You can call me Mike, or you can call me Michael, or hell you can even call me Tex if you want—just don’t call me late for Helter Skelter. Because my favorite hypnotic cult leader Charles “No Sense Makes Sense” Manson is back—along with the infamous Jim Jones, lots of naked and semi-naked go-go dancers, a slew of badass biker chix astride chopped hogs, and even a little in-the-grave fornication, to say nothing of drugs and more drugs even more drugs—thanks to the brand new video of “Runaway Girls” by my favorite English psychedelic doom rockers and yours, Uncle Acid & the deadbeats.
Can you dig it? Is that some witchy shit or what?
I know, I know. You’re not supposed to like the Manson Family, or to glorify or gloss over the monstrous crimes they committed over a two-day period during 1969’s Summer of Hate. And I try my level best not to, I really do. But as I wrote in a March 2014 TVD review of Uncle Acid’s latest LP, Mind Control, both they and I are hopelessly obsessed by the second, benighted half of 1969, when the dark stars of the Tate/LaBianca killings and the mud and murder fiasco that was Altamont converged to send all those hopelessly naïve “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s Your Brother” hippie bromides into permanent paranoid retrograde.
As it turned out the Age of Aquarius had an August 1969 sell-by date stamped on it, and had soured like bad milk by the evening of August 8—which one of Charlie’s Angels described as “so quiet, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon”—when Manson sent three of his female acolytes along with former high school newspaper editor and North Texas State University frat brother Charles “Tex” Watson to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, with orders to slaughter everyone inside.
That evening put finis to the hippie dream of universal brotherhood—as it turned out that pal of Dennis Wilson was indeed your brother, but his name was Cain—and that is what fascinates this cynic about the Tate/LaBianca killings. I can’t say what fascinates Uncle Acid and the deadbeats about the Manson murders, but the band’s video—which quick cuts from girls with extra-long-barreled pistols (just like the one Watson used to kill poor young Steve Parent) to the witchy words (“Rise,” “Death to the Pigs”) scrawled in blood at the Tate/LaBianca crime scenes to skulls being offered pills (!!!) to a “Charles Manson” from a period exploitation flick who is the spitting image of The Band’s Richard Manuel—is a very groovy exploitation flick in and of itself, what with its strobe-light-like flashes of Sex = Death imagery that come at you like flashbacks from one really bad bummer of an acid trip.
But say what you will about the video, and whether it glamorizes the Manson Family or not, it’s the perfect complement to “Runaway Girls,” which features lots of big, homicidal power chords and murky vocals, and will run right over you like one of the dune buggies Charles in Charge used to ride around in during The Family’s sojourn at the virtually inaccessible Barker Ranch in Death Valley. And speaking of Death Valley, the video for “Runaway Girls” definitely trumps the official video for Sonic Youth’s Manson Family-related “Death Valley ’69,” despite its many shots of shoulda been Manson girl Lydia Lunch looking simultaneously deranged and sexy. (Best lip curl since Elvis!)
“Runaway Girls” is slated for release as a single on August 25 (why not August 8? Afraid of bad karma?), and will be followed by Uncle Acid and the deadbeats’ inaugural tour of the U.S. starting in late September. You won’t want to miss them because, well, they aren’t heavy, they’re your brothers, dig, and you can trust your brothers, can’t you?
Can’t you?
