Psychic TV Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Psychic TV (sometimes spelt Psychick TV) or PTV, is a largely electronic music group and sometimes psychedelic, punk, experimental, band was formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge after his earlier industrial band, Throbbing Gristle broke up in 1981. At one time Psychic TV was intended to be a super group that along with P-Orridge would include Ian Curtis, lead singer of the seminal English group, Joy Division. But unfortunately Curtis committed suicide on May 18th, 1980. The band published 23 live albums in 1986 allowing them to enter the Guiness Book of World Records.Many members of other bands such as Coil, Current 93, Hafler Trio, The Cult, White Stains, Soft Cell, Master Musicians Of Jajouka, not to mention individuals such as Alex Fergusson, Matthew Best, Daniel Simon Black, Bill Breeze, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, Derek Jarman, Fred Gianelli, John "Zoskia" Gosling, Timothy Leary, Rose McDowall, Stephen Kent, Vagina Dentata Organa, Andrew Weatherall, Z'EV, and many others too long to mention, have at one time been members of Psychic TV or have collaborated with P-Orridge. Originally its cult-like fanclub, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth or T.O.P.Y., later turned into a full-fledged religion, long after P-Orridge abandoned it in 1991.
Psychic TV released early albums of acid house music, such as Jack The Tab (1988). After breaking up in 1998, Psychic TV formed into a new band known as PTV3 in 2003. In 2003 Genesis P-Orrdige changed his or her identity to Genesis/Djin Breyer P-Orridge along with life partner and PTV3 member Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge (a.k.a. Mother Jack/Miss Jackie). This change in identity allowed Genesis to become what is known as a real life "Pandrogine". Other projects by P-Orridge include sample project Splinter Test and spoken word, Troubadorian project Thee Majesty with Larry Thrasher (Thrasher Qawwal / Thessolonians)and Bryin Dall (Loretta's Doll).
Since Genesis P-Orridge primarily wrote the lyrics instead of the music, he would assemble different groups of musicians together to create the music. This accounts for the changing musical nature of PTV. Thus the history of Psychic TV can be broken up into the periods of the main songwriter that was working with GPO at the time
In the earliest live performances, Psychic TV maintained much of the noisy atmosphere as GPO's previous band Throbbing Gristle, except they increasingly used exotic acoustic drums and other instruments. PTV was able to get signed to CBS records because of the musical infamy of the predessesor group Throbbing Gristle. Their first albums Force thee Hand ov Chance and Dreams Less Sweet featured high production values, catchy pop songs written by Ferguson with barbershop quartet vocals arranged by Andrew Pearson, and sound experiments primarily created by Peter Christopherson and Geoff Rushton. The live shows continued to be improvised noise untill Peter Christopherson left the band and Ferguson brought aboard a full band who could not only play the pop songs, but imrpovise new ones real time. This led to a series of 23 live show recordings being released, which dominated most of Psychic TV's output untill 1988. Towards the end of this period Ferguson and GPO completed their second proper studio album "Allegory and Self: Thee Starlit Mire". It was at this point GPO became enraputured with acid house or techno and replaced Ferguson with techno artist Fred Gianelli.
History of the Band
1981-1988: Alexander Ferguson Period
Psychic TV was formed with the core memebership of GPO, Peter Christopherson, and Alex Ferguson. Alexander Ferguson used to be in the band Alternative TV, which may have been the inspiration for the name Psychic TV. The "TV" part however, was envisioned primarily by Peter Christopherson (a music video director) to cause the group to focus on visual output primarily. In early interviews GPO would say that "Psychic TV is a video group who does music unlike a music group which makes music videos". However If you look at "Alternative TV" and early Psychic TV albums side by side, the logos of each band and the way they are designed is almost identical, whilst using the "TV" logo as the same one from "as seen on tv"1988-1992: Fred Gianelli Period
During this period Fred Gianelli and other techno artists created music either outputted as Psychic TV, or else outputted under a multitude of band names in "fake compilations". The key studio album of this period is "Towards the Infinite Beat", almost all of the live shows in this period were based around the songs on this album. 1992-93: Exile
GPO claimed initially that he was deported, although later admitted that he left England in "self imposed exile" after a video he had created caused the tabloid press to believe he took part in Satanic Ritual Abuse. During this same period GPO underwent a divorce which traumitized him immensely. Most of the output during this period was re-releases of earlier albums, especially by industrial music record labels who released the albums as a "paying of respects" to the founder of industrial music.1994-1999: Larry Thrasher Period
GPO began working with Larry Thrasher, and created a few spoken word ambient music albums before recycling the best material to create the last major studio album of Psychic TV "Trip Reset". This period was also highlighted by a large number of rereleases of old material. Towards the end of the nineties GPO announced that he primarily wanted to move into spoken word and created the offshoot group Thee Majesty with Larry Thrasher. PTV had a "final show" in 1999, but later GPO toured with an entirely new band called PTV3 which mostly played PTV's greatest hits. It is uncertain if any new studio albums will come out of this incarnation.