Texas Psych - Psychedelic Music, 13th Floor Elevators, Golden Dawn, Red Crayola and more!

Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators Mono

2010-03-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

Check out this vintage Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators mono LP! It’s rare to find these in such nice shape.

This particular specimen went for $491.00 on eBay.

What's most the best about this album (and the band, really) is how they manage to sound truly trippy and totally weird without any over-the-top production techniques or surplus of technical skill. The album was recorded on a three track machine. The ONLY mix to get of this album is the powerful mono mix.

At this point, the 'Elevators really were a garage band, with all of the usual trappings; their songs were rooted in wonderful, grease-coated rock n roll, complete with nasty guitar riffs (courtesy of Stacy Sutherland) and snarled vocals (thanks to wildman lead singer Roky Erickson).

Their lyrics are pure gonzo poetry, loaded with mysticism and druggy imagery (and accented, of course, with a healthy dose of good old fashioned bad attitude). The guitar notes are fed through Stacy Sutherland's battery of effects, and there are plenty of acid-soaked solos flying around all over the place. Riffs and melodies are perched somewhere between blues-based garage punk and dream-addled pre-punk rock.

The most notable addition is Tommy Hall's "electric jug," a bizarre rhythmic instrument that garnishes several of these songs. Tommy Hall actually sang all those sounds. He held a microphone alongside the top of the jug and would make those noises into the jug. The jug was a prop that *maybe* added a resonation effect.

Just listen to some of these songs! "You're Gonna Miss Me" is a deranged slice of teenage snarl with a meaner-than-mean guitar line and a meaner-than-meaner-than-mean vocal, with Hall's jug floating menacingly in the background. "Roller Coaster" is an "epic" (over FOUR MINUTES!) mindbender with an absolutely archetypal guitar drone and a ghostly vocal from Erickson. "Don't Fall Down," with its chugging bass line and woozy backing vocals, is out-and-out hypnotic, and "Fire Engine" moves into full-on rock out territory.

The result is a whacked-out classic that bridges the gap between rock and the world beyond. It's the sound of a bunch of zitfaced teenagers formerly obsessed with cheeseburgers 'n' fast cars stumbling upon the mysteries of the universe. It's the sound of the 60s lurching into overdrive. It's the mono psychedelic sound, baby!

The Roky CD Club were the first to issue this album on CD waaaay back in 2003. It's still, arguably, the best sounding version. In 2008, Sundazed reissued it on vinyl from a copy of the long-lost master tapes and the mint IA original. Last year, Charly included it in their Sign of the Three Eyed Men box set.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Your’re Gonna Miss Me
2. Roller Coaster
3. Splash I (Now I’m Home)
4. Reverberation
5. Don’t Fall Down
6. Fire Engine
7. Thru the Rhythm
8. You Don’t Know
9. Kingdom of Heaven
10. Monkey Island
11. Tried to Hide

J.M. Dobies / Mal Thursday Interview - Texas Tyme Machime

2010-03-02T19:03:00.000-08:00

Recently, J.M. Dobies (Mal Thursday) was kind enough to sit with us and answer some questions. Below is the interaction:

How did you get involved in radio?

I started doing college radio at WMUA in Amherst, Mass., back in '87, after I got out of college. I was the lead singer in a local band, the Malarians, and got invited to do a guest DJ thing where I brought in a bunch of garage records, and said a bunch of stupid things on the air. After that, they gave me my own show, which was the original incarnation of "The Mal Thursday Show." I would mix it up, playing new releases as well as the old buried shit that was my bread and butter, and segue from a Sinatra record to Iggy & the Stooges doing "Louie Louie."

By the way, the Malarians are reuniting in June to do a tour of Massachusetts to support the CD reissues of our LP catalog. It's pretty much of tour of Route 9: Boston, Worcester, Northampton, and Amherst. We're doing Boston and Worcester with Lyres, who have done some great Texas covers in their day: "We Sell Soul," "Enough of What I Need," etc.

Where does your interest in sixties psych stem from?

I was a little kid in the '60s, but thanks to AM radio and my older sisters, I got early exposure to not only the Beatles and Paul Revere & the Raiders, but also the Doors, Hendrix, and Vanilla Fudge, as the decade wore on. Like I said in an interview with the Miami Herald last year, "As far as I'm concerned, music's been going downhill since 1966." As John Lennon said, referring to Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, "That's my period and I'll never leave it."

Sixties psych doesn’t seem like a great career move. Why?

Neither is radio, for that matter. And when I was working in commercial radio, I found it pretty much impossible to divorce myself from what I was playing. If I couldn't get off on it, it seemed dishonest to pretend that I did for the benefit of the listening audience. With the podcasts on GaragePunk, I may be preaching to the choir, but I know the audience is digging it. One reason that '60s garage and psych isn't a great career move is that the records were made over 40 years ago, which is to the present day what the roaring '20s were to the '60s. While the baby boomers' death grip on pop culture, combined with the fact that there was more great rock 'n roll made between '64 and '69 than there has been in the four decades since, has kept the music alive, there's no getting around the fact that it's ancient history. Pretty soon it'll be like Doo-Wop, totally marginalized. But not yet, thankfully.

Why Texas Psych?

I don't know if there was something in the water here, or what, but there was more good music coming out of Texas in the '60s than almost every other state in the U.S. Sure, New York and California had the major record companies, and San Francisco got all the hype, but the Texas psychedelic bands not only had a certain purity, they also rocked. Hard. Listen to the 13th Floor Elevators 1966 show at the Avalon Ballroom - none of the San Francisco bands could come close to that intensity. Of course, Janis and Chet Helms gave that scene the Texan flavor that helped put it over the top.

How did the "Texas Tyme Machine" come about? Is the show going to enter into syndication?

When I moved down to Florida in the fall of 2001, I created the "Florida Rocks Again!" radio show. It was my way of giving back to the culture, to show Floridians that so much great music had come from there, that Florida was more than just a national joke about rednecks, retirees, and hanging chads. It also allowed me to play a bunch of great garage and psychedelic records along with the Skynyrd, Tom Petty, and Sam & Dave stuff. Although we had a couple of lengthy runs on commercial radio, there was resistance on the part of most programmers to the overall obscurity of the show. There's also the unavoidable fact that a large percentage of the population wasn't even there in the '60s and '70s. They were in New York or Cuba.

In Texas, it's a different story. People take pride in their culture here, especially in Austin. I wanted to do a Texas version of "Florida Rocks Again!" even though there are already a couple of all-Texas music shows on the local airwaves ("Lone Star State of Mind" on KGSR and "Texas Music Matters" on KUT), I figured there was room for a more rockin' variation on the formula. Again, I could play all those great local '60s records, and give airtime to people like George Kinney, Roky Erickson, and others. I came up with the title "Texas Time Machine," and I even had some investors and a host, Dickie Lee Erwin, who had the right persona.

I encountered difficulty in the fact that corporate-controlled commercial radio is not at all receptive to new ideas or specialty programming, which they consider to be an "audience-killer." So if you manage to get your show on the air, you're stuck with a late-night time slot or Sunday mornings, which is not going to attract much in the way in the way of sponsorship.

Then I found out that the University of Texas has the trademark on the name "Texas Time Machine," which is some kind of a geographical mapping project. What a waste of a great title! So I changed it to "Tyme" with a Y, like Kenny & the Kasuals' "Journey to Tyme," and rather than wasting a year of my life trying to get the show syndicated for chump change, I decided to make it a regular part of "The Mal Thursday Show," which already has a built-in worldwide audience. And unlike a radio show or streaming internet show, a podcast is available indefinitely, 24/7, and it's free on iTunes.

What has the feedback been like so far?

There have been two all-Texas episodes so far, and I've gotten great feedback not only from the listeners, but from bands and labels here in Texas. The promo CDs have been pouring in, which is great. Also, I'm reaching out to the guys in the '60s bands, and giving them an opportunity to tell their stories. On Volume 3, the surviving members of the Wig are going to tell their tale, accompanied by their 45s and live tapes from the Jade Room.

If no syndication, are any individual stations interested in broadcasting "Texas Tyme Machine." Has there been any interest from the University of Texas at Austin’s student radio station?

I'd like to take a shot at it, but what's more likely is that I'll do "The Mal Thursday Show" on KOOP, the local community FM station, which shares a frequency with the UT student radio station. The UT station is limited to enrolled students, and going to grad school isn't in the cards at the moment! Part of the problem is that I've got a family to support, including two little kids, Liam, 5, and Lola, who's almost 4. I've got to hustle every day just to pay the rent. And I got laid off from my hated Microsoft job last July, so it's not easy.

I take whatever gigs I can get. For instance, I'm writing a Classic Movies column for the Austin Examiner, a Celebrity Headlines column for the Dallas edition, in addition to my blog, and I'm up for a featured extra role in the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit. Luckily, I can ride a horse and I'm growing my hair out for the Malarians reunion tour, so I've got properly Wild West sideburns going on.

Are you going to focus on cities/regions per show? That could be cool.

Oh yeah. The current episode has a segment on the Dallas/Fort Worth area circa '65-'67, taken from Norton Records' great Fort Worth Teen Scene series. Of the new bands I'm playing on the "Texas Tyme Machine" shows, I'm showing a huge bias towards Austin and San Antonio bands, but those are the bands I've seen and heard, and more importantly, that I've gotten promos on. If any bands from the rest of Texas are reading this, send me your stuff. LPs, CDs, mp3s, whatever you've got.

Ten years ago hardly anybody, outside Texas, had heard about this genre on music. What do you attribute the (late) rise in popularity to?

Well, the first renaissance in the genre was in the '80s, when you had all those semi-legit garage and psych comps, and people like Doug Hanners, David Shutt, and Dave Baldwin doing those vinyl releases like Texas Flashbacks, Fire in My Bones and Houston Hallucinations.

In the early 2000s, there was a revival of interest in the music when garage rock was declared the Next Big Thing, and Little Steven started doing his "Underground Garage" show, and later his Sirius channel. There have been some great documentaries, like You're Gonna Miss Me and Dirt Road to Psychedelia, and all the fine work of the Roky CD club. There's also the undeniable fact that good music is good music, and people will listen to it if they get the chance. And thanks to the internet, that's easier than it was back in the days of scouring the Goodwills in hopes of finding some obscure psych 45 or waiting around for Pebbles, Vol. 69.

Are you uncovering any new gems? If so, tell us about it.

While most of the records from that era that haven't been completely lost have already been documented, there's still a lot of stuff that remains unheard, that was unissued, or only exists on acetates collecting dust in someone's attic. Researching the show, I'm always hearing great stuff for the first time. Or stuff I haven't listened to in 25 years. And although I'm something of a dinosaur, I'm hearing a lot of new bands that are really incredible. Austin has the Ugly Beats, the Jungle Rockers, Love Collector, the Black Angels, and I'm getting together with the Texreys to do some live shows. There's a great band from the UK, the Higher State, who do a killer version of the Golden Dawn's "My Time" on the new episode.

What’s the future of Texas Tyme Machine?

It's going to be more or less a quarterly feature on "The Mal Thursday Show," and if I can get it on the airwaves here in Texas, that will be a bonus. In the meantime, I just want it to be heard by as many as people as possible, especially fans of Texas music, like your readers.

