some favorite links inspired by this week's playlist

I. Older psychedelic sounds - re-imaginings and the real thing:

VietNam's new nostalgia
At the core of this now Brooklyn-based (via Philadelphia) band are two musicians from Austin, lead singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist Michael William (Michael Gerner) and lead guitarist Joshua Garrett (Joshua Grubb), whose original incarnation of the band formed in New York in 2000 before they moved back to Austin for a while. This catchy, classic rock album for moderns, their first full-length recording, was released in January. It includes Mike Foss on drums, another friend from Austin who was turned on to the band in their Philly days when he saw them play in New York. Although by no means a carbon copy of past eras, their music recalls the heavy side of 1969 as the spacey, psychedelic guitar transports us through a hanging bead door into a blacklight-bathed inner sanctum where Dylan, Reed, and Lennon front the bluesy rock of Moby Grape. And what's this, Phil Spector's wall of sound snagged from behind the Righteous Brothers?
Here's a slew of links that will keep you happily occupied for some time:
[website] [myspace, including video and links to limited edition vinyl] [guitar details & best bio I've seen of the band (& a cool video, to boot)] [the big crash and burn in San Francisco] [record label band site, including video links] [Memphis interview] [Daily Texan interview/article]

Turning on a new culture & preserving an old one: Austin's musical magi of the '60s bear gifts for the world (The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Powell St. John, Janis Joplin, and Tary Owens)
On today's show we featured the Elevators' "Tried to Hide" (whose inspiration is described below), the January 1966 B-side to their first single and biggest hit, "You're Gonna Miss Me," and found here on a 2001 CD compilation from the British psychedelia and garage label Past & Present. The tune was apparently transferred from a vinyl copy of the album released on the American label White Rabbit in 1983. The original 1966 release has been described as a non-album B-side, but since the song also appears on the first Elevators album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, perhaps it's a different version.
There is very little I can add to the legend and literature of this band. You can find tons of material on the web and in bookstores, but I have included below a few choice, fascinating links. For neophytes, this band was at the heart and front of the psychedelic rock movement (which was fed in large part by the bounty of Austin transplants to San Francisco), and, in fact, was the first act to use 'psychedelic' as a musical description. Singer Roky Erickson still lives here in his hometown of Austin, and has had a major personal and musical resurgence in the past few years.
Other key players in Texas music who would join the fertile Austin-to-Frisco migration included a trio of musicians steeped in the old blues and folk of earlier generations. Janis Joplin and Powell St. John honed their singing and playing of these tunes in their band the Waller Creek Boys, part of the Threadgill's music scene on North Lamar (then at the far north edge of Austin), while Joplin's high school bud Tary Owens, following in the world-renowned tradition of the Lomax family, began to record and archive the music of the old bluesmen of Texas with a grant obtained through the help of famed folklorist Dr. Americo Paredes of the University of Texas. St. John and Joplin would become world leaders in fusing those old sounds into the psychedelic hippie culture with her wild and primitive electric blues and blues-rock and his songwriting for both Joplin and the Elevators, as well as his formation of the classic San Francisco band Mother Earth (with its own blues belter, Tracy Nelson, and its own versions of St. John's psychedelic classics like "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You").
Genesis of the Elevators' song "Tried to Hide" - According to the Allan Vorda interviews referenced below, here is how this song came about:
"[interviewer]: The liner notes to "Tried to Hide" state it was written about those people who "for the sake of appearances take on the superficial aspects of the quest." Huh?
[Powell St. John]: As I understand it, it's about those who pretend to be hip, those that try to fake it. Not long after the Elevators formed an incident took place that [Elevators' band leader] Tommy [Hall] said later was one of his inspirations for this song. One afternoon I was approached by a kid named Sally Mann who was around the scene. She is the same Sally Mann who later was featured in Rolling Stone magazine's famous groupie issue. At the time of that publication she was living with the Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco, but she was on the scene in Austin well before that. She knew that I knew Roky and that I knew where he lived. She asked me to take her there on the pretext of giving him something. I didn't ask what it was and so in the interest of helping two deserving young people I took her to Roky's apartment. Roky wasn't in as it happened so I left Sally and went on home. I heard later from a slightly irritated Tommy that he and [his wife] Clementine had come in later bringing Roky home to his place from one of his first acid trips and who should they find in Roky's bed but Goldilocks herself: Sally Mann---bummer. Tommy was irritated because, as he saw it, this was a disruptive incident and it didn't fit the kind of LSD experience he was trying to provide for Roky. And so, according to Tommy, "Tried to Hide" was written with that incident in mind for all the Sally Mann's of the world. I know I left the girl at Roky's apartment; beyond that I don't know how much of the story is true. I was just following The Golden Rule."
Note that Danny Thomas, in the audio monologue referenced below, ascribes this tune to Stacy Sutherland of the band.
Drop these on your tongue:
[13th Floor Elevators' myspace] [psychedelic rock in Austin, including interviews with Powell St. John and Elevators bassist Ronnie Leatherman, & monologue from Elevators drummer Danny Thomas (audio, giving the story behind the tunes on the Bull of the Woods album as they play in the background, and answering a list of written questions)]
[Allan Vorda interviews: Click here for the most amazing and personal account of the Elevators and their scene that I have ever read - compiled from interviews from 1981 through 1992 with members and friends of the band, including Clementine Hall and giants of Austin music, Tary Owens (profiled in this heart-wrenching story) and Powell St. John (YouTube, myspace, website bio, Austin Chronicle feature, Austin American Statesman feature about the Threadgill's folk and country scene of which St. John and his Waller Creek Boys' bandmate, Janis Joplin, were a part).]
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II. Progeny and cross-pollinations in the Austin indie pop/rock landscape:

Spreading yellow fever
[myspace] [YouTube1] [YouTube2]
Today we played from the 2006 debut release from Yellow Fever, the minimalist indie pop band formed last year and fronted by the lowkey harmonizers Isabel Martin and Jennifer Moore. It's not surprising that some of their tunes hint at '60s girl groups since Moore, besides harmonizing with Voxtrot, is also a member of retro '60s-styled girl group The Carrots. Martin and drummer Adam Jones are former members of Robots, Please! (which made my best albums list of 2003) and several other groups that followed (a more detailed history of Yellow Fever and its antecedents can be found at Austin Sound).
Yellow Fever released Cats and Rats, its second CD, no later than July.

Sixteen Deluxe begets Hit Space
[myspace]
The alt pop/rock band Hit Space features two former members of Sixteen Deluxe (YouTube video 1, YouTube video 2), guitarist/singer Carrie Clark and bassist Jeff Copas (here's a Sixteen Deluxe webpage which looks like it hasn't been updated since the '90s, but it's the closest thing to a band site that I could find). We played "Trash" from their debut, (verb), released in December or January, although several 2007 recordings can be heard at their myspace page.

Angel in a monster movie
[myspace] [website]
Monster Movie is a London duo whose lush and dreamy pop recordings have been augmented beautifully by the vocals of Austin's Rachel Goldstar ([website], [myspace]) of Experimental Aircraft ([website], [myspace]). All Lost was released in April of last year and is one of at least two albums from the band to feature Goldstar prominently. Rachel has also been a member of Austin bands the Swells, the Black Angels, the Weirding (referenced in this 2003 Austin Chronicle article about the synth band scene), and Bees are Black, and has also recorded and performed as a solo artist. Her latest project is All in the Golden Afternoon ([myspace]).
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III. Dangling from the 'lectronic ledge:

Kosmodrome
[myspace] [website]
This is the experimental electronic duo formed by Peter Telckavich and Justin Sweatt in 2003, two musicians influenced by Russian history and imagery, and the art movements of the fluxists, dadaists, and situationists.
The album All My Space Heroes Are Dead reached our music library in April 2006. Here's how Kosmodrome describes it:
"All My Space Heroes Are Dead are the shortest single songs by Kosmodrome. We created them with the idea that maybe we needed some radio tracks. Although we wish that there was some way that a radio could play a whole Kosmodrome song. We do realize that it would be quite hard to do so because of time constraints.
These nine songs represent some edits that were done to the original song whose run time was about twenty six minutes in length."

Proem
[artist description & in-depth interview] [album description/reviews]
Proem is Richard Bailey, an electronic artist often placed under the IDM (Intelligent Digital Music) umbrella, although his music has a more melodic element than many in this genre. In fact, this piece is one of two on the CD revolving around an almost classical music piano keyboard sound. This track is from his latest of many releases, available since early this year.

Jgrzinich
[website]
Jgrzinich is John Grzinich, an experimental ambient/electronic artist from Austin who has been living in Estonia for several years now. Today we played an excerpt from "Fluid Itinerancy" from his first full-length solo album, Intimations, which was released in New Zealand in 2004. It incorporates environmental recordings made in various locations around the world, including Austin while he still lived here.
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IV. Jennifer Warnes communes at Jacob's Well in her famous blue raincoat - a thoroughly Austin story:
[website]

Famous Blue Raincoat 20th Anniversary Edition
It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since the original release of Jennifer Warnes' most acclaimed CD, Famous Blue Raincoat, which firmly established her as a leading interpreter of the songs of Leonard Cohen, a territory which Judy Collins had staked out in the '60s. The album was re-issued on August 7, remastered and with four additional tunes, three of which involve Austin artistry, including this track. I first heard "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" in 1988 on bassist Rob Wasserman's then brand-new Duets CD, and the duet on that track was Wasserman's bass and Warnes' quiet vocals [find Wasserman's website here]. The version appearing on the Famous Blue Raincoat re-release is a much fuller production arranged by none other than Austin's own Stephen Barber, keyboardist of Austin's most legendary 1970s jazz fusion band, the Electromagnets, a band which featured a very young Eric Johnson on guitar. Hidden among the instrumentalists on "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" is another well-known Austin musician, blues rocker Doyle Bramhall II (see next section) on guitar. Two of the other bonus tracks on the new version of Famous Blue Raincoat feature accompaniment from Austin's Mitch Watkins (Antones interview [scroll past Bob Schneider]), and on the nine tracks from the original album you'll find several other current or former Austinites as producers, arrangers, or musicians, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Roscoe Beck, Paul Ostermayer, and Bill Ginn. Some of these artists were also found on her following two albums, The Hunter and The Well, along with other past or current Austin musicians Eric Johnson, Doyle Bramhall (senior), David Grissom ([website], [myspace]), and Rob Meurer.

Sidetrip to Doyle Bramhall II
Bramhall ([website], [myspace]) is known for his work with the Arc Angels, his solo career, and guest spots with artists like Eric Clapton, B.B. King, and Roger Waters. Here are some interesting video excerpts of Bramhall playing at the Alamo (with the Arc Angels) and at the Great Wall of China (with Eric Clapton's highly complementary voice-over). Here's a DVD source for the Alamo concert and a listing of other internet material of interest regarding Bramhall.

The Passenger connection
In researching this feature, I learned that the story of the connection between Warnes and many of the above-named musicians began long before her collaborations in the mid-'80s on Famous Blue Raincoat, but went back to 1979 when Leonard Cohen recruited members of Austin's second-most legendary '70s jazz fusion band Passenger (which included Beck, Ginn, Ostermayer, Watkins, and drummer Steve Meador) to record on his album Recent Songs and be part of his band in the tour to promote it, roles which they have reprised for decades now (here's a link about the 2001 album of the tour with mini bios of the band members; here is a great series of backstage and on stage photos from the tour; and a rare documentary of the tour was also filmed). Warnes attended studio sessions for the recording of Recent Songs, and was a back-up singer on the tour afterwards. In fact, through the relationship that Warnes began with Passenger bassist Roscoe Beck, she moved to Austin after the '79 Cohen tour and lived here absorbing the sounds and stories of Austin's music scene until her return to L.A. in '81. She also lived in Austin during the mid-'90s while working on the music that led to her album The Well, her collaboration with Doyle Bramhall (father of Doyle Bramhall II), whose centerpiece song was inspired by the natural beauty of the spring at Wimberley's Jacob's Well near Bramhall's Wimberley home. The story of Warnes' Austin connection, especially how it led to the creation of The Well, is beautifully told in an article by Brad Buccholz (accessed from the bottom of Warnes' home page by clicking on "about the well"), and her 2002 interview with Jody Denburg covers some of the same topics.

Postscripts
Rob Meurer is now writing musical comedy with the Knack's Berton Averre!
Paul Ostermayer (scroll down here) is a respected musician and musical educator in New Jersey and New York City.