Count Five - Psychotic Reaction...

...june's gin-soaked psych-o-delic summer-of-love trips festival continues here at the rfs lounge with the second in the occasional series - it's what LESTER would have WANTED! (the first - LouReed's Metal Machine Music, is on our sister channel rfsmojofilter) - over to you, LESTER...

"...I tried and tried to buy the Psychotic Reaction LP- I'd go down to the Unimart stoned on grass, on nutmeg, vodka, Romilar or coming glassy eyed off ten Dexedrine hours spent working problems in geometry (I was a real little scholar - when I had the magic medicine which catapults you into a maniacal obsessive, craving for knowledge), I tried every gambit to weaken my resistance, but nothing worked. Shit, I had a fuckin' split personality! And all over a fuckin' Count Five album!"

...here's the performance that set lester off...go go girls...



"...they were a bunch of young guitar-slappin' brats from some indistinguishable California suburb, and just a few months after the Yardbirds' "I'm a Man" left the charts they got right in there with this inept imitation called "Psychotic Reaction". And it was a big hit, in fact i think it was an even bigger hit than "I'm a Man", which burned me up at the time but was actually cool now that i think about it, yeah, perfectly appropriate. The song was a schlockhouse grinder, completely fatuous. It started out with this fuzz guitar riff they stole off a Johnny Rivers hit, then went into one of the stupidest vocals of all time. It went, let me see, some jive like

i feel depressed, i feel so bad,
cause you're the best girl i've ever had,
i can't get your love, i can't get affection,
aouw, little girl's psychotic reaction...
an' it feels like THIS!

and then they'd shoot off into an exact "I'm a Man" ripoff. It was absolute dynamite. I hated it at first but then one day I was driving down the road stoned and it came on and I clapped my noggin: "What the fuck am I thinkin' of? That's a great song!"