thee hypnotics ? c/d

Not sure what happened to them after SOUL GLITTER & SIN, which found them branching out with horn sections etc. Last I saw of them was a t-shirt sported by Black Crowes' frontman Chris Robinson (surely a bad sign).

They were a complete stooges rip-off but there are worse bands to rip off...

They were from my home-town and i used to sit next to the singers brother in Physics...(interesting eh?)

One of them ended up in Hurricane #1. I heard they had some bad habits which might have gotten in the way of career success.

As MC5/Stooges imitators go they weren't too bad - better than tosspots like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, anyway - but it all seems a very long time ago now...

Walking through Big Box Retail Store, there was an endcap stacked with these iPod docks that auto-rotate the iPod for no apparent reason. Even more confusing to me was that the packaging features Come Down Heavy

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Revolution-Motorized-Portable-Speaker/dp/B002M78L6E/ref=sr_1_12?s=mp3&ie=UTF8&qid=1292415392&sr=1-12

How does this product placement happen? Was this a sly joke placed by a 40-something graphic designer. Did someone pay for the plug? This seems like the sort of band that, weirdly, could still have management. They should have chosen Soul Glitter and Sin!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81WsM77rRSL._AA1500_.jpg

Jim Jones's current band, the Jim Jones Revue, are a whole bundle of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IVfC_nqzWQ

FIFTY-FIVE MILLION AND THAT'S JUST THE START OF IT

Really class band the one time I saw them live (1989-ish?). Just swaggered on to the stage, nodded at the crowd, plugged in and then blew a hole in the fucking sky.

Totally embarrassed to admit I hadn't heard these guys until I saw them mentioned in the same breath as Monster Magnet, Spacemen 3 and Loop. I think. Oh wait maybe Union Carbide was in there? Great stuff.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I quite liked them at the time - I particularly loved the voodoo, Dr John-like jams in Soul Glitter & Sin.

why would you be ashamed! they were awesome! soul glitter & sin is one of my top ten faves of the 90's. for real. but i love the one before it too. and the live album is insane.

Soul Glitter and Sin is my keeper as well. Been far too long since I've heard it...

soul gitter & sin is one of those albums that i've listened to over a hundred times and i don't think i've ever met anyone in real life who has heard it. it kinda disappeared without a trace. i did bail on the last album though. i bought it and played it once or twice and that was it.

okay, i've met ned in real life. non-ilx people i should say...

last album wasn't that bad too.

heavy liquid was very stooges, but in a good sense, and a couple of the so-called ballads had enough little weird touches to be interesting (but I guess Chris Robinson producing was definitely too un-hip).

"why would you be ashamed!"

some x-posts
at least here they were considered a second rate Stooges/ Mc5 rip off (as opposed to Spacemen 3 and Loop, that I guess were considered first rate Stooges/ MC5 rip offs?!).

They were a different strain of Stooges/MC5 to Loop and Spacemen, so they never really attracted the same crowd (or the critics). Spacemen and Loop took the notion that the Detroit bands were indie experimentalists - hence all the drones. And hence the crowds of whey-faced students. Hypnotics forgot the solipsism, wore black leather and scarlet shirts and played rock'n'roll shows. So although the bands sound of a piece now, they represented very different takes on the same aesthetic at the time.

Was in a radio studio with Jim Jones earlier this year and asked him about Thee Hypnotics: he said they were, like so many bands, done over by the business, but also felt the records never quite captured what they were about. Again, like so many great live bands.

ithappens, were you actually at gigs by spacemen 3 and thee hypnotics? i was, and i can tell you that it was almost EXACTLY the same audience for both bands

Not where I was!

Spacemen in 86 was anorak wearers. Hypnotics in 89 was leather jackets.

i think that is the narcisscism of small duffel coats

I guess I'm thinking of Spacemen in their sitting-on-stools, noodling on for hours phase. Dunno what their audience was by 89. So fair enough.

But they did represent different takes on same aesthetic, and I do think that's why one lot got crit love and the other didn't to anything like the same degree.

But I never wore a duffelcoat. Or an anorak. Or a leather jacket, for that matter.

i can dig it. spacemen were more VU and hypnotics more mc5.

and i can imagine loop and spacemen fans turning up their noses at the cock rock elements of thee hypnotics.

I will be digging out Thee Hypnotics stuff tonight - I'd forgotten the band even existed till I had a chat about some psychedelic/drone stuff with a colleague the other day - I then got drunk and forgot all about them again. This thread revive is a timely reminder.

I haven't listened to them for over 15 years. I think I remember preferring the tighter, more referential, Come Down Heavy to Soul Glitter & Sin - I don't think that will still be the case.

