tracks on LP: You’re Gonna Miss Me / Roller Coaster / Splash 1 / Reverberation (Doubt) / Don’t Fall Down / Fire Engine / Thru The Rhythm / You Don’t Know / Kingdom of Heaven / Monkey Island / Tried To Hide
Record Label: WEA 56596
Producer: Lelan Rogers
Released: 11/66 | my reissue is from 1981 (second press, white WEA label)
Purchased: 29/04/85
Imagine it’s 1966. In Texas. You’re a kid looking in your local record store, through the racks of Beatles, Stones, Bobby Fuller, and you come across a strange sleeve with swirling green and red pattern bearing the words “13th Floor Elevators”.
Your curiosity aroused, you look at the back, at the copious sleeve notes to find out about this far out new pop group, and begin reading: “Since Aristotle, man has organised his knowledge vertically in separate and unrelated groups . . . Science, Religion, Sex, Relaxation, Work, etc” Hell, what’s going on here? You continue: “recently it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view . . . ” In these early days that might mean nothing, but clearly there’s some serious business going on here.
You take it home, and listen to “You’re Gonna Miss Me”, which sounds initially like any other snarling garage-punk put-down song of the time. But the sleeve notes explain that it is about the dismissal of people who “for the sake of appearances take on the superficial aspects of the quest”. And even this scarcely prepares you for what follows: “After your trip life opens up, you start doing what you want to do.” (“Rollercoaster”) “Let me take you to the empty space in my fire engine . . . “
Twenty two years on everyone knows about the Elevators, but still few have heard them. There are no guitar solos, no dreamy organ, no flower power nonsense. The music is a mutant form of British invasion / frat rock, but with clattering, reverbed drums and guitar, the “funny little noise” which is Tommy Hall’s jug playing and, above all, Roky Erikson‘s extraordinary wailing voice. Why this should have happened in Texas is a mystery, but therein lies its genius. For the Nth time, and timelier than ever, all this is available again. This time, don’t miss out. (UK music press, 1988)
Way Out Man . . . The 13th Floor Elevators greatest hits, all on one album. This is the band that brought us Roky Erickson. Who? Well I guess he’s some trendy prophet you know, the type of guy who strings together totally meaningless words, which together with the floating music makes for mind bending listening.
The band sound like a totally stoned version of the Doors and Stones . . . and that’s a kind comparison. The songs really are monotonous, droning and tinny. To make it worse there’s a constant electronic beep running through every song. It sounds just like a goldfish. Cosmic, eh? This is the music of ’66.
If this is anything to go by that must have been a bad year, even if England did win the World Cup. ** (Record Mirror, 28/10/78)
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