I have a cold. So instead of coughing up a lung in my wife’s face while she tried to sleep last night, I generously chose to snooze on the couch. It’s not the most comfortable surface in the house on which to catch some Z’s but, making the best of this temporary sleeping arrangement, I was happily able to lull myself into a wheezy, congested slumber by listening to anything I wanted without the fear of driving my significant other insane. Earlier in the day, a friend of mine had posted some photos of a few psych records he had just purchased, one being The American Metaphysical Circus by Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, a record I had heard once several years ago but that I didn’t know much about. I set a box of tissues and my laptop on the coffee table next to the couch, found The American Metaphysical Circus on YouTube, pressed play, turned down the brightness on my screen and fell sound asleep in maybe 20 minutes without even finishing the record.

The next thing you know, the sun’s out, shining through the curtains behind my head (which feels like a swollen brick) and, through the magic of continual play on YouTube, music is still spilling out from the my tiny laptop speakers. Who knows how many videos played while I slept, but at this point I’m hearing the unmistakably staccato opening riff of somebody’s version of “War Pigs,” but it’s clearly not Sabbath, it’s different somehow (unless it’s some live version or something). Groggy but curious, I bring up the brightness on the screen to be greeted by this:
 

Suck. The very first thing I saw this morning.
 
Suck. A band called Suck I’ve never heard of who put out a record apparently called Time to Suck on which the band is jamming a pretty solid version of “War Pigs”? My interest piqued and hoping that the title of this record (being the very first thing I saw upon opening my eyes this morning) wasn’t some sort of bad omen about how the rest of my day was going to go down, I start looking into the proto-metal powerhouse which was Suck. I was not disappointed, and hey, I even learned something.

Turns out that Suck was a short lived endeavor from South Africa where the early seventies generated a handful of notable proto-metal acts collectively referred to as “The Big Heavies,” a name derived from a 1972 compilation album of the same name featuring fully leaded fellow South African bands, Freedom’s Children and Otis Waygood among several others. Suck’s Time To Suck  was released in 1971 and features a shitload of covers of Grand Funk Railroad, King Crimson, Free, Deep Purple, Colesseum, the aforementioned Black Sabbath (well actually “War Pigs” was not on the original record release, but was added as bonus track when the recording saw the light of day years later on CD) and even a lyrically botched version of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.”

I managed to track down the liner notes to Time to Suck taken from one of a few CD releases written by former seventies DJ and record aficionado from Johannesburg, Leon Economides.

Here’s Economides’ accounting of the birth of Suck:

The band was formed in Johannesburg in early 1970. S.A. born bassist Louis “Moose” Forer, who’d previously worked with Peanut Butter Conspiracy in Salisbury in the then Rhodesia, when land grabs weren’t the rage, as well as with Johannesburg based Group 66 and Billy Forrest, met guitarist Steve “Gil” Gilroy, who’d just arrived in SA from London, in a club. Gil had worked with guitarist Mick Abrahams, original guitarist with Jethro Tull and founder of the brilliant Blodwyn Pig. “I think it was called ‘The Underground’”, says Moose. “Gil and I became drinking partners and we gelled immediately”. Italian born drummer Saverio “Savvy” Grande, who’d previously been in Elephant and had also worked in an Oompah band and was influenced by Latin American percussion bands, met Gil and Moose in a club in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, en route to Bulawayo, Rhodesia. Port Elizabeth born Cypriot vocalist/guitarist/flautist Andrew Ionnides, previously with Meenads, Blind Lemon Jefferson and October Country, and who’d recently moved up to Johannesburg, was drafted in and Suck was born.

 

Suck on stage somewhere in 1971 with a cat-o-nine tails whipping around on the right.
 
Apparently craving as much controversy as possible, Suck was almost called Fuck before cooler heads prevailed, but, according to Economides, the band still blazed a pretty brazen trail of destruction across South Africa and Rhodesia during their short 8 month run, destroying instruments, setting fire to stage curtains, simulating mutilation somehow on stage and getting themselves banned by way of police road block from playing in the entire then unrecognized state of Rhodesia. Band members apparently brandished Bowie knives, claw hammers, a Colt Python .357 Magnum and a fucking cat-o-nine tails on stage. This kind of behavior was off the charts in conservative, early 70’s South Africa and, for the authorities at least, the name Suck was completely apt for this wild bunch of hellraisers.

Time to Suck is totally worth a listen if you’re a fan of early Grand Funk and UFO, Pentagram, Pink Fairies, and Blue Cheer. Singer Andrew Ionnides has a killer voice, singing with a smoky, controlled rasp over the raw mayhem over blown out guitar tracks. “War Pigs” has this great intro with air raid sirens, gunshots, armies marching and somebody screaming bloody murder (probably, in hindsight, what woke me up this morning). The cover of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” is maybe the best track on the record. Raw, sloppy and stripped down with a distorted vocal track, it’s punk as fuck. The single track written by Suck called “The Whip,” while kind of lyrically Spinal Tap-esque, is pretty cool with some undeniably Robert Plant-infused vocals sailing over quick changes in time signature.  All in all, I’d say thank you magic of the Internet for delivering a big, steaming pile of Suck to me this morning!
 

The original ‘Time to Suck’ album cover.
 
Incidentally, I just wrote most of this whole thing in the waiting room at my doctor’s office. “Watcha working on?” he asked when he finally found the time to stroll through the door. “I’m writing about a band called Suck for this website that I work for. They’re actually pretty good. Cough.” He didn’t seem that interested. I hope you will be. For your listening pleasure, it’s Time to Suck: