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The Moving Sidewalks — Flash (Reissue)
(Bandcamp RockBeat 3451, 1969/2022, CD / LP / DL)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2022-05-17

Flash (Reissue) Cover art

In Houston, Texas, back in the late 60s there was a psychedelic garage quartet called The Moving Sidewalks, inspired by Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Their sole full-length album, Flash, was released in 1969 by a small Houston record label Tantara Records. Today the original album is a collector’s item worth a lot of money, primarily because the band featured singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons and drummer Dan Mitchell, who went on to form ZZ Top that same year. Other band members on Flash were bassist Don Summers, keyboardist Tom Moore, and multi-instrumentalist Isaac Costa. What is cool about this proto-ZZ Top album is that Billy Gibbons’ signature blues guitar style and gritty vocala are quite evident on a number of the songs, especially the nearly 8-minute “Joe Blues” and “No Good to Cry.” As The Moving Sidewalks were just finding their musical feet, shall we say, they pulled together a lot of influences from late a variety of 60s bands such as Steppenwolf, The Amboy Dukes, Iron Butterfly, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, and Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. In fact, they were probably smoking too much of that loco weed while listening to Zappa when they decided to start twiddling the knobs and reversing the tapes in the studio on “Eclipse” and “Reclipse,” two experimental freakouts that closed the original album. For this reissue, Liberation Hall decided to include the non-LP bonus single “99th Floor,” pure 60s psych garage rock with heavy organ. Flash is more than just a snapshot in time, it is an album that still sounds great today.

Filed under: Reissues, 2022 releases, 1969 recordings

Related artist(s): The Moving Sidewalks

More info
http://movingsidewalks.bandcamp.com/album/flash

 

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