DOWNLOAD:
The Mal Thursday Show #24: Texas Tyme Machine, Vol. 2

Mal Thursday sets the controls for the heart of the Lone Star State, as he takes y'all on another trip in a Texas Tyme Machine. The second volume in the series features tracks from Norton Records' essential Fort Worth Teen Scene series, killer cuts from bands out of Austin, Tyler, and Sherman, and San Antonio, and a set of songs by Texas artists reinterpreted by bands hailing from Boston, Pittsburgh, the UK and elsewhere.Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD NOW

Tracklist:
THE BOTUMLESS PIT: 13 Stories High

THE BOURBONS: Of Old Approximately

THE FIVE CANADIANS: Writing on the Wall

SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET: It’s a Man Down There

THE GRAVEN IMAGE: Take a Bite of Life

ZAKARY THAKS: Won’t Come Back

THE WIG: DRIVE IT HOME

THE PASSIONS: Lively One

THE SENSORS: Rumble (bed)

LARRY & THE BLUE NOTES: In & Out

MARK V: Night of the Phantom

THE BARONS: Live and Die

THE CHOCOLATE MOOSE: Chocolate Moose Theme

THE ROOTS: It’s a Long Journey

THE BARDS: Alibis

THE CHOCOLATE MOOSE: Half-Peeled Banana (bed)

13th FLOOR ELEVATORS: I’m Gonna Love You Too

DMZ: You’re Gonna Miss Me

THE HIGHER STATE: My Time

THE BROOD: I Need You There

THE CYNICS: I’m in Pittsburgh (And It’s Raining)

THE CHESTERFIELD KINGS: 99th Floor

AMPLIFIED HEAT: Neighbor, Neighbor

THE UGLY BEATS: Take a Stand

THE FREDDIE STEADY 5: Cavestomp 2001

THE SONS OF HERCULES: Brain Dead

THE JUNGLE ROCKERS: Shake it

THE TEXREYS: Cave Girl

THE HICKOIDS: The Talking Hot Pants Blues

PLUG:
J.M. Dobies Writer/Producer
THE MAL THURSDAY SHOWFLORIDA ROCKS AGAIN!

Austin, Texas, USA
904.806.4934
jmdobies.com
BLOG! by JM Dobies
Twitter.com/jmdobiesGaragepunk.com Podcasts
Austin Classic Movies Examiner
The Florida Rocks Again! Online Superstore
The Malarians Swag Shack at Cafe Press

Celebrity Headlines at the Dallas Examiner

2010 Memorial Day Cosmic Campout! On Facebook & MySpace

2010-02-23T18:23:00.000-08:00

The 2010 Texas Psych Cosmic Campout is going to be a hoot! Be there or be square!

On MySpace:

http://profile.myspace.com/Modules/Applications/Pages/Canvas.aspx?appId=119211&appParams=%7b%22rt%22%3a%22%2fEvent%2fView%2f1076366%22%7d

On Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=325080892553

13th Floor Elevators: It's You (aka: I Don't Ever Want To Come Down)

2010-02-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

13th Floor Elevators: It's You (aka: I Don't Ever Want To Come Down)

Well some they pledge allegiance while others treasure seek
And soul wisdom spoken back, each life will be unique
Some want only pleasure, you only want to please
Or bring as the highest life that prayer ever sees.

I don’t ever want to come down from your village and your big town

I won’t tell foreigners earth’s their home
Well armed by the life you’ve been making
And not crush powers not your own
Just stick to your own overtaking

I don’t ever want to come down from your village and your big town

Encouraging all men, I wish you would
To live in a fable, I wish you would
I can’t do no other with you and David’s Saint fable
I’m not even trying to or curious fair
Each unicorn makes it completely prepared

Complete 13th Floor Elevators IA Singles Collection - Test Pressing

2010-02-05T17:48:00.000-08:00

When will we see one of these again? A white label test-pressing of this amazing box set; a true one-off. All eight records contain plain white heat-pressed center labels. Each 45 is housed in a plain white sleeve which has the name of the disc written in pencil in the top left corner. Comes with original fully laminated box and fold out insert.

The Complete 13th Floor Elevators IA Singles Collection
Track Listing:

1.You're Gonna Miss Me
2.Tried To Hide
3.Reverberation (Doubt)
4.Fire Engine
5.I've Got Levitation
6.Before You Accuse Me
7.She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own)
8.Baby Blue
9.Slip Inside This House
10.Splash 1
11.I'm Gonna Love You Too
12.May The Circle Remain Unbroken
13.Livin' On
14.Scarlet And Gold
15.You're Gonna Miss Me
16.We Sell Soul

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #23: Texas Tyme Machine

2010-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

Our friend, Mal Thursday, has added a quarterly treat to his famous Mal Thursday Show. This will be called Texas Tyme Machine. By the looks of the playlist for the first show this is going to be a monster!

Playlist:
KENNY & THE KASUALS: Journey to Tyme
THE WIG: Crackin’ Up
13th FLOOR ELEVATORS: Thru the Rhythm
ZAKARY THAKS: Face to Face
THE OUTCASTS: 1523 Blair
MOUSE & THE TRAPS: Lie, Beg, Borrow, & Steal
ELECTRIC LOVE: This Seat is Saved
THE MOVING SIDEWALKS: Flashback/Headin' Out
THE GENTLEMEN: It’s a Cryin’ Shame (alt. version)
THE ELITE: My Confusion
THE 12 A.M.: The Way I Feel
THE HEADSTONES: 24 Hours Every Day
THE REDDLEMEN: I’m Gonna Get in That Girl’s Mind
THE LAVENDER HOUR: I’ve Got a Way with Girls
THE EXOTICS: Come with Me
KNIGHT’S BRIDGE: Make Me Some Love
JUNGLE ROCKERS: Love Trap
THE UGLY BEATS: Let Me Through
THE SONS OF HERCULES: Misunderstood
LOVE COLLECTOR: Tell Me
AMPLIFIED HEAT: Rambler
THE SIR FINKS: Heart Full of Soul
JON WAYNE: I’ve Got Texas
THE RACONTEURS: Headin’ for the Texas Border
LOCO GRINGOS: Texas Ranger Man
DEAN MARTIN: Houston
MAL THURSDAY &THE CHEETAHS: Get Outta Dallas
THE IGUANAS: Leaving You Baby

Download the show by clicking here:

http://garagepunk.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mal-thursday-show-23-texas

Mayo Thompson Interview - 1/29/10

2010-02-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

Chris Gray Interviews Mayo Thompson of the Red Krayola:

Rocks Off: Which came first for you, art or music?

Mayo Thompson: I was never a visual artist. I did some drawings and stuff in those days, but I was never a visual artist. Music was something I backed into in a way, something I found myself making. I don't know what you mean, 'which came first.' Like did I choose between two careers or something like that?

RO: Right.

MT: No, I didn't. Music was the thing. I studied art history at St. Thomas. They did not have a studio art department at that time, and I don't know that I would have used it anyway. I studied art history there and made music.

RO: What are the origins of the Krayola in Houston?

MT: You mean why did we start a band? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. One was looking for something to do, some way forward, to use a figure of speech. Seems as good as any. Popular music was something I had known about for a long time, and been exposed to all my life. My mother played music around the house, and I knew about it.

RO: Would you characterize what the Krayola was doing back then as 'psychedelic'?

MT: I don't know. The Elevators were interested in Psychedelic with a capital P, Psychedelic as a way of life, as a mode, as a strategy, as a philosophy, whatever. We would own up that there was something that was psychedelic in the small-p sense, in the sense that something could expand your mind, and perhaps some medium was required, some substance was required to perform the magic that was discussed in the Elevators' thing.

But it was also possible to look at that as a characteristic of a relationship where you look at a sunset and you have kind of a 'Gee whiz! Isn't that beautiful' kind of effect, which takes you a little bit out of time and puts you in a slightly different space. That we thought of as psychedelic in some way, in the small things and the mundane things, that there were also moments where other worlds and other ways of thinking and other kinds of ideas came into the foreground in some way.

We weren't advocates of psychedelia in the way that the Elevators were, nor were we interested in perpetually occupying ourselves with those states or being in those states. Do you know what I mean?

RO: Are you talking about drugs, or just the...?

MT: I'm just talking about the whole way of things. I don't know. To me, it seemed to be weak thinking.

RO: Was there a lot of friction between the Krayola and Lelan Rogers?

MT: No. We never had any friction with him. We were naïve in extremis; we knew nothing about the business, and we just wanted to make records. We were crazy to make music, and crazy to make records, and our first contract that we signed with International Artists was a piece of boilerplate. It's unbelievable when I look back on it.

I have had occasion to have a lawyer explain to me what that first paragraph of that contract meant, and I signed away a lot of... I wanted to get on with it, and I wasn't paying attention to the business part of it. And Lelan, we had a misimpression of Lelan - we thought that was his record company. It wasn't. It was owned by two lawyers who had bought it from another lawyer. We made that first record, and pretty soon after that, Lelan was out.

When they asked me to come back and make God Bless The Red Krayola, the second album, Lelan wasn't even around. He wasn't even part of their operation; they had gotten rid of him. Instead, Ray Rush was in charge of A&R there, and Fred Carroll was involved in the production side of it.

IA was a shaky organization. They didn't do anything the regular way. They didn't advertise, and they turned around and tried to make a virtue out of that. As we see from what happened in the later years, that this is actually a feasible way of going on, but at the time we didn't think much about it. We just wanted to make a record.

It never occurred to us to try to send tapes to the major labels and try to get a deal in the usual sort of way. We just felt like there was an opportunity there, and we went for it. Lelan was an adventurous thinker in his way. He had an imagination, and he had a show-business nose. He came along and saw us playing one night in a battle of the bands. KNUZ had a battle of the bands we were invited to play. We played one night in Gulfgate Mall, and he came to that looking for a parakeet and found us and asked us to make a record.

I later read in interviews where he said he thought we couldn't play, and I suppose from the point of view of musicianship, I guess we couldn't play. We were not your standard-issue musicians. We just weren't interested in the techniques in quite the same sort of way. Like I said, for us instrumentality was tied to a notion of expressing ideas.

Our understanding of adequacy was a little different. But at the same time, music is a form that has a powerful, phenomenal effect on the body. And one has a feel for time, a feel for frequency, and even without knowing much about it, being 'primitives of the form,' we still managed to touch some things that actually do work, and are characteristic of music that works generally. So I think it was valid as music. I don't think there's any question of that.

We didn't have any friction with anybody, particularly. We were not really - I mean, Steve Cunningham was much more deeply steeped in the scene than I was or Bartheleme was. Bartheleme and I came from a slightly different world. We were a little bit older than he. It was a kind of craziness. It was making it up as we went along. We were determined that we wanted to do it differently, and we had some funny ideas.

We wanted to change the name of the band all the time, and the record company thought, 'Oh, my God.' We had also made up our minds that we would not record the same thing twice, and once we were done with one kind of idea, one way of doing things, we'd move on and find something else.

RO: Did you find living in Houston back then to be constricting at all?

MT: No. I mean, I had other horizons on my mind. But Houston was a perfectly fine place. It worked for a lot of people, and a lot of people that we knew were doing very well there, and things were going on. It was just fine. I personally wanted out, but not because of anything about Houston.

One gets older [and] after all these years, I think 'I can live anywhere if I have to.' And I will. I'll live wherever I have to and I'll make the best of it that I can, whatever's going on. It's certainly the case that Houston suffered from a kind of second-rate, like a hierarchy of relations in relation to culture - you know, New York is where art came from, and Chicago is where music came from. There were all those kinds of clichés around about how the world is organized and how it's built.

