Waiting — Doctors of Madness
#365Songs: August 12
Thanks to Smitty’s deep thoughts yesterday I had a chance to watch four movies in Rome, New York at the Capitolfest 2024 Film Festival, drive six hours through hail and rain and rainbows, and not worry about racing home to post some half-assed nonsense at 11:57.
I spent that drive time scrobbling through the most obscure of my 1980s obscurities on my Plex server. You see — back when Pirate Bay was more King Arthur than the near-corpse that says “I’m not dead yet,” I found a guy that uploaded his massive collection of new wave, dark wave, post-punk and electronic music. He dropped four albums at a time (I think he reached drop #80 something) and I was lucky if I knew any one of the bands included in each. It was humbling and thrilling and the act of downloading these files and immersing myself in these bands consumed me. And not just because they’re handy to have in your back pocket when you meet an 80s music snob that thinks they’re Richard Blade because they listen to ĒBN-ŌZN.
So I made it the goal of my drive to pick one of these beautiful obscurities. I did better than that — I picked five.
This afternoon I sat down to write and learned that I’d gone too deep. Almost.
Three bands didn’t exist on Spotify and the fourth only had some recent releases that hardly resembled their 80’s output. The fifth — the fifth stared back at me, wide-eyed, undeterred by the low number of monthly listeners belying the artist’s closeted influence on New Wave, Punk and Post-punk.
And then I changed my mind.
I needed to rewind a few more years to do this obscure and silently omnipresent musician, actor, writer, and journalist a measure of justice. I’d do two posts to celebrate this mad, maniacal genius.
The Guardian called Richard Strange’s Doctors of Madness the missing link between David Bowie and the Sex Pistols. They’re glam and prog, they’re punk’s harbinger; each song is its own thing, wildly and sometimes disconcertingly waffling between genres and contemporaneous rock tropes. More notable perhaps than their broader catalog — they commandeered the stage like villains in a William S. Burroughs dreamscape. Pure theatrics and showmanship.
They dyed their hair blue, wore sequins on their eyelids, took on bizarre stage personas, and wallowed in lyrics describing the coming dystopian hellscape brought about by political corruption, urban decay, and increasing degrees of mental illness. Pure UK proto-punk.
During their fleeting, vaporous prime, the Pistols, The Jam, and Cabaret Voltaire all opened for The Doctors.
And then in 1978 they were just gone.
Buoyed by a deluxe reissue of their three records forty years after the fact, the Doctors once again appeared on the radars of music listeners who might have missed them the first time around. Myself included.
This gonzo lyric from “Waiting” stuck with me since I first heard the song. It kept me hunting through their discography for more fragmented, mind-fuck gems of haunting silliness.
Kentucky chicken is dripping
Around my ears
Let me down easy before my
Mind disappears
Rationalize this pageant of pigsties
Definalise the unthinking grey skies
I’m sitting uneasy upon my throne of fears
And it’s fucking depraved and beautiful, tucked inside a proto-punk club rager. This opens their best record, Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms. The same record closes with an epic 16-minute prog-opera. Even if you can’t find the wavelength, listening to this record is like stepping onto Charon’s ferry to cross the River Styx. It’s worth the trip into the demented, sequin-lined darkness.
The Doctors may have dissipated, but Richard Strange carried on, influencing and working with countless prime-time 80s acts, creating a solo act or two — a performance piece in an of itself, appearing in iconic cinema, and writing for UK print and online publication. Among other absurdities, of course.
Tune in tomorrow for another taste.
~
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