There have been two bands called The Godz over the years, but the only thing they had in common was poor spelling. The first were a group of sixties New York City-based “experimental” primitivists who made the Troggs sound like Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The second were a seventies hard rock band from Columbus, Ohio. We will speak of them no further. So shuffle back to the Buckeye State boys, your job here is done.
The Godz weren’t much interested in learning to play their instruments—it sounded like a big hassle, and besides they already knew how to play the bong. The story of their first “practice” at the Sam Goody’s in NYC where they worked (when there were just three of them) speaks volumes: “There were all these percussive instruments lying around” (this from multi-instrumentalist Jim McCarthy) “and out of total frustration, I got up and started shaking a tambourine or something like that, and that’s how it all started. We all started to get up and make noise like a bunch of maniacs, expressing our frustration.” Frustration is the heart and soul of rock and roll, and The Godz nailed it the first time out.
Anyway, The Godz—who in addition to McCarthy (who also played plastic flute and harmonica) included bassist and violinist Larry Kessler, vocalist Jay Dillon, and drummer, maracas player, and guitarist Paul Thornton—soon signed with the ESP-Disk jazz label and released their 1966 debut Contact High with the Godz. I have no way of knowing, but I would guess they sold about six records. Unlike their label mates The Fugs they didn’t have quality poetry to hang their racket on, leaving them with, well, just the racket. And the market in racket is a small one.
Not that it stopped the inimitable Lester Bangs from writing a 1971 article (“Do the Godz Speak Esperanto?”) for Creem magazine, the gist of which was “theoretically anybody could play like that,” but “as for you, you probably ain’t got the balls for it.” Nor did it stop AllMusic scribe John Dougan (at a much later date) from writing, “The Godz coughed up some of the strangest, most dissonant, purposely incompetent rock noise ever produced.” I guess you could compare them to legendary incompetents The Shaggs but I’m relatively certain the Shaggs wished they know how to play their instruments better, whereas the Godz had no such base ambitions. If possible, they may have wanted to play even worse.
Opener “Turn On” features a badly strummed guitar, Thornton’s maracas, and McCarthy’s harmonica, along with lots of out-of-pitch mumbling by the boys. Dillon’s vocals have that high and lonesome sound, as does McCarthy’s trusty harmonica, and what it sounds like to me is a bunch of very stoned guys sitting on bean bag chairs fucking about. It should have been a hit.
“White Cat Heat” doesn’t have a melody per se but it does have the guys imitating some very horny cats getting hornier (and louder) by the second. Call it truth in advertising. “Na Na Naa” again features McCarthy’s guitar and some kind of clicker, while Dillon does his worst to sound like he’s from the Middle East and just lost his entire family in a rocket attack. Or maybe it’s a love song, it’s hard to tell. Towards the end he gets breathless. The lyrics are in the title and the title is the lyrics. It’s brilliant.
“Eleven” is a meandering number featuring Dillon repeating the title while pronouncing it in various ways while a string instrument makes a lot of annoying noise and Thornton’s really bad drumming comes in and out. Dillon’s vocals again give the song a Middle Eastern feel, sort of. Towards the end he tosses in a few other lower numbers, perhaps to prove he knows how to count to eleven. On the failed math answer that is “1 + 1 = 7″ Dillon actually sings, like a folkie no less, to the sound of some simple strumming, Thornton’s maracas and McCarthy’s harmonica. My favorite lines go “I’ve lost all my chips and I’ve broken my wrists/And my heart is not too strong.”
Dillon sings again on “Lay in the Sun.” You get more primitive McCarthy guitar strum and harmonica and Thornton’s drum clamor, and in order to be sure he remembers the lyrics Dillon keeps ‘em simple: “All I wanna do/Is lay in the sun.” On the instrumental “Squeek,” Kessler ineptly scrapes away on a violin while Thornton follows ineptly on drums, and I can imagine a German music teacher crying “Nein! Nein! Sie töten kleine Tiere!”
On their theme song “Godz” the guys go “Goddddz! Godz! Whoo! Whoo hoo hoo! F- Godz” and so on to a rapidly strummed guitar and maracas, putting The Monkees theme song to shame. As for the ersatz country number “May You Never Be Alone,” McCarthy warbles away on plastic flute and harmonica while Dillon once again condescends to actually sing, and this is the one song on Contact High with the Godz a normal person could listen to without getting up and moving to another state. To me it sounds like a sellout.
The Godz recorded three more albums before breaking up in 1973—only to return in 2014 with Gift from the Godz—but they made their point with Contact High with the Godz, the point being that ineptitude can be a virtue if coupled with heart, soul, madness, viscera, and a sense of humor. The Godz remind me of 19th Century French writer Alfred Jarry’s quote “The work of art is a stuffed crocodile.” Contact High with the Godz is an unstuffed crocodile, one most people would prefer not to have smiling in their living room. Jarry also wrote, “One can show one’s contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one’s life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.” If that doesn’t sum up the Godz’ musical aesthetic, what does?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
