Austin Psych Fest 3: Five Minutes With City Center

Leading up to Austin Psych Fest 3 (April 23rd - 25th at The Mohawk), we’ll be spending five minutes with many of the artists scheduled to perform at the festival. Today, we catch up with New York’s City Center.

What does the term "psychedelic" conjure up in your mind?

There's a sticky kind of connotation attached to the word that immediately draws up images in most people's minds of multi-colored oil blotch projections, flashing strobe lights or sitar music. The kitsch factor some people heavily associate with the term "psychedelic". We like to think of it a lot more literally, in terms of something that makes you think differently, messes with your concepts and perceptions. A (Alejandro) Jodorowsky movie isn't as druggy as it is fantastically psychedelic. A lot of dub records are psychedelic, with not so much as a day-glo flower in sight.

Does Austin deserve to host a psychedelic music festival?

Austin completely deserves it! Austin deserves everything! In all of my experiences, it's one of the sweetest towns in the U.S. This is just another facet of it's radness.

Roky Erickson or Stevie Ray Vaughan?

Roky all the way, because we actually listen to his music and find him interesting. Neither of these is the case with SRV, but I heard he used super thickly gauged guitar strings. That's, uh, totally interesting...

What is right or wrong with the music industry today?

Music has become ostensibly free, at least in the ways that people who are young and excited about music are coming up digesting it. This, in our opinion, is a good thing, even if a heavy change to deal with. Ultimately, one loves what they love musically, regardless of how much access they have to different stuff, how many records they buy or used to buy or how much advertising hype and money is thrown about. What I'm saying is the business part of music industry is pointless in the end, and watching it crumble is interesting.

If you could invite one musician, living or dead, on stage with you, who would it be?

That's such a tough call. It'd either be us backing up Arthur Russell singing, Alice Coltrane sitting in, or John Olson sabotaging our set.

Thank you for spending five minutes with Austinist.

Austin Psych Fest: [Official] [MySpace]
City Center: [Official] [MySpace]

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