This afternoon, the Austin City Council approved the naming of Doug Sahm Hill, situated a few blocks from the former site of the Armadillo World Headquarters. It's worth noting that the hill (captured in Google Street View above) is the highest point in the lovely new Town Lake Park. Awesome.
Sir Douglas Quintet +2 = Honkey Blues - 1968
The consistency of the output of Doug Sahm and his Sir Douglas Quintet was worth betting the homestead on back in his heyday of the late 1960s and 70s, but it's only through the benefit of hindsight that one can appreciate the giant curve ball he threw with the release of the Quartet's first album. Sure, it's loaded with a heavy Tejano influence, an occasional shout out to the folks back in San Antonio, and his usual melange of styles and influences, but the overwhelmingly psychedelic nature of the album is the what makes Honkey Blues such a treat and a complete anomaly in the Doug Sahm canon. It's also worth noting that the LP is one of his few without the wheezing Vox Continental of longtime cohort Augie Meyers. The tunes here, as strong as any in Sahm's repertoire, are drenched in reverb, linked in reverse tape effects and patched together using such bizarre editing that the result is an album that is remarkable for inducing such an aural trip between the ears of its listener rather than one that sounds like the band were simply out of their heads when recording it. A tremendous listening experience and one of the great underappreciated psychedelic LPs of all time.
The consistency of the output of Doug Sahm and his Sir Douglas Quintet was worth betting the homestead on back in his heyday of the late 1960s and 70s, but it's only through the benefit of hindsight that one can appreciate the giant curve ball he threw with the release of the Quartet's first album. Sure, it's loaded with a heavy Tejano influence, an occasional shout out to the folks back in San Antonio, and his usual melange of styles and influences, but the overwhelmingly psychedelic nature of the album is the what makes Honkey Blues such a treat and a complete anomaly in the Doug Sahm canon. It's also worth noting that the LP is one of his few without the wheezing Vox Continental of longtime cohort Augie Meyers. The tunes here, as strong as any in Sahm's repertoire, are drenched in reverb, linked in reverse tape effects and patched together using such bizarre editing that the result is an album that is remarkable for inducing such an aural trip between the ears of its listener rather than one that sounds like the band were simply out of their heads when recording it. A tremendous listening experience and one of the great underappreciated psychedelic LPs of all time.