That's all nonsense anyway. I mean, not nonsense, but it's not really a problem. Anything anywhere - I mean, look at ZZ Top. They stayed right there and they've done fine. So it's not about the town, it's about your state of mind, I think. Me, I said I wanted out, so I got out.

Also in the '60s, music changed a little bit. The folk thing had been rolling for a while, but then it gave way to electric music. I was interested in those forms, and I was interested in those ideas. I went to Europe in 1965 and sat there for a while and looked around.

When I came back, I got in touch with my friend Frederick Barthelme and suggested to him that we should start a band, that that seemed like as good a way forward as any. I had done a little bit of playing at that time, and Rick had played a little bit of drums, so we just had a bash.

RO: Were you trying to consciously go against the grain of the music that was popular at the time?

MT: I always consciously try to go against the grain of anything that's popular at the time. I'm contrarian by disposition, and unorthodox and iconoclastic and all those things. That makes sense to me. At the same time, I wouldn't want to characterize what I do as going against the grain for its own sake. It's just the way I do it, the way I see it.

The orthodoxies and the standard-issue ideas and so on, things like that, have never been satisfying to me in any way. They always seemed to me to be pious in some way... or I shouldn't say that. That's judgemental. Let's just put it this way: It's not for me. It never spoke in a voice that spoke to me or for me. So I was interested in trying to find something that I could say grace over that made some sense in relation to the ideas, at the same time, that wasn't what was already going on.

Plus I come from a school of thought where if somebody's already doing something, you don't do it. You don't duplicate those relations, you try to find something else. Those kind of constraints informed it, and certainly I have to confess that to a young fella it's a lot of fun to get in people's faces. Getting knee-jerk reactions out of people and stuff like that, there's a certain kind of transitory gratification involved in that, and I confess to having done some of that kind of thing.

But it was not really the main impulse. I always hoped, perhaps, and dreamed to some extent, that one was involved in a conversation where everybody was doing pretty much doing the same thing, looking not for just for the known goods but looking for what else might be there in some sort of developmental sense.

That was still an idea in the '60s, that there was somewhere to go with those things. I've since been disabused of this idea. There is nowhere to go, apart from across the road, maybe. Does that make any sense?

RO: I think so. How did you translate those sorts of ideas into the music you were making?

MT: Just to talk about different things than 'Baby, I love you' and 'It's a pretty day.' Rather than trade in tried and true, to find something new. It also operated at the limits of one's abilities, of course.

When we started playing, one of the things that was palpable to us was how our musicianship stood up to the quality of musicianship with which we were familiar, which included classical music, and then jazz, and then on down to people who were adept at various idioms, like great guitar players like Hendrix or those kind of things. The music made by the Beatles, or the music made by the Rolling Stones, all of which is derived from other kinds. The Beatles, I hear English music-hall music, you know, and the Rolling Stones are obviously R&B.

We were moved by the intensity of jazz bands to some extent, like Albert Ayler was certainly a figure that we admired and had great respect for, partly because he knew his way around his instrument and he could play very well, but he chose to use it in a fairly expressive sort of way and to treat it as an instrument where it was not about technique, and it wasn't about mastery over the scales or those kind of things, but it was about an activist relationship to the ideas, and that the instrument was an instrument conveying those ideas.

So we started from those principles. And we also had some kind of understanding of art, as a kind of progression or series of movements, which it had been up until that time. Those days are over, but it had been up until that time. And we were familiar with notions of avant-garde and notions of [phone rings] Can you hang on one second?

RO: Mm-hmm. [Mayo talks to wife on phone]

MT: Sorry. My wife was calling to report she had survived the traffic. Yeah. You know, in the '60s the world was a lot different than it is now. The '50s had been a glorious time for the United States, and in the '60s things were starting to look a little frayed around the edges in terms of some of the verities that one was taught, or expected to live up to in some way.

I don't know. The war in Vietnam was getting going real good. It was just a different world. The civil rights movement, all that stuff. It was a time of change, and we were as anxious as anybody to change it, and we were perhaps a little disrespectful. I will say that.

RO: How did you wind up assisting Robert Rauschenberg?

MT: Accident. I was sitting in Europe in the summer of '73, and I went to Greece to make a record with a guy named Manos Hadjidakis, the guy who wrote "Never on Sunday." And he was ill and couldn't work, so I just sat there for a month waiting and waiting and waiting and finally I just couldn't stay there anymore. I was running out of money; there was nothing I could do. And there was nothing for me to do there.

I begged his pardon and said, 'I think I'm just going to have to leave. I can't stick around here and wait forever.' And I went, 'On my way home I think I want to stop in Paris.' So he organized a ticket for me and I went to Paris. I was sitting there and it was August, and I was walking around one day with my second wife, who was an artist, and we were walking down the street one day and we saw Rauschenberg sitting in front of Illyana Sonovan's [sp?] gallery.

[My wife] knew him from New York a little bit, and we got to chatting and he invited us to come in, and I wound up working for him through that. He needed to write a press release for this exhibition they were putting together, and they needed a little something because they were launching this printing company. He had a printing press called Untitled Press, and they needed something to write. I knew how to use a pencil, and so I got the job. 'Oh yeah, I can do that. Sure, I'll help you do that.'

So I helped write the press release, and in proving oneself handy at this and that, opportunity will knock. And so when we got back to New York, where I was living at the time, there wasn't much of anything going on and I asked Bob could we have a job. And he found something for us to do because he liked us.

He liked people around him, he liked to hang out, he liked to have fun, and we had had some fun together. So it seemed a natural, and pretty soon we were working for him. I worked for him for about 18 months, almost two years.

RO: What other kind of work did you do for him?

MT: Walked the dog, pick up the dry-cleaning, you know, wash the dishes. Whatever. I suppose the most interesting thing I got to do was working on a film about him. There was a documentary being made about him by a French film company, and the guy who was making it - when Bob saw this film, he said, 'Oh, I can't let this out this way. I need to do some more on it.'

So he asked my wife at the time, Christine, he asked her, 'Do you know anybody that can make movies?' And it happened that I had made some movies when I was at St. Thomas; I had gotten interested in film there. They didn't have a media department there, but I was just making movies. Barthelme and I were working on a film together before we started the band.

And she said, 'Oh, he can.' Like the press release, you know: 'Can anybody write around here?' 'Yeah, I can write.' 'Okay, you get the pencil.' 'Can anybody make a film?' 'Yeah, I think I can probably do it.' I'm not easily intimidated by those kinds of things, or as nervous as it might make me, I'm not going to be so scared that I won't have a go. So he said, 'Can you?' and I said, 'Sure, we'll try.'

I went and rented a camera and wound up finishing this film. The guy who had been making it before was terminally ill, and it fell to Rauschenberg. He backed it up and we did some more filming on it. It's a film called Mostly About Rauschenberg. My version of it, I should say, or our version of it, was never shown until after Bob's death, in fact, in Munich. We were invited to show it there. We went along with some people from Bob's organization, David White, and showed the film then. That was the most interesting thing I got to do.

We traveled around with him some, and worked on installations of exhibitions in various places. We went with him to Israel, for example, and we sat in Jerusalem for a couple of weeks and helped put together a show of his work there, and helped make things. We helped make things in Paris. The usual stuff that assistants do. Some of this, some of that.

RO: I was looking over your discography and it's just staggering. What do you think it is that's made you so prolific?

MT: Well... I don't know. After The Parable of Arable Land and Coconut Hotel and God Bless The Red Krayola and Corky, I thought pretty much I was finished. I thought I had done about everything there was left to do with music. It seemed to me to be exhausted, at least in terms of formal development. I was thinking along the lines of where Schonberg leads to Cage and Stockhausen, out of classical music.

Unless you're really a technician and interested in musicianship and interpretation and stuff like that, which is what players do classically - not being a player and not being interested in music in that way, I thought, 'Well, I've exhausted this form.' I stopped making music for a while, until I met those guys in Art & Language. Then I got to thinking, 'Well, maybe there is something more to do with this stuff, maybe some kind of lyrical content that I haven't explored the possibilities of putting down and dealing with, and some other kinds of expressive relations, some other kinds of politics of relations.'

So there's always been some reason for it - it's always been reason-driven, let's say, where it's like 'Gosh, there is something else to say, there is something else to do.' And production, my motto has always been 'Produce and the world will run to keep up,' or 'Produce and be damned' and 'Take a stand somewhere, do something and see what happens.' So that's what I did, and over the years it's happened that I've had opportunities to make records.

I haven't always pushed it. Sometimes I've pushed it out of necessity, fiscal necessity. I've thought to myself, 'I better go find something to do' a couple of times. That happened to me in England - that's how I got involved in all that stuff with Rough Trade. I found myself in need of a way of making a living, and doing some things, and found out that there was interesting things going on in music, punk rock and all that kind of stuff, and got involved in that.

RO: Of all the collaborations you've done over the years, which ones kind of stand out in your mind today?

MT: The ones I can remember (laughs). If I see it down on paper, I'll go 'Oh yeah, I remember doing that!' or 'I remember them.' The most constant, I suppose, is obviously my association with Art & Language. That persists, and we still find things which are of interest to both of us, sufficiently interesting to animate us [on] both sides, and we get things together and do stuff from time to time.

But every collection of people who have gotten together to do something has been interesting in its way, and I don't rate it one over another.

RO: On this most recent album, why did you choose these five people that you did?

MT: I didn't choose them; Art & Language chose them.

N: Do you know why they did?

MT: (laughs) No. I don't. George Bush, I can think that they might have chosen him because historically they've done portraits in various styles. They've done "Portrait of V.I. Lenin" in the style of Jackson Pollock, so there's a relation there. And they've done a portrait of Bush in the style of a certain Pollock painting which had a certain history. I can't remember exactly how it worked out, but it was shown somewhere in the East, and Lenin's name had to be taken off of it.

I don't know - there are certain kinds of indexicalities that they could answer better than I, and I don't really know them. And I haven't really concerned myself with them, not because I'm not interested in them or anything else like that. It's just that, you know, I wanted to make the record. They've written lyrics and given them to me over the years - well, these things were not written as lyrics. They were written as descriptions of representational works they were making.

RO: Kind of like instructions.

MT: Well, yeah. They describe the features, and when they looked at the lyrics, they thought to themselves, 'Ah, Mayo might like this.' So they called me up and asked if I'd like to see what they were doing with these texts that they had gotten together, and I said by all means, send 'em to me. I looked at 'em and I said, 'Oh hell yeah, I'll do something with that.'

I started thinking about the problem of the very idea of making portraits of these people, and what would go into a portrait, what makes something a portrait, what makes it possible to see these people and to bring them to life, so to speak, or to bring them before one, to conjure them before yourself. It's an interesting formal technical problem. I'm interested in the problems of representation. I have the privilege to involve myself in those kinds of questions rather than other sorts of stuff. So I do.

RO: How did you go about composing the music to match each one of these portraits?

MT: All of those people are very familiar to me. My being an American, I happen to know all those characters. Wile E. Coyote, I saw the first Roadrunner cartoon back when they came out. I always liked Wile E. Coyote and thought he was a very sympathetic figure and, you know, one of the most charming villains in film history.

And I also liked Bo Diddley, and I know Bo Diddley wrote a song called 'Roadrunner.' So I started putting two and two together, things like that, you know, just one step after another, that leads to another thing - the 'knock on' effect with ideas. It was about generating something that was familiar.

