Psi Com >> There is no end to the figure 8

California Month, tremor #10:

Psi Com - "Ho Ka Hey"

(Mohini Records, 1985 / Triple X Records, 1993)

"Ho Ka Hey" is allegedly a rallying cry used by some tribe of Native Americans (I refuse to use the incorrect term "Indians"), which I heard means "Let's go get 'em!" or, more specifically, "Let's go kill 'em!"  As for why I'm posting this on 9/11, you can interpret it however you want, but I'm mainly doing it as a comment on the rush to war that most countries feel they need to do after being attacked.  I bought a copy of the Koran the other day for a few bucks, so that should be interesting reading, considering that I think the Bible and the Koran are responsible for setting the human race back tens of thousands of years.  But I like to skim them for entertainment value, and, oh yeah, here's the song you wanted.

It's not surprising that Psi Com would use such a term in a song, considering how most of these California post-punk / goth bands of the mid-'80s, such as Savage Republic, Crash Worship, Red Temple Spirits, etc., even early Red Hot Chili Peppers, used lots of tribal imagery and rhythms.  (And U.K. bands like The Cult and Fields Of The Nephilim did this pretty blatantly too, but in more of an image-based, black-cowboy-hat way.)  As for the band name, it was originally spelled Psi-Com.  I think it's slang for psychic communications, but I don't know.  I like how vague and clipped the name is.  This self-titled EP came out on Mohini Records in mid-1985 on 12" (only 1500 copies made), but over half of the pressing came warped from the factory, so quality copies are incredibly rare.  My favorite song on it is actually "City Of Nine Gates", but "Ho Ka Hey" is more visceral.  (And "City," though much more existential and cerebral, has some lyrics that would be inappropriate today, such as "The city's growing crooked / The city bleeds rosy veins to empty streets" and "Banging on the walls until they bleed.")

Psi Com was: Perry Farrell - vocals, some percussion; Kelly Wheeler - bass; Vince Duran - guitar; Aaron Sherer - drums

A band whose members refuse to even look at one another cannot last very long; photo from the CD booklet.

Perry went on to form a Led Zeppelin tribute act called Jane's Addiction and founded Lollapalooza and formed Porno For Pyros, etc., making him a cultural icon and Mr. Alternative Rock to many folks.  But with all due respect, nothing he did will ever come close to the quality level of Psi Com's EP.  It was kindly reissued in 1993 by Triple X Records on CD, cassette, limited-edition 12" (with several different covers), and numbered-edition 10".  Big ups to Triple X for giving it such a deluxe treatment.  I bought it on cassette in August '95, right before going off to start a bad year of college in Virginia, and quickly became obsessed with it.  This song's astounding bassline is obviously the star of the show, but the whisper-to-a-scream vocals and existential lyrics are top-notch too.  For example: "One end burns, one end freezes / The unlearned hold on to neither," "The answer comes before the lesson," and "The path we walk is not so straight / And there is no end to the figure 8."  Sounds like a lot of Buddhist or Hare Krishna mumbo-jumbo, but I kind of that sort of stuff.

It's kind of sad that Perry was doing pop songs as vacuous as "Jane Says" just a few years later.  You can find an enormous amount of info about this EP over at this great page.  I once read that the cover image is of a dead person during some war in Asia (lying on the ground) who was cropped out and reoriented vertically onto that image of a coastline.  I had always thought it was just Perry jumping in the air, during a particularly anorexic period of his life.  (When one is emulating Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, and/or Rozz Williams of Christian Death, and/or David Bowie, one has to forgo lots of calories.)

Helpful sticker on the 1993 Triple X reissue

Some more fond memories of California:
The blackberry field behind our condo, exploring Kirby Cove, Lombard Street, the occasional mini earthquake, feeding quails by hand in our backyard, seeing Joe Montana in a restaurant, going to a Warriors game, ice plants blanketing the hills of the Presidio, long drives to the big swimming pool in Marin County which often played Phil Collins songs on its PA system, a day trip to Silicon Valley, etc.

Informative and fashionable t-shirt I bought a few years ago

This is a photo I took for Fine Art Photography class at Loyola right before Halloween '97, late in the afternoon (hence the great shadows) in the French Market.  There were a lot of pumpkins being hawked.  I know it's a bit overexposed and hence  lacks enough dark tones, but I kind of like the washed-out, sunlit look of it.  According to his business card, his name was Zahdan Sterling, or maybe that was the name of his company.  Yes, there is a lot of brightly-colored, tie-dyed stuff in this photo.  I never noticed until after I developed it that there were two women hugging in the background.

I lost this camera, a fully manual old Ricoh or Nikon, when my rented canoe flipped in the Atchafalaya Swamp the following April!  One of the most harrowing experiences of my life... being stuck, alone, in water up to my neck, my bare feet on the muddy swamp bottom, about 100 feet offshore, in what is arguably the alligator capital of the world, with the tide rising and the sun about to set, peripherally worrying about getting some toes taken off by a snapping turtle.  After about 10 minutes, which seemed like 10 days, I figured out that to get back in a canoe, you have to hop in at one of the tips, so that the weight of the canoe and the weight of your body balance each other out.  Your first instinct is to try to get back in it on one of the broad sides, but it will keep flipping over every time.  The only reason I was there was to catch some reptiles and/or amphibians for my Herpetology class.  I did catch a cool water snake (a Nerodia fasciata, I think), and kept it as a pet for about a year before letting it go in Norco.

The only more harrowing experience I've had was when I was wandering in this unmarked grassy field in Chalmette or Violet, looking for... yup, reptiles and/or amphibians... in 2000.  I was holding only a tiny blue aquarium net.  Suddenly 4 dudes on ATV's peel up and surround me, one of them waving a rifle.  One of them may have been in a pickup truck, actually.  The armed one was an old redneck codger, screaming at me to get off his land.  I pointed out that there wasn't a No Trespassing sign, but this just made him angrier.  Somehow I weaseled my way out of it, and now I never do that sort of thing.  I guess a more harrowing thing that I witnessed was when my sister got swept away by a river current in the mid-'80s in California.  My dad and I ran along the bank, which was about a 10-foot high cliff, and I think he got her to grab onto his fishing pole or a branch.

Planets with similar climates: Bauhaus - "Kick In The Eye" (1981), Quicksand - "Fazer" (1992), Christian Death - "Desperate Hell" (1981), The Pop Group - "Colour Blind" (~1980), Sonic Youth feat. Mike Watt - "In The Kingdom #19" (1986), Moonshake - "City Poison" (1992), Fugazi - "Waiting Room" (1988).