HIGH SPEED AND THE AFFLICTED MAN

Get Stoned, Ezy, Bonk Records, UK, 1982. £125.

Get Stoned Ezy is no ordinary album. The project was one of several spin-offs from Londonbased late-70s underground punks Afflicted. Much like Sham 69, Afflicted had, for whatever reason, garnered a very unsavoury right-wing following. This began to plague them and, as a result, they stopped performing live.

Band leader Steve Hall was a striking guitarist, and his squatting lifestyle, solvent abuse and heroin addiction certainly added a dose of grime to his musical approach, even more so in relation to this album. His acid-drenched solos, soaked in reverb, fuzz and wah-wah often reach levels of sensory overload.

Get Stoned Ezy is psychedelic rock for noise addicts and comes with the disclaimer: “WARNING: THIS RECORD IS VERY POWERFUL AND COULD GIVE YOU EARHOLE DAMAGE”.

Recorded live to four-track – and almost certainly under influence – it’s kind of how Pink Fairies should have sounded on record. Of its three lengthy tracks, Zip Ead and Sun Sun are lysergic garage jams, pre-dating the likes of UK psych revisionists Loop, Spacemen 3, Bevis Frond etc by several years.

This is by no means an album for those who like their rock music tight and nicely produced. It is, however, a perfect mix of dirgy punk embracing the looser, freethinking jams of the 60s at a time in the early 80s where it didn’t really have a place to sit. LD

‘Get Stoned Ezy is psychedelic rock for noise addicts.’