This Week in Texas Music History, Austin psychedelia finds its home.
On October 27, 1967, the psychedelic venue the Vulcan Gas Company opened in Austin. Texas stages that featured the new rock styles of the 1960s abounded, but the Vulcan may have been the first Austin venue created by the counterculture for the counterculture itself. It grew out of the Electric Grandmother production company that had been staging 13th Floor Elevators concerts around town. Elevators soundman Sandy Lockett joined Houston White, Gary Scanlon, and Don Hyde to open the Vulcan, not on Austin’s margins, but at 316 N. Congress, just down the street from the state capitol. Underground comics artist Gilbert Shelton served as the first art director, bringing the flowery San Francisco poster style to Texas, and he was succeeded by Jim Franklin, who would do so much to give those California styles a distinct Texas accent.
The initial idea was for the 13th Floor Elevators to serve as the house band, but the group was under significant strain from both legal troubles and inner turmoil. Shiva’s Headband and the Conqueroo played the October grand opening and took up the slack alongside Texas acts like the Hub City Movers, Golden Dawn, Georgetown Medical Band, and more, together with touring groups like the Velvet Underground and the Fugs and blues legends Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Mance Lipscomb. Johnny Winter recorded his first album there.
By the spring of 1970, while the music was great and culture growing, the bloom would seem to be off this particular flower power experiment. Which was unfortunate, because house group Shiva’s Headband had signed to Capitol Records and been promised money in their deal to develop other like-minded Austin acts. When the doors of the Vulcan closed, then, those funds helped to open another, as Shiva’s invested in the creation of the Vulcan’s successor, Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters.
Shiva’s Headband, “Kaleidescoptic”
Sources:
Paul Drummond. Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound. Los Angeles: Process Media, 2007.
Eddie Wilson with Jesse Sublett. Armadillo World Headquarters. Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2019.
Media:
Dirt Road to Psychedelia Trailer
Barry Underhill, Vulcan Gas Company: A Cultural Utility on PBS
