Psychoderelict

Untitled

Psychoderelict was a concept album written, produced and engineered by Pete Townshend.

Released in 1993, the album's songs tell the story of Ray Highsmith (commonly called Ray High), a burned-out sixties rock star whose manager(Rastus Night) connives with a press reporter (Ruth Streeting) to re-invigorate the musician's career. Their plan: pretend to be a pretty fourteen-year-old girl trying to learn the ropes of singing stardom, sending pornographic photos of herself to him as part of the ruse. Later, they release the photos to the press along with the story, now tagged as the "Porno Pen Pal" scandal. All of High's previous albums have just been re-released, and sales jump.

Commentary

The commercial release of the album featured (profanity-laden) dialogue over most of the tracks, which tell the story. Some of the tracks were made available to radio stations without dialog, notably English Boy and Outlive the Dinosaur.

The album is a critical, perhaps satirical look at Townsend's own life: the dedication of his music to Meher Baba's teachings, and his Lifehouse project, which closely resembles the Gridlife project the Ray character is working on.

Track listing

1. "English Boy"
2. "Meher Baba M3"
3. "Let's Get Pretentious"
4. "Meher Baba M4 (Signal Box)"
5. "Early Morning Dreams"
6. "I Want That Thing"
7. Dialogue Introduction to "Outlive the Dinosaur"
8. "Outlive the Dinosaur"
9. "Flame [demo version]"
10. "Now and then"
11. "I Am Afraid"
12. "Don't Try to Make Me Real"
13. Dialogue Introduction to "Predictable"
14. "Predictable"
15. "Flame"
16. "Meher Baba M5 (Vivaldi)"
17. "Fake It"
18. Dialogue Introduction to "Now and Then (Reprise)"
19. "Now and Then (Reprise)"
20. "Baba O' Riley (Reprise)"
21. "English Boy (Reprise)"