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

Johnny Winter Vulcan Gas Company Poster

2012-02-01T19:29:00.000-08:00

Johnny Winter

This is an extremely rare Johnny Winter Vulcan Gas Company poster known as Two Headed Snake. It's from the home of that Uber Collector. This was a Johnny / Bubble Puppy gig. Pretty sick! Enjoy!

Clementin Hall Remembers Janis Joplin

2012-02-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

Janis Joplin

Ms. Clementine Hall recently sent the Texas Psych Blog this exclusive piece about her friend - Janis Joplin:

Clementine Hall on Janis Joplin:

As I recall, the first time the people who knew her in Austin heard her sing was when she was about 18. We were at" the Ghetto" (a cheap, ramshackle housing development on the campus of the University of Texas), in the apartment of Wally and Tommy Stopher. Powell St. John also had a room there (with a joke sign over the door that said "ball room" (meaning room in which to have sex!) I was mostly hanging out with Wally Stopher (who to this day remains my oldest friend from the University of Texas). I remember Powell being there, and Wally and another friend Ramsey Wiggins (whose brother Lanny Wiggins was an exceptionally fine 12-string guitar player; he and Powell and Janis later formed a little hootenanny-type folk/blues group that called themselves the "Waller Creek Boys," after the creek than ran through our part of the campus). Besides myself, I'm not sure who else was there at the time - there were always people drifiting through. I cannot recall what we were talking about; usually we just sat around and listened to records and smoked cigarettes. Anyway, Janis walked in, dragging a big old reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked us to wait until she left and then turn on the recorder and play a tape she'd made of herself singing. She also made us promise that we would tell her the absolute truth about what we thought of her voice. We promised, she left, we turned on the machine.

(At the time I had a light Joan Baez-type soprano voice and had sung a few solos in high school, but had had no exposure to blues or anything outside of classical, pop or folk singing. I had never let anyone at the Ghetto hear me sing. I was like a blank slate where most music was concerned.) Through my ears, that tape was the most extraordinary thing I had ever heard in my life. First of all, I had never heard Bessie Smith (and Janis had chosen mostly her songs); secondly, I had never heard a white female voice remotely like Janis' voice. Despite the complete unexpectedness of the experience of hearing Janis sing for the first time, I was instantly converted. I was absolutely thrilled by the sound, immediately and permanently. As was everyone else in the room. None of us could believe what we heard. It was the same voice we know now, except that it lacked the screaming she later asked Roky if she could borrow.

Janis was gone for about 30 minutes and we kept re-winding and replaying the tape and finding ourselves at a loss for words. The other people there were much more familiar with the music than I, but they were as flabbergasted as I was. Every one of them. We never stopped listening and waiting for her to return. When she finally came back, we carried on and on and she kept saying, "Are you sure? Are you shitting me? Please don't say shit you don't mean." I learned a bit later that the voice she grew up with was a light soprano (her family kept asking her to return to her "pretty voice" and give up her blues voice). From that moment on, we kept urging her to get up and sing before others, and as soon as she sang at a campus "Hootenanny" she became famous on campus.

I have vivid memories of those Hootenannies on Wednesday night on campus. She would sing, Powell would play guitar and harmonica and Lanny Wiggins would play 12-string guitar. Janis turned me on to small, slender cigars called "Havatampa Jewels" and we would sit cross-legged on the carpeted floor and smoke them - they were absolutely delicious. At one point, I got up the nerve to stand up and sing a Sottish lullaby in my newly discovered mezzo soprano voice, and John Clay (a legend on campus, a songwriter extraordinaire and banjo player we all respected) actually praised me, telling me that I had sung it authentically and asked me to come and sing that song with them on the radio. I was overwhelmed but I did it. I sang after Janis and the others had sung and played, but never again.

Janis, Powell and Lanny Wiggins then started playing regularly at Threadgills in Austin (a beer bar and restaurant combination that became much beloved by Austinites). They could have free beer if they played music. I can see and hear them so clearly in my mind. They were so extraordinary, with their fusion of old country, old blues and a little Woody Guthrie protest music. I can still see Powell ratcheting his foot up and down, as if he were playing an old pedaled sewing machine, and absolutely wailing on his harmonica. (Three harmonicas really stand out in my memory from those times: Bob Dylan's, Roky Erickson's and Powell St. John's. I could listen to those guys play harmonica all day (and often have), without ever tiring of it. Janis was in her element at Threadgills: only a few uptight frat types or hard-core cowboys made it out there, and those that did lightened up after a few beers and the music soaked in. She was full of laughter and affection for people, while still maintaining her tough/hip girl defensive appearance.

Janis often mentioned how moved she was by our acceptance of her tape-recorded singing. But she was terrified about singing before a real crowd and when the time came for he to sing at a fund raiser the Elevators were playing at, she had to be literally pushed onto the stage by friends. She went on in her usual costume: black dress, black hose, black sensible shoes and her hair pulled back in a bun. Once she started singing, her talent was recognized.

I was present at only one other occasion when Janis was thrilled to pieces by something said to her. Tommy and I were visiting Chet Helms (the proprietor of the Avalon Ballroom) in San Francisco at the time we we touring the Bay Area with the Elevators. Before going out Chet had told us that B. B. King was in town and might be calling, and asked us to take a message. He mentioned that B. B. King loved to come to Chet's place to play the slot machine Chet had installed for special guests. This machine was programmed to pay out more than not. Sure enough, that afternoon, when Janis was also visiting, the phone rang and she picked it up before we could tell her about the expected call. We heard her end of the conversation but she was doing very little talking and she didn't sound like her usual self (which was usually full of laughter and wise-cracking when she was in a comfortable environment). When she got off she was almost fainting with pleasure. She had heard his message and then she said, "You probably don't know who I am, but my name is Janis Joplin and I am a great fan of yours." After that she was completely silent, except to say good-bye. It turned out he had said: "I know who you are. You are the best damn white blues singer in the world."

Austin George Kinney Benefit - Uncle Billy's 3/17/02

2012-01-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

Mal Thursday says:

I have a tentative date for the next George Kinney benefit, on SXSW Saturday March 17th from 2 pm to 2 am at Uncle Billy's Lake Travis.

I am trying to get Bubble Puppy, Josefus, and Shiva's Headband for the show, along with Lone Star Hippie, The Texas Garage Project, Jesse Sublett, and UK fuzzmasters The Higher State.

Shiva's Headband is playing a record release show for their SINGLES COLLECTION anthology at Uncle Billy's Lake Travis on Saturday February 11th.

Here's some vid from a Kinney Benefit at Uncle Billy's:

13th Floor Elevators - Magic Mountain Music Festival Poster Signed by Roky!

2012-01-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

Check out this framed Magic Mountain Music Festival poster signed by Roky! This is from the home of that Uber Collector who is sharing his stash with we mere mortals.

The KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was an event held June 10 and 11th, 1967 at the 4,000 seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre high on the south face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Kicking off the summer of love, this is the first real rock & roll festival, predating Monterey by a few weeks. At least 36,000 people attended the two-day concert and fair that was the first of a series of San Francisco area cultural events known as the Summer of Love. The Fantasy Fair was influenced by the popular Renaissance Pleasure Faire and became a prototype for large scale multi-act outdoor rock music events now known as rock festivals.

Admission to the festival was two bucks and all proceeds were donated to the nearby Hunters Point Child Care Center in San Francisco. The Fantasy Fair was originally scheduled for June 3 and 4 as a benefit for the center, but was delayed one week by inclement weather. Several acts booked for the original dates were unable to perform, including the 13th Floor Elevators.

Alec Palao wrote of the fair in Cream Puff War #1: “The dichotomy in Bay Area music was never so evident, as the self-proclaimed “adult” scene separated itself from the “teen/pop” scenes.” Paradoxically, Greg Shaw recalls that there was not really a large gap splitting the radio preferences of the teens and the hip until Tom Donohue’s free-form KMPX fully flowered in the fall of ’67. “Being a KFRC event, it probably attracted some younger fans who wouldn’t have minded [Every Mother's Son], with the older hippies coming for their own reasons, if only a groovy day out in the sun.” A review of the bands that played indicates that most were groups that played the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and were part of the Psychedelic scene at the time. It wasn’t a teenie-bopper event.

Here is the musical line up for both days:

Saturday, June 10

    Mount Rushmore
    Rodger Collins
    Dionne Warwick
    The Doors
    The Lamp of Childhood
    Canned Heat
    Jim Kweskin Jug Band
    Spanky and Our Gang
    Blackburn & Snow
    The Sparrow
    Every Mother's Son
    Kaleidoscope
    The Chocolate Watch Band
    The Mojo Men
    The Merry-Go-Round

Sunday, June 11

    Sons of Champlin
    Jefferson Airplane
    The Byrds with Hugh Masekela
    P. F. Sloan
    Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
    The Seeds
    The Grass Roots
    The Loading Zone
    Tim Buckley
    Every Mother's Son
    Steve Miller Blues Band
    Country Joe and the Fish
    The 5th Dimension
    The Lamp of Childhood
    The Mystery Trend
    Penny Nichols
    The Merry-Go-Round
    New Salvation Army Band
Here are a couple of quotes about the festival:

Kathy McCarthy Cari:

"I was 14, lived in Tam Valley, at the base of "the mountain" and was lucky enough to go both days. It was my first concert of any kind. I watched a lot, walked around the grounds and people-watched too. There were couples in the bushes, getting high, making out and some were just picnicing. I don't remember if I was with anyone but I know my mom was pissed I went. She was trying to get me ready for a Edna McGuire School 8th grade graduation and I was not around for a dress fitting until 10 pm the first night. I vividly remember The Cyrcle (Red Rubber Ball), Grass Roots (Live for Today)and Country Joe (Going up the Country), The Byrds (Turn Turn Turn). Those songs play once in a while and they bring me back to that Fair. Just like it did this morning when the Cyrcle played Red Rubber Ball this morning. I hitched home both days and took the bus up. I lived 12 minutes from the Fantasy Fair and will NEVER EVER forget it. I remember lots...very fondly and emotionally."

Dave:

"I was 14 when I attended this festival (only went on one day). I remember the Doors were great, they did the long organ solo version of 'Light my Fire' like the one you could only hear on KSAN FM radio at the time. I also remember Dionne Warwick singing her cheesy top 40 hit 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose?' and she got lots of applause, even from the pack of Hells Angels that were with all their bikes right up front by the stage (total jerks otherwise). And I remember Canned Heat blew me away with 'Rollin and a Tumblin' and 'Bull Frog Blues". I went out and bought their album right away and it still is one of my favorites. Anyway, this was one of the best festivals I went to (along with Lake Amador). The 'Summer of Love' was no BS; people looked out for each other, and there was a feeling of kinship that was very optimistic and positive. Then the bad drugs (speed, smack, downers) and the sell-out media commercialization combined to crush it. But while it lasted it was a beautiful thing, as anyone who was there will testify. Rock-on!"

Don Steiner:

"We hitchiked from Sacramento and had a great time. I remember watching David Crosby taking a toke from a joint that was handed to him from someone below the stage. A great group "New Salvation Army Band" also played. I still have the program and made notes to who played that differs a little from the schedule. Great time in my life."

Jim Robertson:

"I was there both days. I was stationed on top of Mt Tam in the air force. The AF was so paranoid that they locked the gates at 5:00 Friday evening in fear of "peace & love". Anyone not on base was stuck (oh shit) whichever side of the gate they were on. I was lucky enough to be outside with tickets for both days! Decision I will cherish for the rest of my life!!"

Here are some photos:

Beefheart photos at Festival. Beefheart ( Van Vliet) walked off the stage right after the intro to the second song, having experienced some kind of LSD flashback. At 2:08, Ry Cooder is pictured behind Jerry Handley watching Don walk off the stage:

Review of Disc 8, A Love That's Sound, from Sign of the 3 Eyed Men

2012-01-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

This is a review of Disc 8, from that abortion of a 13th Floor Elevators box set - A Love That’s Sound. This is the only disc that is unique and hasn’t been done before (and better) by somebody else. Meaning, ALL of the material on the other nine CD’s has been released before by somebody else in better quality. OK, OK aside from the stray track that is.

Here is the track listing:

01 - Wait For My Love (unreleased 6th single)
02 - It's You (acetate)
03 - May The Circle Remain unbroken (original mix)
04 - Livin' On (take 1, full take with original vocals)
05 - Never Another (take 8, full take with original vocals)
06 - Dr Doom (take 6, original vocals)
07 - Sweet Surprise (take 5, original vocals)
08 - Moon Song (take 1, unreleased backing track)
09 - Livin' On (take 1, edited and overdubbed lead vocals)
10 - Never Another (rehearsal, unknown take)
11 - It's You (rehearsal, take 3)
12 - Moon Song (rehearsal, take 6)

Obviously, Paul Drummond doesn’t like Stacy Sutherland because none of Mr. Sutherland's tracks where he does vocals appear. It is apparent Drummond was trying to recreate the “lost” third album by the band to be called Beauty and the Beast. He failed miserably because there was, obviously, so little to work with. We have original takes, that appear on Bull of the Woods (making them duplicates), and duplicate titles (different takes) of four of the songs on the same disc. This disc is really a catch all for the last “Roky” tracks and NOT an unreleased third album as Drummond calls it.

The worst part of this disc is the thin and two-dimensional sound. This is because those idiots took the warm analog signal and ran some sort of horrible compression program on it once converted to digital. This “boosts” the overall signal across the dynamic range but it also flattens out that same dynamic range. The “warmth” and three-dimensional quality of the sound is utterly lost. This is not my opinion; this is fact. Graph this recording and then graph something put out by the Roky CD Club or graph an original ‘Elevators album. This Charly product is a (pretty much) flat line of constant noise. Shit, put it on and listen to it; let your own ears tell you.

And when you put these Charly discs on your stereo you can’t crank it like you normally want to without the sound getting all brittle-sounding. This is because the signal is ALREADY balls-to-the-wall on the disc. It doesn’t sound clear and loud like it’s supposed to. It sounds crappy and loud; the sound is hot and brittle. This is entirely Drummond/Charly’s fault. And it shows how Mickey Mouse and UN-knowledgeable they really are.

Still, one should get this eighth disc from the abortion of a box set. I think it’s called: Sign of the 3 Eyed Men. The ONLY reason for getting this eighth disc is that it’s still very interesting and unique; in spite of its glaring deficiencies. But this is the ONLY disc from that abortion of a box set that you need.

Texas Pop Festival Poster - "First State"

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

Check out this “First State” Texas Pop Festival poster. This is from the home of that uber collector who has been kind enough to share with us.

Two weeks after Woodstock many of the same bands, and attendees, converged on the Dallas International Motor Speedway in Lewisville, Texas to rock out. Fans experienced the music of B.B.King, Canned Heat, Chicago, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Freddie King, Grand Funk Railroad, Herbie Mann, Incredible String Band, James Cotton Blues Band, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Led Zeppelin, Nazz, The Quarry, Rotary Connection, Sam & Dave, Santana, Shiva's Headband, Sly & the Family Stone, Space Opera, Spirit, Sweetwater, Ten Years After and Tony Joe White!

Here’s the list of bands in order of appearance:

Saturday, August 30
Canned Heat
Chicago Transit Authority
James Cotton Blues Band
Janis Joplin
B.B. King
Herbie Mann
Rotary Connection
Sam & Dave

Sunday, August 31
Chicago Transit Authority
James Cotton Blues Band
Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
Incredible String Band
B.B. King
Led Zeppelin (announced as "The Led Zeppelin")
Herbie Mann
Sam & Dave
Santana

Monday, September 1
Johnny Winter
Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
B.B. King
Nazz
Sly and the Family Stone
Spirit
Sweetwater
Ten Years After
Tony Joe White

Here's an example of a "Second State" poster:

Here's some vid from that weekend:

Shiva's Headband Picture Disc for Sale! Sick! Nice!

