“I got my psychedelic feet and my psychedelic shoes, / I believe Lord o’mama I got the psychedelic blues”

The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music duo from the Lower East Side, which started in the early 1960s, consisting of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber. They were the first to use the word “psychedelic” in recorded music, it might sound kinda old-fashioned (or common sense) today but back in that time it wasn’t an anthology yet, it was more considered like being outrageous. 

On November 21, 1963 – the day before President Kennedy was assassinated – the duo recorded an album that filtered the eccentricities of rural American folk music through the contemporary drug culture of NYC. Their blend of folk music and psychedelia gave them a cult-like following until the beginning of the 1970s.

Recently the illustrator Drew Christie created a colourful short animated clip about the Holy Modal Rounders’ story... and the narrator is Peter Stampfel himself. The video is quite off-the-wall and, yes, pretty much nails it.