The Roots Of Psychobilly

The history of American pop and rock music is littered with

examples of short term genre crazes. Some of them of lesser

worth fizzled only briefly and usually died out as quickly as they

had arrived. Included here would be space songs, monster

records, novelty items and death discs, and we might even be

tempted to list Psychobilly were it not for the fact that the

retrospectively named genre has proved to have had a huge

amount of influence on US groups and artists over the decades.

The roots of Psychobilly are found in the Rockabilly strand of Rock

'n' Roll, itself a rich and collectable genre of music. It did however

rather tend to push things to the limit with manic vocals, wild

instrumentation, and the overall feel of the records. The tracks

gathered here span the years 1956 up to 1964, thus lodging them

neatly between the original rockers and the sixties rockers.