2012-01-23T18:16:00.000-08:00

Shiva's Headband has issued sick picture disc! Take a look at that puppy above (front & back). This disc is called The Singles Collection and features three extra tracks. Me? I doubt I'll even play this thing because it's going upon my wall!

Now, our buddy, Spencer Perskin, has a 1,000 of these things so... we need all of the cognoscenti to step up and pony up for one. We're always bitching about that "there's no good music coming out now" but here, one of our own, has independently put this great disc out. Support this great band and support the Texas Psych Genre of music by BUYING A DISC!

Please click either picture at the top to be taken to the site to purchase this great Shiva's Headband Picture Disc.

Fever Tree - Masonic Temple Poster 6/22/68

2012-01-20T23:05:00.000-08:00

This good-looking poster advertises a June 22, 1968 show at the Masonic Temple in Portland, Oregon that starred Fever Tree. There is no artist credit, but it was obviously created by the same artist responsible for many of the other Masonic Temple pieces of the day. This poster is in wonderful condition with a bit of handling, but no other flaws. Size: 14" x 22"

The Masonic Temple was built in 1925, at 1119 SW Park Avenue at SW Jefferson Street. The Masonic Temple building is now part of the Portland Art Museum (the address is 1219 SW Park). The 4-story building still includes the Grand Ballroom, which is probably a remodeled version of the Ballroom used for rock concerts in the 1960s. The current capacity is about 1000 (per the site), so perhaps up to twice that many could have been squeezed in.The Masonic Temple was a regular, if intermittent venue for Portland rock concerts in the 60s.

Clementine Hall Offering Rendering of Your Favorite Pet

2012-01-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

Our own Clementine Hall is now offering drawings of your favorite pet from photographs. See an example in this blog post. Can the fans please forward this blog post around to other discussion boards? Below is Ms. Hall's message to Texas Psych fans:

From Clementine:

Drawings of your favorite Pet... I can make a pencil portrait of your favorite pet, or wild animals, birds, etc. I make exceedingly realistic drawings. Photos are nice mementos but an original drawing is more than a memento, it immortalizes your special pet, captured in a work of art.

My large framed drawings (8X10) are $100 and the smaller ones (5X7) are $75. This price also includes framing them in a beautiful frame. Postage and shipping extra. Contact me at: clementinehall13@aol.com

PLEASE, limit queries to this offer!

Design for Avalon Spaceman Poster

2012-01-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

The original design for the Avalon Spaceman Poster was taken from a 1954 photo, by Ralph Morse, of an Air Force pilot, with patterns of light covering his face and shoulders (like a contour map), being measured for a perfectly fitted flight helmet. This was the cover story of the December 6, 1954, issue of LIFE; a report simply titled: "Jet Age Man."

This same image was used for two extremely popular and enduring psychedelic posters in San Francisco and Detroit known as both "Zebra Man" and "Spaceman".

Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly utilized the image for a 9/30 - 10/1/66 gig at the Avalon Ballroom by the 13th Floor Elevators.

Gary Grimshaw borrowed the image for 10/21 - 22/66 gig at Detroit's Grande Ballroom by the MC5.

Here's a vid with a close-up of the Avalon Spaceman poster:

Johnny Winter on Letterman 1/12/12

2012-01-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

Johnny Winter is back! Here he is the other night on Letterman! David Letterman, after the performance, said: “God Almighty, that was great. Johnny, good to see you. Here’s what we’re going to do. Paul, get us a van. I’ll get some cheap speed, some coffee and some donuts and we’ll just drive all night."

Johnny went though some really, really tough times with heroin addiction and then addiction to tranquilizers. It is SO GOOD to see him back and wailing out! I saw him in 1999, at Yasgur's Farm for the 30th Anniversary of Woodstock, and it left me shaken. He looked like he climbed out of a hospital bed to perform. He was a shadow of himself and played slow blues; the only thing that hadn't let him down was his slide.

Now he's back and sounding like the platinum-haired Guitar God I used to see strutting around on the stage at the Chance in Poughkeepsie. He'd get full of whiskey and cocaine and blow the doors in! One night, in the alley behind the Chance, my friend and I were smoking something and getting ready to go in. We heard Johnny playing his guitar backstage through an open window. We began yelling stuff up to the window and Johnny would let us yell some stuff and then reply with a guitar riff!

I saw him, at a free concert outside New Paltz, a few days after Muddy Waters died in 1983. I taped that show and he totally wailed out. This was released on the Roky CD Club a few years back. SUNY New Paltz insisted that their sound system be used along with Johnny's stacks of Marshalls. Johnny fried the SUNY New Paltz sound system.

A friend of mine went to see him in Albany in 1978; up at JB Scott's or JB Stokes. Midnight comes and no Johnny. One o'clock comes and no Johnny. Two o'clock comes and no Johnny. Finally, at 2:30 am, Johnny slithers up to the mic and yells: "I'M TOO FUCKED UP TO PLAAAAAAYYYY!" Then he passed out and fell into the audience. The crowd rioted and tore the joint down. My friend became a HUGE Johnny fan that night!

Fucking Johnny is back. Awesome.

2012-01-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

Check out this cool Grateful Dead San Antonio poster! The set list is below. That Dark Star is 24 minutes long! Yikes!

11/26/72, San Antonio Municipal Auditorium

Artist: Micael Priest

Setlist:

One:
The Promised Land
Deal
Mexicali Blues
Sugaree
Black Throated Wind
Bird Song
Beat It On Down The Line
China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
Box Of Rain
El Paso
Big Railroad Blues
Around And Around
Casey Jones

Two:
Playing In The Band
Brown Eyed Women
Jack Straw
Don't Ease Me In
Big River
Dark Star > Me And Bobby McGee
Brokedown Palace
Sugar Magnolia > Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad > One More Saturday Night

Vulcan Gas Company Psycho Bubbles Poster

2012-01-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

Check out this rare Vulcan Gas Company poster on our friend's wall. It promotes a series of shows featuring Shiva's Head Band, Conqueroo, Afro Caravan and the Golden Dawn. Show dates were December 22 - 31, 1967. This fabulous psychedelic image, "PSYCHO BUBBLES", was designed by Gilbert Shelton, and is referred to as VG 9 in the Vulcan Gas series. For good measure I am throwing in the handbill too.

To me, this poster is obviously a nod to the Vulcan's Light Show. Practitioners would squeeze colored oils between two glass clock-faces on an overhead projectioner.

PSYCHO BUBBLE from Shawn Knol on Vimeo.

Bull of the Woods - If Only...

2012-01-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

Back in the day I used to bash Bull of the Woods. At that time, I just had never heard a good copy of it. Now that I enjoy IA rips to CD of that album, and the 45's, I can say that I love that album. What other band could have put out such a great album while in the throes of being gut-shot? I just wish that IA would have spent more time with the track selections and TAKEN THE TIME to actually SEE what was there to work with. If they had done that, they could have put out a worthy follow-up to Easter Everywhere and then Stacy could have had his solo album after.

It's like with Syd Barrett and the Madcap Laughs LP. They had all these GREAT TRACKS in the can, from two previous Producers, and Gilmour and Waters opted to drag an annoyed Syd Barrett out of bed and have him bang out three tracks on the acoustic to *finish* the LP. All they fucking had to do was LOOK AROUND and tracks like Swan Lee, Rhamadan #1, Lanky, Dolly Rocker, Let's Split and the wonderful Opel were right there to just be added to the LP.

Still... Madcap Laughs is a work of genius, even with the three "hurry it up" tracks. And I guess that's my point with Bull of the Woods.

Roky Erickson Fairfax, California 12/9/75 Handbill

2012-01-14T05:29:00.000-08:00

Check out this Roky Erickson Fairfax, California handbill. Of course, it's signed by Roky. This is the December 9th, 1975 gig that was recorded by Jack Ortman and bootlegged as Shrunken Heads. Or course, it was ultimately re-released on the Roky CD Club and mixed from the original master tapes. Here's the link:http://www.texaspsychedelicrock.com/2008/09/roky-cd-club-44.html

Anyway, this handbill is a rare one.

Jim Franklin Armadillo World Headquarters "Floating 'dillo" Poster

2012-01-13T18:47:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this beauty, it’s known as “Floating ‘dillo”. Like, the planet the view is from is an armadillo and the moon, circling the planet, is another armadillo. Yeah, no drugs there Jim.

Here are two photos of this piece. One is a more dignified framing job with a black frame and yellow and black matting. The other shot is mine and I went for the primary colors in the image: red and yellow.

This is an early Jim Franklin Armadillo World Headquarters poster promoting, what must have been a MONSTER gig, Mother Earth & Shiva’s Headband. This must’ve been a real Texas Psych Extravaganza; two of the last surviving bands back at the scene of the crime in 1971. By 1971, Roky was in Rusk, the Red Crayola had left any semblance of melody and tune behind in their Quest for Weirdness, George Kinney had said: “Fuck it” and was pursuing a career in Country music in Nashville. Mother Earth and Shiva’s were the last two left standing. It must have been some gig with most of the cognoscenti in attendance.

Please see below Mother Earth performing a version of the 13th Floor Elevators’ Kingdom of Heaven.

Roky Erickson - "I Am An Alien" Notarized Statement

2012-01-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

Talk about a Prime Piece of Roky Erickson Memorabilia; how would YOU like to have Roky Erickson's Notarized Statement that he is an Alien framed on YOUR wall! We are still peering into the home of that major collector and he's busting out the weird shit!

In the early Eighties Roky began telling friends that Aliens were coming to Earth to harm him. In 1982, a Notary Public was enlisted to Witness and Officiate a statement by Erickson that he was an Alien himself. By making an Official Declaration that he was an Alien, Roky hoped that this would convince the real Aliens to leave him alone and be in line with any "international laws" he might have been breaking. Afterwards, Roky claimed that the attacks stopped.

Rare Armadillo World Headquarters Posters

2012-01-11T18:14:00.000-08:00

Check out some more rare Armadillo World Headquarters posters! These are from the same Collector whose collection we are currently highlighting.

We Have (top to bottom):

1)   a rare Jim Harter “bug” piece
2)   a rare Ravi Shankar piece by Jim Franklin
3)   a 1977 Jim Harter Armadillo Calendar
4)   flying enchiladas by Jim Franklin
5)   the 1st ‘dillo by Jim Franklin
6)   the 2nd ‘dillo

Texas Rock Poster Art - Peek into Home of Big Time Colletor

2012-01-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Check out another peek into the home of a big time Texas Rock Poster Art collector. His place is jammed with Vulcans and 'dillos; many signed by the musicians and poster artists. This is SICK!

Gilbert Shelton Signing Vulcans

2012-01-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Check out these photos of Gilbert Shelton signing a couple of Vulcan Gas Company posters. He's signing two posters known as White Girl & Blow Your Mind. Below this is a cool interview reprinted from the Comics Journal.

Gilbert Shelton
Interviewed by Frank Stack,
excerpted from The Comics Journal #187

Excerpted below are portions of the Gilbert Shelton interview from TCJ #187, conducted by Frank Stack. In the completed version, Shelton guides us through his history as a cartoonist -- from his early days at the University of Texas' newspaper, The Texas Ranger, right up to his current status as yet another expatriate American artist living in France.

Of the current incarnation of Shelton, interviewer Frank Stack writes: "He's mellowed some, though the truth is that, sharply critical of the society as he always has been in his published work, personally he's always been a calm, rational and emotionally mature person. With my questions in this interview I kept trying to get him to vent some anger and some passionate feelings against the kind of right-wing jerks and pontificating crooks that, I thought, he had every reason to hate. But he wouldn't take the bait. As you will see, reading this interview, he preferred to speak about things he felt positively about. Trash-talking is not Gilbert Shelton's game."

Starting Somewhere
FRANK STACK: Well, we have to start somewhere. I assume that sometime in your early career you decided to be a cartoonist. But early on, were you thinking that you'd be a cartoonist, or a writer, or an artist, or what?

GILBERT SHELTON: I've never really been much of anything other than a cartoonist. I remember that when I was four or five years old I would copy the faces of cartoon characters out of the newspaper comic strips. I could do Dick Tracy, and Nancy, and Henry.

STACK: Not Mickey Mouse?

SHELTON: I don't remember Mickey Mouse being in any of our local papers.

STACK: Would you write your own stories?

SHELTON: I didn't have enough imagination. I could copy drawings, but I wasn't good at inventing things. I remember being in kindergarten at age five and having the teacher tell us to get out our paper and colors and draw a picture of anything we felt like drawing. I looked around to see what the other kids were drawing, and they all seemed to be doing a picture of a house with smoke curling up out of the chimney, a lollipop-shaped tree in the yard and the sun in the upper right-hand corner of the sky with lines emanating from it. So I drew the same thing. I knew that the windows of houses weren't supposed to be right up in the corners, but I drew them that way because the other kids did.

STACK: Accepting authority? The authority of the other kids?

SHELTON: Yes, I was the youngest in my class, I think.

STACK: Did you read comic books when you were a kid? Stupid question.

SHELTON: Yeah, I liked Donald Duck and Little Lulu. You know, Disney never allowed Carl Barks, or anyone else, to sign their names to the stories, but I could tell when a Donald Duck story in any given issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories was going to be funny, that is to say written by Barks, by looking at the lettering style. I learned how to read before I was in the first grade, mainly by studying Donald Duck.

STACK: Where did you go to school?

SHELTON: I went all the way through public school in Houston. I did best in reading and arithmetic at first, but after a couple of years I built up more confidence about drawing. I wasn't usually the best artist in my class but I was usually in the top two or three.

STACK: Didn't you tell me once that you didn't take any art classes in high school?

SHELTON: I never took art in high school, but I did go to private art classes given by a little old lady when I was 10 or 12 years old. In high school we had a cartoonists' club and I was a member. They gave the club a bulletin board in the front hall and each week we'd have a display of cartoons.

STACK: You told me the name of one of your characters...

SHELTON: Poddy. "Poddy rules the world" was his slogan. Outside of school I would deface local advertising billboards with Poddy graffiti. A sort of early eco-terrorist, you might say. I spray-painted Poddy on the billboards in my neighborhood with such persistence that eventually the billboard companies were unable to sell those spaces to any advertisers, and the billboards fell blank. That was just more space for me to paint on, of course.

STACK: Can you still draw Poddy?

SHELTON: Sure. [He starts drawing.] Let's see. He was always running from left to right, carrying a 23-cent piece in his left hand. He has a long, flexible tongue like an anteater.

STACK: Disgusting.

SHELTON: I didn't make the nose long enough... In those days I would try to copy the style of VIP, Virgil Partch, who would do things like putting both eyes on the same side of the nose. Partch himself was copying the style of, or parodying, Pablo Picasso. That was the modern cartoon style of the '50s. Poddy's teeth I got from Ton Smits, a New Yorker cartoonist.

STACK: You said a local family showed you The New Yorker?

SHELTON: One family in our neighborhood had moved to Texas from the Northeast and they had a collection of bound volumes of cartoons from The New Yorker which I studied intently.

STACK: What high school in Houston did you go to?

SHELTON: Lamar. Named after Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, President of the Republic of Texas from 1838 to 1841.

STACK: I remember Lamar. I was going to W.B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi.

SHELTON: Lamar played Ray for the state quadruple-A football championship in 1954, as I recall.

STACK: And Lamar won.

SHELTON: High school football has always been one of the most important things in Texas.

STACK: Did you do athletics, or anything besides defacing local billboards?