You know how portraits are - when you go and look at a portrait of somebody you'll see in a museum, and if they were an explorer there'll be a little globe on the table, and they'll have their hand on a book of geography, that kind of stuff. And so it was pretty simple putting together the atmosphere that goes around these kinds of people. Their worlds, so to speak.

Wile E. Coyote's world is his life in the imagination of people. And I thought about Bo Diddley, of course, and Bo Diddley had just passed away not too long before I started working on that thing. I had always liked his music, and I always felt a great deal of sympathy for him, and understanding, because when I hear 'Roadrunner,' which is a little bit different from his jungle thing, I thought, 'That's the pop musician's perennial problem, that the idea is to make something that everybody will like, and to do something that makes a kind of sense.'

So I went online and saw a couple of performances of Bo Diddley performing 'Roadrunner' with his ensemble, and it just struck me how alienated the whole thing was, about how much it wasn't idea-driven, about how it was a project to do something, and to get something that really resonated with the people.

And who knows? Bo Diddley, at the time he did that, I think he was living in New Mexico. Maybe he saw a roadrunner, or maybe he saw the Roadrunner cartoon and thought that it had captured people's imagination and he was going to get him a little piece of that action, he was going to get in on that, so he wrote that tune, and that tune seemed to be good enough to me.

So I rearranged it and added a few little thises and little thats, but it seemed to be an ideal way of portraying Wile E., a good backdrop. And it seemed to capture some of the energy and the frenetic aspect of it, which is something like a cartoon.

So I got that, and I thought of George Bush as being a figure who is intimately associated with the very idea of Texas. I thought, 'Well, that's my turf.' So I borrowed the University of Texas' fight song, which they borrowed from some other tune they borrowed from, you know, the levee song and 'I've Been Working on the Railroad,' and then I had some other music which I had written. Back in the '80s I wrote a piece called 'The New Eyes of Texas' which I had never done anything with, but I had this piece sitting around.

I thought about 'Home, Home on the Range,' which was written in Texas I believe, and 'Red River Valley' and 'Oh Texas, My Texas,' 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' - I just thought of all that Texiana and thought about George Bush, thought about there being a piano in the White House and, you know... it was pretty straightforward, you know what I mean? It was just a game of association.

And Jimmy Carter being from Georgia, you know, 'Georgia On My Mind.' 'Rainy Night In Georgia.' And then 'Dixie's Land,' something - sort of the forbidden, the hot icon, because it's associated with the Confederacy and associated with the old slaveholding South and the contradictions which persist and continue to this time, continue to haunt the whole relation, as we see. So all of that came into it.

At the same time, with John Wayne, I grew up with John Wayne in the movie house. Back in the day in Houston, there used to be a theater on the corner of Main Street and Richmond Avenue that was called the Delman. I lived around the corner from that theater, and I used to go there every Saturday to the movies. I think I probably saw most of the movies that John Wayne was in from the late '40s all the way through the '50s.

John Wayne was a hero to me. He's one of those figures that I just admired and respected. And of course in the '60s, when there was a question of are you a patriot and how does patriotism express itself, and there was some controversy over what counted as a legitimate expression of patriotism and 'Do you love your country?' and 'Would you die for it?', etc. The Green Berets, and all that moment. And John Wayne had always been a conviction player on the side of flying the flag, which is something I understand.

Of course my father's generation, those people went out and fought the war. That was the world I grew up in. I was born in '44, the war ended a year later, no connection I'm sure, but that colored my relationship to John Wayne. And Ad Reinhardt I got to know about when I got to know about art. And Mozart of course I had known about since I was an infant. I've heard his music all my life.

The funny thing about the Mozart piece is that my wife is a molecular biologist. We were living in Scotland at the time and she had a piano. She's also an accomplished pianist, although she doesn't play any more. At one time she had to choose between biology and the piano, and she chose biology.

Anyway, she would come home and sit down at the piano sometimes and play. One evening she came in and started playing this Mozart piece. She was working on some passage of it that didn't quite satisfy her. She's quite technically accomplished, so she was working on the left hand. I heard this figure, and I said, 'Honey, what's that you're playing?' She told me what it was, the name of the piece, and I'd heard it before but just didn't know what the name of it was.

And I said, 'Would you play that again? Just the left hand, and play it slowly.' She did, and it's the motif from 'Paint It, Black' by the Rolling Stones. This is in the second section of Piano Sonata No. 6 in D (sings). The first 32 bars of the second section of the Piano Sonata in D, that is a motif. It changes register and changes around, it doesn't stay the same way it does in the Stones' version of it, but then I thought to myself, 'Brian Jones, surely he heard that. He had piano lessons as a kid and knew Mozart, and that line had always stuck in his head. Who knows?'

So that was an easy association. And it turns out, of course, that Ad Reinhardt always painted all of his pictures black. They're all black. So there's a certain kind of literalism and a kind of associationism, trading in familiarities, some straightforward representation, which is a little bit different from what I've ever done, but like I said I don't like to do the same thing twice. So that's how that stuff came about.

The John Wayne thing, the movie, one of my favorites of his is The Searchers. It's got music by Max Steiner. I think he must be a German émigré who came to America after the war, somebody like Franz Waxman, who wrote for Hitchcock, somebody who was trained in the academy and knew musical tropes very well, and who was able to adapt things, sitting out there in Hollywood and knew this one and knew that one, and one thing led to another and pretty soon he's writing the music to this movie.

So because it's a Western, he's obliged to bring it down to earth at some level, and there's some fairly prosaic music, and I'm sure that he listened to some American music in the same way that, you know, Bartok listened to folk music and stuff like that. When I listened to The Searchers, I thought, 'Well, there's 'Just a Closer Walk With Thee' in there, it's an adaptation from this old spiritual, but it's also the tune to a thousand songs.' So it's deeply ingrained in American culture, and so it seemed to me to be deeply noncontroversial.

Plus, in that setting, you have all the chromatic excitement, which is all the clichés of soundtrack music versus this homely tune, and that kind of thinking.

RO: What's your attitude toward performing live these days? Do you do much of that?

MT: I confess that I still get a thrill standing in front of people. I don't know why. I really don't. I can't explain it. I mean, there's something completely absurd about the relationship of standing in front of people with a guitar around your neck yowling down a microphone. Like, 'What?' But somehow people will go, and people seem to enjoy it, and I like standing on the other side of the footlights.

And for me, it's a way of being in public. I don't go out much at all, and it's one time I can get out and be in public, and it's when I can play a little bit of a role and get out there and do my thing, and I go on tour sometimes or play shows sometimes, and that makes a kind of sense to me. Plus there's something I really like about the process. I like the way that time passes when you're onstage. I like sharing a vibe with a lot of people in a room. That's a strange feeling, and an interesting feeling. Very powerful.

You notice, like, 'Oh, he dropped his beer. Oh, they're leaving. Oh, she's dancing. Oh, he's not. He's sneering, and that one's laughing, and they're not listening at all.' But the thing about music is, as you know, is whether you're listening to it or not, it's playing you. It's got hold of you. It's got hold of your body and it's moving you around, even if you're not listening to it. Even if you don't like it, or if you do like it, one way or the other it's got you. If you're present, and music is present, it's happening. You know what I mean?

So I like that relation about it as well. I still like playing in public, yeah. I do. And partly because of the, like I said, one of the most interesting parts about it for me is the ability to get out and be with other people.

RO: Are there any plans to play out with this new record?

MT: No, no plans. If something comes up, and somebody has an idea and makes me an offer, you know, maybe I'd do it, maybe I don't. Maybe we will do something. The only place I go on tour in the traditional fashion is in Japan and in Europe, those two places. In America, the band gets invited to play maybe in New York, or somebody will give us a gig in San Francisco maybe. Or we could play in Chicago.

But when I first came back to America and started playing here in the '90s, when I first started working with Drag City, I played in some places in the middle, in St. Louis, maybe somewhere in Wisconsin someplace, I can't remember all the places we played, and Philadelphia. But it's not like Will Oldham, for example, who's out there and who plays every town in America. He goes everywhere and does all those things.

We're not that kind of band. We're difficult, and the music that we play is not - I read a review of something recently that said, 'The Red Krayola's music is not practical.' And I thought, 'That's really a great observation.' There is no practical justification whatsoever for what we do. It's not functional, it's not the kind of music you can put on when you want to dance, it's not the kind of music you can put on at a barbecue.

You might find one or two tunes here and there that'll fit if you had a whole medley of other kinds of things. You can shoehorn something in there, you know? But largely it's unique stuff, and it's the kind of music that was made on the premise of 'Now listen to this' rather than 'Put this on while you're cooking fried chicken' or something like that.

If somebody does that, I'm happy. I'm not ruling that out, but it's not functional music in the usual sense. It's not dance floor. It doesn't sit comfortably in any of the genres that I know of or in any of the categories that I know of, except in the broadest category of them all, which is popular music. There, I think we've got a foothold, along with everything else.

And people say to me, 'Oh, you're part of the alternative music scene.' And I say, 'Look, if there's any kind of music, all music is alternative.' And ours is alternative to all other kinds, and there is no hierarchy of values which is implied in these stances. I refuse a lot of the usual category closures. So it's really not the kind of music that you can - you really have to want to go and hear the Red Krayola do its thing. There ain't many people out there who want to do that.

It's unfortunate. There's nothing I'd like better than to play. Part of the game of popular music, of course, is to do something that catches the public imagination on a grand scale, and I'd love to see that happen. I keep that possibility open, and I wouldn't be surprised. People have funny ideas. Maybe one of our funny ideas meets up with everybody else's funny idea one of these days. Who knows?

So it's that kind of a thing that keeps it going, as impractical as it is in terms of the known applications.

RO: Do you make it back to Houston much anymore?

MT: I haven't been back since 2007. My mother and father are deceased, and my great-aunt, they were the people who brought me to Houston. That was why I went to Houston, was to be with them. I still have some friends who live there, but I haven't been back in a while. I communicate with them.

I've got some cousins who live there, but we were never very close and we don't communicate with each other, so I don't have strong family reasons that bring me back to town. I've got some stuff in storage there, which I need to visit, but I just can't get myself together to do it.

I don't know. I like that city very much. I think Houston is a great city. I've seen it grow from 'The Biggest Little Town In the World,' as they used to call it, and where they zipped up the sidewalks, as they used to say, at 10 o'clock at night. That was back in the day when men went out and they wore hats and ties and stuff like that, and ladies didn't go anywhere without hats and gloves. But that world's gone, and Houston now is a whole new thing.

I like the city, though, very much. I particularly like it between October and March; between March and October I'm not very fond of it. The weather. But I can endure it. How are things there? How is Houston?

RO: Houston's a busy place. We have a nice little art scene here, and a music scene that's improving every year.

MT: Oh, I know. There's always been a lot going on. There are a lot of fine people. What is the Houston Press? I remember back in the day there used to be a newspaper that was owned by Scripps-Howard that was called the Houston Press.

RO: That was a daily. We're a weekly. I guess we've been around maybe 20 years.

MT: I was a paperboy for the Houston Press. That was a good paper. They had a bulldog edition and a morning edition, all those things that came out. That was when Houston had three newspapers.

RO: Right. The Post, the Chronicle and the Press.

MT: I've heard of the Press, and I've seen articles here and there, online for example, where it says Houston Press. I hope y'all are doing well. Twenty years is a good record.

RO: Yeah. Especially these days.

MT: I would come back to Houston if it was a little closer. I'm far away, and my wife works, and our life is here in L.A. at the moment. That's just the way it is. I could live in Houston easily. Now, it would be easy for me, but I just don't see anything happening for me along those lines.

