Ant Trip Ceremony

Oberlin, 1968

Ant Trip Ceremony was a free form psychedelic rock band based at Oberlin College. The band was together in the 1967/8 school year and released an LP in the spring of 1968 primarily as a document before the members graduated and went their seperate ways.

ATC included Steve DeTray (guitar), Gary Rosen(bass, vocals), Mark Stein (guitar,flute), George Galt (guitar, vocals, harmonica), Roger Goodman (lead vocals), and Jeff Williams (drums), the only non-OC student.

The group played live shows for campus and off campus parties, shows that included a lot of improvisation, fueled by the band's and audience's use of the usual pharmaceutical enhancements. As the end of school neared, the band recorded some of the original songs and some covers with the help of fellow OC student David Crosby (not THAT David Crosby, of course). The recordings were done on campus but mastered at Cleveland Recording. Three hundred copies of the LP was pressed at Pama and sold at the college bookstore and hand to hand. Steve DeTray, the founding member, graduated in 1968, as did most of the other members, and left Ohio and the ATC behind. The LP is an excellent document of a unique time. Although the band was clearly influenced by the San Francisco psych bands, many of the songs have a solid rock and roll background, thanks to the members earlier experiences in rock and blues bands.

For some information about Roger Goodman's experiences as a gay man of the era, visit the web sites - http://my.enom.com/3029/page99.htm and http://www.oberlinlgbt.org/content/Personal-Histories/The-1960s/roger-goodman-oc-68-page-1-of-3.html