The Linus Pauling Quartet
Encyclopedia
The Linus Pauling Quartet is a psychedelic rock
group which specializes in a specific subgenre known as "Texas Psych", but frequently dabbles also in Garage rock
, Stoner rock
, Punk rock
, and Heavy Metal
at various points throughout their discography. The LP4 was formed in 1994 by veterans of various local groups from the Houston and Clear Lake
areas of Texas
. Born of the same musical cauldron that birthed such renowned Texas Psych favorites as The Mike Gunn, Dry Nod, and Schlong Weasel, bands which also included later members of Charalambides
and Dunlavy, the LP4 got off the ground when guitarist Ramon Medina and bassist Stephen Finley recruited drummer Larry Liska and singer/guitarist Clinton Heider and the quartet began writing and recording songs for their first album, Immortal Chinese Classics Music, released in 1995 on their own Worship Guitars label. The album surprisingly earned considerable attention beyond their native Houston, garnering notable reviews in several music magazines such as Q Music
, Factsheet Five
, Alternative Press, Crohinga Well, and Ptolemaic Terrascope
, and featured "The Linus Theme" and "Hamburger Girl", two songs which came to define the band's early years, and which the LP4 revisited many times throughout their career.
The band's notice by Ptolemaic Terrascope was particularly helpful, as the LP4 were invited to contribute a track to the magazine's inaugural benefit compilation double-CD Succour. An all-night practice space recording session yielded not only their contribution "Dartania", which was chosen as the lead-off track on the benefit album, but also a batch of other tracks split evenly between improvisations and structured songs, which were ultimately released by German label September Gurls in 1997 as a self-titled limited edition vinyl album.
Armed with a recording contract with September Gurls, in 1996 the band added analog synthesizer player Flip Osman and saxophonist/guitarist/singer Charlie Horshack, swelling their ranks and expanding their sonic palette, and this lineup released Killing You With Rock in 1998. The following year, they were featured on a split 7" vinyl single with Italian band Kryptasthesie, contributing a very rare live version of their song "Jason Bill", a tribute to the erstwhile Charalambides
guitarist.
The year 2000 was an active year for the Linus Pauling Quartet: they were invited to Seattle, Washington, to play at the fourth Terrastock
psychedelic music festival alongside such musical luminaries as Bardo Pond
, Moe Tucker
, and Ghost; and they released Ashes in the Bong of God, a "concept album
" related to their ongoing saga of the "bongs of power", alien "bug people," and "the Great Singularity," issued on double vinyl in Europe through the September Gurls label and on CD in the United States through the Fleece label. It was also during this time that Flip Osman left Houston and the band added keyboardist and photo-theremin player Carol Sandin Kelly to the group, though both members were present at the band's appearance at Terrastock IV.
The LP4 contributed a notable version of Syd Barrett's
song "Vegetable Man" to The Vegetable Man Project, a compilation of wildly disparate covers of that song released by Italian label Oggetti Volanti Non Identificati in 2002.
In 2003 the band released their final offering on the September Gurls label: C6H8O6, a massive
slab of psych-rock showing the full range of the band's abilities, including MC5-esque garage rock, a psychedelic depiction of airplanes falling out of the sky, songs about bongs, a song about eating Mexican food with Satan, and a lush psych-rock cover of Kraftwerk's
"Hall of Mirrors".
The band appeared at showcases at Austin's
South by Southwest
festival in 2004, 2005, and 2008. Otherwise, the next few years were outwardly quiet for the LP4, but they were hard at work recording a large cache of material which would go on to comprise much of their subsequent two albums, and continuing to compose more material for future releases, intermittently taking breaks to play shows in their native Houston. All Things Are Light, self-released in conjunction with Camera Obscura
on purple vinyl and made up primarily of some of the band's heaviest music to date, garnered a considerable number of positive reviews upon its release in December 2007. On the heels of this release, the band was again invited to perform at Terrastock
in June 2008, this time in Louisville, Kentucky, resulting in one of their most memorable shows, playing alongside such notable psychedelic groups as MV & EE, Robert Schneider's
Thee American Revolution, Damon & Naomi, and Kawabata Makoto
.
2010 saw the band release a 7" vinyl split single with Austin sister-band ST 37; ST 37 contributed a cover of Helios Creed's
"Lactating Purple", while the Linus Pauling Quartet debuted their original piece "Monster". Only months later the band released Horns of Ammon, an album of songs primarily dating back to 2003-2005, released on Homeskool Records; it included the single "Monster", as well as the biker anthem "HAWG!!!", previously released as a single through the extremely limited-edition Grey Ghost series in Houston. Though the album was essentially an "odds and sods" release, documenting a set of more melodic and textural music than appeared on the other "official" albums contemporaneously released, it received largely positive reviews. The band is currently in the studio preparing their next release, the double LP tentatively titled Bag of Hammers.