SHELTON: No. This was a big school, with 3,000 or so students. There were plenty of outstanding athletes. And there were a lot of creative people too. Tommy Sands, for instance, was a student there at the same time I was. You remember him, the teen-idol singer who married Nancy Sinatra and never did another gig after he divorced her? He was about six years older than me, I think, but I had almost caught up with him in school because he spent a lot of his time doing his daily television show. Also Tommy Tune the dancer was in my class, and Max Neuhaus the sound artist.

STACK: What did you do when you finished high school? Did you go straight to college?

SHELTON: Yeah. First I went to Washington and Lee University. That's a small men-only school in Lexington, Virginia. It had about 600 students.

STACK: And why did you not continue there?

SHELTON: I was bored, and I wasn't doing well in my studies. The only thing to do there was join a fraternity, and I wasn't invited to join. Ninety-five percent of the students at Washington and Lee were in one fraternity or another, so that left me and a dozen or so other weirdos and eccentrics sitting in the local bar, Doc's. That's where I met Stanley Marsh III, later to be a renowned art patron, who commissioned the work of art now known as the Cadillac Ranch -- the row of Cadillacs buried nose-first in concrete with their tailfins sticking up, in Amarillo, Texas.

STACK: So did you finish a full year at Washington and Lee?

SHELTON:Yeah. Then I went to the University of Texas for a year, and then Texas A & M for a half year, and then back to the University of Texas where I got my bachelor's degree in the social sciences in 1961.

STACK: Why all that moving around?

SHELTON: I went to A & M because my parents had moved to College Station and I thought it would be a good idea to move back in with them and save money. It turned out to be boring there, too. I was driving to Houston or Austin every weekend. And Texas A & M didn't have a student humor magazine. It was the Texas Ranger that brought me back to the University of Texas.

STACK: You had contributed a number of cartoons to the Texas Ranger when I was its editor in the academic year '58-'59...

SHELTON: I did some cartoons, but I wasn't part of the social scene. I never went to any of the Ranger parties that year, even though I was invited. Most of the people working on the magazine that year were a couple of years older than me, and I think I was sort of intimidated.

STACK: I would never have guessed that you were intimidated. I remember thinking, me and the others, that you were a sort of cocky young talent, self-confident, ingratiating and funny.

SHELTON: I probably had had to drink two or three beers to build up the nerve to walk into the Ranger office and appear to be self-confident. But anyway, I started getting more involved in the following couple of years when Bill Helmer, Lynn Ashby, and Hugh Lowe were the editors, in the years '59-'60 and '60-'61.

STACK: You went to New York right after you got your degree?

SHELTON: Yeah, I moved to New York in September of '61 and started looking for a job. I looked in the classifieds under "historians" -- that's what I had mainly studied -- but there weren't any jobs in that category. I had one contact in the publishing business, Bill Helmer, who was now associate editor at Escapade and Caper magazines, and he helped me find an editorial job elsewhere. I probably would never have found a job if the Berlin wall crisis hadn't caused a lot of people to get drafted about that time.

STACK: I remember it well. I was one of them. I had to quit graduate school at the University of Wyoming and come to New York and spend my days sitting at a desk at the army base on Governor's Island.

SHELTON: The editor of two little automotive magazines, Speed and Custom and Custom Rodder, had been called back into active duty from the reserves, just like you, and I was hired as assistant editor to put the magazines together in his absence. It was easy, I just followed the editorial formula they had already worked out. I would sneak my own drawings into the magazines from time to time, saying they were drawings from the readers.

STACK: I remember you saying at the time that you did almost all of the magazine yourself, since the readers' contributions were so consistently dull and incompetent.

SHELTON: Yeah, the good automotive magazines, Hot Rod and Rod and Custom, were published in Los Angeles by Petersen Publishing Company. The New York car magazines were low-quality imitations. What do they know about cars in Manhattan?

STACK: There were several of us ex-Ranger people working in New York that year. Besides you and Helmer and me, there was Lynn Ashby, who was working as a reporter for the New York Times. We made lots of contacts, like the Help! magazine people, Harvey Kurtzman, Terry Gilliam, and Chuck Alverson.

SHELTON: I showed Kurtzman my cartoons from the Ranger at that time, but he wasn't interested in publishing them in Help!. I remember showing my stuff to Thousand Jokes magazine too. That was a big-circulation monthly collection of single-panel gag cartoons, as you might recall, and the editor, I don't remember who it was, had a curious comment. He said, "Personally, I hate your work, but I guess it's the wave of the future, and you'll probably do all right. We don't want it for Thousand Jokes, though." [laughter]

STACK: I remember you had tried to work with an old professional comic strip writer.

SHELTON: Yeah, I can't remember much about that, except that some guy gave me a written script for a daily newspaper strip that he wanted to have drawn up.

STACK: What was the theme?

SHELTON: High school athletics. I tried to do it but it took me a week to get one day's worth done, and I realized if I had to do an episode every day I'd be in big trouble.

STACK: You said you sold some stuff to Escapade or Caper?

SHELTON: No, I don't think so. I did sell a few gag cartoons here and there, but I can't recall specifically. The first national publication I ever sold anything to was a magazine called College Humor, back around '59.

Birth of The Hog
STACK: What was the genesis of Wonder Wart-Hog?

SHELTON: The idea for this character came to me one day as I was walking down the street in New York in '61. I even remember exactly where I was, it was the corner of Avenue of the Americas and 45th Street, not that that had anything to do with it.

STACK: I remember the early roughs you did, on yellow sheets of paper. In fact, I may even still have some of them stuck off in my files someplace.

SHELTON: I was working on the first Wonder Wart-Hog story in the fall and winter of '61, when you and I lived in the same neighborhood on the upper west side of Manhattan. The first story was actually written by Bill Killeen, the former editor and publisher of Charlatan, the student humor magazine at Oklahoma State University. I had shown Killeen my ideas for the Wart-Hog strip, which was to start with the origin of the hero, and he told me I shouldn't start with the origin, I should start with the fully-developed character and come back later to the origin. He offered to write a story himself, which he would then publish in Charlatan magazine, which he intended to start publishing in his hometown of Lawrence, Massachusetts, now that he no longer attended Oklahoma State University.

STACK: So Wonder Wart-Hog was first published in Charlatan magazine?

SHELTON: No. There was a new college humor magazine that had been started back in Austin, called Bacchanal. The editor of Bacchanal, Dave Crossley, was one of a group of guys who had been fired from the staff of the Texas Ranger for sneaking obscenities into the illustrations and text. Bacchanal was going to be distributed at all the Southwest Conference colleges, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for this project. The magazine was well-done, with inside color and everything, but unfortunately it only lasted for two issues, March and April of '62. The first two Wonder Wart-Hog stories appeared in these.

STACK: You had gone back to Texas by this time?

SHELTON: Yes. It was looking as though I was about to be drafted, too. I had been called in for my pre-induction physical exam in New York and I had passed, so I decided I had better get back in school and get a student deferment. So I went back to Texas and enrolled in graduate school.

STACK: That was the fall of '62?

SHELTON: The summer session. By this time, it was apparent that Bacchanal was going to fail for lack of distribution, and the position of editor of the Texas Ranger had fallen vacant again, so I applied for the job and was appointed. I was the editor for all of the academic year '62-'63, and I did half a dozen Wonder Wart-Hog stories during this time. Some of the scripts I wrote myself, and some of them were written by Killeen, who by this time had moved to Austin.

STACK: The Texas Ranger had a big circulation. I think it had a circulation of 20,000 copies per issue at its peak in '61-'62.

SHELTON: I believe the maximum was 12,000, but it was still the biggest of the college humor mags. It went into a long, slow decline and finally died in the '70s. Anyway, after I was editor of the Ranger, I dropped out of graduate school in history and started over again as a freshman in the art department. The draft board didn't seem to care, though. They kept giving me the deferment. But after two years, I flunked out of art school and was finally drafted. The army only kept me for a couple of days, however.

STACK: And why did they only keep you for two days?

SHELTON: They said I was medically unfit. Maybe they didn't like the fact that I admitted taking drugs like peyote and LSD.

STACK: Were you humiliated or delighted?

SHELTON: I was glad to get off the hook. Vietnam was really heating up by this time, '64. I thought I was doomed. [laughter]

STACK: What did you do then? You had your character, Wonder Wart-Hog. Weren't there people interested in publishing it?

SHELTON: Bill Killeen was publishing it in Charlatan magazine, which he had re-started in Gainesville, Florida. That incarnation of Charlatan lasted until Killeen was sued for libel by some official of the University of Florida whose name had found its way into the joke column of the magazine. But I wasn't making any income from the Wart-Hog. I lived off my friends for a while. I published six or eight numbers of THE Austin Iconoclastic, all but the last two of which were pamphlet format. I also published a small edition of your Adventures of Jesus, at least I took credit for being the publisher. It was xeroxed clandestinely at the University of Texas law school by a law student named Brooks Alexander, and I stapled it together. One of these original editions, which is titled the Adventures of J. by F.S., is supposed to be very valuable today since there were only about 50 copies made, but I imagine it would be sort of difficult to distinguish a genuine original from a copy of the original.

STACK: One of the things in THE Austin Iconoclastic which was memorable was the regular "Austin's Monuments to Bad Taste" feature.

SHELTON: That was Jack Jackson's contribution. Some of the monuments he made fun of were the sculptures by your teacher and mine, Charles Umlauf, and I imagine if Jackson had tried to go to art school Umlauf would have killed him. [laughter]

STACK: If Charles Umlauf blamed you for that, that might have been one of the reasons you found art school difficult.

SHELTON: No, I thought Umlauf was friendly towards me. I had another art teacher who told me that he had wanted to give me a C but the other teachers on the jury had overruled his decision and forced him to give me a B-minus instead.

STACK: That's one of the first good stories I've heard about the University of Texas art faculty.Well, I thought at the time, and I think lots of other people thought too, that you had an extraordinary feeling for what's funny. You said earlier that you didn't know how to do jokes, but somewhere along you did learn. How did you know if it was funny? Did you just show it to somebody and say, "Is this funny?" Did you have sounding boards? Did you try things and change them? Did you talk to people about it?

SHELTON: If it makes me laugh, then I know my idea is funny. But I wasn't especially good at the single-panel gag-type joke, like Virgil Partch used to do. He was very funny with the single-panel gags, but after he started doing a daily comic strip it wasn't so funny.

STACK: You're talking about Big George?

SHELTON: Yeah. But in the '40s and '50s VIP was really funny.

STACK: Who else did you think was funny?

SHELTON: Let me see... Charles Addams. Cobean. George B. Price. Jules Feiffer. Shel Silverstein. Kliban. And in the newspaper comics, Chic Young, Charles Schultz, Mort Walker, Johnny Hart and Mel Lazarus.

STACK: I remember you saying you liked Dick Tracy.

SHELTON: I liked Dick Tracy because it was so weird. I don't know if Chester Gould was trying to be funny, but Dick Tracy really broke me up. I liked the names of the villains, like Flyface.

STACK: Why did you decide to leave Texas, where it seems like there was some kind of scene developing in music and other things, and go to California?

SHELTON: I left and returned to Austin several times. In '64 and '65 I spent some time in Cleveland, where my girlfriend Pat Brown was going to the Cleveland Art Institute.

STACK: Wasn't Robert Crumb living in Cleveland at this time, too?

SHELTON: I think so, but I never actually met Crumb until '68, in New York. In Cleveland I applied for a job at the American Greeting Card Company of Robert Crumb fame, but I was turned down. I did meet Dave Sheridan in Cleveland then, where he was a student at the Art Institute, and Fred Schrier too. During '64 and '65 I was shuttling around between Austin, Cleveland, and New York. Harvey Kurtzman had started reprinting old Wonder Wart-Hog stories from the Ranger in his "Public Gallery" section of Help!, and in '64 he asked me to start writing new Wart-Hog stories for his mag, for which I got $35 a page. Help! didn't last long after that. Then I went out to California for the first time in '65, in a truck with a bunch of guys in a motorcycle gang called The Cleveland Gooses. I stayed with friends in Venice and Summerland, California, and lived in Santa Barbara briefly. In March, 1966, Tony Bell and I started doing regular Wonder Wart-Hog stories in an automotive magazine published in Torrance, California, called Peter Millar's DRAG CARTOONS. Then Tony and I moved back to Austin and continued sending in the strips from there until Millar went out of business in '68. One of the reasons that Millar Publishing Company went bust, maybe, was the publication of two issues of Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly, done by me and Tony Bell and Joe Brown.

STACK: Wasn't it the second Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly that had "The Second Ugliest Thing in the World"? The portrait of Wonder Wart-Hog standing in the same pose as the rejected official portrait of Lyndon Johnson by Peter Hurd?

SHELTON: Yes. I imagine very few people remember that story now, how Lyndon rejected that portrait, calling it the ugliest thing he had ever seen. Tony Bell did the drawing for Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly, and there was a big poster done of it too. Probably not many of our readers got the allusion. I wonder whatever happened to that official portrait of L.B.J...

STACK: I believe somebody bought it and gave it to the National Portrait gallery in Washington, D.C.

SHELTON: Anyway, Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly failed after two issues. Millar had had 140,000 copies of each printed, and he had to sell half of them to break even. But the thing was too weird for the distributors and most of the copies stayed in the warehouses. Only 40,000 of each number were sold. I remember looking and looking for a copy on sale at various newsstands around Austin, and I never found one anywhere.

STACK: Was there anything being published at this time that anyone would recognize as an underground comic?

SHELTON: The format of Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly was modeled after Jim Warren's Creepy, with 64 pages in black and white and a cover price of 50 cents. The archetypical underground comic, Zap, didn't appear until a couple of years later. There had been some earlier things that could be called underground comics, like The Adventures of Jesus and Jackson's God Nose, back in '64.

The Vulcan Gas Company

STACK: So Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly sounds like first a career break, then a career setback. What did you do then, in '68?

SHELTON: About this time a friend of mine, Houston White, and some other guys opened a rock dance and concert hall on Congress Avenue in Austin -- the Vulcan Gas Company -- and I became art director, in charge of getting the posters done each week. I did a number of posters, in a style influenced by the California poster artists, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson, Bob Fried, and others. These posters for the Vulcan Gas Company were similar in style to the California ones, but larger, since this was Texas. They were printed by an Austin printer named Johnny Mercer, and some of them were really beautiful, with split-fount inking. Only about 100 copies of each of these posters were printed, so they're quite rare now. I did this for about a year, until I moved to San Francisco in the summer of '68. Jim Franklin then became art director for the Vulcan Gas Company, and then for Eddie Wilson's Armadillo World Headquarters, which was more successful. A whole art and music scene grew up around the Armadillo World Headquarters, which I missed.

STACK: I remember being at a party in Austin and seeing you there with Janis Joplin, if my memory serves me right.

SHELTON: Yeah, Janis and I were close friends and it's entirely possible you saw us together. Janis started at the University of Texas in '62. She was studying drama, I think. These were the days of the big folk music revival, and Janis would sing each week at the regular hootenanny in the student union. She was a folk music purist at the time, and when I once suggested to her that she ought to try doing some rock and blues, she rejected the idea. But then she dropped out of school and moved to New York in '64, and then later went out to California with the Texan Chet Helms, and well, the rest is history.

STACK: Did the two of you go to California at pretty much the same time?

SHELTON: By the time I got to San Francisco, Janis was already a star. She'd been discovered at the Monterey Pop Festival, and she already had an album out with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The album cover was done by Robert Crumb.

STACK: Columbia Records didn't have the nerve to use Crumb's original front cover, so they used his back cover as the front. The original front cover was too raunchy, with Janis sweating and all.

SHELTON: [laughing] I didn't know that. But it makes a great front cover anyway.

Freddie King Armadillo World Headquarters Poster 5/19/72.

2012-01-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Check out this Freddie King Armadillo World Headquarters poster from 5/19/72; Freda and the Firedogs opened. The Poster Artist was my pal Jim Franklin. He made a very psychedelic poster.

I have been told that the shift, from the psychedelic and colorful Vulcan posters, to the detailed ink drawings of the Armadillo was the result of the drug of choice for the poster artists moving from psychedelics to speed. According to my Source, the poster artists would get all hopped up on speed and GET ALL INTO drawing with ink.

This poster is another from the home of a big time collector; bigger than your's truely. He has been kind enough to share some images. Below is some footage of Freddie at the Armadillo with Jim Franklin as Emcee.

Grateful Dead Panther Hall Poster & More

2012-01-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

Check out this view of three, very rare, Texas Psych posters. We've got the 13th Floor Elevators - Grackle Debacle, the 'Elevators' Avalon - "Grace Slick", and the Grateful Dead Panther Hall. You're looking at between six to seven grand hanging next to that kitchen door. It doesn't get much better than this me boyos! This is a peek into the home of a big time collector.

The 'Dead Panther Hall poster promoted a 02/20/1970 gig with Quicksilver Messenger Service. This poster is easily two to three grand alone. Panther Hall was a concert hall located in Fort Worth, Texas and open from 1963-1978. As you can see, they produced their own psychedelic concert posters and these are highly collectible and sought after.

Roky Erickson Signing Posters in His Home

2012-01-09T19:35:00.001-08:00

What is one of Roky Erickson's favorite activities in his spare time? Why, it's signing posters for his fans! Here the Big Rok is putting his "John Hancock" to a sheaf of posters for the fans recently. Did you think that it would be anything less? Right on Rok!

What Good Can Drinking Do? Carolyn Wonderland

2012-01-09T15:04:00.000-08:00

Check out this version of What Good Can Drinking Do? by Carolyn Wonderland. This is a more upbeat and "rocking" version than the, faithful to the Delta, version by Janis. For reference, I pasted Ms. Joplin's version below. For good measure, I have pasted the same, by the Great Tracy Nelson, in too! Three great versions by three great ladies!

JANIS JOPLIN - WHAT GOOD CAN DRINKIN' DO? LYRICS

What good can drinkin' do? What good can drinkin' do? Lord, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue.

There's a glass on the table, they say it's gonna ease all my pain, And there's a glass on the table, they say it's gonna ease all my pain. But I drink it down, an' the next day I feel the same.

Gimme whiskey, gimme bourbon, give me gin. Oh, gimme whiskey, give me bourbon, gimme gin. 'cause it don't matter what I'm drinkin', lord, as long as it drown this sorrow I'm in.

I start drinking friday, I start drinking friday night. Lord, I start drinking friday, start drinking friday night. But then I wake up on sunday, child, there ain't nothin' that's right.

My man he left me, child, he left me here. Yeah, my good man left me, went away and left me here. Lord, I'm feelin' lowdown, just give me another glass of beer.

What good can drinkin' do, what good can drinkin' do? Well, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue!!!

Three Vulcan Gas Company Handbills

2012-01-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Check out these three Vulcan Gas Company handbills. Actually, the center one (Conqueroo /Rachel's Children) is an Electric Grandmother piece. The Electric Grandmother pre-dated the Vulcan and was (essentially) the same folks. The center handbill promoted a Celebration of Love, Apr 22, 1967 at the Doris Miller Auditorium in Austin. This was where the Electric Grandmother was attempting to take their shenanigans mainstream and put the acid rock shows mainstream. We all know how that worked out...

The first handbill is known as the Indian and Phonograph and features Shiva's Headband and the Lost & Found. My pal, Jerry Lightfoot, once told me that the Lost & Found were the most exciting live act after the 'Elevators. The last handbill is known as White Girl and promotes Shiva's and the Thingies with the South Canadian Overflow.

The Singer for the Thingies contacted me awhile back and was going to sign my Vulcan poster but I lost his email and the opportunity skittered off into the void.

The Living End Making Time

2012-01-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

Check out this Miller Lite commercial with the song Making Time by Creation. As the cognoscenti already know, Making Time was covered by the late, great Texas Psych band - the Living End. The Living End Making Time appeared on the Sundazed Psychedelic Microdots from the Sixties, Vol. 2: Texas Twisted. This is (mostly) great quality versions of bands on the Dallas Sump'n Else TV Show. The only drawback is that the 13th Floor Elevators tracks are at the wrong speed (too fast). It's like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Luckily, the Roky CD Club corrected this.

Here's the Track Listing. Tracks 9- 18 are the 13th Floor Elevators:

1. Making Time - The Living End
2. Empty Heart - The Living End
3. She Don't Know - The Changing Times
4. Near You Babe - The Changing Times
5. My Flash On You - The Menerals
6. Green Skies - Southwest F.O.B.
7. Captain Soul - The Living End
8. About Me And You - The Changing Time
9. You're Gonna Miss Me
10. Fire Engine
11. You Really Got Me
12. Roll Over Beethoven
13. Mercy Mercy
14. Tried To Hide
15. Gloria
16. Fire Engine
17. You're Gonna Miss Me
18. Roller Coaster

Here's a recent video of the Living End live in Abilene, Texas:

Politics

2012-01-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Sunday morning and I was watching one of those televised evangelical church shows. Something dawned on me that made me remember one of the things that I consider elemental and vital in our communal quest for a better society, presumably brought about by better people.

For a long, long time the religious community, including folks representing all major religions have been professing concepts of human behavior the most often propose some form of monotheism, that is, a "one God" view of our world. In my opinion, this fundamental concept is valid and justifiable by observation and study.

However, there is a huge, cathedral flaw in the essential understanding of the entity through which the creative, all inclusive nature of what is commonly referred to as "God" is applied and which forms the basis of most traditional religions.

The flaw to which I refer is the almost universal and outrageous anthropomorphism of this all powerful, all pervading, and universal source of creative energy.

The first clue as to the general idiocy of this tendency is the sexist referral to this omnipotent beingness as "He" this and "He that". This is just plain ridiculous. And, even the brave ones who switch the anthropomorphic reference to "She" meaning the "Goddess" are equally incorrect.

From this fundamental error, the rest of the system, founded on such a primary error, thus becomes not only incorrect but prevents any true understanding of our species' relationship with the transcendent aspects of our nature, and greatly limits our potential for our most comprehensive and beneficial evolution.

I have tried (mostly in vain) to come up with a term for whatever universal principle that would best represent this entity or force. The best I have heard is offered by Amit Goswami, who labels this invisible force as Consciousness, the ground of all being. Still, it is an uncomfortable and complex term, requiring a lot of study and background knowledge to comprehend. Oh well, wouldn't it be worth it to a least try to comprehend the real, true nature of what we call "God"?

Our religious leaders cop out spinelessly, and try to deliver their message supporting the fallacious status quo of the concept of divine participation in our fate and the background of our evolution.

In short, a new paradigm in thought regarding the nature of this transcendent principle and our relationship to such principle or aspect of our being needs to be developed, enhanced and propagated through dedicated research and education.

Here are some basic ideas that might enhance this development and the incorporation of the expanded concepts into our society in general.
1) We are not separate from "God/Goddess.
2) There exist states of our being that are transcendent to the visually and sensually tangible reality that currently define our idea of our existence and our self identity.
3) These transcendent states are the primary connection points with universal consciousness, the ground of all being, that many modern scientists are referring to as Quantum Consciousness.
4) Exclusive Newtonian physics, the foundation of modern materialism,must be replaced by Quantum mechanics as the superior system for furthering our understanding of the essential nature of our universe. This does not mean to abandon the Newtonian principles altogether, but rather to regulate those valuable principle to the pragmatic applications for which for they still and possibly will always be appropriate.

Lightning Hopkins Love Street Black Light Poster

2012-01-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Check out this sick Lightning Hopkins Love Street poster (top). This is a blacklight poster I do believe it's from 1968. A fan sent me this photo today (the poster).

Conqueroo, Rachel's Children, Jomo Disaster Psych Handbill

2012-01-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

Check out this cool psych handbill from May 6, 1967 for a concert held at the Doris Miller Auditorium in Austin, TX (promoted by the Vulcan Gas Company). Conqueroo, Rachel's Children and the Jomo Disaster Light Show. Measures 7 3/4" x 10 1/2". Nice!

Rachel's Children formed in San Antonio in late 1967. They opened for the 13th Floor Elevators when the 'Elevators opened the Mind's Eye club in San Antonio.

Now, I have looked on Google, Yahoo and Youtube for anything else about Rachel's Children. I can find nothing! Who can enlighten us? Add Comments to this post.

Kiloh Smith - Rock Poster Art

2011-12-19T13:39:00.001-08:00

Check out this video of much of my collection of rock poster art. I began to run out of time so I couldn't show two other rooms or my several portfolios (full) of posters or my huge amount of handbills and cards. But this is a lot.

You Syd Barrett fans will find stuff to oggle and you Texas Psych fans will find stuff to oggle. Kiloh Smith - Psychedelic Poster Art.

ROKY CD CLUB #50 REVIEW

2011-12-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

This is Kiloh, I am reviewing the Roky CD Club #50. Yup, we have been operating for FIFTY VOLUMES now! Whoring it out on the street for all the fans for over ten years now. Roky CD Club #50 is a 2 disc set of Evil Ones vocal and instrumental tracks.
To read the particulars of these discs and see where to DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE! GO HERE NOW.

OK, this is vocal takes and instrumental takes. All of this stuff is taken from cassette copies of the master tapes. This is, basically, THE MOTHDERLODE! Some quality is a bit better than others and there are a few spots where the tape was damaged but… THIS STUFF IS ALL EXCELLENT QUALITY! All of the highs and lows are there; it’s crisp as fresh iceberg lettuce. And when I say the “tape was damaged” don’t let your little minds begin working about “damaged tape”. There are a couple spots, about two seconds long, where the tape fades in and out a bit. But, other than that, this is all AMAZING QUALITY.

Now, the “Vocal Tracks” disc does have instruments on it as well. The mix is the rough mix; there’s no Stu Cook “polishing” of the sound here. Billy Alienate? That dog was well leashed on these tracks. Who knows? Maybe he was blowing Stu Cook for more of a “presence” on the Evil One final mix.

As with any rough mix the drums are out front. This is like Led Zeppelin’s Coda LP where they put Bonham out front. But, with any rough recording of a rock band, the drums come out front. That’s not a “bad” thing here.

Roky sounds fantastic! ‘nuff said!

The grouping of the tracks might be a little off-putting to some because one hears like… 5 Cold Night For Alligators and 6 Wind And More tracks back-to-back that are very, very, very similar. But the REAL FANS will be going: “Can I please have more!?”

The instrumental tracks disc is great too. Listening to this disc one really becomes aware of just how much Roky adds. Roky is the Straw That Stirs the Drink. Oh hell, he’s the Ice and the Booze too; *maybe* the Aliens are the empty glass.

The picture for this blog post is my copies on the seat of my car while I fly through Phoenix rocking out to this stuff. There’s a little message for Billy and Luckin in there too. See if you can figure it out.

Finally, I want to say a word about our Producer. He is the unnamed one. The guy is a genius. Everything is done by hand. There are no “applications” run on this stuff. And by hand means that it takes time. He’s the FORCE behind the throne.

I tol’ you that we would/will continue to whore it all out. This is the fans TAKING CHARGE and continuing to destroy the multi-headed hydra of scumbags taking advantage of Roky’s Legacy and trying to line their pockets. WE PUT OUT THE BEST STUFF AND IT’S DONE FOR FREE! FREE! FREE!

BE SURE TO CHECK THAT PREVIOUS BLOG POST FOR THE PARTICULARS AND HOW TO GET THIS FOR FREE!

13th Floor Elevators - Grackle Debacle Vulcan Poster

2011-12-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

Check out this, super rare, 13th Floor Elevators Grackle Debacle Vulcan Gas Company poster. This is the ONLY example of this VERY hard-to-find Vulcan Gas poster I've ever come across. I'm guessing most didn't survive, due to the extremely volatile/acidic newsprint it was printed on. A definite "set stopper" from the VG series.

This shows the band as "Stacey & The 13th Floor Elevators". Poster is black and white with art by Gilbert Shelton. In order to save money, the Vulcan Management printed some posters on newsprint, including this one. New Atlantis, which featured former Elevators member Dan Galindo, performed on the 29th as well (without the Elevators). This is the hardest to find of the three Vulcan Elevators posters.

I will post another vid when I get this back from the Document Restorer's. Enjoy!

The Sherwoods Corpus Christi

2011-12-09T19:06:00.001-08:00

The Sherwoods were a Corpus Christi quintet that was popular from 1968 - 1969 and made two 45s on Smash records in 1969. The Sherwoods were Michael Claxton (lead & backing vocals), Johnny Clary (drums, lead & backing vocals), David Franklin (lead & rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Jim Frye (lead & rhythm guitar, backing vocals), and Kenny Blanchet (bass). They were a psychedelic pop group, patterened after the Moving Sidewalks (featuring Billy Gibbons) and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

Their live shows were evidently very impressive, because it was one such performance in Austin that got them signed by Mercury, but only two of the three singles they cut were ever released, to no success. After two years together, the group broke up in early 1970 amid personal difficulties and members' problems with the Vietnam-era draft.

2011-12-07T10:55:00.001-08:00

Check out this sick, 1st printing, 13th Floor Elevators Kelly Mouse poster from 9/2,3/66 at the Avalon Ballroom. My buddy in Dallas owns this puppy! It was signed by Mouse and Kelly! One of these shows is where the famous "Avalon Bootleg" is from. The World Famous Roky CD Club put this out with speed-corrected Sump'n Else TV Show tracks. Here're some samples of that show below:

2011-12-06T05:54:00.001-08:00

The Roky CD Club continues to PUT IT ALL OUT! Up this time? How about some Evil One Vocal & Instrumental takes? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! COME 'N GIT IT AFORE I THROW IT TO THE HAWGS!

DOWNLOAD ON DEMONOID!

From: http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2799200/ & http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6866815

Roky Erickson & The Aliens - The Evil One Vocal Takes & Instrumentals, Studio,
137:08, ROK CD 50

Recorded 1978-79 at:\

The Church Studio, Marin County, CA
The Automatt, San Francisco, CA
Wally Heider's Studio, San Francisco, CA

Lineage:
* Assorted Cassettes & Sony TC-KA1ESA Tape Deck (Dolby Off) & Adcom SLC-505
Straight Line Controller & Prodigy HD2 Soundcard > Cool Edit Pro & Wav

CD1: Processing: Pitch correction, gain adjustments and channel offsets aligned.
No NR or EQ.

CD1 Vocal Takes 78:23:
01 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:14
02 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:13
03 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:14
04 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:14
05 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:14
06 If You Have Ghosts 4:00
07 If You Have Ghosts 3:35
08 If You Have Ghosts 4:00
09 If You Have Ghosts 4:01
10 If You Have Ghosts 4:10
11 If You Have Ghosts 4:04
12 The Wind and More 4:24
13 The Wind and More 4:24
14 White Faces 2:45
15 White Faces 2:43
16 White Faces 2:41
17 White Faces 2:44
18 Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play/ 2:22
19 Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play 2:36
20 Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play 2:35
21 Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play 2:35
22 Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play 2:39
23 Don't Shake Me Lucifer 2:58
24 Don't Shake Me Lucifer 2:50

CD2: Processing: Pitch correction, gain adjustments and channel offsets aligned.
Some EQ, no NR.

