Last month I saw The Silver Apples live at the Velvet Lounge in DC.

For those who don’t know:
The Silver Apples were an early, influential, yet fairly unknown, psychedelic electronic band from NYC in the late 60’s. The band was made up of Simeon Coxe III (Simeon) and drummer Danny Taylor. They were active for a few years in the late 60’s, defunct for a couple of decades, then reformed in the late 90’s with the addition of Xian Hawkins (Sybarite). The Silver Apples activity came to a tragic halt when Danny Taylor was killed in a tour bus accident. In the early 2000’s Simeon began to recover from his injuries, started releasing records and doing occasional tours.

The Silver Apples have inspired generations of psychedelic rock bands, as well as experimental electronic artists over the years - The track “We Carry On” off of Portishead’s recent album “Third” is a great example of this influence.

I was more than a little excited to hear that The Silver Apples (now just Simeon, and his homemade wall of synthesizers, also called the Simeon) were playing in DC at the small, intimate Velvet Lounge last month. Here are a couple of the videos I snagged, there are more on my youtube page. Below the videos are the original recordings of “Lovefingers”, “Program” and “Misty Mountain”. Simeon seemed like a real cool guy, especially because he was sporting a Spy vs. Spy t-shirt! Enjoy.

Lovefingers:

Program:

Misty Mountain: