Cosmic Psychos with M.O.T.O.
Cake Shop, NYC, Saturday, September 21, 2013

I remember the name of the band the Cosmic Psychos from back in the early 90s but I didn’t know anything about them until recently.  They are  notable for being an relatively obscure Australian band that somehow got under the skin of the Seattle scene during the formative years of Grunge.  Not too many other people knew about them.  Now they’re celebrating 30 years if existence and are the subject of a new documentary called Blokes You Can Trust.  The band comes from a long line of dumb and repetitive but loveable heavy Australian rock and roll music.  The Saints, Radio Birdman, The Hard Ons, hell even AC/DC fits the bill.  When it comes to the Cosmic Psychos, when the wah-wah pedal kicks in, I learned last night that they deliver powerfully inside the electric church.

This one’s for the cunt who took my farm – Ross Knight

I hate to give Eddie Vedder credit for anything because it’s hard to trust anyone who sits on surfboards playing ukuleles  — but his comments about how great the Cosmic Psychos are live in the trailer for the documentary (below) are accurate.  It appears that Mudhoney and Butch Vig bolster the film’s credibility on this matter.  Kurt was a fan, of course.  When they got onstage one floor beneath the baked goods at Cake Shop on Ludlow Street, their heavy machinery-operating style bent me over and plowed me. True, the guitarist looked like he was inches from death.  He stumbled and almost knocked into me twice before they went on.  It looked like his beer baby bump was about due and he wore a wifebeater.   He had a dirty, orange John Boehneresque alcoholic glow.  I imagine the Replacements’ Bobby Stinson might look like this now, had he lived.  But the bloke channeled Ron Ashton in the best possible way and completely shredded the lid off during the entire event. Ross Knight, hunched over and driving the attack via his rural-yet-industrial, fuzzed-out bass and Lemmy-influenced vocal stylings.  This is an interesting cat and there is a good Q&A with him via Austin Chronicle.

Leading contender for best rock show of the year 2013.

  

Check out the trailer for the new documentary

Separate post on opening act M.O.T.O. to follow, maybe.