CD2 Instrumentals 58:45:
01 Stand for the Fire Demon 6:14
02 The Damned Thing 5:21
03 The Damned Thing 0:26
04 The Damned Thing 2:52
05 The Damned Thing 0:35
06 The Damned Thing 0:30
07 The Damned Thing 4:34
08 The Damned Thing 3:57
09 The Damned Thing 4:31
10 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:16
11 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:14
12 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 0:58
13 It's a Cold Night for Alligators 3:25
14 Night of the Vampire 4:22
15 Night of the Vampire 4:58
16 Don't Shake Me Lucifer 3:02
17 Don't Shake Me Lucifer 3:17
18 Don't Shake Me Lucifer 3:06
Musicians: Roky Erickson (vocals & guitar), Duane Aslaksen (guitar), Steven
Burgess (bass), Fuzzy Furioso (drums), Andre Lewis (keyboards), Bill Alienate
(autoharp); Also: Brian Marnell, Scott Matthews, Link Davis Jr. and Stu Cook

A LewsiVer Production

For more information please Visit us at:

TEXAS PSYCH FACEBOOK GROUP

TEXAS PSYCH GOOGLE GROUP

Jimi Hendrix Johnny Winter at Steve Paul's - the Scene Club 2/69

2011-12-01T19:17:00.001-08:00

Jimi Hendrix Johnny Winter at the Scene Club! Check out this sick-assed picture of Jimi playing bass while Johnny Winter blows his mind on the guitar at Steve Paul's Scene Club in New York City! This was taken in 2/69. The Scene Club is legendary as are Jimi's 1968, after hours, jams there. Jimi recorded all of them on a reel-to-reel that he put in the club. All of these tapes were stolen when Jimi died.

There's a recording of Jimi, Johnny, and a drunken Jim Morrison at the Scene from 1968. The Doors played for three weeks straight at the Scene during this time, resulting in the Scene's biggest box office draw. Jimi came to jam after hours and ran into a stone-drunk Jim Morrison. In the interview below, Johnny Winter says that he WAS NOT at this jam. However, I think that I can clearly hear his voice going: "Whoa!" after Morrison utters his first XXX scream of obscenities. Additionally, Johnny states that Stephen Stills was not at a Record Plant jam with Jimi and himself. It has been confirmed that Stephen Stills was there. So... Johnny's memory is a bit hazy. I will paste that part below and you be the judge.

In 1964, Steve Paul opened the Scene as a hangout for actors, musicians and theater workers associated with Broadway; live music was limited to a house pianist. The club was located in the basement of 346 West 46th Street, in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City. In 1966 the entertainment shifted to Rock music acts and involved such groups as The Young Rascals, The Lovin' Spoonful, and Andy Warhol & those associated with him, including the Velvet Underground.

Briefly, the club closed but reopened with the assistance, financial and otherwise, of such persons as Peter Yarrow, Allen Ginsberg and Tiger Morse. It became particularly popular with Jimi Hendrix, who regularly performed there after hours, in jams with other notable musicians. In fact, the first New York performances of the Jimi Hendrix Experience were at The Scene, on June 3 and 4, 1967, subsequent to Steve Paul seeing the band at the Monterey International Pop Festival. Hendrix went on to lead the club’s legendary late-night jam sessions the following year.

The Scene closed in 1970. According to Sterling Morrison, then of the Velvet Underground, the closure was prompted by Steve Paul's refusal to pay protection money to the New York Mob. This resulted in fights being started at the club, placing its liquor license in jeopardy

Read Iterview with Johnny Winter about Jimi:

UniVibes: When did you first meet Jimi Hendrix?
Johnny Winter: I met him at The Scene club that my manager Steve Paul had in 1968. Jimi was always at The Scene when he was in New York and we played many times together. He was just everywhere - he went out and jammed everywhere he was. There was a club called The Experience where he always went when he was there - no matter where he went he would go out and play with whoever was around and do a lot of recording with other people, just recording the jamming. They would be down at the club all night and then whoever was sober enough he would bring back to the studio at the end of the night - you know, he really did like to play!

UV: What was your impression of Jimi as a person rather than as a musician?
JW: I never really got to know Jimi as a person. He was always involved in music and never talked about anything `serious' [OK, we know what he means!]. We talked about music and that was it. He didn't seem like a very open person as far as talking about his problems and things like that... He would never say, `Hey man, I really don't feel good today.' He would just keep to himself if he didn't feel good. I'm sure he had a lot of people he was closer to than me that he did talk to, but he just didn't seem to be that open a person except about music and that was what he did, you know. I don't what he was like as a person.

UV: You recorded at the Record Plant with Jimi, Stephen Stills and Dallas Taylor. What do you remember of that?
JW: Yeah, well, I recorded at the Record Plant with Jimi and I played with Dallas and Stephen at The Scene but I don't think they were on the record though. I don't think they were at the studio but I'm not real sure - it's been a long time! [note: Stephen Stills confirmed that the session at the Record Plant was with Jimi, Johnny, Dallas and himself].

UV: You recorded Guitar Slim's `The Things We Used To Do'...
JW: Yeah, we did. That just came out on [`Lifelines', 1990]. I've got it on cassette, there are four cassettes, a whole lot of things he did in different ways and some stuff that hadn't been released before. It's a kind of interesting bunch of tapes and `The Things I Used To Do' was on that. It was OK for an impromptu kind of jam.

UV: You're sometimes credited as playing on a Jimi Hendrix bootleg called `Sky High' along with Jim Morrison and others playing `Red House', `The Sunshine Of Your Love' and several other songs...
JW: Oh, I never even met Jim Morrison! There's a whole album of Jimi and Jim and I'm supposedly on the album but I don't think I am `cause I never met Jim Morrison in my life! I'm sure I never, never played with Jim Morrison at all! I don't know how that [rumour] got started.

UV: You were at the Band of Gypsys concert at Madison Square Garden on 28 January 1970 where Jimi walked off the stage. What did you think was wrong with him?
JW: I dunno. I heard all kinds of things like he took some bad acid... Who knows? I was there that night and it was real obvious that something was wrong. I really don't know if it was drugs or he just had a bad night, but it was really scary. I don't have the faintest idea what it was but it was one of the scariest things I ever saw.

UV: Can you remember when you last saw Jimi?
JW: No, I sure can't. He was around pretty much all the time. I was always running into Jimi some place but I really don't remember the last time.

UV: If he had lived what do you think he would have gone on to do? Do you think he would have gone on to greater things?
JW: I think he would have definitely done better things. I've never seen anybody who loved to play more than him and he always had some kind of an idea. I don't know whether it would have been in a commercial way or he might have come up with something very strange but he was always up with new ideas. I think if he had lived he would have stayed as great as he always was. He would have probably had to go through some pain to do it but I'm sure things would have been OK.

This interview was previously published in UniVibes issue 4, November 1991

George Kinney is Better!

2011-12-01T14:23:00.001-08:00

Hello all Texas Psych fans. As most of you know, our friend (and Texas Music Legend), George Kinney has been suffering from liver cancer all of 2011. This is to let all the fans know that George got his new liver this week. Word has it that he is up and walking around already. Please pray for George’s recovery and the donor’s family.BTW, George’s recovery is going to be long. The George Kinney Medical Fund is still the place to go and contribute. See that here:

CONTRIBUTE TO GEORGE KINNEY MEDICAL FUND

Roky Erickson 13th Floor Elevators Vocals Picture

2011-11-27T17:08:00.001-08:00

I haven't seen this picture of Roky Erickson tearing it up before. He looks like he's hitting some unknown territory there. And Stacy is just checking him out as he does it. I really feel like Roky Erickson is the Greatest Rock Vocalist that Ever Lived. He smokes everybody. Roky Erickson 13th Floor Elevators; 'nuff said!Stacy Sutherland is on record stating that Roky Erickson used his voice like a musical instrument and that vinyl never completely captured his sound.

John Ike Walton Interview with Myth Magazine

2011-11-25T21:07:00.001-08:00

Reprinted from Myth Magazine:

An Interview with John Ike Walton

MYTH Magazine met with John Ike Walton, original drummer andfounding member of the pioneering (and legendary still to this day) psychedelicgarage rock outfit The 13th Floor Elevators, along with his wife, Alice, for acup of coffee on a recent Sunday morning at a bookstore coffee shop inKerrville. He and Alice have been staying busy remodeling one of their rentalunits, and were planning on going to Luckenbach later on around lunchtime,providing the much needed rain gives out by then. John, 64 (he shares the samebirthday as Jimi Hendrix), has a keen memory of his days with the Elevators,and has brushed shoulders, as well as played, with many influential rockartists of the mid- to late-60's. John left the Elevators in 1967, after twoyears of non-stop touring mixed with running from the law--Texas wasn't tookeen on long-haired musicians back then-- and one ground-breaking album, infavor of cruising the Texas hill country roads on his motorcycle.

MYTH Magazine: John, more than 40 years have passed sincethe release of the Elevators' first album, The Psychedelic Sound of the 13thFloor Elevators, and...

John Ike Walton: Actually, let me correct you there...thatwas not our first recording. Our first album was the Live album. That stuff isthe first stuff we put in the can. We went into the studio and they said,'Okay, we're getting some levels.' Well, we played about ten or twelve songs,and they said, 'We're still getting levels.' But they weren't, they wererecording everything that we were doing.

MM: Out takes? Covers?

JW: Cover stuff, everything that we did in Austin at the Jade Room, and they wereputting it all in the can, and we didn't know this until the Live album cameout.

MM: Which was after Easter Everywhere.

JW: Yeah, after Easter Everywhere. And then when that cameout, I said that's the first stuff we ever cut. And so, the third album isactually our first album.

MM: And they just threw canned applause in there to make itsound live?

JW: Yeah, that's right.

MM: I am sure, more than zillion interviews have been donewith you and/or the other members of the Elevators since you broke up. Why,after forty years, is there still a strong interest in a band that was togetherfor only four years and four "official" albums?JW: Well, Charly Records over in England has been putting this stuffout for, well...here's the deal. Noble Gunther and the people that formed IA(Houston-based record label International Artists) were a couple of lawyers andthey did this for a little while, and then they weren't making any money off ofit, and so they stopped doing it after Bubble Puppy had (released) Hot Smokeand Sassafras.

MM: Bubble Puppy was a group out of Houston?

JW: Yeah, well the lead guitar player was from Corpus Christi. But atInternational Artists, we were their first people, and since You're Gonna MissMe had a lot of air play around Texas and up to number thirty one in Billboard,to all the groups around Texas that was the only record company around andthought that was a happening thing that they should get into, you know, to getwith these people (IA). Anyway, Bubble Puppy, right after they had their hit,Hot Smokin Sassafras, the company folded. They put our master tapes in storagefor gosh, a long, long time. Lelan Rogers, Kenny Rogers' brother, bought thetapes (in 1978) and then, he also went to TNT where they had our old albumsstill there, and he put them together in some boxed set of all four of ouralbums, and since they had been out of print for a while, he was selling themfor two hundred dollars a set. And you see we didn't know any of this was goingon...I got wind of that after a while. And then he subleased all of our stuffto Charly Records in England,and they put it out all over Europe. AugieMeyers is a friend of mine, and he came back (from Europe) and said, 'Man, youguys are all over Europe.' He said we were inall of the record stores and we were really a big hit. And so, Charlyfranchised our music to other record companies all over Europe.And this went on...well, that movie High Fidelity, they franchised You're GonnaMiss Me to them. They franchised it to Dell Computers.........

MM: By franchising, do you mean licensing?

JW: Licensing, right. They did that to probably thirty orforty different companies in Europe. I finallyreceived a royalty check from them just in time to pay the IRS some back taxesI owed them just recently, and so that was a good thing. I mean it wasn't asmuch as they actually owed us, but it really came at the right time.

MM: The scuttlebutt on the Internet is that the masters areno longer around. Is that true?

JW: Well, the masters were sold by Lelan Rogers to CharlyRecords for $150,000. He sold them after he had licensed it to them for many,many, many years. And when Roky's attorneys came down on Lelan Rogers, Lelandecided to sell, outright, the masters of all of his stuff to Charly Recordsfor $150,000, and then he was out of the picture. Then it was all CharlyRecords. But before that, they (Rogers and Charly) had a partnership deal, andthat went on for many years, since 1989. That's the first date I ever sawCharly Records stuff, it was on the Live album back in 1989.

MM: How do you feel about the quality of the releases fromCharly Records?

JW: Well, the best that I've heard are the LP's theyreissued.

MM: On vinyl?

JW: On vinyl. 180-grain vinyl. That's the best sound thatI've heard. The CD's are a bit trebly, a little too thin. They were taken offtapes back when CD technology was not up to what it is now. Who ever did itthen didn't really have a very good ear. But the vinyl, that's where I can makesense of the music. I still have those at my house...I still have the recordplayer my mother bought me in 1965 to play our first album. I have the album,unopened, one of them, that the record company sent to her.

MM: How ironic, nowadays, that the best sounding Elevatorsmusic can be found on vinyl, and not on CD.

JW: Yeah, (the vinyl reissues) are much better.

MM: The same year that Psychedelic Sound came out, 1966, theBeatles released Revolver, Bob Dylan gave us Blonde on Blonde, the Beach Boysput out Pet Sounds, and Simon & Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence. Nowthat must have been a pretty magical time to be involved in music, both as alistener and a performer. What is your take on the 1966 music scene, not justnationally, but in Texas,where really, country was still king?

JW: Well, when You're Gonna Miss Me hit in California, it was number one in a lot ofplaces. In fact, it was number one in Sacramento,where we played our first Californiagig. And we were committed to the Avalon Ballroom and we played there quite abit. The scene there was (long pause)...you see, when we were playing in Texas, there wasn't muchrock and roll going on at all. We were one of the few rock bands around. Weleft shortly after we formed (and after the release of Psychedelic Sound) for California...

MM: San Francisco?

JW: Yeah, to play the Avalon Ballroom. That's where we spent3 or 4 months there, and then we came back to Texasand pretty much disbanded because it was hard to make money as a band in Texas. There were somany bands in Texasthat weren't making enough to live on, it was impossible. I mean, I lived withmy parents when we came back, there was no way anybody could pay rent with whatthey made playing in Houston,and it's still pretty much that way. If you're not playing a sit down job, oryou're a road band (sic), you won't get enough gigs to survive. Don't quit yourday job. No matter, if you get a new CD out, don't quit your day job.

MM: Looking back though, how does it feel to be mentioned inthe same breath as the other albums released in '65 like Blonde on Blonde andRevolver?

JW: Well, it was fun at the time and it was new, but we weredodging the law half the time in Texas becausewe were the first longhaired people in Texas...

MM: Longhaired musicians?

JW: No, just longhaired people. After the Beatles came out,we were playing in Port Aransas as the Lingsmen. This was before we metRoky...it was Benny Thurman and myself, and Stacy. It was a pretty tense time.There were times it was very, very tense...I mean, we were playing one job inRiver Oaks in Houston at a private party when our band boy, Joe Hernandez,comes up to me while I'm playing drums and said there were a couple ofpoliceman there at the deal. He said, 'Okay, the cops are in the dressing roomand they found the dope and now they're coming to get y'all.' You know, therewere a lot of tense moments like that during that time. Actually, it was veryhard to relax among that group because we picked up so much heat from the cops.Part of it was hard to enjoy actually because we had no cover, we had noprotection from the law. One time down in Kingsville,Benny and Stacy decided to walk downtown while we're there for a college gigand they (the police) picked them up. They just picked them up and took them inbecause Benny had an earring and Stacy had a goatee and their hair was littlebit long and they were walking down the street, so they just picked them up,put them in the squad car and took them down to the police station and startedquestioning them. Asking them why they were in town, and that they lookedfreaky. They released them and they walked back to the gig we had at A&ICollege. So it was pretty hard on us emotionally because of the police.

MM: If the Elevators had been born in California, instead ofTexas, do you think things might have been different?

