I remember this one time, about 8 years ago, I was in Texas with some friends of mine. We were stoned all the time. One day we were slumped in our chairs with minds on auto-pilot. Something was needed to stimulate imagination, so I decided to play my cassette copy of Aphrodite's Child's "666". It didn't have the best sound quality, having been extracted from a less-than-pristine vinyl copy. Not only that, but the tape was old and didn't boast of the same fidelity (low as it was) as it may have 4 or 5 years before.
My first copy, though not the one I burned it from, had it's share of pings, as I had purchased it used. I have no memory of what venue I bought it from, be it flea market, used record store, swap meet, garage sale...But I do, very distinctly recall being uneasy of even owning the album. At the time I was quite the Bible thumper. There was something undeniably creepy and WRONG about a record that portended to describe the apocalypse using the artistic medium of Greek progressive rock music. Moreover, how sinister the album cover looks! A fire-tinted square splash red mixed with burnt orange with the large numbers "666" in white set against a black rectangle which takes up the center the square.
*insert ghostly wails and phantom whispers*
Six...Six...Six......Whoo, boy, didn't we know what those numbers were all about! You don't even want to THINK about that. Scary, scary stuff. Ultimate horror novel you got there at the end of the sacred scriptures! What kind of rock and roller is going to write a whole album about it? We dreaded receiving the mark of the beast. We came to believe, at one point, that universal bar codes on food products were the mark, that if you bought anything with a bar code you were damned and you're chances to come out unscathed after Judgement Day are mighty slim.
I probably thought there was something wrong with me for really enjoying the Aphrodite's Child record. I liked it a lot.
So, as I was saying, my buds and I were in a lethargic state of being so I threw some "666" on the stereo to see what it could do.
What it did was freak some sturdy people out. It sent Tony "The Gunner" Resipel into an epileptic fit that almost cost him his tongue. It inspired Richie "The Owl" Grant to give up drinking Mountain Dew...he was drinking it when the dope and the music crashed together, and I suppose he thought the Dew was responsible for the frighteningly intense hallucinations he was seeing (not all of which, it must be said, were bad...it's just that the bad ones outnumbered the good ones by a significant margin). The hallucinations took on a different aspect for Heath "The Knothead" Tucker. He insisted that he'd been taken up into the seventh heaven by God. The Cheribums that guarded the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were slain by the mighty sword of truth which he weilded in his left hand. In his right was an exact replica of the bong he'd just took a hit from before he stepped out of the "real world". He's pierced the angels, each one with an arrow sticking into their hearts and, in the vision, ran to climb the fabled tree. When the Philosophical Society pried him down (an event which was attended to by great stress and grief), he spoke to Heath's observing self: "Get away from these people, and especially the good looking one who played that blasphemous Aphrodite's Child tape. Find your way south, to El Paso. There you will be received by a hunchback in monk's attire. He will give you instructions and directions to an ornate, architecturally magnificent church building. You will, at that point, be introduced to another man, a monk in hunchback's attire. He will lead you into a dark grotto where a group of seven or height men will be joined in a circle, lit by 356 vanilla scented candles. Their heads are, to a man, bowed, totally covered by the itchy, starched fabric of the hoods on their tunics. Call out to them, o Knothead, and watch them jump. They will, each one of them, be a little mad at you for breaking the reverie of the ritualistic ceremony they were conducting. Nevertheless, the big one with the snaggle teeth and scrunched up nose will tell you your destiny". And so, in the incredible revelation Heath was encouraged to go into the ministry.
And this is exactly what he did when he left that day. He took a jet airplane, flew it to Miami, Florida, where he paid Benny Hinn a large sum of money to tell him the secret of healing folks. He decided he was a Man of God and served as a pupil under Hinn for several months. When that ordeal had ended he added the word "Apostle" to his name. It was as Apostle Heath "The Knothead" Tucker that he wound up in a federal penitentury for master minding the most devestating scam in history.
But he claimed to like it at the time. The "666" record, that is. He said it was as good as any Pink Floyd album in terms of musicality but also in how it juiced up the head when marijuana was also applied.
And so it is true. In fact, I'll take this double disc over just anything the Floyd has ever done. I know them's fightin' words, but I must be true to my sentiments. In the 4th track "The Four Horsemen", the colors of the horses are recited throughout, "The leading horse is white, the second horse is red, third one is a black, last one is a green". Didn't rhyme for shit. But they pull this one off like it was a power anthem. Very catchy melody here, so you should have no trouble matching color to horseman in the future.
