BURIED TREASURE
Stoned Gas
From rock obscuria’s dumper: boxing-gloved, Stoogean lunacy from late-’60s Toronto.
Blowing off: Bent Wind (from left) Marty Roth, Sebastian Pelaia, Gerry Gibas and Eddie Thomas, 1969.
Bent Wind
Sussex TREND, 1969
ONE OF vintage psychedelia’s most unhinged and highly valued long-players, Sussex by Bent Wind emanated from a low-life hippy hang-out at 75 Sussex Avenue in Toronto’s university district. In the basement there in spring ’69, shaggy-maned stoner Gerry Gibas was woodshedding with his rhythm section when nearby headshop proprietor Marty Roth popped in, and within minutes was filling in for the combo’s absentee rhythm guitarist. For a few hours, they ran through Gibas’s repertoire, but after their leader nipped upstairs for his supper, he returned to find the trio working on a Roth composition.
“Gerry plugged his guitar back in, turned his wah wah on, and before you knew it, we had another song happening,” recalls Roth today from his home in Toronto. “After we’d finished, he looked up at me and said, ‘It sounds like a bent wind… What else you got?’ Gerry was a strange cat, that’s why I loved hanging out with him.”