JW: If we had stayed in California, yeah, because theydidn't care what people did because there were so many people that nobody cared(what you did). You know, down here, the police department was alerted aboutus--the name of our band, and what we looked like, and what was happeningaround (the release of) Blonde On Blonde and all the other music that wascoming out--people were getting upset. It was hard for other people and groupstoo, which is why a lot of us didn't stick around. Janis Joplin had to move. Janiscame to California to play the Avalon right after we left (Texas) and sheshowed up and put together Big Brother and the Holding Company and they wouldopen up for us. Moby Grape opened up for us, Quick Silver (Messenger Service)too.

MM: Speaking of Janis Joplin, according to what I've read,she played a couple of gigs with the Elevators. Is that true?

JW: No, that's not true, Janis never played with us. Onetime at the Methodist Student Center (in Austin) she and her guitar, byherself, opened for us. That's the only time that she as a solo artist openedup for us. Travis Rivers took her out there (to California) and they puttogether Big Brother and the Holding Company and then they would open up forus.

MM: At the Avalon or Fillmore?

JW: First at the Avalon, and then at the Fillmore. GreatSociety played before us one time, you know, with Grace Slick. Let's see, whoelse? Oh, there were some other groups that were really good. The Charles LloydQuartet, they were a great jazz group. And one night after we were through, TheElectric Flag and Buffalo Springfield came in after hours and they played. Theywere outstanding. Buffalo Springfield was pretty good, but The Electric Flagwere astonishing. And they had so many pieces to the band and they played sowell together. Steppenwolf was at our motel, when they were John Kay and theSparrow, and they pulled up to the motel and saw that we had "13th FloorElevators" in little letters on the side of the station wagon window, andhe pulls up and had this CD (sic) which sounded like Eight Miles High, but byJohn Kay and the Sparrow, and we had just finished our album, PsychedelicSound, and he was wearing sun glasses at night and he asks, 'Are you guys aband?' and we say yeah. We had this little record player and he came in andplayed his record for us, then we played our album for him. (After that) theywere always at our performances.

MM: And so, Janis never considered joining the Elevators?

JW: That never came up that I know of. She was hooked upwith Travis Rivers. He latched onto Janis Joplin's talent immediately out ofAustin. We were in California for a while, and he and her took off forCalifornia. But there was never any talk of Janis joining our group, no,because we had our thing and she had her thing.

MM: What was she like?

JW: I don't think I've ever even talked with Janis Joplin. Idon't think we even met openly. I mean, we might have shook hands before wewent on at the Methodist Student Center, but I didn't know Janis Joplin. Tommyknew Janis Joplin. He had a tape of her that I heard at his house in Austin andshe was singing that song, I'm A Woman. I was lying there and Tommy played thattape and he said that she was a local singer. I said that (tape) wasunbelievable, the power you can hear in her voice, and her guitar was justunbelievable.

MM: Now, it is well known that Tommy Hall was instrumentalin putting the 13th Floor Elevators together back in '65...

JW: Well, he brought Roky into the band. We were actually aband before that.

MM: Right, he met you, Benny and Stacy when you all were therhythm section for the Lingsmen on the gulf coast. How did you meet Tommy?

JW: At a service station in Port Aransas. Stacy went up tohim and started talking and Tommy had some weed, so we went down to the beachto smoke some weed. And then, Tommy went back to Austin and he says that therewas a singer up there that we should come hear. So we left Port Aransas, wentto Austin, and then heard Roky. Tommy brought Roky over to his house and we gottogether and we jammed. We did some blues tunes and some sixties covers. ThenTommy convinced Roky that he needed to fire his band, they were all hisfriends, and then come play with us. And he did. He had a gig at the Jade Roomwith the Spades backing him up, and then Roky replaced the Spades with us andwe started playing the Jade Room.

MM: That was in '65?

JW: Yeah, in '65.

MM: What was your initial reaction when you met Roky? Andwhen you heard him sing for the first time?JW: We were amazed because he could play guitar, leadguitar, rhythm guitar and sing. He was just incredible. Stacy made thiscomment, he said, 'If we can get that kid, we'll go somewhere. We'll besomebody if we can get that kid to sing for us.'

MM: Tommy didn't actually play an instrument when the bandwas formed, right? It's said that one day he picked up a jug, put a microphoneon it and then blew into it and the rest, they say, is psychedelic musichistory.

JW: Yeah, and he got the lyrics for the songs from a bookcalled All and Everything by G. I. Gurdjieff. That's where that stuff camefrom. All of that wasn't really coming from Tommy Hall. What he'd do is he'dread...he'd carry that book with him everywhere, and it was a big book...andhe'd sit down with a piece of paper and he'd open it up and read a section andhe would write basic ideas and thoughts of this philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff.And Dylan was reading Gurdjieff at the time too. And then Roky would take thoselyrics and put his music to it because Tommy had no musical ability at all.

MM: Is it true that you, Stacy and Benny convinced him thathe had to play an instrument to be in the band, and so he chose the jug?

JW: No, no...We were jamming and all of a sudden we heardthis...(Walton expertly mimics the familiar sound of Hall's jug)...he hadpicked up one of the microphones lying around and put it up to his mouth andthe jug while we were jamming and starting doing this and, uh...

MM: Just blowing into it?JW: Yeah, just blowing into it. His wife (Clementine) startedraving about how great it sounded and so...Tommy did essentially pull ustogether--he hooked us up with Roky--and all of a sudden, he (Hall) was amusical part of the band going...(Walton again expertly mimics the jug soundfor a few seconds)...that was the jug. That's how the jug came about. There wasa lot of contradictory stories as to how that came about like, that we askedhim to or that we loved him so much that we wanted him to play an instrument.That's not how it happened.

MM: It's funny how a stereotypically country musicinstrument like the jug would help start up the psychedelic genre.

JW: Yeah, well there were some bands in Austin...back inthat time, there were, you know, a few guys that would play the jug and thewash tub bass and the basic instruments of that type. But they weren't reallyinstruments.

MM: What was it like to play at the Fillmore in SanFrancisco?

JW: At the time, the Fillmore was a real dump. It was theworst of any place I think we've ever played. Old and dampy (sic), it wasupstairs and old--let me tell you this: that gig (the Fillmore) was BillGraham's first attempt at anything--but I had noticed a poster (on the wall)that the next week after we were playing there, was a Pink Floyd. And Ithought, how weird the poster's geometric designs were and, why wouldanybody...who is Pink Floyd? Who could that be?

MM: And a lot of people have compared Roky to (original PinkFloyd lead singer) Syd Barrett as far as the similar paths they took and thechoices they made. They were both musical geniuses. They both experimentedheavily with LSD and then, kind of self-destructed along the way.

JW: Yeah, they did, and Tommy and Stacy...Stacy had anincredible tolerance for drugs. He could punch in completely stoned. But Rokyand Tommy were taking acid about three times a day, seven days a week. Onenight, Roky showed up at the Avalon Ballroom and he was on a bad trip and wehad an audience of about three thousand people out there, and he turned aroundto his amplifier and squatted down and he wouldn't sing. He'd just sit there.So, basically Ronny and I and Stacy just started jamming in E and A--and just,you know, your garage band basic beginning stuff. We'd just play that becauseour lead singer had freaked. He's down there sitting in front of his amplifier,and he'd sit and mope and get the feedback going and just sit there.

MM: What was Tommy's reaction to that, seeing that he lookedat LSD not so much as a recreational drug but as a learning tool to explore orget in touch with your...whatever?

JW: His reaction was a little later after we cameback...after that (Roky's Avalon freak out episode) we came back to Texas torecord our album (Easter Everywhere), and I talked to Lynn Powell. And he saidthat Tommy came to him one day while Roky was pretty spaced, almost catatonic,and said, 'I don't know what to do with Roky's mind.' And then Tommy took offfor California. When Roky couldn't produce any more money, wasn't able to play,there was no more income for Tommy and the record company couldn't make anymore records because Roky was just too spaced. Then Tommy went to California.

MM: Is it true that Tommy broke Roky out of a mentalhospital?

JW: Now this is what I heard, and I've heard so manycontradictory stories, but I heard that Tary Owens and Tommy Hall unbolted thedoor to his lockup (sic) but I really don't believe that and I'll tell you why.I think the reason they sent him to Rusk (State Hospital) was Dana would go inthere (Austin State Hospital) and pick him up in a convertible...

MM: Who's Dana?

JW: His wife. They eventually wound up getting married atRusk--they got married at a criminally insane mental hospital--but Dana wouldgo in there and get him and take him out of there. She would go in there andpick him up because you could just drive out with somebody, you know, and Rokywould be walking the grounds and he'd get in the car and they'd take off. Andthey did this about three times and his brothers would take him back becausethey knew that he had criminal charges that had been deferred for mentalinstitution treatment. They brought him back and they did this about threetimes, and then they (the hospital) sent him off to Rusk because they did notlike this happening. They didn't want this trend starting with people coming inand picking up patients and taking them out.

MM: Was he admitted into the hospital by his family, or bythe court?

JW: It was a court commitment because they had found himguilty of possession of marijuana and his attorney pleaded him insane. And sothat's how he got up there and then his girlfriend kept getting him out and sohe wound up at Rusk.

MM: Wasn't he caught with just one joint?

JW: Well, he and this kid were smoking up on top of Mt.Bonnell in Austin and they let the kid off if he would say that his drugsbelonged to Roky Erickson--to pin the case on Roky. He had been arrested beforethat on possession of marijuana and they were trying to make another arrest.

MM: Is it true that after the first bust, your parents camedown and gave you a choice to...

JW: My parents came down because they were veryconcerned--my father saw us get busted on television--and they came down veryconcerned and they hired the ex-D.A. Les Proctor to handle my case. We didn'teven know what the penalties were for marijuana, and then we were caught.

MM: And so, your parents didn't give you an ultimatum toleave the band.

JW: No, not at all. They were part concerned about what wasgoing on...but they were supportive even after the bust. They bought Stacy anamplifier and bought the PA system and a van and everything for us. We just hadto get out of Texas and my parents were very supportive of getting us out ofTexas.

MM: Did you leave the band because you didn't like thedirection the band was going? I heard that you preferred being a sessionplayer.

JW: Actually, no. You see, Tommy would come up and say, 'Wegot a gig in Houston and it pays fifty dollars a man.' And to me, that didn'tmake financial sense to pack up and drive to Houston and possibly break even.At that time, money meant a little more than it does now. I mean fifty bucksnow is a couple of meals out. Back then, fifty dollars was something--you couldcome home with a twenty and be happy. But Tommy kept this thing going and getsreally involved in it and he had Roky helping. But Ronny and I, we reallydidn't care because there was so much struggle for so little money thatwe'd...I had a Martin 750 Atlas Straddler and Ronny had just bought a Honda andwe'd rather ride our motorcycles up here in the hill country and not botherwith driving down to Houston to play a gig.

MM: Stories of non-payment of royalties are rampant in thisindustry. Why is that, especially in this day of high tech accounting?

JW: Not with a major label that has a good reputation, butif it was somebody that was just beginning...look, here's the thing: thedistributors of cd's are constantly swamped by people trying to get nationaland international distribution. And if you don't have a whole lot of moneybehind you and a good product, you're just going to get local airplay. And youknow, most of these Texas musicians in these mags you read about, they runaround and they play a lot of gigs and they sell their cd's off the bandstand.But there weren't no major record companies that I know of in Texas thatactually had the power to get the distribution done. Back then there weren'tmany bands around. Lelan Rogers got in because he had been doing that as arecord producer for years and he had some connections with some of thedistributors. But your cd's have got to go first to a major distributor in themajor cities and put it on the shelves. But they're not going to put anythingout that's not getting airplay. You have to have airplay, and this is the hardpart. In Texas, it's really tough because of the competition and there's somany bands.

MM: One last question about the Elevators: any regrets?

JW: Hmmm, any regrets? No, it just happened. It's justsomething that happened back then and (long pause, then silence)...

MM: Do you stay in touch with Benny?

JW: Yeah.

MM: And Stacy's family?

JW: Yeah, I see Mrs. Sutherland occasionally. I saw her alittle bit before we were put into the Texas Music Hall of Fame. I saw herabout two weeks before that when her husband was still alive. He died the daybefore we were inducted and so she couldn't make it to the awards ceremony.

MM: And Tommy Hall? I understand he is living in some kindof...

JW: He's living on social security and disability in SanFrancisco on Van Nuys, I think. I have his address and phone number somewhere,but it's in the tenderloin district in San Francisco and he lives in a room byhimself. Paul Drummond, who came over from England to write a book about us,went and visited Tommy and told me of his disability.

MM: Is it true that he refuses to speak about the Elevatorstoday? That he'd rather talk about his project on horizontal thinking, orwhatever it is he is calling it nowadays?

JW: No, that's not true, he talks about the Elevatorssometimes. I heard about two hours of a six-hour interview with Tommy. And Idon't think Paul asked him a whole lot of questions about the Elevators. Ithink he asked him questions about what he is doing now...I couldn't make awhole lot of sense out of that interview. But I haven't seen Tommy since heleft for California. He was in Austin and I was in Kerrville and I just heardthat he had gone to California and I haven't talked to him since then.

MM: And Benny?

JW: Now, Benny, I saw him. He came to the awards ceremonyand then I saw him one more time. Lynn Howell brought him to the Austin MusicAwards and...

MM: Who is Lynn Howell?

JW: Lynn Howell was Roky Erickson's next-door neighbor. Heknew all of the Erickson boys and everything. But Benny was very defensive(sic) but Margaret Moser of the (Austin) Chronicle wanted Benny to come to theawards ceremony and so I called Benny's best friend and he put a bug in Benny'sear and then all of a sudden, Benny shows up. I was standing there and someonekicks me in the butt, and it was Benny and he says, 'Oh, excuse me. I thoughtyou were Ray Benson.' (laughs) He was dressed up like a cowboy and he kicked mereal hard! I hadn't seen him in years and Lynn brought him to the ceremony.

MM: John, catch us up on what you're doing today.

JW: Well, right now we're getting a rental unit ready torent, and there's a fellow in Harper who is interested in making the fingerdulcimers. He is a NASA aerospace engineer, retired, and he's got a shop outthere.MM: Tell me about the instrument that you make and sell, thefinger dulcimer.

JW: Well, it's three octaves, and it's...(excitedly) if youcan find me anywhere, I have the DVD's and the cd of the kalimba played by StanMorris and I have them for sale for five dollars apiece.

MM: What is it called? The kalimba?

JW: It's actually an African kalimba, but I call it thefinger dulcimer because people will come up to me when I'm playing it and say,'I know what that is, it's a hammer dulcimer.' So I finally just gave in anddecided to agree. Instead of trying to explain to them that it is an Africankalimba, of which they had no concept of, the dulcimer was working for them. SoI just joined with them and said, 'Okay, it is a dulcimer.' It's a fingerdulcimer, rather than a hammer dulcimer, and so I just decided that it's easierto give in and call it a finger dulcimer. But it is technically a kalimba,which has 37 keys and three octaves, which is enough to play any song that youwant to play. Stan will play it for you over there at Melody Corner musicstore. Just go in there and ask him to and he will.

MM: What motivated you to make them?

JW: A friend of mine, who was our attorney--our defenseattorney over in Austin on the weed charge--was making one of these in a verycrude form. Mine is a very polished version--I've been working on them forforty years and it's polished now and I have the stamping dies, which make thekeys. My mother came up with the money to get the dies made and have them set.They're steel and there's five different dies that cost eleven hundred dollarsapiece. I have those dies and that fellow there in Harper, that aerospaceengineer, is very interested in making the boxes...in making the whole thing.Because he can run a punch press, and sharpen the dies as a machinist. I saw apicture of him climbing up the shuttlecraft. He worked on the shuttlecraft--theguy's a genius. Plus he's a cabinetmaker--he's got a degree in cabinet making.Hopefully, that will pan out. Hopefully he doesn't have to leave the hillcountry for lack of income like a lot of people have to do. They come up herethinking they can make a living with the action here. But they can't do it;they gotta have some money if they want to make it here.

