Cold Sun, ” Here in the Year,” Dark Shadows (World In Sound, 2008)
Nowhere is the mythical place of Austin, Texas’s blistering music scene more evident than in the work of Cold Sun. Within the late 60s garage and psychedelic movement, Cold Sun’s leader Bill Miller congregated with his friend Roky Erikson, building a band around similar themes to the 13th Floor Elevators (then under the name Amethyst). Venerable record label International Artists was at the center of this world, issuing the work of the Elevators, New Dawn, Red Krayola, Lost & Found, The Bubble Puppy and Thursday’s Children.
But Cold Sun did not come out on International Artists. In fact, they did not even see their work released in their prime. The tracks were recorded in Austin in 1970 by Sonobeat but were not released in full until the early 1990s, in a tiny vanity pressing by the Rockadelic label. Defining the band’s sound in Miller’s autoharp, redesigned and rebuilt into a fully electric instrument. When plugged in to his amp, it sends out otherworldly sounds. The primary lead instrument throughout the record (with Tom Mcgarrigle’s electric guitar the inter-woven counterbalance) is Miller’s autoharp, despite what your ears may be telling you. In Miller’s reimagining, the autharp is capable of pedal-steel-like tones, as well as organ-like swirls and swells. The tonal influence of pedal and lap steels, B3 and Hammond organs, and electric guitar is evident, but becomes twisted in the psychedelic haze of Miller’s vision. As Dead Kennedy’s frontman Jello Biafra writes in the liner notes to World in Sound’s 2008 re-release: “This is True Texas psychedelic music progressive expansions long before prog realized how ‘progressive’ it was and lost the brain melt side of the plot.” Tuned with peyote, Miller’s music travels through and beyond, with tightly wrought compositions engineered on grand scales. This is where psych leaves the garage and develops some chops but does not lose its heart and mind.
With Miller and Mcgarrigle were Mike Waugh on bass and Hugh Patton on drums. Miller wrote in the 2008 liner notes: “The only reason I wanted to see this album released is because I wanted the world to hear the greatest bass player of them all… World In Sound’s German engineers did a valiant job of bringing this up as best, as tastefully [as] possible in the mix. Austin, Texas is famous for all the wrong things. It should be famous for Mike Waugh, whom Bill Josey [who ran the Sonobeat label that recorded the band] aptly described as ‘capable of spontaneous composition.’” Waugh’s bass is absolutely masterful and both drives and steers Cold Sun through the fuzz.
Patrick Lundborg, the specialist-scholar of all things Texas garage and psych, has written an excellent piece on Cold Sun on his Lysergia site. A sample of the wild scene that surrounded and was this band: “Bill Miller himself still had plenty of space to allow his special interests to grow, and in fact made the local papers when his huge tegu lizard ran away and was put into a dog pound, from which it promptly escaped. Other Miller projects included building a complete Dr Doom (the Marvel comic book villain serenaded by the Elevators) costume, although it did not progress beyond a completed metal glove. One interest that would have direct impact on Cold Sun’s music was ancient Egyptian mythology, as heard on the ‘RA-MA’ track from their Sonobeat tapes, an 11-minute epic that also invoked Lemurian elements. And psychedelic drugs were of course everywhere, as they had been in Austin long before the Elevators started handing out free LSD at local gigs. Miller recalls that ‘a wider cross section than one would imagine did peyote. The 60s beatnik-peyote scene seemed to know no beginning - it had been among the hip as long as the hip had existed since way before acid was invented. It was legal and could be purchased in cactus shops and plant stores. Things were actually more cool before acid appeared.’”
So much about the band is enigmatic, even its name—when they formed and went in to record at Sonobeat, they took the name Cold Sun, where previously they’d been working as Amethyst. But the 1989 retrospective album on Rockadelic that finally brought these unreleased tracks to light listed them under the name “Dark Shadows,” the title of the popular 1960s mystery TV show. The 1970 recordings could not be promoted heavily enough to the majors when Bill Josey’s Sonobeat label encountered financial woes. Cold Sun forged on, refining their sound and songs, but they did not gain a large local following in Austin, partly because by 1971 the Elevators were over and that scene largely dead. The audience had moved on to country and blues roots music (with Sonobeat artist Jonny Winter taking a lead in this).
New live bassist Mike Ritchey served as archivist for Cold Sun during these early 70’s doldrums:
“This isn’t quite the end, however. Sometime around 1973 Cold Sun bass player Mike Ritchey had taken the Sonobeat master tapes and had an acetate made from them. The main reason was that he wanted to be able to replay the recordings – on which he doesn’t actually play – on regular hifi equipment. As far as can be determined, only 1 single acetate was made, and remained in Ritchey’s possession. At one point he played it for Roky Erickson, who was surprised as he hadn’t heard of neither Cold Sun nor Bill Miller’s songwriting capabilities. As Miller tells it, Roky confronted him after hearing the acetate:
ROKY : “Now, Bill, who is the writer in this band?”
BILL : “You are, Roky. Why would I want Bill Miller for a writer when I could have Roky Erickson? Do you think I`m stupid?”
Soon after this incident the Cold Sun acetate and the band itself disappeared off the face of the earth; the only trace of them anywhere was a brief 1976 interview reference by Miller. As it turned out, it would be 15 years before anyone heard of Cold Sun again” (Patrick Lundborg, Lysergia.com).
Thankfully, Ritchey brought the acetates to the attention of the Rockadelic label, and with the release of a few tracks in limited numbers, enough of a rumble was made to spread the Cold Sun word. Miller had migrated to California, and now Cold Sun exists in the MySpace universe, pulling in listeners nearly forty years after the fact. All that was strange, bizarre and undefinable about the band appears to still be very much present. Dig into to this great track and then find a way, any way, to get the World In Sound reissue of this lost classic.
Thanks to Sven Fröberg of the fantastic Greek Theatre for turning me on to Cold Sun.
Cold Sun on MySpace
World In Sound
