Psycho-Surgeons

Horizontal Action b/w Wild Weekend

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Story time...

Back in 2008 I found myself in Australia, on tour with my band the Dirtbombs. On our day in Sydney I managed to connect with the wonderful Mark Taylor.

Taylor is quite known in the garage punk world as the most die-hard, highest spending collector in the circuit. While oftentimes folks with this mantle are derided amongst everyone else, Taylor's maintained a golden reputation...always quick to help folks with information, transfers from what are oftentimes the cleanest known copies of records in the WORLD, and general humility and affability.

We had traded a couple things back and forth in the years before, so he stopped by the club after sound check and we then went to his "bunker" to go and listen to garage records.

Carved deep into a hill that overlooked Sydney, complete with the opera house and the Harbor Bridge in all of it's postcard views, I dug through his collection, just agog.

Once, maybe twice in a lifetime do you ever truly get the thrill of going through a collection that is so...COMPLETE. Just every goddamned record I could ever think of was in there...original copies of the Keggs, the Young Men, just about ever single that was ever featured on the "Back From the Grave" compilations. After a while, it just became almost...whatever? Like, "of course you have that...you have everything."

I don't say this in a flippant way. But when you go to the Louvre, after two hours or so, the sheer impact of a masterpiece has diminished a bit, right?

Anyway, the view of the harbor skyline was beautiful, there was even a fireworks display, just a really eye-opening moment, super-memorable.

As we were leaving, I casually made mention to Mark that I was a fan of his work in the Psycho-Surgeons and Lipstick Killers. He looked utterly surprised. As his time in one of Australia's earliest, most influential punk bands does not intersect with the world of 1960's American garage rock.

"You know the Psycho-Surgeons?" or something to that effect, was his reply.

"Of course!" I said.

"Hold on, I'll be right back."

He runs out of his car, back into his house, and comes back with an original, 1978 pig's blood-spattered copy of "Horizontal Action."

"Here...this is for you."

I was dumbfounded.

The songs are unthrottled punk rock, clocking in under 2 minutes each, early salvos in Australia's punk front, undeniably solid, solid, essential. And yes, in true punk fashion...they splattered the white, die-cut jackets with pig's blood.

An original will run you around $600, but reissues, sans blood, are handy for less than a tenner. Recommended.