‘Feed Your Head’ on April Fool’s Day:
Legendary Austin Bands at Rag Blog Bash
Go to the Facebook “Feed Your Head!” event page.
“Old Skool” will be in session on April Fool’s Day at Jovita’s in Austin, when The Rag Blog and Rag Radio invite you to “Feed Your Head.” A big slice of Austin music history will be on display at the event, which will feature performances by Shiva’s Headband, Greezy Wheels, and Jesse Sublett.
The event, scheduled for 6-9 p.m., April 1, at Jovita’s, 1619 S. First St. in Austin, will benefit The Rag Blog, an Austin-based progressive Internet news magazine, and Rag Radio, a weekly public affairs program broadcast on Austin’s KOOP 91.7-FM and hosted by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer. The Rag Blog and Rag Radio trace their roots to Austin’s legendary underground newspaper, The Rag, which was published from 1966-1977 with Dreyer as its original editor.
Psychedelic rockers Shiva’s Headband, founded in 1967 by Spencer Perskin, a classically trained violinist, was the house band at Austin’s Vulcan Gas Company, and was the first group to perform at Austin’s iconic Armadillo World Headquarters. Their album, Take Me to the Mountains, was the first nationally released album by an Austin rock band.
Pioneers of the “progressive country” movement in the 1970s, Greezy Wheels was for years the unofficial house band at the Armadillo. Guitarist and writer Cleve Hattersley and “fiddler extraordinaire” Mary Hattersley, led the group that, according to the Austin Chronicle’s Margaret Moser, “owned Austin” in the mid-70s.
Bassist Jesse Sublett -– also a mystery writer and artist — founded Austin’s legendary alt-punk band, The Skunks, which debuted at Austin’s Raul’s in 1978, and Sublett continued to be a mainstay on the Austin music scene.
A poster for the event, designed by James Retherford, features original art by Austin surrealist artist Jim Franklin, who, as house artist at the Armadillo World Headquarters, helped turn the lowly armadillo into an internationally recognized symbol for the Texas counterculture and whose artwork graced the landmark Shiva’s album, Take Me to the Mountains.
Proceeds from the event benefit the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that publishes The Rag Blog and produces Rag Radio. Suggested donation is $10. Limited edition Jim Franklin posters and special Rag Blog t-shirts will be available. Jovita’s has a full bar and food menu.
The Rag Blog, founded in 2006 after a reunion of staffers from the original Rag, has become a force in the progressive blogosphere and receives 50,000 unique visits a month. Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews with newsmakers, artists, and leading thinkers. Broadcast Fridays from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, it is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) by WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA, and also streams live, with a widespread internet audience.