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
group which specializes in a specific subgenre known as "Texas Psych", but frequently dabbles also in Garage rock
Garage rock
Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name...
, Stoner rock
Stoner rock
Stoner rock or stoner metal is a subgenre of heavy metal, combining elements of psychedelic rock, blues rock, traditional heavy metal and doom metal. Stoner rock is typically slow-to-mid tempo and features a bass-heavy sound, melodic vocals, and 'retro' production...
, Punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, and Heavy Metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
at various points throughout their discography. The LP4 was formed in 1994 by veterans of various local groups from the Houston and Clear Lake
Clear Lake City (Greater Houston)
Clear Lake City is a master-planned community located in southeast Harris County, Texas, within the Bay Area of Greater Houston. It is the second-largest master-planned community in Houston — behind Kingwood...
areas of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. Born of the same musical cauldron that birthed such renowned Texas Psych favorites as The Mike Gunn, Dry Nod, and Schlong Weasel, bands which also included later members of Charalambides
Charalambides
Charalambides is an avant garde musical group originally from Houston, Texas, USA and lately of Austin, Texas. Formed in 1991 by Tom Carter, Christina Carter and Kyle Silfer, they have followed in the footsteps of other Texas psychedelic music artists such as the 13th Floor Elevators, Red Crayola,...
and Dunlavy, the LP4 got off the ground when guitarist Ramon Medina and bassist Stephen Finley recruited drummer Larry Liska and singer/guitarist Clinton Heider and the quartet began writing and recording songs for their first album, Immortal Chinese Classics Music, released in 1995 on their own Worship Guitars label. The album surprisingly earned considerable attention beyond their native Houston, garnering notable reviews in several music magazines such as Q Music
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
, Factsheet Five
Factsheet Five
Factsheet Five was a periodical mostly consisting of short reviews of privately produced printed matter along with contact details of the editors and publishers....
, Alternative Press, Crohinga Well, and Ptolemaic Terrascope
Ptolemaic Terrascope
Ptolemaic Terrascope is a magazine covering old and new music, usually of a psychedelic nature. It has been published irregularly since 1989...
, and featured "The Linus Theme" and "Hamburger Girl", two songs which came to define the band's early years, and which the LP4 revisited many times throughout their career.
The band's notice by Ptolemaic Terrascope was particularly helpful, as the LP4 were invited to contribute a track to the magazine's inaugural benefit compilation double-CD Succour. An all-night practice space recording session yielded not only their contribution "Dartania", which was chosen as the lead-off track on the benefit album, but also a batch of other tracks split evenly between improvisations and structured songs, which were ultimately released by German label September Gurls in 1997 as a self-titled limited edition vinyl album.
Armed with a recording contract with September Gurls, in 1996 the band added analog synthesizer player Flip Osman and saxophonist/guitarist/singer Charlie Horshack, swelling their ranks and expanding their sonic palette, and this lineup released Killing You With Rock in 1998. The following year, they were featured on a split 7" vinyl single with Italian band Kryptasthesie, contributing a very rare live version of their song "Jason Bill", a tribute to the erstwhile Charalambides
Charalambides
Charalambides is an avant garde musical group originally from Houston, Texas, USA and lately of Austin, Texas. Formed in 1991 by Tom Carter, Christina Carter and Kyle Silfer, they have followed in the footsteps of other Texas psychedelic music artists such as the 13th Floor Elevators, Red Crayola,...
guitarist.
The year 2000 was an active year for the Linus Pauling Quartet: they were invited to Seattle, Washington, to play at the fourth Terrastock
Terrastock
Terrastock is a music festival organised periodically by Phil McMullen, formerly editor of the Ptolemaic Terrascope and since 2005 the publisher of the Terrascope Online website. The event typically features independent bands playing psychedelic rock....
psychedelic music festival alongside such musical luminaries as Bardo Pond
Bardo Pond
Bardo Pond are an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1991, and who are currently signed to London based label Fire Records. The current members are Michael Gibbons , John Gibbons , Isobel Sollenberger , Clint Takeda , Jason Kourkonis , and Aaron Igler...
, Moe Tucker
Maureen Tucker
Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker is a musician best known for having been the drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground.- The Velvet Underground :...
, and Ghost; and they released Ashes in the Bong of God, a "concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
" related to their ongoing saga of the "bongs of power", alien "bug people," and "the Great Singularity," issued on double vinyl in Europe through the September Gurls label and on CD in the United States through the Fleece label. It was also during this time that Flip Osman left Houston and the band added keyboardist and photo-theremin player Carol Sandin Kelly to the group, though both members were present at the band's appearance at Terrastock IV.