MM: Until he gets set up, are you going to continue makingthem by hand?

JW: No, I've turned that over to him. I gave him two newones, and I gave him the prototype to take the dimensions off of. I'm notmaking them right now, I'm doing the electrical wiring and plumbing, and Aliceis doing tile setting. We're finishing off a house to have another rental unit.And then, when we get that rented out, we're going to move to the place wherewe lived and finish that out. Her brothers are carpenters and they built thathouse. We have two rental units, this will be the third rental unit that we'llhave up there and then, after we finish the big place, which has two bedroomsupstairs--a two bedroom, two bath--and when we have that rented out, then we'llgo on the road with the kalimba and the Zulu drums to sell them.

MM: Will you be selling them and playing them at festivalsand such?JW: Festivals and everywhere there's little booths where youcan do something...because Alice is an excellent drum player and her brother,Bobby Delery...that's the story you should get to. He's an incrediblesongwriter and mentor and great singer. He's real class.

MM: Perhaps another time and interview. One more lastquestion, John: Having seen it all, the good and the bad and the highs and thelows, what would be your advice to today's aspiring musician?

JW: (long pause)...Just do whatever you want to do as amusician. My mother told me this, she said, 'John, music is okay as a sideline,but you need to learn how to do something,' because all I was doing was workingon my hot rod...a '34 Ford with a Pontiac engine it and I was always out theretuning it up...I built it...it took me six years to build it when I was ateenager. I was obsessed with that kind of stuff, and playing drums was a lotof fun. So, I don't really have much direction to give to anyone that would beof any value than what they're doing musically right here or anywhere--there'sjust so many musicians--and I don't know. Shelly King is a friend of ours, andshe sells her cd's off the bandstand, and I learned that musicians are going tosell more cd's off the bandstand because it's so difficult to get enoughairplay. Like, you go to Waterloo Records (in Austin)...there's (sic) tenmillion records at Waterloo Records...that's the only place that has our cd's.And our vinyls, I just send everybody to Austin to get our stuff. (It's hard tofind) because Charly Records is distributing it all. Kids today are moreadvanced today in their own marketing techniques--I can't even turn on acomputer. (Alice mentions the limitless possibilities the Internet providestoday to anyone who wants to market their music to anyone in the world, andthereby bypassing scrupulous record labels) Look what happened to Creedence(Clearwater Revival). Something like a hundred million cd's (sold) and notgetting any money, getting totally ripped off. Because here's why: when youbring in a whole lot of money in one year, you have to pay taxes on that. Say,you're a producer and you go out and get yourself a group and they have a hitrecord and it brings in a whole lot of money. Well, you have to pay taxes onthat, or you have to just disappear. And that's what happened to so manyone-hit wonders. They weren't just one-hit wonders. The managers that weresupposed to pay them all that money on that record ripped them off. Theyprobably got a big puddle of cash and living in the Caribbean...on a yacht andthey're hanging out down there. That's the way I see it.

MM: Thanks John for clearing up some of the myths andstories surrounding the Elevators, and for catching us up with what you'redoing nowadays. Good luck with the remodeling and with the kalimba.

JW: That was fun.

Thirteenth Floor Elevators Vulcan Gas Company Poster by Gilbert Shelton! Pooh!

2011-11-22T19:41:00.001-08:00

One can't see too many of these! How about this sweet Thirteenth Floor Elevators Vulcan Gas Company poster! This puppy is up on Ebay, right now, with a price of four thousand. I wonder what mine, signed by 'Elevators, Conqueroo & Shiva's members, would bring? Annnnnyway, this is sweet!

Take a look at Gilbert Shelton having a beer at the top!

Love Street Light Circus Poster - Opening Night

2011-11-21T17:12:00.000-08:00

Check out this Love Street Light Circus poster that just surfaced. It was kicking around in some old trunk. It's in pretty rough shape but the colors are still vibrant.

In the late sixties, Allen's Landing was home to the Houston's best-known psychedelic nightspot, Love Street Light Circus Feel Good Machine opened on June 3rd 1967. This was where groups with names like the Red Crayola, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Bubble Puppy, Shiva's Headband & Fever Tree performed mind-expanding music accented with strobe lights and pastel projections. The audiences sat at tables or in the Zonk-Out, a series of cushions with back rests. The historic Sunset Coffee Building on Commerce at Main Street, which housed the nightclub on its third floor, is still standing.

Josefus Live Video 1989

2011-10-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

October of 1989 Josefus reunites to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the release of Dead Man. The show happened outside of Houston on a farm in Rosenberg, Texas. It was 4:00 AM when they hit the stage and then it was 1969 all over again. I did the best I could with the meager lighting set up, I think something is better than nothing. The energy comes across quite well. This was one of the best rock shows I have ever witnessed. God bless Josefus!

Frank Zappa Armadillo World Haedquarters Poster by Jim Franklin

2011-10-23T08:11:00.001-07:00

Check out this, rare-as-hen's-teeth, Frank Zappa Armadillo World Headquarters poster by Jim Franklin. The date is 10/26/73. Jim Franklin really captured the zaniness and genius of the late, great, Frank Zappa with this drawing.

This poster is immaculate. Please click on the picture to enlarge.

Please see the set-list for this show below:

Preamble
Cosmik Debris
Inca Roads
Preamble
Pygmy Twylyte
The Idiot Bastard Son
Cheepnis
Preamble
Big Swifty
Preamble
The San Clemente Magnetic Deviation (Dickie's Such an Asshole) (premiere)
Preamble
Farther O'Blivion (incl. parts of Steno Pool Be-bop Tango Drums Cucamonga)
encore
Son of Mr. Green Genes> King Kong> Chunga's Revenge

Frank Zappa - guitar, vocals
George Duke - keyboards, vocals, tiny little notes
Napoleon Murphy Brock - vocals, saxophone, flute
Tom Fowler - bass
Ruth Underwood - percussion
Bruce Fowler - trombone, dancing
Chester Thompson - drums
Ralph Humphrey - drums

Here's a video containing the song, Big Swifty, from that show:

To read a very entertaining account of this show at the Armadillo please visit the Threadgill's blog:
http://blog.threadgills.com/?tag=armadillo-world-headquarters

Download the show here:
http://www.filestube.com/9Rv9NoXQslqtyKinrGKce5/Frank-Zappa-Live-Armadillo-World-Headquarters-Austin-TX-10-26-73.html

Roky Erickson - Kessler Theater 9/30/11& 10/1/11

2011-10-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

Check out these vids from Roky Erickson at the Kessler Theater in Dallas from 9/30/11 and 10/1/11. This was a general admission show and Roky appears strongly here although his vocals are (unbelievably) turned down in the mix.

Billy Alienate has Porn Site

2011-10-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

In our, ever-ongoing, watch of the shenanigans of Billy Alienate we have come upon a pornography site that he's running. It's easy to check out. See this site for the band: Blood Drained Cows: http://www.blooddrainedcows.com

The Blood Drained Cows were the latest band Billy has tried to associate himself with. He attempted to ingratiate himself by building a real crappy website. His "technique" is easily identified: the use of Times New Roman font, the big paragraphs, the simplistic graphics.

Annnyway, look at the Icons on the left and you will see "Billy's World - enter at your own risk." It even has his friggin likeness on the Icon! Click on that Icon and you will be taken to the porn site he is attempting to cash in on.

Here's the URL:
http://www.transload.net/~billyangel/index.html

One can see the name that he goes by in the URL: Billy Angel.

The sleazy fuck! It's not enough that he's been known to be involved in ripping off Roky Erickson for decades but now he's peddling porn? I have been telling you all about this guy for years! What a sleaze-bag!

Golden Dawn Vulcan Gas Company Poster

2011-10-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Check out my new Golden Dawn Vulcan Gas Company poster. It's just back from the Restorer's in Tucson. She de-acidified it and mounted it on linen. This poster was in rough shape before going to Tucson. My connect did a wonderful job on it.

This poster promoted shows for 11/24 & 25/1967 with art by Gilbert Shelton.

Please see below a list of the "Vulcan" shows of 1967.

January 7, 1967 Doris Miller Auditorium, Austin, TX 13th Floor Elevators/Conqueroo/Jomo Disaster (Lights)
Electric Grandmother Presents
Electric Grandmother was a production company that preceded Vulcan Gas.

February 10, 1967 City Coliseum, Austin, TX 13th Floor Elevators/Conqueroo
Electric Grandmother Presents

February 18, 1967 Houston Music Theater, Houston, TX 13th Floor Elevators/Conqueroo/Jomo Disaster
Electric Grandmother Presents

April 22, 1967 Doris Miller Auditorium, Austin, TX Conqueroo/Rachel’s Children
Vulcan Gas Company Presents

May 6, 1967 Doris Miller Auditorium, Austin, TX Conqueroo/Rachel’s Children
Vulcan Gas Company Presents

September 24, 1967 “Love-In”, Zilker Park, Austin, TX Shiva’s Headband/Thingies/Circus Maximus/Conqueroo/Black Lace
Vulcan Gas Company was among the promoters

October 27-28, 1967 Vulcan Gas Company, Austin, TX Conqueroo/Shiva’s Headband
The first Vulcan Gas show at 316 Congress, with a poster by Gilbert Shelton (later of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers). All shows from here on were at 316 Congress Avenue unless otherwise events.

November 3-4, 1967 13th Floor Elevators/Conqueroo/Shiva’s Head Band

November 10-11, 1967 Conqueroo/Swiss Movement

November 17-18, 1967 Thingies/South Canadian Overlflow/Shiva’s Head Band

November 24-25, 1967 Thingies/Golden Dawn

December 1-2, 1967 Lightnin Hopkins/Conqueroo

December 8-9-10, 1967 13th Floor Elevators/Shiva’s Headband/Swiss Movement/South Canadian Overflow

December 15-16, 1967 Shiva’s Headband/Lost and Found

December 17, 1967 Conqueroo/Shiva’s Head Band

December 22-23, 30-31, 1967 Conqueroo/Afro Caravan/Golden Dawn/Shiva’s Head Band

Open Letter to Charly Records - by Mike

2011-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings, over the past few years, Charly Records in conjunction with Paul Drummond, a self-acclaimed "author", have seen fit to re-release music from the old International Artists catalog of recordings. In this endeavor, it is all but certain you have made a great deal of money from these recordings, with little or, no, investment.

A few days ago, a member of the 13th Floor Elevators contacted our Group and informed us you have not paid royalties to him or, to other artists involved in your re-releases.

In this, "Charly" and, Paul Drummond, I have a challenge for you: Take the profits from your quasi-legitimate re-releases and set up a fund to pay the artists a fair fee for their work!

Instead of heading over to the "Pub" to impress women with dubious claims of "Record Barron" or "Author", set aside funds to reimburse the members of the bands you have flagrantly exploited for your own capital and, personal gains.

In resurrecting the name "International Artists" and stamping "your" releases with this title, you have also resuscitated the legendary reputation for greed, manipulation and graft endured by these artists through your disdain for their creative process.

In short, you are abusive and, dishonorable.

But, you can change this... You can step up, pick up your pen and send these artists their just dues. After 40 plus years, they deserve more than your abject disrespect...

Michael

OMIGOD! Read the conversation thread about this on the Texas Psych Google Group!
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/texas-p/wFJA9qijb6U

Another Message from John Ike Walton

2011-09-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

JOHN IKE WALTON SENT ME THIS TODAY:

Thanks for the post everyone should know Internationalartistsrecords.com is the worlds biggest rip off record company ever. The old one from Houston and the one in England don't believe musicians should ever be paid for their works. They somehow believe stealing is OK.

Columbia contacted our manager when we were playing the Avalon in 1967 and they wanted to sign us but International Artists would not have let us go. Capitol also contacted Steve Tolin our manager. He went to work as Dick Clark's PR rep. and left us because Roky was beginning to freak out from all the crystal meth Tommy was keeping him on. That’s Right folks the 13th floor elevators except Ronnie and I, thought they were taking LSD but Tommy was representing crystal meth as LSD to Roky and Stacy. I saw he had crystal meth and wouldn't take it. That's why Tommy ruled Roky and Stacy's brains. Sad but true. JIW

Any thing else you would like to know? By the way Roky totally wrote Splash 1. I was sitting on the sofa when he first played it for Clementine and I. She so got Tommy to have her name put on the album as author of Splash 1. She is such a bandit just like her Idiot husband Tommy. Tommy was the only one of us that got money to keep going from IA to keep them recording for those thieves. Enough said for now To Be continued. Remember kids don't buy from Internationalartistsrecords.com; the bands are getting the shaft. JIW

Kiloh, thanks for the support. Let's bring IA down. Fuck the British Record THIEVES!

DON'T BUY CHARLY / NEW INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS!

2011-09-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just got this message from former 13th Floor Elevators' Drummer - John Ike Walton:

"Spread the word not to buy products from www.Internationalartistsrecords.com the bands are not getting paid royalties."

Well... that pretty much says it all about Charly and the "new" International Artists. They fucking suck and they are still up to the same crooked shit that they have always been up to. And their reissues suck too! Compressed garbage.

Click the "Charly" label at the bottom of this post to get the unique URL for this blog post. Use the Facebook and Twitter buttons too! Spread this around! Post this on other groups!

The Black Angels Rock the Kanrocksas Music Festival

2011-08-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

Although the daze of the sixties mega festivals (Woodstock, Isle of Wight, Texas Pop) are gone, big music festivals are not merely an element of the past. As shown by the popularity of the more current festivals like ACLU, Lolapalooza and Coachella, mega festival music in the USA is alive and kicking. Another soon-to-be behemoth, The Kanrocksas Music Festival, touched down on the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan. on Aug. 5 and 6. The event featured headliners Muse and Eminem in addition to more than thirty other acts including the Black Angels, Cudi, Flogging Molly and A Perfect Circle.

With five different stages, there was hardly a moment in which there were less than two artists performing at once during the whole two-day festival. Stages included the “Critical Mass Tent” which featured smaller audiences for a more intimate event with performers like Tempah and other deejays.

Despite being named for its location, Kanrocksas boasted attendees from all over the USA as well as Canada, Australia and Ireland, according to officials associated with the event. Others attendees from out of the area included a representative from Kicker Audio, Connor Schuman. Kicker Audio is a division of Stillwater Designs.

“I suggested that it would be really beneficial to go to somewhere like Kanrocksas where college students and audiophiles are running around,” Schuman said, “There are music lovers of all age at Kanrocksas and these are people who might be interested in our product, since we are a performance audio company. The marketing department liked the idea,”

Austin natives The Black Angels also performed at the event, bringing a decidedly Texan flair. A press release for the band speaks to the Texan origins of their music, revealing that previous albums “Passover” and “Directions to See a Ghost” were recorded in the band’s base in Austin.

Another view of one of the previous songs:

Texas Psych Video - Danny and the Counts,

2011-08-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of blasts from the past! Some enterprising soul made some Texas Psych video for ya'll.

I can't find anything about The Sons Of Barbee Doll - Psychedelic Seat other than it was recorded in 1967. It sounds like a novelty record almost. At the bottom of this post is a higher quality MP3.

