Monster Magnet – Citizens of the Cosmos

Loyal fans in the US have been waiting more than ten years
for the live sounds of the now Ed Mundell-less Monster Magnet once again.
Sounds that Aleister Crowley should have been listening to while climbing those
mountains, cause the world would be a more peaceful place, maybe, a very
different place though.

A Sunday night harvest in downtown Minneapolis with smiles,
chills, almost tears of joy, demons and angels, a lot of middle-aged white
guys, and of course a dope smell in the men’s bathroom and probably in the
women’s too. Not an intimate gathering there at the venue Mill City Nights,
unless you were one with your doobie, which you probably always are. Mill City
Days does not exist.

I think of and admire Monster Magnet in Jungian terms, as
the epitome of wholeness, or, capturing “individuation” for all you psychology
geeks out there. A fully integrated rock & roll experience with all good,
and all filler. Just notice lone survivor and mastermind of the band Dave
Wyndorf’s gear, it’s old and beat in contrast to the rest of the newly acquired
member’s stuff. They do retro and future at the same time – ‘70s and 2000s, and
everything in between – the usual space rock template.

That most important and now relevant wholeness is best
defined by an integration of all aspects of the self, past and present,
conscious and unconscious, good and not so good. Psychotherapist Carl Gustav
Jung (1875-1961) wrote, “The right way to wholeness is made up of fateful
detours and wrong turnings.” And “The unconscious is not just evil by nature,
it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not
only bestial, semi-human, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the
classical sense of the word, divine.” Monster Magnet embodies all that in their
music and lyrics, all the time…………………………infinity……….(I do not know any current,
or any former members of the band personally).

Well then, how about Wyndorf’s “effects table?” Controlled
by his hands with his back to the audience, like Photoshop filters on a computer
– creating atmosphere, the haze, taking the place of a smoke machine and a
confusing op-art exploding light show in the dark. But in the beginning it was
Wyndorf’s mind that was the most important instrument, his vision. A vision
that makes me appoint him the Lou Reed of stoner rock. So, arguably, what
Monster Magnet did for the heavy rock genre, is equivalent to what Lou Reed’s
band The Velvet Underground did for theirs.

Techniques that night? Every song was well executed, sounded
great. There wasn’t any special modernization or extra baggage acquired along
the way with those old tunes, except an homage to Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’
within the iconic ‘Spine of God’ song. There are still the appropriate
space-out-attention-span-freak-out parts, but not overwhelming, and without all
the electronics like used in the records after ‘Powertrip,’ records completed
after the year 1999.

Casually on the stage, and lyrically, Wyndorf does not seem
to care about certainty, a career, a broken string, or any such drama. Maybe
because he has a solid backing band that supports and engages in his ways? He
has found the planet where that Jungian wholeness within a band works the best,
amongst the scientific human – half pig and half chimpanzee?

One thing I do remember vocalist Wyndorf saying was when
they came out for an encore – “Hope you guys like space rock” cause this song
is eleven minutes long – it was one off of their latest LP ‘Last Patrol.’ ‘Twas
right on, hypnotic, deserving of a black light poster, a big one, and you’re
only allowed to do one Hawkwind cover in your lifetime anyways, right? And they
used that up early in their career with Brainstorm.

I don’t think Monster Magnet “ended up” here. (Holy Grail)
There seems to be a mission, a magical universal creation to be discovered
somewhere, or like a patrol, a trek through the questionable cosmos with rock
& roll as performance, as being real, their purpose and identity through
performance – esoterically. So let’s all change our names to “In Search Of,”
partially because the rest of one’s life is based off of a first love, right? A
conquering?

Anyway, Monster Magnet is still on this plane of existence,
for now, and I want to use a word to describe them overall that means the
opposite of “destroyers of consciousness,” but I do not know what that is, so,
I will end with the idea of gestalt, because Carl Jung would approve and give
permission and because Wyndorf and his mystic crew are everything, everybody,
all the time.

© Sandi Murphy

Check out the new album ‘Last Patrol’ – out now on Napalm
Records.

P.S. I should mention something about the setlist, which had
two songs off of the new LP ‘Last Patrol,’ and the rest were from ‘Powertrip’
and before, nothing from the last four records. But buy ‘em all.

Report made by Robert Savela/2013

© Copyright http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com/2013