, 12-string guitar, heavy bass, and a hard back beat drums and blues harmonica. The lyric were little unusual. The chick the subject is trying to get into bed is a head case. I can’t get your love! I can’t any satisfaction! Only a little psychotic reaction! The singer yells, a certified rock classic indeed.
This garage revolution only lasted a year and a half, and then the hippie rockers took over the airwaves. Some garage bands survived the newer psychedelic sound, bands like Arthur Lee and Love and Sky Saxon & The Seeds but the others didn’t fit so they died a hard death. Count 5 tried their hand in the new sound, like the album, Carburetor Dung, but the acidhead public wasn’t buying it. People would ask, wasn’t that the band that did Psychotic Reaction? Ah, no thanks. The legendary rock critic lauded, “Carburetor Dung” as a psychedelic masterpiece, but alas, who listens to rock critics anyway? The great garage sound died at birth and it was Jefferson Airplane turn.
John Byrne died at the age of 61 this week from liver cancer. I was 12 years when he hit song came out I ran to my dictionary to see what the word, “Psychotic” meant. Then I bought the album at Norty’s record shop in Los Angeles. The cover was the band looking face down at a dug up grave, the joke was, and you were the corpse they were looking at.
So here’s to you Mr., Byrne, I raise my beer can for a toast in your behalf. OK kids story is over, get to bed! Tomorrow is a school day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-691KqcDttE 
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