So Rad, Dude

It wasn’t the Gaye Bykers on Acid who helped create the best night I ever had in the Sir George Robey but their doppelgängers and alter egos the Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds.

Wonderfully supported by the very surreal anarcho-art terrorists the Mutoid Waste Company (an art collective who not only performed challenging avant-garde music, but also created many an idiosyncratic art piece [Car Henge and all manner of bizarre vehicles, such as the Skull Bus, with its skull-like cabin; and the stumpy coach morphed and shaped into a curious bony fish – all perfectly road-legal with their very own tax discs!]), the first band I saw using arc welders and angle grinders on stage, sending golden showers of viciously spiteful sparks over the first few rows of a cowering, concerned audience; followed by the Bykers in full drag, promoting Stewed to the Gills by playing it in its entirety.

They played their little hearts out.
Never before had I witnessed a bespectacled, dreadlocked man in a frock play a fuzz guitar with such gusto.

Emerging from static and skip, not unlike tuning in, the driving, pounding, full-throttle psychedelia on this album relentlessly assaults the ears, turning the listener on with swirling sounds and provocative lyrics that makes one wanna drop everything and go and drop out in a most delicious fashion.

There’s not a poor tune on this album, and amongst all the samples and superbly edited montages (predicting a direction the band would take in the next few years with their PFX project, as they desperately sought credibility, recognition and sales), some of the best modern out there rock music can be heard.

The real stand out tracks for me include the vitriolic plea aimed at those who abuse the planet, ‘Harmonious Murder’, with the shouted epiphany: “No ozone!”;

‘Ill’, an indictment against the then Tory government who were busily flushing the British health service down the toilet;

‘Teeth’, which carries on the battle cry, and advances the attack by concentrating on every speed-freak’s nightmare: dentistry.

(Not only does one have to pluck up courage enough to actually visit the dentist, but then suffer the paranoia of not being able to meet the bill; and the “not such a nice man after all” wants his amalgam back; without the costly luxury of local anaesthesia.)

Then there’s ‘Shoulders’, telling the tale of the devastating night in which the grebo (“Acid Boy”) attending a gig with his girlfriend (“Acid Girl”) loses her; only to find her again seated atop another’s shoulders; totally destroying what could have been “the per-per-perfect night”.

I could go on.

This was definitely G.B.O.A.'s finest work; their last with Virgin (and the production certainly benefits from that association), and without doubt the best album to come out of the whole grebo era.

Gaye Bykers on Acid - Stewed to the Gills (1989)

It Is Are You?

Better Off Dedd

M.A.D.

Hot Thing

Testicle of God (And It Was Good)

Ill

Harmonious Murder

Shoulders

Hair of Dog

Rad Dude

Teeth

Floydrix

Fairway to Heaven

It Is Are You? Concept Reprise

Quality vinyl rip @320kbs

For best effect when burning: remove pauses.

Get Stewed here