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Psychedelic Rock

Dallas-born, 13th Floor Elevators

Roky Erickson

Roger Kynard Erickson was born in Dallas on 15 July 1947. In late 1965, aged 18, he co-founded the 13th Floor Elevators, who made The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in 1966 and Easter Everywhere in 1967. After a 1968 breakdown he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Arrested in Austin in 1969 for a single joint, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was held at Rusk State Hospital until 1972. He came back with the Aliens and The Evil One in 1981. R.E.M. and ZZ Top saluted him on the 1990 tribute Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, and in 2010 he made True Love Cast Out All Evil with Okkervil River. He died in Austin on 31 May 2019, aged 71.

Gary Ramon's band, since 1990

Sun Dial

Sun Dial is a British psychedelic rock band formed in 1990 by Gary Ramon, its frontman and main creative force. His earlier group, The Modern Art, released two studio albums but never played live, and Ramon wanted a band that could get out and play. The debut, Other Way Out, came out on Tangerine Records in 1990. Its first run sold out on word of mouth alone, and it has since been reissued eight times. Reflecter, Libertine and Acid Yantra followed as the sound moved through space rock, acid rock and stoner rock. After an unreleased album, Kohoutek, Ramon put the band on hold to produce other artists. Sun Dial returned to the stage in 2002 and released Messages from the Mothership in 2023.

After Throbbing Gristle, 1981

Psychic TV

Psychic TV was formed in 1981 by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and songwriter Alex Fergusson after Throbbing Gristle split, with the magical order Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth running alongside it. Force the Hand of Chance came out on Some Bizzare in 1982. On Dreams Less Sweet in 1983, Peter Christopherson and John Balance tried experiments that pointed toward their later work as Coil. From 1986 the plan was to release a live album on the 23rd of each month for 23 months. They stopped after 17, but still earned a Guinness entry for most recordings. Jack the Tab in 1988 helped pioneer acid house. They split in 1999, came back as PTV3 in 2003, and ended when P-Orridge died in New York City on 14 March 2020, aged 70.

Hawaii, private press, 1979

Howard Nishioka

Howard Nishioka's only album, Street Songs, came out privately in relatively small numbers in 1979 on the Otaro label, and it is now a prized piece of Hawaiian psychedelia. Nishioka wrote and produced it, played acoustic, electric and bass guitar, and sang on a couple of the songs. Drummer Byron Kitkowsky joins him on two of the long pieces. Engineer Richard Kon co-produced, supplied the concept and liner notes, and added washboard. The sleeve carries a dedication under every title: to bar bands, island people, sailors and fishermen, and to San Francisco's streets and dogs. The nine tracks drift from calm acoustic picking to electric space solos. It was reissued on CD in South Korea in 2011 and in Japan in 2012.

Munich, 1968 — a commune splits

Amon Düül II

Amon Düül started in 1967 as a political commune in Munich, and for a while it wasn't a band at all. Then an ideological split at Germany's first underground festival, in September 1968, sent one faction off as the original, free-form act and the other, tighter and stranger, as Amon Düül II. Their 1969 debut, Phallus Dei, had Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz, the band's only woman, among its singers, and it is widely credited as a founding document of krautrock.

The Collection