If I'm remembering everything in the correct order I got to Thee Hypnotics via Jesus and Mary Chain then Loop.

my brother played the live thing for me and at first the stooges-aping kinda put me off them but come down heavy changed my mind. they seemed to have a *little* bit of hype surrounding them in the states for like a minute. but it was a short minute. i think people ended up preferring the soup dragons here. or jesus jones. or emf.

"and i can imagine loop and spacemen fans turning up their noses at the cock rock elements of thee hypnotics"

basically this (again at least here in italy).
i remember reading many years ago a ferocious putdown of ted nugent that convinced the then young and innocent me that his stuff wasn't worth my precious time; this until someone here at ilx gave me a healthy kick in the ass.

they seemed to have a *little* bit of hype surrounding them in the states for like a minute. but it was a short minute

I think they got 15 minutes and maybe an NME cover in the UK but the leather jackets and the guitars didn't fit the mood of the time (all baggy madchester pills n thrills).

Yeah but the whole Sub Pop thing was just kicking off too right?

Yes I think Thee Hypnotics were one of the first UK bands on Sub Pop. They cut short their first big US tour after a car accident and I think they lost any momentum they had.

The first Hypnotics singles were just a few crucial months before Sub Pop really made an impact in the UK, so they had probably already been heard and written off by the time Touch Me I'm Sick came along. Also, the UK press was always more ready to accept rock bands from the States - especially with the hard drinkin' lumberjacks backstory Sub Pop created - than from the UK, where it was always too easy to discover they were really dentists' sons from Teddington called Jeremy.

always thought thee hypnotics were a boring band with a great sound. had most of their stuff up through come down heavy, at a time when i'd buy anything even vaguely stooges-derived, but wound up loving none of it in the long run. problem was that they too faithfully reproduced a note-perfect motor city din, convincing but faceless, filtering elements of funhouse and the first MC5 lp through mudhoney's wall of distortion pedals. the hooks were thin as the sound was beefy and their songs seemed to drag on forever without actually going anywhere. this in comparison to loop and spacemen 3, who seemed at least to take their abject stooge worship someplace new, and whose songs went everywhere without ever leaving the couch.

that was my take at the time, anyway. wouldn't mind revisiting tracks like "half man and half boy" and "come down heavy", as i remember them more fondly than the above might indicate.

Don't think they ever topped the first two singles, Justice in Freedom and Soul Trader, to be honest. Have a lot of affection for them, though.

I love the sound of overdriven guitar+horn charts. Like "Shakedown". That's one of my fav tracks ever. Gallon Drunk did that kind of Mingus-punk really well too. The Saints "Know Your Product" is the earliest example I know of, tho' I probably just haven't found the right Ike Turner track.

^ "know your product" is a cherished 20th-century classic hereabouts. prototype seems to be stones circa exile, but less bleary.

prototype is 'skunk (sonically speaking}', fer sure (or even 'lady friend' by the byrds)

Just been sent a reissue of Come Down Heavy, on Cherry Red (inevitably). Nowadays, when you'd expect a record by a guitar band to roar out of the speakers and be mastered with everything louder than everything else, it sounds a little bit tinny and thin. Tendency for songs to have one really good idea, but exhaust it well before the end. And it does sound much, much more rock'n'roll than Loop or Spacemen 3 - Jones's singing has a lot to do with that: caterwauling rather than doing the affectless nasal drone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVClmEKbm0I

soul gitter & sin 4ever. top ten rock rekkerd of the 90's for me. one of the last great rock records i ever bought too. rock with a capital r.

hos is Liver Than God?

how

I had no idea there was any connection between Jim Jones Revue & Thee Hypnotics! I just knew Jim Jones Revue as a recent band, it's a pretty generic name I guess. I like them though.

the live album is indeed loud and sounds totally like stooges.

but only the first part is live?!

who can remember at this point? i only own come down heavy and SG&S at this late date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEYx8whmXiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJaEUOs3R-w

^ my two favourite songs by them, both from the early days

I bought Justice Is Freedom 12" at a second hand place in Brighton last year, it still languishes in a to-listen pile. At least I picked a good one!

Weird, there are clearly mentions of the Jim Jones Revue on this thread but I had completely forgotten/not realized the connection until recently, and of course they've just now called it quits. Found the first album yesterday for cheap, though, and am listening now, good ramshackle stuff.

never heard thee hypnotics, but loved the jim jones revue.
such a great live band.
jim had a real presence on stage (lots of preacher man call/response fun), and the rest of the band always looked as if they had come from a bank robbery.
saw them twice, and the crowd were an interesting mix of old school quiffed to excess rockabillies, young tattoo'd hipsters, and bikers.