Are You My Acid Mother?

Space Campers and Space Jammers help their fans get high—really high

Sarah Askari

published: May 09, 2007

Saturday, 1:00 a.m.

"Damn, this cat's shoes are white," I think to myself as Space Camp guitarist Tim Uhl leans into the microphone. It's the release party for the foursome's new album, A Foundification for Soundification, and after the first few shaggy-voiced, anthemic verses, Uhl realizes he can't leave the thing unspoken a second longer.

"I'm wearing my new shoes, my stunning new shoes!" he points out with a mix of genuine and ironic enthusiasm. The combination of being able to truly feel new-sneaker happiness and the compulsion to make fun of that very reaction is at the heart of Space Camp's mission. Bands like this combine pop's love of simple pleasures with punk's need to roll its eyes at them.

When Uhl and fellow vocalist/guitarist Jon Greenlee sing "Cheesy Pop Song Makes a Comeback," they're making light of the whole endeavor. But they save the fooling around until after they've completed the work of writing powerhouse choruses and exultant melodies. I just wish the careful songcraft on the album came through more clearly at the live show.

While the drink prices at Big V's are kind to patrons, the sound system is less so. I would rather pay a bit more for my vodka tonic and find more to enjoy in the performances, but I am old-ish and have a low tolerance; valid arguments can be made for maintaining the status quo. At any rate, the crowd demands a repeat performance of "Cheesy," and the band is sporting—or drunk?—enough to oblige.

 

Sunday, 11:00 p.m.

Have Acid Mother's Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. captured the sound of a birthing star for broadcast here on Earth? Are they using their psychedelic collective to expand our minds, our cosmology, our sense of what music can make possible?

Or are they old-timers married to a genre whose promise of avant-garde surprise was exhausted decades ago?

These are the questions I ask myself as the ten-year-old Japanese quintet fills the Triple Rock Social Club with warped notes and endless freak-out jams. Shooting for something beyond lyrics or melody, the group discards obvious song structures to conduct experiments with atmosphere. With a mane equal to Slash's, Kawabato Makoto burns rotting-sun guitar solos into the air. The band's lone woman, Kitagawa Hao, does her best high-priestess bit, the fringes on her scarlet robe shivering as she shimmies the percussive shell bracelet 'round her wrist. She howls in a high, otherworldly tone, her eyes closed in the ecstasy of the moment. Next to her, Higashi Hiroshi twists knobs while flopping around an impressive and frightful shock of wizened-sorcerer hair.

The sparse vocalizing borrows from the harmonic resonance of throat singing. As notes hang thrumming in the air, the band members start chanting a low, multilayered call to temple—or maybe they're arguing about who left toenail clippings on the tour van's dashboard. The warm sound of real voices is a relief after all those swirling, droning guitars. Daubing one tone on top of the next carries the same peril in music as it does in finger painting—when you blend too many together, they all turn to mud.

 

End quiz: Which of the following is not a current permutation of '90s guitar shamans Acid Mother's Temple? a) Acid Mother's Temple & the Cosmic Inferno; b) Acid Mother's Gong; c) Acid Mystery Future Stench; d) Acid Mother's Temple & the Incredible Strange Band; e) Acid Guru's Temple; f) Acid Mother's Temple & the Pink Ladies Blues.

Answer: c is fake. AMT have seeded a crazy number of bands. If the Triple Rock hosts a show next week by the Acid Hopefuls or Doomtree Mother's Temple, we'll know they're capable of propagation by infection.