Five years Motortrades

Those were the first Motorpsycho live-recordings I ever got. It was late 1999, “Roadworks I” had just left me craving for more live music when I stumbled across a post by Kristoffer in the old marketplace. He was so nice to send me the two tapes for free & the next weeks I was all over them. The sheer mayhem of the recording from Roma left me actually quite puzzled yet deeply impressed while the Drammen tape astonished me with a number of then unreleased songs. Six years & roughly 300 recordings later Motortrades, the Motorpsycho trading community, celebrates its fifth anniversary – today!

In order to commemorate the anniversary I will use this opportunity to take a look at some randomely chosen recently surfaced recordings (those that actually came on physical media):

The last opportunity to tape Motorpsycho music galore was the 2004 tour of The International Tussler Society. Along with a good number of fantastic tapes – the best being the tour-closing shows Dresden & Berlin – came our only Motorpsycho(related) recording from Bodø (15.09.2004). Recorded by a first-time taper it features some problems, like a little sub-standard sound & being circulated on disc-at-once burnt discs. It is, however, a labour of love, as the scan of the charmingly designed artwork shows. This one proves that Motorpsycho’s music (and live-performance) has still enough power to make people go “Oh my god, I gotta tape THIS!”.

Another sideproject’s -- HGH’s -- spring tour in 2005 spawned a very rare soundboard recording (on DAT) made with Geb’s approval at Berlin’s Knaack Club (09.04.2005). There are very few soundboard recordings out there, and so far only one by HGH (Weinheim, Germany 27.01.2001). Look out for this recording to be circulated soon.

Our crown-jewel though is a recording from back then. It’s a recording made on good old analogue tape at Reutlingen’s (Germany) Zelle towards the end of the fantastic “Trust us” tour (22.05.1998). Recorded five days prior to “Roadworks I” it’s every bit as great as that landmark recording. While the majority of the pre-2000 Motorpsycho recordings tend to be of comparatively amateurish, bad sounding & often incomplete charakter the show from Reutlingen was captured by an experienced taper. It has excellent sound & very elegantly done tape-flips. The performance is simply wonderful: it features two acoustic sets as well as a juicy electric portion that features “Ocean in her eye” as perfect opener, the last 1998-era stand-alone “Superstooge” (before it would ultimately morph into "Superwheel" for the next two years), a text-book “K9 suite”, a lenghty “577”, which includes a “The other other fool”-esque jam, as well as an even longer “Heartattack Mac”, enriched by a lenghty “Waiting for my man”-jam. Particularly noteworthy is the inclusion of “Ocean in her eye” since it is the only 1998 recording of that song to circulate, plus the only recorded 1998-version of “Come on in” in listenable sound.

That was not the last great discovery to be made though.

Just back in late 2005 some brave psychonaut liberated a video-recording of Motorpsycho at 1993’s Quart festival (09.07.1993). The bootleg DVD was on sale at some record-fair in Norway when our secret agent secretly copied it & brought it to the fans for free. While the sound is terribly poor the footage makes allthemore up for it: we are still talking nasty screaming, long dreadlocks & gigantic Deathprod noise here! Watching it was one of the very few instances when i was I able to really penetrate to the very heart of “Demon box”-era Motorpsycho & to really get the music made back then.

Talking old-school 1993 Motorpsycho there was another interesting find last year -- though historically much more so than musically. It’s a wild tape of Motorpsycho meeting Hedge Hog (forming Detroit Dogs) for a round of fun-and-distortion filled MC5 & Stooges coverversions, recorded on Norway’s national day 1993. The cover speaks for itself.

The latest recordings to surface are the previously reviewed acoustic session from Japan & a Minidisc-recording from Bergen 1999 (16.04.1999). This one has actually just surfaced & we still don’t know what to expect from it because it hasn’t been playbacked yet. No matter how it turns out it’s a cool find anyway because recordings from the 1999 tour are amazingly sparse (curiously enough an audience source for Trondheim 09.04.1999 has just surfaced as well.).

The amount & content of the stuff we unearthed together through the years is amazing -- thank you!

If you got a Motorpsycho recording that is not listed here or here, or if you happen to know of a recording (a friend of yours made or so), or if you intend to tape an upcoming show we'd love if you got in touch with us here or here or here.