The Schizophonics are San Diego Garage Rockers who do channel multiple personalities through their manic singer and guitarist Pat Beers, as they tear up the place from the start.
At the core they are a drums and guitar duo with Pat’s partner Lety Beers. A revolving seat for the female bass player who I’m told comes from another Californian band and has joined within the last year.
They are a Whites Stripes band in spirit. They come from sunny warm San Diego, up against the contentious southern border, but their heart beats in colder Detroit, against the northern Canadian border.
They play Rock’n’roll as if it is love in the middle of a fire fight. A streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm suddenly comes to life with the opening sonic blitzkrieg.
Pat Beers leaps, does the splits repeatedly, owns the original Iggy James Osterberg schtick as he hurls himself around the stage repeatedly.
All the while maintains blistering incendiary drone riffs on guitar. Most of the time he’s playing just with his left hand up the fret board.
Is there another guitarist off stage? With the sound desk? How does he maintain the blistering sound which does approach the twin guitar attack of the original MC5?
We stumble on the secret. At times when he’s free of the axe, the monumental sound is coming from the engine room bass and drums. The essential power element which is the key to their sonic drive.
Pat can do multiple splits and crawl on the floor like James Brown and Jackie Wilson before him. The showmanship that goes way back to the original chitlin circuit for Black American artists.
Elevated to the popular masses by Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
When he starts to windmill his arm, we realise he is obviously spawn of the Who. Daltrey and Townsend were huge fans and a de facto James Brown tribute band at the start. Daltrey would hurl and lasso the microphone, but he doesn’t approach the physicality of Beers.
First four songs encapsulate grungy Garage band Blues. Hoarse shouty stuff sounding like Stooges 1970. Rockabilly played as primitively and dirty as possible.
After that he looks like he’s just done the 100 metres. We feel physically drained just watching him.
There are the cycle-delic sounds of Davie Allan, a hybrid of original Sixties Surf. Echoes of the wilder American bands like the Sonics and the Wailers.
At the halfway point, Beers announces a new song off a forthcoming album. It’s a dance song and maybe we hear Do the Monkey!
The guitar drops out and the rhythmic drive is monumental.
A song which speed-natters on about My Heart reminds me of Joan Jett. A Black Heart of course.
The band play a glowing tribute to John Baker, wild man of Ratso and Kiwi Rock’n’roll eccentric. He connected with the Phonics a few years ago and has brought them out for their fourth New Zealand visit early in 2025.
We saw Ratso open for Jack White prior to Christmas just gone.
Baker comes on stage to shake a tambourine, hoist Beers on his shoulders to do a crowd walk, and yell a bit.
Also joined by a Ratso guitarist, and the sound approaches full throttle MC5.
The vocals sound like Hasil Adkins in his demented Rockabilly days, and Scizophonics take it out with meshed guitars and the engine room levelling the place one more time.
Keeping Rock’n’roll alive as if reviving a corpse. Totally Dada.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
The Schizophonics
BUZZ