The "conceptional" aspect here is much more structured than Floyd's (or really just about anybody else that's done a concept album). So what if it's much more about creating mood and atmosphere than telling a story. All of the spoken word proclomations will be recognizeable to anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of the Revelation of John. Added one on top of the other and it's still hard, nay impossible, to make sense of any of it within any sort of contextual structures.
Oh, but where was I? Ah, yes. I remember. I had just wound up telling you how Heath Tucker had found religion after listening to "666". He wasn't the only one who had dreams and visions. Cal "Don't-Call-Me-Cal" Calvin decided, when he was eventually revived, that his destiny was as the franchise owner of a local International House of Pancakes. He must have been serious because he still works there even now. I saw him only yesterday. We spoke for a moment, but when I tried to bring up the subject of the day we listened to "666" he grew very quiet and you could sense a distinct annoyance in the way his facial muscles played with themselves. He spoke no more for several minutes before rising and going back into the kitchen. Back on the clock he began making some crepes. He loves this. He loves the smell, the taste, the way the dough feels between his fingers, how it sounds so much like an ass getting slapped when the palms were applied to the lump.
As for me, I emerged from this particular gathering with a new appreciation of Aphrodite's Child, though I still, to this day, have heard nothing else by them. The only part of "666" that I don't love uses the "Infinity" sign as a name. It's nothing more than a woman chanting "I am I was, I am to come" with varying degrees of exciteability. She really gets into it at times and there's no way anyone could miss the double entendre usage of the word "come". It's ridiculous, and at five minutes and fifteen seconds you'll be glad you pushed the "Next" button fifteen seconds into this strangely tedious production. I would suggest that you might as well just stop the CD at that point and call it a really good album, not even listening to the last 3 songs (one of which is almost 20 minutes long). But it's great stuff. As good as what came before. You can't miss that, so the SKIP button it is.
My stoner friends and I used to have these little preview sessions. We'd make sure we were really, really high and listen to an album that was critically acclaimed. Then we'd discuss our own opinions, comparing them to what the critics thought about the record. "666" was the only record we listened to that was not in the canon of acknowledged classic rock albums. I thought it should have been, that it was a shame that it kind of got thrown under the rug, for whatever reason.
We listened to Aerosmith's "Rocks" one night. "Don't-Call-Me-Cal" and I got into a big fight over which one of us had the correct interpretation of the lyrics to "Back in the Saddle". I had to repeatedly remind Cal that Steven Tyler was heterosexual.
Calvin chose "Hotel California" for the next get together. I threw a fit an a vain attempt to convince the majority of voters that the Eagles had no right to be in such quality company. I was ignored, though, as one might figure. Yet, it will never be forgotten by anyone who was there that they don't call him "Don't-Call-Him-Cal" for nothing. He was quite offended by my way of looking at things and decided it might be a good idea to turn the volume up on the stereo at about the time "Life in the Fast Lane" kicked in. Only when he spotted tears running down my cheeks did he show mercy, easing down on the volume. By that time the record was only a moment or two from it's closing chords. Needless to say, my view of "Hotel California" fell in firmly with the side that loathed the song
This is just one example of our Masonic Lodge-like reunions. We also raked over the coals "Exile on Main Street", "Pet Sounds", "Pink Moon", "Master of Reality", "Selling England by the Pound"...the list was not a short one. Our debate on the overall quality of "Tommy" versus "Quadrophenia" is legendary and came very close to being published in the hallowed pages of Trouser Press. But that did not happen, as the magazine ceased publication within 6 months of expressing interest in the transcriptions. I remember being so pissed off...I'd wanted to subscribe to Trouser Press for years. When I finally got around to it, late 1994 I think it was, they stopped coming out. Instead I was sent The Record magazine to fulfill the remainder of my subscription. Thanks for nothing. Record was pretty weak...not really all that bad, but when you compare it to Trouser Press it certainly pales.
Sorry, got off track. Was going to say that the transcriptions of our "Tommy" vs. "Quadrophenia" symposium are available to any interested book maker and are much more affordable than you might think would be the case. Quality stock, too.
Unfortunately there are no transcriptions to record the legendary Aphrodite's Child "666" date. It is likely, though, that if you'd ask any one of the people in my group what album I was playing, you'd likely get the answer, "I have no idea. I don't remember. I don't remember a lot of stuff. I don't even remember my dad's birthday. I have no memory of every single time I played the live Scorpions album while living with a grimy guitar player who liked it for some reason. I don't remember getting married. I don't remember gettin divorced. I don't remember getting re-married. I don't remember the times when the marriage vows were applied very thinly. I don't have no notion of what'n it may ha'n to be." I do, though. It is marked on my forehead, in the bar code that was on the CD package, tattooed on my skull, the indisputable MARK OF THE BEAST...that's right. It said "Aphrodite's Child".
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