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Neil’s Children, l-r: John Linger, Brandon Jacobs (drums),
James Hair (bass). Photo by David Titlow.
Wacko movements like psychedelic diwali or Panjabi electro boogie prove that most rock and rollers have no idea which way they’re going, where they’re going to end up or how much damage they’re going to do inside. Disaster is always imminent and danger is omnipresent but we don’t fucking care right?
Recently, I dug out a load of old English psych records by bands like Tomorrow and July and got quite high and was totally unsure about what anything was or what my name was and it was round about that time that a little teenage psych punk band called Neil’s Children changed my life.
Somehow I’d ended up in Camden on a Tuesday night and it was packed and I was, like, really fucking Egyptian y’know? So we had to leave the bar (too packed) and went to see the band play and then all of a sudden I’m TOTALLY TRANSFIXED and blasted into some sort of sonic netherworld by this intensely loud, spiky psychedelic punk pop rock MAYHEM played by three apparitions that looked like a rocket-powered cult school play version of A Clockwork Orange. Are you following this? Anyway man it was so fucking heavy and wired and exciting that I swear these two girls at the side of the stage started fingering each other in the middle of the last song!
I got to hang out with the band after the gig and we talked for hours about groups like The Jam, Erase Errata, Buzzcocks, and fucking Oasis and then it turned out that the singer John Linger (great name right?) is a big English psych fan and was totally obsessed with the EXACT SAME English psych records that I’d been listening to earlier in the day when I did the mushrooms. It was beautiful.
I think I said something to him like: “Dude, you’re like already the new king of the English psychedelic punk committee. How’d you do it?”
“We’re interested in making British-sounding music,” he screamed down my ear because their gig gave me tinnitus and the music in the club was so loud.
“There’s been mistakes in the past but then something good comes along. We want to threaten the established order, and we’ll do it by being the most explosive, exciting band on the planet. We want to smash everything up and start all over again and we’ll do it by hook or by crook because we don’t give a fuck about anything.
And I was like, “good attitude man!”
CORNELIUS HOPE
Neil’s Children’s debut single “Come Down” / “How Does It Feel” is out now on Soft City Records.
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