RO: Well, one of these days I know we hope to talk you into coming to Rice or downtown somewhere and doing some Red Krayola stuff.

MT: I appreciate that thought very much. I really do. That's awfully sweet of you, but I have to confess that the very idea of playing in Houston makes me a little nervous. Playing in Texas - people talked about 'Would the Red Krayola play a tour of Texas?' and I've thought about it a number of times; it is a card that one could play. But I'm reluctant. I'm really reluctant. Because... I don't really know why. It just makes me nervous to think about it.

N: Just because you were raised here?

MT: Maybe that's what it is. I don't play in L.A. anymore. When I first came out here, I was kind of going back and forth between here and Houston, spending time with my mother out there. I played some shows here, and played in L.A. for a while. And after a while, I thought to myself, 'I ain't never playing here again.' I live here, and you don't play where you live. It just seems like not a good idea.

There's something like that about it. And I really wouldn't know where to play. The other night I turned on the TV and I saw Roky Erickson playing on Austin City Limits. And that's a natural for him. He's an Austin man, and he's part of an authentic, official music world, a music scene. He can play all kinds of venues, and there was Billy Gibbons onstage with him, and some other people like a guitar player and a solid bass player and a good drummer, and some kind of keyboard.

They're on there doing their thing and I thought to myself, 'What we do sounds something like that, but it also sounds something not like that.' I just don't want to go and face the vagaries of it, I suppose. I'm lacking in nerve on that front. But it's a nice idea, to come to Houston and do something. I like it. I like the town, and Rice is an amazing, amazing campus. Are you affiliated with them? Did you go there?

RO: No.

MT: Are you a Houston man?

RO: Yeah. I grew up here, and lived in Austin for a long time. I'm a UT boy, but I moved back a few years ago.

MT: I joke about Austin and Dallas. Whenever I say I'm from Texas, they always say, 'Dallas, right?' I say, 'I'm from Houston. We admit that Dallas is part of Texas, but that's as far as we'll go. And then Austin, 'Oh, that's a vibrant scene, the music.' And I'll say, 'Yeah, Austin is our state capital.' I underplay it because I believe in rivalry between towns. I kind of like that idea, for one thing. Plus the culture of Austin has always felt a little alien to me, like San Francisco feels a little alien to me. It's too cultured. Too cultivated, and too aware of its own value.

RO: I know exactly what you mean by that.

MT: I bet you do.

RO: I don't think Houston has ever quite had that problem.

MT: That's one of the great things about Houston.

RO: It's always underestimated itself.

MT: It really is a town that's a bit alienated. I like it. You can be as alone there as you want to be, or you can be in the middle of things if you want to be. That's one of the reasons I like Los Angeles, or one of the things Los Angeles has in common with this town, that there's a certain kind of anomie that informs things. You can just make it up as you go along. There is no center, there is no bar where you're going to run into everybody, there's no restaurant where you're bound to run into everybody you already know and all that kind of stuff. I like that. I like that.

RO: I like that too. I like it here because of that.

MT: I can believe it. What did you study at UT?

RO: Different things. Journalism, American Studies, started in the music school actually.

MT: Yeah? You a player?

RO: Formerly. I played cello and bass for a while, classically.

MT: That's great. I'm working on an opera. Man, that's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to locking horns with all those classical people.

RO (laughs): What's the opera about?

MT: It's called Victorine, and it plays in Paris in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Victorine Muron was the model for Manet's painting Olympia. It's this nude, there's a black woman in it and a black cat, a black woman holding a bouquet of flowers. It's largely referred to as a painting of a prostitute.

She plays this role, a courtesan, and anyway, she modeled for a lot of people. She modeled for Courbet, she modeled for Manet, and this thing plays in Paris at the time. The story is occupied largely by a police inspector trying to solve what he thinks are a bunch of murders based on his readings of various paintings of nudes, where he sees them as murdered. He treats these paintings as forensic evidence.

The libretto is by Art & Language. It's very funny. This guy's got a confusion between 'motive' and 'motif.' He looks at the motifs in the paintings and thinks they amount to motives for murder, like there's some sort of message involved, that the killer is trying to tell tales and so on and so on and so on, making political points.

And people are manipulating this copper left, right and center trying to sic him on Courbet. Because Courbet was a lefty, and Courbet got in big trouble for pulling down the Vendome column. He was the minister of culture for the Paris commune, who Karl Marx said of them, 'Their mistake was they didn't march on Versailles and therefore transform all of France.' They were satisfied just to take Paris, that's all they cared about (laughs).

Anyway, this plays in the aftermath of this whole thing, when Louis Napoleon was in charge in France. Art & Language are very good writers. The characterizations are funny, and it's really wordy. It's four acts, and I don't know what the word count is, but let's say there are lots of words there.

It's not like most operas where you have an aria, and a recitative parts where the story is stitched together with some songs. There is only one aria in the whole piece, and one vocal chorus of policemen. The rest of it is all these descriptions of bodies, and then some speculation on the politics of representation.

But it's quite entertaining. I hope it'll be entertaining. I would say if you were to characterize the Red Krayola, I always say we're entertainers. We entertain ideas, and we try to bring these ideas to life so people will be entertained by them as well, or will have the opportunity of entertaining them themselves.

The premium would be on entertainment, and not everybody's entertained by the same kinds of things, of course, and some people have different ideas. Some people, when they think of entertainment, they think of 'ha ha ha,' or, you know, whatever. But this is a more complex relationship to that very idea.

And this opera, I won't say it's traditional, in that it doesn't come out of any particular line of thought, let's say, but I can tell you for sure that my favorite operas in the world are Mozart. Don Giovanni's a fine piece of business. Puccini operas, The Barber of Seville, these are fine, fine, fine pieces of music, and I will not simulate these effects, but I have learned from them and absorbed quite a lot of those ideas, and there will be something in that.

And also, this coincides with my old claim that I can put anything to music - any words, I can find the setting for it, and that's not a problem. The premium has been put on the sense of the language, so that you can follow the story, so it'll be easy to follow the story.

It'll strike a balance between opera as it exists as some kind of spectacle, constrained by the narrative imperatives of Hollywood scriptwriting. In Hollywood they want you to make damn sure that everyone knows exactly what's going on all the time. There will be no mysterious elements or anything like that. Nobody will turn to you in the theater and say, 'Who is she?'

So that would be a criterion, emphasis on sense, and also wedging this thing from the outside into that world and seeing what happens when these worlds collide. That's my entertainment, and Art & Language's entertainment as well, to some extent, would be to go to Salzburg and watch the people who are drenched and steeped in the classical tradition, see how they respond when they have to listen to this stuff.

And they may have to, because there's always a trade-off where commercial necessity dictates that you have to get in bed with some strange people sometimes. That's the card we plan to play.

RO: I sure will. Thank you so much for talking to me.

MT: It was my pleasure. The most recent occasion I had to look at your paper was when Walt Andrus passed away. I really thought y'all did a good job with his obituary, the way you handled it. That was really nice.

RO: Well thank you.

MT: It was really nice. He was a great man.

RO: So I hear. Quite a figure back in those days.

MT: Oh, I mean, he made - so much of the stuff that we know of was done in his studio. Frank Davis still lives in your town, and he's an amazing character. When I first started playing music, he and Guy Clark were two people who were really generous to me. They didn't say, 'Fuck off, kid.' They were playing at the Jester Lounge, which is out on Westheimer right by what is now Loop 610.

It was a folk club, and there were a lot of folk players there. Frank Davis was playing there, and Guy Clark was playing there, and they were the first people who really talked to me in a really straight-up sort of way. We talked about music, and I learned a lot from those two guys.

Corky's Debt I recorded at Walt's, and we recorded Parable at Walt's place. I recorded Corky's Debt for Walt's label, and Rock Romano, who's another Houston stalwart, we did that together. All those players are Houston players that are on Corky's there. There's some good stuff in that town.

Guys I went to college with at St. Thomas, the guys who did the newspaper there, Bob Raines was a drummer, and a guy named Paul Norris, and Bob Raines used to get regularly called by Mickey Gilley to play drums. One time he asked Mickey, 'Why do you call me, Mickey?' He said, 'Because Bob, you play loud. I like that.'

There's some things there, and that obituary brought all that back to life for me. That was really good.

RO: I wish I would have had a chance to sit down with Walt and talk to him before he passed away.

MT: I do too. You know, he and I were talking again on the telephone, about the possibility of remastering that stuff, The Parable of Arable Land and God Bless The Red Krayola, because this record company, Charlie, who have got control of that kind of stuff, there's some sniffing around about maybe making peace over this stuff. We'll see.

We've been cut out of it for years. But I think they did that box set with the Elevators, and I think they wanted to have something of mine along the same lines with us, which eventually might happen. So there was talk about Walter and I getting back together and remastering that material, and I was talking to Walter on the telephone through the past year, up until the time he passed away. It was just great talking to him. He's such an amazing fellow. Funny fellow.

He was one of the people who was not balked by the fact that the things that I was doing were perhaps not official enough, or that they didn't belong to the regular categories. He just heard the sound and he liked the sound. He had a really open mind about things. He was vital to my getting involved in the business as well.

The first thing we ever recorded was with him, in fact. Before we signed with International Artists, we went in his studio and made a single. He was extremely encouraging.

RO: Well, I would very much like to see how that all turns out.

MT: Stay in touch.

New Roky Erickson Album in April!

2010-01-25T18:47:00.000-08:00

Our own Thirteenth Floor Elevators' Roky Erickson will return with his first album of original material in fourteen years, recorded with Austin indie-rockers Okkervil River. Roky has previously performed with Okkervil River in 2008 at the Austin Music Awards and the following year at SXSW Festival.

True Love Cast Out All Evil includes material written throughout Erickson's life and "found sounds" from the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he spent several years in the early 1970s. While at Rusk, Roky was subjected to Thorazine, electroshock therapy, and other “experimental treatments.” The effects of his stay would alter his life.

Okkervil River's Will Sheff, who produced the album, said in a released statement, "This is not a cynical comeback record, a lukewarm update on an established legacy – these are the best songs Roky has ever written. This record has been the most challenging and rewarding thing I've ever worked on, and we in Okkervil River were deeply honored to show up decades later and help Roky carry these wonderful songs over the finish line."

True Love Cast Out All Evil culled tracks from sixty unreleased Erickson songs which Sheff remarks are, “unreleased due to decades plagued by the kind of personal tragedies that would destroy someone less resilient.”

In these songs, Erickson addresses his troubled history in his own words, eschewing the metaphors of earlier songs like "I Walked with a Zombie" to speak directly about hardship and the lessons learned from it. Will Sheff's production highlights the songs while interweaving them with found-sound and archival recordings culled from Erickson's home videos and recordings made in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

“There were songs written during business setbacks including the Elevators' painful break-up, songs written by Roky while he was incarcerated at Rusk, and a great deal of songs that reminded me of the sense of optimism and romanticism that I think sustained Roky through his worst years and ultimately reunited him, a few years ago, with his son Jegar and his first wife Dana. The quality of the material we ended up with was exhilarating," said Sheff.

Though his music has been incessantly bootlegged and appeared in several anthologies over the last decades, Erickson has not released new material since 1995's All That May Do My Rhyme, and it is over forty years since the Texas songwriter's most celebrated work, with psychedelic rockers 13th Floor Elevators.

