Vintage ZZ Top Artwork and Houston's Hippie Past

By Chris Gray Wed., Jul. 15 2009 at 4:15 PM

Categories: Art Rock, Catfish Reef, Only In Houston, Playbill

scarletdukes

Can you guess which one is Billy Gibbons?

Chris Gray

What goes around comes around. The same week ZZ Top is playing The Woodlands (which you may have read about on Rocks Off once or twice this week), the Buffalo Bayou Partnership announced it's renovating the International Coffee Building (right), site of legendary if fuzzily remembered psych-rock club Love Street Light Circus. Along with joints like Liberty Hall, Catacombs, the Old Quarter and Of Our Own, Love Street was a cornerstone of the Houston music scene in the late '60s and early '70s - the scene that birthed first the Moving Sidewalks and then ZZ Top.

A while back, Rocks Off No. 2 stumbled across the Flickr pool of one "scarletdukes," which contains almost 150 examples of vintage Houston hippieland artwork that will totally blow your mind, man - flyers, handbills, underground rags like Space City News. There's ads for the Family Hand restaurant, KAUM-FM, the Mr. Fantasy clothing store and head shops like the Grass Hut (which was at 1200 W. Alabama, if you're curious). The ZZ Top stuff Rocks Off pulled is just a tiny representation. This stuff really belongs in a museum somewhere.