Moving Sidewalks With Billy Gibbons

There must be something in the water — or the beer — in Texas that caused the huge eruption of garage bands and psychedelic bands in the mid-1960s, because there sure were a lot of them, and their records on obscure labels have kept collectors busy for decades. Most of them were amateurs, but the Coachmen, who came together around 1964, were different.

Billy Gibbons had grown up in Houston as the son of top society orchestra leader Fred Gibbons, and had watched his father deal with getting and playing jobs, and with musicians. By the time Billy was 14, he'd put together a band, the Saints, to try to play the blues he heard on Houston's black station, KCOH.

The song "99th Floor" was their rave-up number, but nothing happened to the tape, and the band broke up. Drummer Dan Mitchell stuck with Billy, though, and a new band, the Moving Sidewalks, emerged. Their approach was different: They'd been listening to English bands and the few recordings leaking out of San Francisco. Then the biggest surprise of all: From Austin, virtually next door, came a band called the 13th Floor Elevators who were not only writing and performing top-quality material, but also had been playing the ballrooms in San Francisco as equals to the local bands there. That just made Billy set his sights higher for the Moving Sidewalks, and early in 1967, they recorded a new version of "99th Floor" (above).

NPR's Terry Gross of Fresh Air recently produced a show on the Moving Sidewalks. It can be heard HERE