RE/Search: How did you meet?

IVY RORSCHACH: We met in 1974 in college in Sacramento, California. Under the guise of the Art Department there were classes like "Art and Shamanism," which was really a study of amanita muscaria; the textbook was The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. The class was real loose; the teacher would ask you, "What grade do you want, an A?" He would gravitate toward certain students and invite them to "heavier" classes at his home--he had this fabulous spread. Lux and I met in his class, although actually we met hitchhiking.

LUX INTERIOR: There isn't that much to tell about that first encounter--she was hitchhiking and I picked her up. Later, we would both hitchhike down to San Francisco and back every weekend, barefoot.

IR: We met hitchhiking , we talked and discovered we were going to see each other again in this teacher's class. Actually, the first kiss was in this instructor's house--we'd taken mushrooms, I think.

R/S: Tell us about some strange records you've found--

LI: There are a lot of great slow instrumentals on the B side of rockabilly singles, and a lot of them sound like Martin Denny in a way, but weirder because it was just the band having fun-they figured no one would ever listen to them. That's a whole genre I never see any reissues of. And that is incredibly strange music, because it was all these hillbillies on speed!

IR: A lot of people who collect rockabilly think those B sides aren't any good. But it's a whole other world

Other excerpts from Incredibly Strange Music I :

• Gil Ray
• Mike Wilkins
• Norton Records
• Eartha Kitt
• Gershon Kingsley
• Mickey McGowan
• Lynn Peril
• Martin Denny
• Lypsinka
• Amok Books

Table of Contents for Incredibly Strange Music I

Body Modifications and Sexuality / Music & Films / Subversives/Alternative Acts / Writers/Fiction