Seth Lorinczi Blog on Punk, Psychedelics, and More

“So Dan,” I asked, “what’s the deal with the 13th Floor Elevators?”

“Well, I know this much,” he said. “I’ve listened to Easter Everywhere as much as any other record, ever.”

I don’t remember where we were or what we were doing. It was probably somewhere in Holland in early 1993, when our respective bands—Circus Lupus and Lungfish—slogged all over Europe. But I never forgot what Dan Higgs shared with me that day. For someone obsessed with lineage, it was a breadcrumb trail leading me back to some unseen but essential origin story.

The short-lived “restaurant side” of CBGB was objectively deplorable. The pizza was rank, fit only for the desperate. But desperate I was, having just hightailed it from D.C. to New York just in time to play a frantic and rushed set at the show space next door. I was starving and would have eaten barbecued rat, but there was a problem: I literally didn’t have the dollar to buy myself a slice. That’s when Joan Jett stepped up.

I’m not in a tapestry-lined dorm room or a dealer’s shabby pad; I’m sitting in the intentionally bland confines of an eastside Portland counselor’s office. The woman is a highly experienced therapist, and the crystals I’ve just smoked are called “toad.” A ridiculous notion, the idea I might find salvation by inhaling amphibian poison. And yet here I am.

Or should I say, I’m not. As my back finds the couch’s embrace I fall fast into darkness. A final, perplexing image: A great chrysanthemum unfolding inside my skull. Then I’m gone.

Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident, happened 37 years ago today. If, like me, you enjoy reading about Really Bad Things, it’s high time to read Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices From Chernobyl, an oral history that gives voice to ordinary people put into extraordinary situations. But reading the book in a post-COVID world gives it an even more powerful spin. In 1986 I was a street-smart and knowing 15-year-old, but at least I knew we weren’t like them, the Soviets. In the intervening decades, I see how much my faith has been eroded.

The release of “Don Zientara’s Inner Ear” has many fans of D.C. music excited, and rightly so: The book—compiled by D.C.-based photographer Antonia Tricario—is a triumph. Flipping through the glossy pages and reading the many testimonials to Don, I realized something I hadn’t before: That in addition to engineering my first “real” recording session, he was an early role model for me as well.

I never met István Deák, the Hungarian-American author and academic, but I’m grateful to him. For a start, his books—most notably Europe on Trial—offered a window into the tangled realities of my ancestors’ world. Unlike many historians of the anti-fascist resistance, he provides a clear-eyed look at the rivalries (and alliances) among collaborators and resistors. How it’s far, far harder to tell the “good guys” from the bad.

But Professor Deák gave me something far more precious than his expert scholarship. He was the first person I looked up to who said: “You’re on to something. Keep going.”

“You remind me a bit of Hunter S. Thompson,” said Dr. K. “Have you read him? I wasn’t really in a position to answer. Dr. K’s a chiropractor, and at that moment I was bracing myself for that adjustment he does, the one where it feels like he’s gently yanked all the bones in my neck out for a moment.

I was flattered, though I suspected his reference was more to our shared hairstyles, or lack thereof, than any similarities in our writing. I said as much.

“No, no,” he assured me. “I don’t know why, but I’m getting the hit you should revisit him.” Dr. K’s suggestions are usually worth following. And so I headed down to the library, picked up Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, and fell through a portal in time.

Austerlitz hadn’t yet been written when I visited Breendonk, the former concentration camp in Belgium, but the eerie sense that some long-ago transmission was finally reaching me was in full effect. There was information for me here, I was sure of it. And yet I lacked the wisdom, or perhaps the courage, to dig deeper. Having just turned 22 and fulfilled my decade-long goal of a European tour, I thought I’d made it.

I hadn’t. It would be years until I learned how to tap into my creative intuition again, to tune in to the ghostly signals I’d begun to sense at Breendonk. Look back, they told me. There’s more for you to gather here. Eventually, I’d follow those voices to their source, back to Budapest.

Recording an audiobook version of "Fatherland" has been in my plans from Day One. If you're curious about the book and want to get a sense of its flavor, you can listen to the roughly 6-minute reading here. It's about an early (and puzzling) introduction to my family's concept of Jewishness. If you're a Washingtonian, the corner in question is 27th and Q, NW (and the incident a reminder of what Georgetown was like in 1980!).

Lots of fun to sit down and commune with Brian Gathy (host of not one but TWO Dischord Records-centric podcasts). In the current episode of Unanimous Hour, I discuss the intersection of psychedelics and punk, plus some memorable anecdotes from punk shows gone horribly wrong….

Lots of fun to sit down and commune with Brian Gathy (host of not one but TWO Dischord Records-centric podcasts). In the current episode of Unanimous Hour, I discuss the intersection of psychedelics and punk, plus some memorable anecdotes from punk shows gone horribly wrong….

An appreciation of late Wailers’ bassist Buck Ormsby, a key figure in Pacific Northwest rock. After the Wailers ceased to be a working concern, Buck turned his considerable energy towards managing and promoting up-and-coming bands. He also shepherded my brief interaction with the greatest PNW rock band of the ‘60s: The Sonics. Here’s the story.