Ed. Note: Austin Psych Fest brought the weirdos to the state capitol this weekend for sets by big legends like The Moving Sidewalks and small ones like Silver Apples. Our friends at DC9 at Night in Dallas, writer Jesse Hughey and photographer Tracie Louck, were there to brave the mud and reverb to bring you these dispatches.

Photos by Tracie Louck

Friday
The sun setting over the Saharan desert music of Tinariwen marked for me the first moment that Austin Psych Fest truly felt like we were somewhere else completely. Tie-dyed kids, a guy in a curious mirror-and-disco-ball-bedazzled pink getup and the usual festival dirtbags in black concert tees swayed and spun to the hypnotic Malian African blues unwinding from the band's hand drums and acoustic guitars.

Before that, Besnard Lakes and Vietnam had both built up the kind of droning, reverberating rhythmic grooves that set the mood for getting a good buzz on in beautiful Texas weather. Now it felt like we were somewhere else completely.

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This weekend the Moving Sidewalks, best known as the band Billy Gibbons was in before ZZ Top formed, were once again a living, breathing, kaleidoscoping musical being. Gibbons and the other Sidewalks - Tom Moore (organ), Dan Mitchell (drums) and Don Summers (bass), all of whom still live in Texas - drew a full house to B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill near Times Square Saturday night.

If you ever wondered what a primitive ZZ Top might sound like slathered in psychedelic '60s organ, you can stop.

The psychedelia didn't stop with the trippy tunes, including covers of "Wild Thing" and Jimi Hendrix's "Red House" and "Foxy Lady." The guitar the 63-year-old Gibbons was playing featured an illuminated green blob on a screen embedded into the body.

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Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there, too. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link.

A "selecta" was originally the guy who selected the reggae vinyls from the crate and passed them along to the person playing them through the sound system.

The term has since evolved to symbolize the DJ himself. DJ Meshak has been selecting reggae, dancehall, and dub records at art shows and warehouse parties in Houston for almost a decade. Foregoing fancy mixers, headphones and computers, Meshak uses an old telephone receiver to throw down one of the realest music experiences you will ever find in Houston.

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Courtesy of Nameless Sound

L-R: Christina Carter, Heather Murray and Tom Carter in 2003

Tom Carter, guitarist for Charalambides, the influential and prolific ex-Houston avant-garde/psychedelic duo, is out of intensive care and recovering at a rehabilitation hospital in Ahrenshoop, Germany after awakening from a medically induced coma last week. Carter's bandmate and ex-wife, Christina Carter, says he could be well enough to fly back to the United States as soon as the first of next month.

Carter was on tour with Charalambides when he began feeling ill and was hospitalized in Berlin May 31. Doctors diagnosed pneumonia, but decided to put him in a coma after further complications, and he remained in the ICU for 40 days until waking up and being transferred to a rehab hospital earlier this month.

"We went there thinking they were going to say, 'Oh, you have a virus or something or the flu, here's some antibiotics,' Christina told Rocks Off from her home in Austin last week. "But [doctors] said 'No, you have to stay here. We have to observe you at least a couple of days. That's when he went really downhill and they put him into ICU that night. It was really a last-minute kind of thing."

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Photos by Marc Brubaker

Roky Erickson
Continental Club
July 14, 2012

With the arid summer of 2011 fresh in our memories, it's easy to forget that Houston's often a sweaty, swampy mess. Saturday night it was no different, having rained for a week straight.

Though the rain was done by evening, the air was thick and balmy through the night. It was heavy air, the kind that forces folks to smoke their cigarettes faster and down their beers a bit quicker, just to crisp their lips once again.

Inside the Continental Club, the atmosphere was not much different. A swath of bodies had gathered in anticipation, chattering in excitement. They knew what was coming, or at least had been roped in by a knowing friend and were appropriately expectant.

Though he might not lay claim to "household name" status, Roky Erickson is a legend: the storied godfather of psychedelic rock has legions of disciples, including fans as well as followers in his musical footsteps. The crowd assembled at the Continental featured plenty from both camps.

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Photo by hellokitty2399 via Flickr

Linus Pauling Quartet in May 2010

Five years sounds like a long time unless you're one of Texas' most nefarious stoner-rock merchants. In that case, sometimes one song can feel like five years.

Really, it's hard to believe that much time has gone by since Houston (mostly) five-piece Linus Pauling Quartet's last new album, 2007's All Things Are Light. But songs about "Bongs of Power, Monkeys in Space, D&D shit," according to an LP4 announcement Wednesday night. The new LP is called Bag of Hammers (Homeskool Recordz), so we're guessing it's going to be heavy.

"You know how every band has to have the one guy who moves things along?," says one of LP4's myriad guitarists (actually there's normally three), Ramon Medina, who also practices music journalism for Free Press Houston, Nonalignment Pact and occasionally us. "That guy may not be the smartest, the best guitarist, the best songwriter, etc. but he's the guy stupid enough to follow through on dumb ideas that shouldn't be?

"Well, while I was too busy with my personal life to really focus on the band, it appears I was that guy."

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Spurred on by the realization that both David Bowie's commercial breakthrough Let's Dance and Queen's News of the World had solid, sturdy side ones on their vinyl releases, I then began the hunt for other great vinyl slabs with amazing side ones.

Of course, the idea is that this could only include albums from the (first) great rock vinyl heyday. I am sure that Wilco and others have turned in great side ones in the past decade, but only a select few of you have heard them on vinyl.

The secret to great albums, of course, has everything to do with genius and gripping songs, plus proper sequencing and editing. And you may remember a few years back, when I attempted to cut some of most popular double slabs down to one lean collection.

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Dave Matthews Band opens new tour at Pavilion May 18

The boys are back on tour: The surviving Beach Boys are primed for a reunion jaunt

The Beach Boys, one of the most popular and celebrated bands to come out of America in the past century, announced a reunion tour this week, with Houston getting a set from Brian Wilson and the gang Friday, June 8 at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 24 at ticketmaster.com and 1-800-745-3000.

The list of Beach Boys hits and chestnuts this group could reel out over the span of a two-hour concert set is mammoth. Fresh off a Grammy telecast performance that featured new kids Foster The People and Maroon 5, the group is on a 50th anniversary victory lap, reunited for the first time decades.

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Photos by Jason Wolter

Roky Erickson
Continental Club
October 1, 2011

Roky Erickson, the godfather of Texas psychedelic music and one of the state's most beloved musical figures, has come far since his days of disabling schizophrenia and poor health. Saturday night he roared through an hour of material that spanned his entire catalog as he looked healthy and fairly at ease.
 
Blasting off with "Cold Night for Alligators," one of the anthems of the Blieb Alien years when he wrote songs about aliens, horror-film topics, or science fiction, Erickson wasted little time laying down the law of the evening: Turn it to 11 and let it rock. Hard. He immediately slashed into the edgy warning "Don't Slander Me." So much for warming up the crowd, which was with the 63 year-old Austinite note for note.

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savagesaints.blogspot.com

"The past is not dead," William Faulkner once said. "It's not even past."

Rob Landes, organist for '60s Houston psych-rockers Fever Tree, found this out a couple of years ago when he discovered some old boxes labeled "Fever Tree Live Session." Inside were some reel-to-reel tapes, but Landes couldn't remember the group ever doing a live recording. The handwriting belonged to Fever Tree's late former manager Scott Holtzman, "so I couldn't call him and ask what they were," he says.

Instead Landes, now a jazz musician, took the tapes to SugarHill Studios, where he was doing some session work. He gave them to the studio's co-owner and chief engineer Andy Bradley, who processed them and told Landes, "I think you've got something really good here."

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