Over the four decades that followed, Roky has gained legendary status, bolstered (and weighed down) by his reputation as an "outsider" artist. He has been saluted by acts including REM, Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain, ZZ Top and even Kasabian.

Roky has been enjoying an amazing comeback these last years touring America and Europe. This album of new material is eagerly awaited by the fans. True Love Cast Out All Evil will be released by Anti on 20 April.

Texas Psychedelic Images

2010-01-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

Texas Psych - Psychedelic Music, 13th Floor Elevators, Golden Dawn, Red Crayola and more!

13th Floor Elevators Bull of the Woods

2010-01-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

This is the Elevator's swan song, recorded under incredibly difficult circumstances. Only the absence of Roky's manic energy makes the 13th Floor Elevators Bull of the Woods a bit of a letdown compared to the previous two albums. If anything, Bull... has the weirdest songs and trippiest-sounding production of the three albums.

Ghostly background vocals, bizarre horn arrangements (yes, horns!) and somberly mystical lyrics make this set a must-own for connoisseurs of the psychedelic genre. The audio quality is pretty miserable, but oddly enough, the thin, grungy sound seems to work with this material, producing a proto-Flying Saucer Attack effect.

The material speaks for itself. While it's true that this doesn't have the cohesion that "Easter Everywhere" does, there are some good reasons: the Elevators were descending when this LP was made, Roky was in Rusk State Mental Hospital, and so it consists of outtakes from the Easter Everywhere LP (with only 2 or 3 cuts with Roky Erikson) and the rest being outtakes from an unrealized project to be titled "Beauty and the Beast." It *still* beats just about anything that was happening in Frisco those days, except maybe for Moby Grape.

Taking the needle and the mantle was the late lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland, truly an unsung guitar hero if I ever heard one. His playing is just enough country and Syd, not sounding overly slick, and a bit of laid-back Jerry Garcia. Sutherland's lyrics are a more accessible bridge abutting conventional songwriting and Hall's metaphors for the psychedelic journey to self-enlightenment. Sutherland is more grounded, down to earth and stark. Despite his dark nature, band members regard him affectionately.

Sutherland's sprawling acid-drenched, wet-as-hell guitar work is pretty incomparable as far as I've heard. The Elevators can still work that echo like they did on "Psychedelic Sounds...” while their subtle feedback and distortion almost has sexual intercourse with the distinct, strange and damn catchy falsetto chants, like "Till Then".

This band's Texan roots are reflected in the 'Gulf' sound; the immaculate guitars and dark but spiritual vocals of singer Roky Erikson. One aural glimpse into this album and visions of Mexican and Aztec civilizations rise in the mind's eye. The songs are all of a mythical quality, each one embroidering a rich vein of human and Godlike enchantment on the eardrum.

The first track, 'Livin' On', comes at you like psychedelic rollin' thunder, with a heavy, well-timed drum and a spanglingly proficient guitar backdrop. It's all up, up and away from there on. True, classic hallucinogenic tunes, played like you dreamed about long before you ever knew what you were gonna be when you grew up.

The galloping heavy psych-folk and tight harmonies of "With You" and "Down by the River" conjure up the Dead, in more ways than one. And Cream couldn't come up with better trippy-ass blues-raunchy than "Livin' On" and "Barnyard Blues" even if they had Robert Johnson stand in for Clapton and plugged a wah-pedal to his guitar.

Around this time the band was beginning to feel the effects of the constant pressure from the police and deviating from their ideals of drug use. They were in constant argument with each other and the music does more than show all of those situations perfectly.

"May the Circle Remain Unbroken" ironically ends the album as the last collectively written and studio recorded song they would ever record as a band. It’s less rock-n-roll driven, less musically technical, and a bit more advanced for the one-eyed/two-eyed folks who want something to sound like a good song more than they want mantras and awareness guides.

If there were ever to be a Great Pyramid of music, then “Bull of the Woods” is a brick. It's bluesy, spiritual, heavy, psychedelia. Not for amateurs, but definitely for anyone with a real appreciation for good music, whatever the genre. One of the best albums I have ever listened to. For me, this one says it all. Everyone else eat your hearts out.

13th Floor Elevators Vulcan Gas Company Winnie the Pooh Poster

2010-01-13T18:33:00.000-08:00

Check out the 13th Floor Elevators Vulcan Gas Company poster that I just got. I shot a video to go with this post too!

13th Floor Elevators Winnie the Pooh Poster

2010-01-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

Hi, Kiloh here. I just bought this 13th Floor Elevators Winnie the Pooh poster. It's pretty rough but it's my first "Pooh". For me, this is one of the ultimate Thirteenth Floor Elevators collectibles and one of the finest rock posters from the Sixties.

Does anybody know about restoring such a poster as this? I know it's pricey but... Should this poster be restored? Or should I leave it in its tattered glory?

One interesting piece of trivia is that one of the shows this poster promotes took place on my birthday. I was six years old.

Texas Psych 2010 Cosmic Campout w/ George Kinney of the Golden Dawn

2010-01-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

Hello Everybody, the 2010 Cosmic Campout w/George Kinney is a GO! The date of this event will be over Memorial Day Weekend of 2010.

This will be a long weekend of camping, fun with fellow list members along with music and quality time with Texas Psych Legend – George Kinney of the Golden Dawn.

Send your indications of interest in participating to this email address: Rokysyd11@yahoo.com

I am creating an email list for this event. This way I can easily keep in touch with those who might be going and forward information and receive communications.

The best part is that we have already done something like this before with the 2004 Cosmic Campout. THAT was lots of fun.

As in 2004, we will be camping up on Mingus Mountain above Jerome, Arizona. The campground is 7,500 feet up on the slope of Mingus and it’s GORGEOUS. I know Ranger Dave too so it’ll be totally cool.

We can grab a few campsites and everybody can crowd in. The campsites feature chemical toilets (clean) and running water. Showers ($2.00) are available in the Town of Cottonwood at the base on Mingus.

Jerome is an actual Wild West ghost town. The only people that live there now are some hippies and oddball characters. It’s a really, really cool spot. Look:

Jerome has an actual Wild West bar! It’s called the Spirit Room. George has played there many times. Check it out:

We’re going to be less than 20 miles from beautiful Sedona, Arizona. Check it out:

2010 Cosmic Campout Participants will get at least two George Kinney concerts. These will be unplugged and out in nature’s beauty. One concert will take place at famous Bell Rock in Sedona. Look:

Bell Rock is the site of a documented Energy Vortex. Sedona is full of them. In Sedona vortexes are made up of spiraling cosmic/spiritual energy. The vortexes of Sedona are believed to be spiritual locations where the energy is optimal to facilitate prayer, mediation and healing. These Vortex sites are thought to be locations having energy flow that works on multiple dimensions. The power of the vortexes interacts with a person’s inner self and is not easily explained. Obviously it must be experienced.

Prices for the 2010 Cosmic Campout are as follows:

$50.00 – 1 person

$75.00 – 1 couple

$100.00 – 1 family

This is a great deal in that it features a whole weekend vacation, along with hours of music and quality time with George Kinney.

I’ll be there too.

Start sending your indications of interest in participating to this email address:

Rokysyd11@yahoo.com

PUT: "COSMIC CAMPOUT" IN THE SUBJECT LINE.

I’ll collect them and make up an emailing list. This way, we can stay in touch and exchange information and phone numbers. This is going to be a hoot!

Kiloh

Golden Dawn - Tell Me Why / Reaching Out to You

2009-12-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

Two from one of my favorite groups the Golden Dawn. Tell Me Why /Reaching Out to You from the 1968 album Power Plant.

As has been documented elsewhere, Power Plant was recorded shortly after The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. However, not wanting to “compete” with Easter Everywhere, International Artists help back the release of Power Plant until after Easter Everywhere came out. The Golden Dawn were even precluded from gigging as IA had their management contract too.

Thus, the Golden Dawn were derided as an ‘Elevators “copy” band by some. Today, we can listen to those backwards instruments and psychedelic lyrics and know that the Golden Dawn were progenitors of psychedelic music. Life just isn’t fair.

Bill Hicks Talks About Mushrooms

2009-12-31T17:04:00.001-08:00

Bill Hicks talks about mushrooms.

Mance Lipscomb - Armadillo World Headquarters

2009-12-27T20:32:00.000-08:00

Check out these Mance Lipscomb posters from Armadillo World Headquarters. Mance was a great friend to the Texas Psychedelic Scene. He was also a 100% original Texas Bluesman.

Dirt Road to Psychedelia - Austin in the Sixties

2009-12-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

This is a comprehensive documentary of the well-known "Austin Scene," a hotbed of great psychedelic music. The film features great clips and good interviews by performers and fans of that time. The dvd is divided into sections and shows the progression from folk to psych.

Director Scott Conn has done an expert job of bringing to life the Austin, Texas '60s music scene, using a combination of modern interviews with important players, movers, and shakers from that scene, along with vintage film clips, still photos, and memorabilia. The superb soundtrack features both rare and classic recordings from the era. The editing is flawless and the structure and pacing will help keep all transfixed throughout the entire movie.

Conqueroo Gig w/Lights by Jomo Disaster

2009-12-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this handbill for the Conqueroo & Rachel's Children, with Lightshow by Jomo Disaster, at the Doris Miller Auditorium in Austin. The date is 5/6/67.

This was when the psychedelic scene was really kicking into full gear in Austin, it was actually the beginning of the end. Promoters were looking to cash in with shows at larger venues and the Doris Miller Auditorium was a likely choice.

Things were beginning to take off and the police were really beginning their CRACKDOWN. This caused many from the scene to flee Austin for other places.

Roky Erickson and the Explosives

2009-12-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

Roky and the Explosives at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia.

Rare Conqueroo Poster from Club Saracen

2009-12-20T20:55:00.000-08:00

Check out this rare original pre-Vulcan Gas Company poster from a short lived 1966 Austin, Texas venue called Club Saracen. Club Saracen was one of the first venues in Austin to take a chance on the new "psychedelic" sound. This Poster was done to promote a show featuring Conqueroo, presented by "the Sacred White Mushroom".

The Poster measures approx 10 X 14 and is printed on tan newsprint...

The term Sacred White Mushroom refers to Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita. This is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita.

Amanita muscaria is famed for its hallucinogenic properties with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. It was used as an intoxicant and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia and has a religious significance in these cultures.

I have a copy of this poster signed by Charlie Pritchard. He has no recollection of Club Saracen.

Vulcan Gas Company Handbill 3/1 & 2/1968

2009-12-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this Vulcan Gas Company handbill (Robert Rush art) promoting 3/1 & 2/1968 shows by Big Joe Williams & Conqueroo and Shiva's Head Band & Rubayyat. Rubayyat had Danny Galindo and they did that gorgeous cover of If I Were A Carpenter that appeared on the Epitaph for a Legend LP. They were also known as the Electric Rubayyat.

Big Joe Williams was an original Delta Bluesman who was signed to the legendary Bluebird label in the 1930s. There, he recorded such standards as "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1935) and "Crawlin' King Snake" (1941), both songs later covered by many other performers. Williams played a nine string guitar and was known as "King of the 9 String Guitar."

Roky Erickson Single - You Don't Love Me Yet

2009-12-14T19:24:00.001-08:00

Check out this Roky Erickson single. Roky Erickson & Evilhook Wildlife ET - You Don't Love Me Yet b/w Clear Night For Love

Fundamental Records Pray 7

12 inch single, black vinyl

Original UK pressing released in 1988

A: You Don't Love Me Yet

B: Clear Night For Love

Long out-of-print 12 inch single release by Roky Erickson.