The LP4 contributed a notable version of Syd Barrett's
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett , born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic...
song "Vegetable Man" to The Vegetable Man Project, a compilation of wildly disparate covers of that song released by Italian label Oggetti Volanti Non Identificati in 2002.
In 2003 the band released their final offering on the September Gurls label: C6H8O6, a massive
slab of psych-rock showing the full range of the band's abilities, including MC5-esque garage rock, a psychedelic depiction of airplanes falling out of the sky, songs about bongs, a song about eating Mexican food with Satan, and a lush psych-rock cover of Kraftwerk's
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
"Hall of Mirrors".
The band appeared at showcases at Austin's
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
South by Southwest
South by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
festival in 2004, 2005, and 2008. Otherwise, the next few years were outwardly quiet for the LP4, but they were hard at work recording a large cache of material which would go on to comprise much of their subsequent two albums, and continuing to compose more material for future releases, intermittently taking breaks to play shows in their native Houston. All Things Are Light, self-released in conjunction with Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura (record label)
Camera Obscura was a record label founded by Australian music journalist Tony Dale in 1996. Described by Dale as 'a conduit for the release of contemporary acid-folk, psych-pop and space-rock,' the label put out almost ninety releases over fourteen years, the vast majority of which were...
on purple vinyl and made up primarily of some of the band's heaviest music to date, garnered a considerable number of positive reviews upon its release in December 2007. On the heels of this release, the band was again invited to perform at Terrastock
Terrastock
Terrastock is a music festival organised periodically by Phil McMullen, formerly editor of the Ptolemaic Terrascope and since 2005 the publisher of the Terrascope Online website. The event typically features independent bands playing psychedelic rock....
in June 2008, this time in Louisville, Kentucky, resulting in one of their most memorable shows, playing alongside such notable psychedelic groups as MV & EE, Robert Schneider's
Robert Schneider
Robert Peter Schneider is one of the co-founders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company, along with Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum...
Thee American Revolution, Damon & Naomi, and Kawabata Makoto
Kawabata Makoto
Kawabata Makoto is a Japanese musician and founding member of the band and "soul collective" Acid Mothers Temple.- Band history :Kawabata is chiefly famous for his leadership of Acid Mothers Temple and its variants; however, he has also played in many other bands since the start of his career in...
.
2010 saw the band release a 7" vinyl split single with Austin sister-band ST 37; ST 37 contributed a cover of Helios Creed's
Helios Creed
Helios Creed is an American guitarist, singer and bandleader. He first came to prominence in the mid 1970s with the San Francisco band Chrome. They are credited with being the godfathers of what later became known as Industrial Rock music...
"Lactating Purple", while the Linus Pauling Quartet debuted their original piece "Monster". Only months later the band released Horns of Ammon, an album of songs primarily dating back to 2003-2005, released on Homeskool Records; it included the single "Monster", as well as the biker anthem "HAWG!!!", previously released as a single through the extremely limited-edition Grey Ghost series in Houston. Though the album was essentially an "odds and sods" release, documenting a set of more melodic and textural music than appeared on the other "official" albums contemporaneously released, it received largely positive reviews. The band is currently in the studio preparing their next release, the double LP tentatively titled Bag of Hammers.
Selected discography
- Immortal Chinese Classics (Worship Guitars, CD, USA, 1995)
- Untitled (Alien LP) (September Gurls, LP, Germany, 1997)
- Killing You With Rock (September Gurls, CD Germany, 1998)
- VA - Succour (Ptolemaic Terrascope, 2X CD, UK, 1995) (Reissued by Flydaddy, USA 1996)
- LP4/Kryptasthesie (Mizmaze, 7", Italy, 1999)
- VA - Thou Shalt Expand Your Mind (Ptolemaic Terrascope, CD, UK, 1999)
- Ashes in the Bong of God (Fleece,CD, USA, 2000)
- Ashes in the Bong of God (September Gurls, 2x LP, Germany, 2000)
- VA - The Vegetable Man Project (Oggetti Volanti Non Identificati, CD, Italy, 2002)
- C6H8O6 (September Gurls, CD, Germany, 2003)
- Songs Of The Cretaceous (Shifty Pope, CD, USA, 2005)
- All Things Are Light (Camera Obscura, LP, Australia, 2007)
- HAWG!!! - Grey Ghost #48 (Grey Ghost, CD, USA, 2007)
- LP4/ST37 (No Label, 7", USA, 2010)
- Horns Of Ammon (Homeskool Records, CD, USA 2010)
External links
- Linus Pauling Quartet
- Myspace Page
- Facebook Page
- LastFM
- September Gurls
- Fleece records
- Camera Obscura
- Mizmaze Records