10 Questions

Hail Voyagers!
We're back with another edition of your favorite feature. Today's guest hails from the land where the Sun's going! (Wish I was there.) From the shores of Australia & the beautiful city of Sydney, it's Ricky Drabsch of The Dolly Rocker Movement!



Here's what Musicfeeds.com.au says about 'em and their latest release:

" In 2006 Sydney band The Dolly Rocker Movement released two critically acclaimed contemporary psychedelic albums. Electric Sunshine illustrated the chemically enhanced blend of folk, garage and country that characterised the band’s early set. The follow-up album, Purple Journey Into the Mod Machine adopted as its thematic premise a journey through space and time, marrying the stylish and colourful aesthetic of the London Roundhouse with the inter-stellar imagery of Stanley Kubrick.

2009 brings the latest instalment in the Dolly Rocker Movement’s kaleidescopic journey. Our Days Mind the Tyme owes its genesis to the influence of Sky Saxon, Arthur Lee and Syd Barrett, yet sparkles as bright, and fresh as the morning sun. From the baroque pop of A Sound for Two, to the tight garage licks of My Heavenly Way and Sold for Sinners, to the billowing pop elegance of The Only One and The Ecstacy Once Told, this is an album touched by the hand of spiritual enlightenment.

Ever since the hippies of the 1960s mutated into the marketing executives of the 1980s, psychedelia has been cloaked in the suffocating presence of romantic hyperbole and commodity fetishism. But beneath the tortured rhetoric and misty-eyed memories is a vibrant artistic spirit that few truly comprehend. It’s that spirit – built upon freedom, beauty, happiness and an attractive melody – that The Dolly Rocker Movement taps into." -Toby Smith



This new album has been in my 2009 Top Ten since I first heard it and as the year has progressed the hold it's had on me hasn't diminished nor has anything else come along which might knock it from the lofty perch I place it on. The damned thing's great. (I'd play "Memory Layne" on my show every week if I thought I'd get away with it.) Our Days Mind the Tyme comes off like a band who's been around for seven years, (they have), and has matured into the sounds they've always heard in their heads. We're richer for it, gods bless 'em. (Available via the mighty Off The Hip label in Australia & Bad Afro Records in Europa.)

OK, let's see what Ricky's thinkin', shall we?

1. In ten words-or less, define "psychedelic music."
Really fucking good music.

2. What is the most psychedelic instrument, why?
Drums - its the rhythym that drives the psychedelia into your brains.


3. Favorite psychedelic album of all time?
Country Joe and the Fish first - Electric Music for the Mind and Body


4. What legendary lost recording or unfindable bootleg would you most like to have? Carnival of Sound by the Beatles
(Editor's Note: I'm assuming Ricky means Carnival Of Light.)


5. What song or album that wouldn't fall into the classic "psych" definition is, nevertheless, psychedelic to you?
Edan's "Making Planets" and "if you want to be my baby" by Danny & The Galaxies



6. Is there an advantage in being the pioneers (60s psychedelic bands), or being the continuing explorers armed with the knowledge of those pioneers work (the modern psychedelic bands)? Why?
We can only play the hand we've been dealt which means we come at a time when psych music had already been created and reinterpreted many times over. All we can do is then reinterpret it for ourselves.

7. Assemble a psychedelic "Supergroup" of current musicians for us:
From Sydney: Piers Cornelius, Luke O'Farrell, Daniel Poulter, the dudes from Silver Moon

8. You're in a discussion with your great-great-great grandfather, through time travel; what song of yours are you going to play for him from your catalog as an example of what you do?
Assuming I took an iPod with me I would play him Call All Angels, Down With You and The Light Ride

9. Top Ten Psychedelic Songs?

Section 43 - Country Joe and the Fish
Tomorrow never Knows - The Beatles
2000 Light Years from Home - Stones
Slip inside this house - 13th floor elevators
Servo - Brian Jonestown Massacre
Cream Puff War - The Grateful Dead
A house is not a motel - Love
Eight Miles High - The Byrds
Break on through - The Doors
Manic Depression - Hendrix






10. Turn the tables, if you'd like, and ask me a question.

Ricky: Have you ever had an unrequited love? Someone you still think about every day?

-valis: No, can't say that I've ever had that experience. I had a heartbreaking end to a relationship which took a long time to get over but not an unrequited love.

Thanks Ricky & best to the band!

PS Check out the addendum to the August 8 post.