Music of Texas - Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelic Rock

The Psychedelic rock movement has deep roots in Texas. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators were an American rock band from Austin, Texas formed by guitarist and vocalist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall, and guitarist Stacy Sutherland, which existed from 1965 to 1969. During their career, the band released four LPs and seven 45s for the International Artists record label. Bubble Puppy was formed in 1966 in San Antonio, Texas by Rod Prince and Roy Cox. The name "Bubble Puppy" was taken from "Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy", a fictitious children's game in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Bubble Puppy's live debut was as the opening act for The Who in San Antonio. The Sherwoods were a Corpus Christi quintet that was popular from 1968–1969 and made two 45s on Smash records in 1969. They were a psychedelic pop group, paterened after the Moving Sidewalks (featuring Billy Gibbons) and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Red Krayola and Golden Dawn carried the genre into the 1970s, but as George Kinney of The Golden Dawn said, "when the whole Elevator/Golden Dawn mystique was gone forever, at least as an actual presence on the Austin music scene. It all disappeared like a mysterious dream of super substantial reality, like the shadows of a once and future dawn." The front man of Red Krayola, Mayo Thompson made a respectable career as a producer of some of the underground’s biggest names― Pere Ubu, Primal Scream, the Fall, Raincoats, and Scritti Politti to name a few. In the 1990s the significant influence shown by notable rock pioneer Roky Erickson was honored in the 1990 Warner Brothers release of Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, on which various rockers recorded his songs. The Black Angels from Austin formed in May 2004, the band's name derives from the Velvet Underground song "The Black Angel's Death Song". In 2005, the Black Angels were featured on a dual-disc compilation album of psychedelic music called Psychedelica Vol.1 from Northern Star Records. On Friday, August 5, 2007, they played at Lollapalooza in Chicago. Smoke and Feathers began in Austin, TX in 2007, formed by Hunter Cahalan and Josh Terry, both possessing unique singing and guitar techniques along with bassist Alan Houston. Austin Psych Fest was founded in 2008 by members of the psychedelic music scene, The Reverberation Appreciation Society, to honor the legacy of Austin's musical history, as the birthplace of psychadelic rock through the creation of a music and multimedia art festival.