Danny and the Counts hailed from El Paso, Texas. Both songs were written by Danny Para and have been compiled on an old Eva comp from the 80s called Texas Punk From The 60s Volume 2.

line-up:
Danny Parra (lead guitar/lead vocals)
Eric Huereque (bass/background vocals)
Javier Valenzuela (rhythm guitar)
'Little' Joe (drums)
Joe (Bozo) Martinez (tambourine)

On the Garage Hangover blog is a bit of interview by "Danny", frontman Danny Parra:

Although I was indeed interested in R&B type music back in the day, it was an absolute nightmare to put together and organize a large (8-12) R&B band in El Paso that could ever hope to compete with the likes of The Night Dreamers, The Valiants, The Premiers, etc. which were all fantastic bands in that genre of music in El Paso. One summer after a dismal year of trying to pull together R&B bandmates for rehearsals and even actual gigs to perform I'd pretty much gave up the quest for a large band with a powerhouse brass section.

My interests and my best friend Eric Huereque started to notice the music trends going on in England via the Beatles and Stones, etc. Not only was their music cool and different but their groups were usually only four or five guys! Much more attainable we thought ..... so we one summer Eric and I were jamming on guitars and we noticed Eric's little brother Joe drumming in the corner of the room with a couple of yellow lead pencils .... and keeping pretty good time at that. We eventually enlisted (after much persuasion) him to try learning some basic beats for our jam sessions. Took a while but we encouraged him.

Spurred on by by his potential and the knowledge that at least we could count on him showing up for practice we realized Eric's cousin Javier Valenzuela was also an aspiring guitar player and that we might be able to recruit him if an audition proved him viable. Note that at this time the big draw of the eventual band's members was that most keys guys were Eric's family and therefore more dependable in contrast to the people we had been trying to recruit and pull together as a viable band from all walks of life and all parts of sprawling El Paso!

Somehow, after countless hours of practice (weeks, months, lifetimes it seemed sometimes) and many horrible and worse experimental gigs we started to focus more on the "English sound" and less on R&B. To make a name for ourselves with this new image and music direction was a herculean task in El Paso because we were all latinos. If you were a band with latinos it was expected that you played only R&B style music back in those days.

Up to this time we had a first record under our belt which was recorded on Steve Crosno's Frog Death label. We recorded "For Your Love" / "It's All Over" in a single live take in Steve's home without a drummer! Unbelievable! The recordings were meant to be a dry run but Crosno decided to put them on vinyl since he could promote them on KELP airwaves where he pretty much reigned as the biggest disc jockey around in those days.

Interestingly, our "For Your Love" was released at the same time the Righteous Brothers released the same song nationwide and the two records were being played back-to-back on KELP. In short order, both records made it up to number ten on KELP's top 20. KELP published a brochure listing of popular records and music events found all over town that I wish I'd kept a copy of!

Although we got some modest notoriety because of his help on KELP and numerous appearance on his TV "Crosno's Hop" show, we ultimately made it clear to him [Crosno] that we wanted to pursue the English music trends as a group and abandon R&B. He wasn't happy about this because his whole market niche was R&B .... so we had an eventual parting of the ways. We produced and recorded our next record "You Need Love" / "Ode to the Wind" using the Coronado label and our own funds.

I've seen many comments & references of people who liked our music but were not impressed by the "production" and/or "sound quality" of the tunes. Guess what? These have been very accurate statements since the songs were recorded as live single takes in a dumpy downtown El Paso recording studio for the princely sum of $75.00 (included master tape). The fee was for an hour of recording studio time with a very bored, spectacled, bald geezer that was truly bored out of his gourd during our session. Did he kick up our audio or segregate the instruments and vocals for a sweeter mix? Hell no! What you hear on those tracks was raw, one take, wham-bam-thank-you-maam sounds. We didn't know any better and the audio engineer simply didn't care squat or know any more than we did! He might've even been the janitor for all we knew.

Q. Is that you playing the lead guitar line on "You Need Love" or Javier?

It was Javier. Many have assumed over the years that the sound was a sitar but I can assure you that we didn't even know what a sitar was in those days. I recollect that he used either a small glass bottle or lipstick cover on his finger as a "slide" to get that sitar-sound you hear. The fuzztone sound was one of the few guitar effects available back then ... made trendy by the Rolling Stones on "Satisfaction".

Our tape was sent through Steve Crosno's contacts. He was a bit reluctant to help at first because we weren't following his R&B recommendation on his FrogDeath label, but he was still cool enough to get it pressed for us with Coronado.

Ironically, I am astounded and flattered that our music seems to somehow endured through other band's interpretations on their albums and through some compilation albums that you can still buy today that showcased much of the music happening in those days in Texas. There have even been some interesting video efforts (YouTube) made to fit our music. Hmmmm, wonder where that audio engineer dude ended up after all these years?

I was drafted in late 1966 (Vietnam) and ended up serving eight years serving my country (Navy) all over the world .... including London, England. Moved with family to California, worked for years as an electronics engineer. Due to a layoff (1985) re-invented and established myself as a much published fashion and beauty photographer in L.A. and authored a book "Model Mystique Unraveled" in 1995-96.

I regret that I lost touch with the band after going in the service after 1966. But I heard that Eric (bass/manager) perpetuated the band for years in spite that I was obviously missing as the frontman!

	The Sons Of Barbee Doll - Psychedelic Seat

	Found at Genius MP3 Music Search Engine

Ultra Rare Texas Psych Poster Art!

2011-07-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

How would you all like to see some REALLY RARE Texas Psych poster art? This is what the big time collectors are into up in their rarified airs! This stuff is as rare as hen’s teeth baby!

Look what we got:

A The Vulcan / Zilker Owl Love In poster. That’s about thirty-five hundred.
A Grateful Dead, Panther Hall, poster. Panther Hall was a Dallas Area place. Recently, another poster like this went for seven grand at auction.
A 13th Floor Elevators “Hand” poster and handbill! You’re looking at five grand right there.

The best part of this whole thing is that this collector is an actual human being. He’s cool and humble and interested in other people’s interest in this space who might not be at his level. You know, I’ve met so many assholes in this space over the years that, sometimes, I forget what a real human being is like.

You know, after being exposed to the Billy Alienate’s, Lama’s, Andrew Brown’s, Chris Meerbott’s and other sundry hemorrhoids in the Texas Psych Universe uhhhhh… I stuck it out (and stuck it to them too) and I discovered that there is a whole other level of COOL PEOPLE into this stuff; people like this collector, the Roky tape donor, my pal George Kinney, my pal Jerry Lightfoot, more…

Sure, the assholes are there but they are really a small part of things and they got nothing. They’re just really, really vocal about the little bit they do have. And you know what? Nobody *has* anything. It’s all part of the big, cosmic, mathematical, semantics gas bag envisioned by Tommy Hall and others. You just got to plug into it and light a match. BOOM!

It’s nice to see that this stuff exists. It’s nice to see that it’s owned by an actual human being too.

South Austin Museum of Popular Culture

2011-07-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Cool, South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, Vulcan & Armadillo Poster Exhibit.

George Kinney - A Theory of Eternal Life

2011-07-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

George Kinney - A Theory of Eternal Life

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 dancers 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.

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.

Roky and the Aliens - Roky CD Club #48 & #49 Review

2011-07-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to the three Roky and the Aliens discs and... this is some of the best material we have put out. The quality is amazing and the material is great. The material is also missing that Stu Cook polish that (I think) detracts from the LP.

Billy Miller is hardly evident; they kept their yapping dog on a leash for these sessions. We didn't have to employ the Billy-o-Meter on these tracks. The Billy-o-Meter is Roky CD Club Production identifying Billy's terrible screeching tone on the signal processing software interface. We then can "shave" it down. One day, we will eliminate it. Sure, Billy jumps in occasionally and tries to make his statement but, on these more raw tracks, that little yapping dog was kept on a leash.

Disc #48 is a collection of MP3 sourced tracks that were floating around along with a few tracks from another boot. We wanted it all gathered together. This disc sounds great but the bass signals might sound a little "boomy" on cheaper systems. Still, the sound is great.

Even though #49 is from cassette sources they are 1st gen off the masters. The quality is fantastic. Additionally, the music has a DYNAMIC RANGE because we didn't compress the shit out of the signal like Charly did with the 'Elevators masters.

With these discs one can crank up the volume without the sound becoming all brittle & harsh like the Charly discs. One can crank this up without hurting one's ears. The sound has that warmth and it's not all flat and up in your face like the Charly discs. Those Charly discs have zero dynamic range.

Roky sounds GREAT on these discs.

Be sure to grab these discs. Here are the blog posts for information on hos to grab them!

Roky CD Club #48:
http://www.texaspsychedelicrock.com/2011/07/roky-cd-club-48-roky-erickson-and.html

Roky CD Club #49:
http://www.texaspsychedelicrock.com/2011/07/roky-and-aliens-evil-one-alternate.html

Golden Dawn - It's Gonna Be A Golden Day

2011-07-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

Golden Dawn - It's Gonna Be A Golden Day

It’s Gonna Be A Golden Day

This band is not to be confused with the 90s ritual-magick band. I’m sure I’ll love them too, but (like Nirvana) they should have chosen a different name; this one has been taken since the 60s. The Golden Dawn to which I presently refer produced some of the hardest-rocking metaphysics you’ll ever hear. Texas produced some of the finest music of the era, a good deal of it emanating from the International Artists label, who had Thirteenth Floor Elevators hogging most of the glory but also preserved such true freaks as the Red Crayola for incredulous modern ears.

That would have been plenty, but they also had The Golden Dawn on the roster, who if the Elevators had never existed would have been the best psychedelic band in Texas. Perhaps in fact they were, but they only managed one album (A Power Plant in 1968) and not a very long one at that. Laboring under the shadow of the Elevators and the Crayola, their star never quite attained the ‘legendary’ luminescence of their peers--but Texas music doesn’t get any better than this. The Golden Dawn was out on as farflung a spiritual tangent as were the Elevators, yet they played much tighter rock and roll. (The Red Crayola were lightyears past either, but they ended up severing themselves from the most minimal standards of coherence to get there.)

So there’s a chunk of the playing field that the Golden Dawn will have wholly unto themselves for all eternity. And a glorious chunk it is. Their liner notes attest that they were as heavily into meditation as they were into acid (they weren’t shy about the fact they’d read a little Crowley either). Their LP (both cover and title) was as unabashed a celebration of the triumph of sacred herb as anybody could desire. One wishes more present-day bands would be as militant about it. There are things like The Chronic, but I can’t think of much from the ‘rock and roll’ bands--not the Americans at least.

There’s a thriving scene in England around Hawkwind, Bevis Frond, Gong, and a hundred other interlocking bands. Prime Minister Blair, for all his punk roots, probably won’t consider giving them their Stonehenge back (as if Maggie had ever had the right to take it away), but even if they don’t have their standing stones the freaks still have each other. In America, unfortunately, hive mentality remains on the throne. So if by chance you inhale, don’t hold your breath.

Remember that cereal commercial, filmed entirely in yellow, tawny, electric brown and orange, and featuring sunbeams glistening off of a haystack’ Some corn-pone voice would drawl, ‘It’s gonna be a gol-den day!‘ Surely there were many lovely days for this band, sneaking a toke or two behind the barn. Ah, yes, people breathed easier in them thar days...The hell they did--you don’t believe that, do you?
We’re talking Texas! In the 60s! Paranoia was one of the very emblems of hipness. If you were into any sort of chemical adventuring beyond coffee, beer or cigarettes, you were best off assuming your phone was being tapped and the FBI was following you around, because it was not at all inconceivable. And the local cops would be more than happy to pick up from the feds whatever slack there was.It was one of those historic changing-of-the-guard moments. You know what that means--you’re busted! Or at least fearful of it. Nowadays it’s hard to appreciate what a brave gesture it was for a rock band in that place and time to put it all on the line, flaunting their lifestyle choices in so provocative a manner.

These people truly were ‘outrageous’ in a way to which most moderns have forgotten even to aspire--because back then the outraging of certain authority figures over that particular set of issues could get you anything from a fractured skull to 10-to-20 years in jail. Or both. Lest we forget, in the more white-trash areas of Texas (and just about anyplace else in the country where the kids still eat lead paint chips) such a fate can easily be manufactured for you, to this very day.

If I may digress: That’s one thing nobody is ever willing to give Deadheads credit for--true grit. Punk was little more than a fashion statement after the first few years, and unlikely to get you more than a lot of dirty looks, but Deadheads (especially in the years before their MTV coronation as a ‘valid’ subculture) had guts. Year after year they’d go out on tour, knowing full well that they were sitting ducks for every narc within 500 miles of the show who was too lazy or chickenshit to earn a badge doing real policework and picked upon lamblike suburban tie-dyes for the crime of flaunting themselves in front of somebody else’s parents instead. (Fun Facts To Know And Tell: During WWII, the theme song of the Bulgarian resistance was entitled ‘He Falls In the Battle For Our Freedom.’ I’m not even Bulgarian, and yet it comes to mind.)

What does all this have to do with the Golden Dawn’ What, you mean the G.D. initials aren’t enough‘..welllllll... The only parallel in recent times that I can draw to the atmosphere of young Texas in the late 60s is that of Deadheads in the early 90s being thrown in jail for nothing more or worse than their chemical preferences. (Which is going to be the next cultural war, after we win the one for freedom in our sexual preferences. Sign up now. We’re gonna need something to keep us entertained in our old age.) Anyway...I ramble ridiculously, but the fact remains that The Golden Dawn were Texas kids who were into peace, pot and microdot, as well as meditation and various metaphysical practices...and while they never were as persecuted so publicly and spectacularly as the Elevators, they lived and breathed and did their very best to practice their peace-and-love in a poisonous, rednecked, hate-filled environment not of their making, which is why they played their rock and roll with a viciousness that the Dead Kennedys or Fear never had a prayer of attempting.

Which is not to say that the latter bands weren’t louder or more raucous overall, but when all is said and done, they were merely doing what was expected of them. When the Golden Dawn were doing their thing nobody had ever heard it before, and there was no niche that had already been carved out in society for them. Nowadays you can go to the mall and the New Age boutique is right next to the body-piercing cubicle, but people back then were obliged to make everything up as they went along.

This is why the freaks of the 60s were the freaks of the century. There are modes of expression developed by latter generations that were inconceivable during the Summer of Love, but the only reason there was a possibility for such things was that the 70s and 80s kids stood on the shoulders of giants. One could say that there would have been no hippies had it not been for Elvis on the one hand and the beatniks on the other--but the hippies didn’t feel any particular debt to either, nor was there any trace of the kill-the-father hostility that the hippies ultimately inspired. Which is the other thing the punks owed to the hippies--a context.

Johnny Rotten used to parade around in a homemade, self-mutilated ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ t-shirt. I’ve never lost any sleep over that, but it begs the question: what would Johnny have been had there never been a Pink Floyd to hate’ Precious little--a Teddy Boy with bad teeth, muttering to himself about life on the dole. Since killing-the-father is what punk is all about, one couldn’t have expected anyone to admit it at the time, but now that ‘punk’ is synonymous with Boring Old Fart it’s long overdue that somebody ought to ‘fess up.

It’s not likely to happen, and I guess it doesn’t matter. As far as the ‘ber-society is concerned, ‘punk’ and ‘hippie’ both are synonymous with Loser, and people should be distracted from making any finer distinctions, much less researching the question for themselves. But if you care to, A Power Plant (their only album--the French liner notes bemoan the fact as much as I do), was released on CD in 1992 and can be located without too much difficulty. It’s the crappy French reissue label, Eva, but that’s infinitely preferable to the crappy American reissue label, Collectables.

You will find it to be one of the most simultaneously enlightened and pissed-off records you will ever hear. For all the snarling rock and roll tunes (‘Evolution,’ ‘Starvation,’ ‘I’ll Be Around) on it, there are also beautiful mellow numbers that nonetheless have an edge to them. There’s even one midtempo tune that sounds like the Monkees. No matter. The rock and roll on this record kicks and growls and leaves tooth-marks on your aura even as it elevates your consciousness. $26’ Cheap at twice the price. Buy!

Steve Czapala