Kozmic Blues: The Life and Music of Janis Joplin - November 14, 2009

2009-12-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

On November 14, 2009 a group of world class performers descended upon PlayhouseSquare's State Theatre in Cleveland to pay tribute to Janis Joplin during the 14th annual, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, American Music Masters series, entitled Kozmic Blues: The Life and Music of Janis Joplin.

The concert lineup consisted of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Ray Benson, Guy Clark, Roky Erickson, Nick Gravenites, Nona Hendryx, Bettye LaVette, Country Joe McDonald, Bob Neuwirth, Powell St. John, Susan Tedeschi, Lucinda Williams, Carolyn Wonderland, and Santana co-founders Gregg Rolie and Michael Carrabello.

Janis Joplin’s sister, Laura, said “I am touched, as is the rest of the family, that Janis’ musical and social power continue to inspire and remain important in the lives of so many,” said Laura Joplin, Janis’ sister. “We thank the Rock Hall for selecting her for the 2009 American Music Masters series. It is a true compliment and homage to her contributions, and she would be proud to see her name among the others who have been honored.”

The show was headlined by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. Williams even debuted a new tune, written especially for the occasion.

"I just finished it a little bit ago," she told a near-capacity crowd of 2,000-plus fans before launching into "Difficult Child," a touching ode to the MIA guest of honor.

"I was a difficult child right from the start / I was running wild before I could walk," Williams sang with a luxurious drawl, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar.

Lucinda Williams was the wrong act to close the show. She appeared out of it and a bit unprofessional. She seemed to have 'phoned-in' her performance. She didn't even know the words! For someone who was supposed to 'embody the spirit of Janis Joplin's work', she was a let down. Melissa Etheridge should have closed the show or at least the amazing talents of Susan Tedeschi and Carolyn Wonderland - they truly embodied the work of Janis. Even Terry Stewart seemed unimpressed by Williams.

Also on the eclectic bill were veteran folkie Country Joe McDonald and R&B singers Nona Hendryx and Betty LaVette, among others.

McDonald, who dated Joplin in the '60s, struck a personal chord with "Janis," a pretty ballad. Hendryx sang "Nightbird," a sweet original tune inspired by Joplin. And LaVette put a smoldering twist on one of Joplin's signature hits, "Piece of My Heart."

Bob Neuwirth, the Akron native perhaps best known for palling around with Bob Dylan in the '60s and '70s, co-wrote one of Joplin's most beloved ditties, "Mercedes Benz." Neuwirth delivered a rough-around-the-edges version of the this song, joined by a chorus that included Joplin's brother and sister, Michael and Laura, as well as Joplin's former road manager, John Byrne Cooke.

Bob Neuwirth, who ruined his own song in the minds of many with a frill-less "Mercedes Benz" delivered mostly a cappella and in half time, had the audience doing their best to chant along obediently to the unnaturally slow rhythm, but more in a spirit of deference than one of joy.

Our own Roky Erickson belted through "You're Gonna Miss Me”, reportedly making his first-ever Cleveland appearance. His performance was marred by a broken guitar strap that some Roadie tried to fix while Roky was performing.

Unfortunately, the show was also marred by numerous technical flaws... a poor sound mix that tried to compensate by merely pumping the volume on everything; a paucity of guitar cables, requiring stagehands to walk on and off stage intermittently to find the plugs and give them to the performers; a lumbering cameraman and his cable puller who distracted both audience and performers by wandering around the stage looking for a shot.

The concert had its bright spots, Carolyn Wonderland, Susan Tedeschi, Santana's Gregg Rolie performing "Evil Ways", but these performances were either buried in the lineup, rather than being highlighted, or were unrelated to Joplin's legacy.

Toward the end of the concert, which ran nearly three hours, Michael and Laura accepted the American Music Masters Award on their sister's behalf.

"This has been awesome," Michael said.

Previous American Music Masters installments have saluted the likes of Woody Guthrie, Sam Cooke and Les Paul. Joplin was only the second female honoree; the first was Bessie Smith.

SET LIST:

HOUSE BAND

Combination of the Two

RAY BENSON

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

GUY CLARK

Trouble in Mind

She Ain't Goin' Nowhere

ROKY ERICKSON

You're Gonna Miss Me

Oh My Soul

COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD

Easy Rider

Janis

POWELL ST. JOHN

Bye Bye Baby

CAROLYN WONDERLAND

Down on Me

NICK GRAVENITES

Buried Alive in the Blues

GREGG ROLIE AND MICHAEL CARABELLO

No One to Depend On

Evil Ways

SUSAN TEDESCHI

Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)

Kozmic Blues

Tell Mama

NONA HENDRYX

Nightbird

Move Over

BETTYE LAVETTE

A Woman Left Lonely

Piece of My Heart

BOB NEUWIRTH

Good Intentions

Mercedes Benz

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

Me and Bobby McGee

Ball and Chain

Difficult Child

Psych Trail Mix #4 - 13th Floor Elevators Issue

2009-12-01T05:34:00.000-08:00

Psych Trail Mix Issue #4 is out! Here's a note from the Publisher:

Psych Trail Mix Issue #4 "Texas Psych/13th Floor Elevators Special" is complete Things will be done a bit differently this time around. I can no longer afford printing and the costs involved, so I will be putting all the back issues, including the newest issue #4 on my website in PDF format so that you can "print your own zine." I STRONGLY urge you all to print it and if you do print it, PLEASE get to a printer that is able to print on the front and back of the paper, this way it will be printed in the way that it was intended to look. Anyway, here are the links to the page for Psych Trail Mix containing all the issues 1-4 as well as a direct link to the latest issue #4, followed by a detailed list of the contents of issue #4... I hope you all enjoy it, I know it's long overdue!

Issue #4 - www.helioschrome.com/issue4.pdf

Psych Trail Mix page containing all back issues:
www.helioschrome.com/psychtrailmix.html

CONTENTS OF ISSUE #4 - THE TEXAS PSYCH/13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS SPECIAL:
*What Goes On
*Interview with Clementine Hall of the 13th Floor Elevators
*FUZZ Feature
*Interview with Texas Legend: Powell St. John
*Bill Hicks Tribute
*60's Psych & Beyond CD Reviews
*13th Floor Elevators Feature: The Music Of The Spheres
*DVD & Book Reviews
*Sign Of The 3 Eyed Men: In Depth Review Of 13th Floor Elevators Box Set
*Love Is Haight - By: Carl Alessi
*Interview with George Kinney of the Golden Dawn
*Rant: Tough Guys, Bling Teeth & No-Talent Divas

GET IT RIGHT OFF THIS BLOG!!!! Check out that issue by clicking here:
13th%20floor%20elevators.pdf

George Kinney - A Theory of Eternal Life

2009-11-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

A Theory of Eternal Life
By George Kinney

The following presentation is a brief consideration of a series of key ideas regarding possible relationships that exist between densities of matter, time, and quality of life. Further, I will attempt to shed some light on how these ideas may correspond to some of the most essential elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine, specifically the concept of Qi. Without attempting to define Qi, an attempt will be made to show possible similarities between the actions or properties of Qi, inseparable from the concept of Yin and Yang, and the properties of various states or densities of matter and energy.

Comprehensively, these key ideas allude to one or more ways of attempting to understand our existences, collectively and individually, in a vast and mysterious universe that possesses qualities, aspects, and dimensionalities that are essentially beyond our ability to define or fully understand…that is, these ideas are metaphors or symbols to aide us in the search for the miraculous, a search which by all indications so far, can by nature never be completed.

POINT

Let us first examine the fundamental nature of our understanding of time, and let us use geometric symbols to do so. Primarily, time, according to our psychological apparatus, is essentially sensed as an “instant” or moment, isolated in perception and connected with past and future moments psychologically thru the application of the associative cortex of our brain. Geometrically, this may be corresponded with a point.

LINE

The extension of this span of time, a moment, linearly gives us the psychological experience, presumably, of a series of events. This expressed geometrically can be visualized as the extension of a point into a line. The same relationship that exists, therefore, between a point and a line, exists also between a moment and a linear series of events. This extension is generally considered to be infinite in the sense that there are conceivably an infinite number of points in a line and an infinite number of potential events in a series. We may further assign a dimensionality value on them and that value would be one. That is, we have begun with one dimensionality, both in geometrical space and time.

Another way of looking at it is that a point, infinitely extended one dimensionally, produces a line. By the same token, a moment extended infinitely produces a series, or infinite succession of events in linear time.

-PLANE OR SURFACE

Our one-dimensional friend, the line, if extended either vertically or horizontally, becomes a plane, or we may say that the “trace” of a point becomes a potentially infinite line and the trace of a potentially infinite number of lines forms a plane or surface.

SOLID

A plane or surface, similarly traced in a any direction perpendicular to it, forms what we refer to in Euclidian geometry as a solid. Thus we may follow these natural progressions of dimensionality to result in the following relationships:

Point> line> surface> solid… forming the continuum of 3 dimensional space that we have all come recognize as our normal sphere of observable existence.
According to the same model, we may experience seconds becoming minutes, becoming hours, becoming days, becoming weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, etc.
These are the logical extensions of aspects of our psychology into graduating levels of dimensionality. *1
In addition, these relationships can be shown to correspond to our experiences in terms of sensations, perceptions, concepts, up to and most likely beyond abstractions and idealisms.

The point of all this is to demonstrate that our sense of time and space, as well as our method of arranging them into understandable forms, systems, and patterns, depend on assigning them graduating degrees of dimensionality in order to grasp them with our understanding, or even to experience them without comprehensive understanding. That is, all the human qualities and potentials for experience are RELATIVE. This is directly associated with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

EVERYTHING EXISTS AND IS MEASURED EXCLUSIVELY IN TERMS ITS RELATION TO SOMETHING ELSE.

A grossly oversimplified bumper-sticker understanding of E=MC2 is that something perceived in a particular state or form is observed as such due to the nature of the observer’s ability to observe and the particular conditions, internal external, under which the observation occurs. That is, energy and matter are either /or dependent, literally, on how one looks at it. This makes the existence of anything relative to the existence of something else and only such interdependence and interrelationship allows or defines such existence. This indicates that existence consists more of patterns and relationships than of tangible particles of 3-dimensional matter, shrinking in size logarithmically until they mysteriously disappear into theoretical beings such as the infamous ‘strings’ and slip away from our direct observation altogether.

You may also remember that in TCM fundamentals, we learned that Yin and Yang, the powerful creative forces of life, are interrelated and interdependent, that is, they exist only in RELATIVITY to each other. However, it is important to note here in light of modern advances in quantum physics, specifically in the observation of the characteristics of light and the behavior of energy in the ‘string theory’, that it seems reasonable at this point to speculate that the more comprehensive our awareness, that is, the more dimensions our awareness is able to embrace and process intelligently, the more comprehensive will be our experience of our environment. In fact it can also be justifiably speculated that the very nature of our environment and our ability to manipulate it constructively, which is a key element in the practice of TCM, rests in expanding this ability through increased awareness of the energies involved.

