ether in the eighties
Typed up this wee piece by George D. Henderson from Real Groove, mid 90s sometime I guess. Not sure what to do with it so I'm just bunging it on here for now:
Just What Were They On?
The Puddle's George Henderson tracks the pharmacology of Dunedin music
Without even taking a drug himself, Martin Phillipps was influenced by his imagination of the drug experience (Kaleidoscope World), by his observation of drugster lifestyles (Drug Musicians) and, above all, by the jargon of drugsters, always part of rock'n'roll's rich vocabulary. The legal drug tobacco lends its image to the lyrics of many of Graeme Downes' songs - For the Love of Ash Grey, Smokin' All the Time Now - and on the lyric sheet of every Verlaines album, examples literal and metaphorical abound. For many (but not all) users, tobacco is addictive and addiction is the aptest of all metaphors for true love: few lovers indeed attain the dedication and self-sacrifice of the addict to opium and its derivatives and imitations.
The best chemist shop burglars of the early eighties were the Dunedin boot boys, represented in Dunedin music by P.D. Bois. Pharmaceutical morphine (before AA), cocaine and benzedrine left traces in band names like Crystal Zoom. Safecracking, becoming harder and less profitable, degenerated into smash and grab raids for O.T., codeine (before homebake) and (later) temazepam "footballs". Some male members of The Puddle brought this trend south from Christchurch, hence Junk and lyrics like "I'll bring my works next time" (K3), "habit keep me poor" et al. The time spent reducing some of these compounds to their useable essence was great and must have detracted from creativity as much as any nine to five job, but the eighties drug which never helped anyone acheive anything, bar imprisonment and epilepsy, was the popular Rohypnol. Dunedin music stagnated until the great benzedrine epidemics of '87 and '93 when a flood of liquid speed inspired experiments like those that led to Mink, Musk and the new wave of Dunedin pop.
The psycilocybin mushroom species, once an exotic import from rural districts, have begun appearing in private gardens and public parks making "psychedelic" trips freely available in season to everyone with the guts and sanity to profit from the experience. Dunedin music has long celebrated these and other keys to the doors of perception with that traditional coy equivocation that allows of other more innocent interpretations - Look Blue Go Purple's Cactus Cat may have been feline and the Rip's Ether may have just as easily to those not in the know, referred to that imaginary substance which conducts forces such as gravity and light across otherwise empty space. If there was one inspirational intoxicant probably unique in Dunedin music, ether was that drug, lost to all since the days of Alfred Jarry and Max Ernst, its local revival gave many a local muso an O.B.E., a taste of the afterlife and alternative realities immortalised by the Rip and Puddle songs Mal de Seance and Ghosts Mope ("where you come from you breathe all the time/ what I have to sniff off a rag"). Ether in the eighties perhaps illustrates best how the creativity of Dunedin drugsters rose to overcome our far from priveleged position at the furthest end of the world's trade routes as well as demonstrating convincingly the ultimate impossibility of frustrating the ancient and natural human desire to change our minds, see beyond our ken and add, if we can, to our fair share of comfort and joy.
ps. I don't think I've heard the Chills' Drug Musicians, what is it on?
Just What Were They On?
The Puddle's George Henderson tracks the pharmacology of Dunedin music
Without even taking a drug himself, Martin Phillipps was influenced by his imagination of the drug experience (Kaleidoscope World), by his observation of drugster lifestyles (Drug Musicians) and, above all, by the jargon of drugsters, always part of rock'n'roll's rich vocabulary. The legal drug tobacco lends its image to the lyrics of many of Graeme Downes' songs - For the Love of Ash Grey, Smokin' All the Time Now - and on the lyric sheet of every Verlaines album, examples literal and metaphorical abound. For many (but not all) users, tobacco is addictive and addiction is the aptest of all metaphors for true love: few lovers indeed attain the dedication and self-sacrifice of the addict to opium and its derivatives and imitations.
The best chemist shop burglars of the early eighties were the Dunedin boot boys, represented in Dunedin music by P.D. Bois. Pharmaceutical morphine (before AA), cocaine and benzedrine left traces in band names like Crystal Zoom. Safecracking, becoming harder and less profitable, degenerated into smash and grab raids for O.T., codeine (before homebake) and (later) temazepam "footballs". Some male members of The Puddle brought this trend south from Christchurch, hence Junk and lyrics like "I'll bring my works next time" (K3), "habit keep me poor" et al. The time spent reducing some of these compounds to their useable essence was great and must have detracted from creativity as much as any nine to five job, but the eighties drug which never helped anyone acheive anything, bar imprisonment and epilepsy, was the popular Rohypnol. Dunedin music stagnated until the great benzedrine epidemics of '87 and '93 when a flood of liquid speed inspired experiments like those that led to Mink, Musk and the new wave of Dunedin pop.
The psycilocybin mushroom species, once an exotic import from rural districts, have begun appearing in private gardens and public parks making "psychedelic" trips freely available in season to everyone with the guts and sanity to profit from the experience. Dunedin music has long celebrated these and other keys to the doors of perception with that traditional coy equivocation that allows of other more innocent interpretations - Look Blue Go Purple's Cactus Cat may have been feline and the Rip's Ether may have just as easily to those not in the know, referred to that imaginary substance which conducts forces such as gravity and light across otherwise empty space. If there was one inspirational intoxicant probably unique in Dunedin music, ether was that drug, lost to all since the days of Alfred Jarry and Max Ernst, its local revival gave many a local muso an O.B.E., a taste of the afterlife and alternative realities immortalised by the Rip and Puddle songs Mal de Seance and Ghosts Mope ("where you come from you breathe all the time/ what I have to sniff off a rag"). Ether in the eighties perhaps illustrates best how the creativity of Dunedin drugsters rose to overcome our far from priveleged position at the furthest end of the world's trade routes as well as demonstrating convincingly the ultimate impossibility of frustrating the ancient and natural human desire to change our minds, see beyond our ken and add, if we can, to our fair share of comfort and joy.
ps. I don't think I've heard the Chills' Drug Musicians, what is it on?