OUR CONCEPTS HUMAN OF LIFESPAN ARE DETERMINED BY THE LIMITS OF OUR AWARENESS

While a comprehensive understanding of this concept may be well beyond the scope of this presentation, it is not overly difficult to consider that the same limits we naturally place on matter due to the limitations of our natural sensory apparatus as it relates to our psychology and our understanding, we may also be imposing upon our concepts of our own potential lifespan. That is, our understanding of both our environment and our existence in it, as it pertains to time or duration, is deducted or induced by our method of observation, which may not include all of the potentialities existent within the phenomena themselves, apart from our ability to understand them. Here we return to the idea of the relationship that exists between the limits of our awareness and the definition of what constitutes our existence, both as matter and/or energy. Thus, varying densities of matter, or various states of matter, involve different laws of physics and time.

The implications of this concept in regard to conscious, practical manipulation of this awareness or energy and its application to healing disease and establishing and maintaining a beneficial equilibrium, or health, may be an important precursor to a vast new approach to health care and quality of life in general.

LIVING TIME

The idea of immortality can either be synonymous with the idea of eternal life or not, depending on how you want to look at it. One common connotation of immortality implies the absence of death. If taken as such, we would not consider eternal life and immorality to be synonymous terms at this time, although they are closely related. Only if we expand our understanding of death can we make these two concepts synonymous.

So right off the bat we have to say that if by death we mean the death and decomposition of the human body, and the absence of that process is immortality, then the concepts I am discussing here do not imply immortality. If, on other hand, we agree to consider death as a process that is intimately integrated with the process of life, and cannot be separated from life, then we could consider eternal life and immortality to be one and the same phenomena. So let’s say, for now, that we can have it both ways…that we can experience death, that is, the decomposition of the cellular material that makes our bodies, and yet that life, for us, can go on, relatively, forever. It is in this context that I offer the following information for consideration.

THE INTEGRATION OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY

Let me emphasize that what I am proposing as a possibility here has almost nothing whatsoever to do with any particular religion, cult, social group, or dogmatic system of worship of any kind. It is interesting to note, however, that most all organized religions and “spiritual belief systems” stem from the fundamental concepts (and the investigations thereof) that roughly form the general category of thinking sometimes correctly referred to as esoteric knowledge. Even this distinction is fading, however, as what has formerly been considered esoteric knowledge begins to merge with the most advanced ongoing scientific discoveries.

Let us consider some of the similarities that can be found that interrelate behavior, awareness, and duration of existence. **2

Matter in our neck of the physio/psychological woods may for our purposes here be broken down into various states of density that have corresponding relationships to duration, i.e., time.
They are, in order of density and duration, the mineral state, the cellular state, the molecular state and the electronic state.

We know that the present doesn’t really exist because by the time we consider it, it is already past. So if the present doesn’t really exist, and the past doesn’t exist any more and the future doesn’t exist yet, then everything doesn’t ever exist, and also, nothing always exists. This paradox can only be solved by evolving ones’ concept of time and by lifting the restrictions we impose on the consistency of matter according to our sensory apparatus. This process can be referred to as the conscious expansion of consciousness, or psychological evolution.

Here are some examples of comprehensive systems that express evolution through the increase of their dimensionality:
Dance: a.) A concept of possible motions including all types of dance, known and unknown. These motions exist in abstraction and only as potentials, but include all possible dances and the steps therein.
b) The specification of particular dances that share some common aspects with all “dance” and have unique characteristics which define it as a particular dance
c) The various steps that formally identify the particular dance from other particular dances
d) The variations of those identifying steps according to the individual interpretation and expression of the individual dancer

Literature: a) All books and all written ideas or experiences, including all linguistic applications such as letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc., which make up the essential elements of literary expression
b) Any particular genre of literature such as fiction, non fiction, speeches, poetry, etc. that classify literature into particular categories
c) The various literary techniques specific to a particular author, which utilize the general characteristics of the genre to identity his work from others
d) The individual and unique interpretation of these techniques in a specific work by a reader

The point here is that the trace of a dance movement in linear time forms a segment of a dance or an entire dance, dependent upon the duration of that extension. The finite repetition of that sequence may represent the lifetime of the dance, or the dancer, and the existence of the dance throughout linear time may represent eternity for the dance. That is, eternity for the dance is repetition of the steps in an infinite field of recurrence, which is not limited by the individual dancer’s participation by any physical application.

Art, Science, and even Religion may be seen to follow this pattern, as well. Religion is perhaps the most ephemeral of the pack in that its precepts and key ideas are not as easily categorized, yet contain definite and obvious concepts involving the transformation of various degrees of matter, an expanded concept of time, and an interactive paradigm of cause and effect which is largely dependent upon an individual’s psychology, expressed through behavior and the concept of choice. Beginning to sound a lot like quantum physics, isn’t it?

States or Densities of ‘Matter

Mineral states of matter.
These are the densest, and therefore the slowest instances of existence as we consider it. Relative to the next finer state, cellular life, it is 800 times slower. That is everything is experienced (if we can even use the word experienced in that reference) 800 times slower that it is in cellular life. In this context we will consider cellular life as it pertains to humans, as an 80-year span. The accompanying charts illustrate some of the variations in the velocity of matter at different densities and the relative ‘work’ done in various time spans relative to these variations.

Cellular states of matter (human body)
This is the next finer state of matter, cellular organization, specifically the human body, but also including the biological world of nature. We may consider it to last 80 years, more of less.

Molecular states of matter

Next up we have molecular life, represented theoretically as the nature of the existence of the human soul. Also, we may consider scents to be a part of this world. The sense of smell is akin to molecular states of matter, in that it can permeate and travel through cellular matter. So the soul can permeate and travel through cellular and to some degree, mineral matter. In this world everything happens roughly a 1000 times faster than in the cellular world.

Electronic states of matter

Last and certainly not least we come to the fastest of the lot, electronic matter or solar matter or the most essential expression of energy as it relates to matter, light, and how it specifically relates to a human life. Everything happens in just 40 minutes that happens in one month in the molecular world and 80 years in the cellular world and 800,000 years in the mineral world. In other words, life in the fast lane, the sub-atomic world of light, is about a million times faster than in a human cellular body.

Living Time and the Integration of Life

So what? Why does any of this really matter to anyone but speculative mathematicians, quantum mechanics (even shade tree ones) and theoretical philosophers?
Here’s why.

The beautiful paintings which follow describe the various world views of major spiritual systems covering a vast time spans and vast geographic areas.
Interesting to note is that they all involve behavior, choice, various states of matter, and duration of life force. They also include states of being superior by degree of dimensionality, which operate in realms of energy that are subject to fewer physical laws as density decreases. These higher states allude to conscious judgment of some degree and that choice and behavior are extremely important factors in determining further states of being.

INSERT PAINTINGS HERE

It is crucially relevant to notice the connection in all of these world views, the relationships of consciousness, behavior, choice, varying states of matter, and the allusion to an omnipotence that is both subjective and objective, intimately connected with what we may consider an invisible aspect or aspects of our being. All include states of being between death and birth that accommodate some form of conscious experience. All incorporate some form of existence after the decomposition of the physical or cellular body. All include some relationship between behavior and the potential outcome of some sort of ‘judgment’ that occurs after death and before birth.

EAST MEETS WEST

Understanding one’s life in time in light of the vastness that the above concepts suggests, life itself may become much more meaningful, and the idea of individual responsibility becomes inseparable from quality and duration of life. This is essential to the integration of fundamental TCM concepts into western medical modalities and research. To accept and seriously investigate the elemental properties of Qi and Yin and Yang together with the investigation of western advances in quantum physics is to initiate the ultimate merger between the ideas of the East and the West.

NEW AGE HEALTH POTENTIALS: FANTASY OR
EXPANDABLE REALITY?

Whatever else one might gain from this investigation, regardless of spiritual beliefs, the idea of being able to extend our abilities to manipulate cellular activity through the manipulation of molecular activity and ultimately through the knowledgeable manipulation of electronic or subatomic energy is an exciting and relatively limitless quest. It could even imply the refinement of health care to levels never before possible, even to the extreme of developing a capacity to treat a disease in the timeless, subatomic realm in order to literally prevent it from ever occurring in the first place. Imagine a doctor who could manipulate energies that existed in a patient that has contracted a life-threatening disease in a realm independent of time. This would be preventative medicine in the most advanced context.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

However you look at it, this life is most likely very important, and how you consider it, that is, the degree to which you are aware or present for you own life is a major factor in determining the overall quality of it. It affects others, too.
For instance, what if you believed that everything existed always and forever? Every thing you did or said would then be in some way more or less permanent.
You wouldn’t waste so much time on insignificancies; things would matter more to you. And this level of awareness of your life would affect everyone around you, in direct proportion to your level of interaction with him or her.
It would be less attractive to you to be unpleasant or inconsiderate of others and of yourself. Personal self-esteem would gain ground in your overall evaluation system or worldview.
This is not to be confused with moralization.. It is relevant only insofar as it applies to actual conscious experience and the potential for the improvement thereof, a process that I fondly refer to as psychological evolution.

But even if you don’t think of life as something that extends for an individual consciousness beyond death and decorporealization, all this is still relevant, if only because it affects the 80 years you might have in which to live and breath and have your being. And anyway, to master the skills in self remembering and persistence in consciousness that might allow you to exist eternally as an individual being, but not confined to the limits and laws of cellular existence would take a whole lot more energy and intent than the vast majority of us are able to muster.

So don’t worry too much if you don’t think this will happen to you. You still might be eligible for some kind of rebirth or reincarnation, as another you just like the old one, constantly recurring on and endless circle of existences without memory of the succeeding life. Or perhaps you might progress with little increments of positive change (visualized by the upward spiral a slinky toy makes when stretched upwards) that might someday qualify you for electronic existence or the life of pure spirit or energy. But in any case, I highly recommend that you do everything in your power to avoid the ultimate degradation, that is, consignment to the world of mineral existence. Remember, that one lasts 800.000 years without significant change or modification. For most of us, that would be Hell.

SO THEN:

In summation, the quality of one’s life depends upon one’s fundamental understanding of time. Everything you do, say, feel, or think, is related to how you view time in general, and specifically how much time you may or may not have. Many if not most of us have experienced the death of someone close to us. At these times, our own sense of mortality is enhanced, for better or worse. Somehow we seem to understand something that passes us right by in our normal daily lives. It has to do with being present for our lives instead of absent from them. It has to do with living our lives under the stark, tangible realization that our bodies will, indeed, succumb to decomposition and yet embrace the thrilling, invigorating sense of timelessness that may exist for more durable components of our being.

NOTES:**2: The ideas of evolution and intelligent design are anything but mutually exclusive. One only had to consider the evolution of a novel to see this. What are the chances that War and Peace wrote itself, randomly, with no intelligent design? Tolstoy had letters and words already available, a totally random field of potential combinations of them, and he organized them into patterns that communicated his essential artistic ability, emotional desire and intellectual intent. Now the letters and words were also invented by intelligent design by humans who came before Tolstoy. The origins of the written word are clearly evolutionary yet include obvious intelligent design. In fact, nearly everything you can think of follows this pattern. Why then, is it so difficult to consider the possibility of mutual participation between intelligent design and evolution? I think discounting the possibility of such a combination of complementary forces is not only unwise, but also unfruitful.

*** 3: The big bang theory, Stephen Hawking and the others notwithstanding, is not necessarily all-inclusive, even though relative to what we have to observe it the best explanation we have within the confines of an understanding of time limited to linear conceptualization.
The thus-far unanswerable question is: What existed before the big bang? Nothing? Well, nothing is something. In fact, nothing and everything are equal according to Zen philosophy. The idea that everything either does or doesn’t have to have a start and a finish is based on a linear concept of time, that is, the progression of past to present to future.