The Psych Rock Lounge

 

Others who claimed immediate influence were Janis Joplin who copped Roky's vocal style and Big Brother and the Holding Company who went toward a blues rock sound with Joplin. Another affected was Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top who went blues rock as well as his past band The Moving Sidewalks whose mix of studio effects psychedelic blues seemed to anticipate sounds on Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love album which came out months later.

 

When Chary reissue producer Paul Drummond found himself out of luck in recovering any multi track recording masters for The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, he was surprised to find that the band's first recordings at Walt Andrus small Huston, Texas studio (now called Wire Studio) were not only still in existence but that International Artists, who had picked up the locally successful single You're Gonna Miss Me and widely distributed it in 1966, had a digital copy of the Andrus' mono safety master.

 

These are not the same recordings which were redone at Gold Star  Studios in Huston, Texas for the Psychedelic Sounds album (that also included four new songs). However, the takes of You're Gonna Miss Me c/w Tried to Hide were taken from these sessions and are featured on the Psychedelic Sounds album.

 

Except for four songs (Kingdom Of Heaven, You Don't Know, Don't Fall Down and Reverberation), this material was initially slated for an album release by a company affiliated with Andrus called Contact Records before the tiny company ran out of cash.

 

Included on this special issue from 2010 is a remaster of the Contact sessions, which has  excellent sound quality despite the nature and age of the source recording tapes, as well as outtakes which include a properly mixed master of You're Gonna Miss Me with Roky's lead and Tommy Hall's backing vocals out front in the sound mix (awesome) as well as great covers of Somebody to Love and a cool take on Buddy Holly's regional hit I'm Gonna Love You Too.

 

Drummond even threw in four poor sounding live cuts as they're believed to never have been bootlegged. No wonder!

 

For the record, the Elevators at this point consisted of Roky Erickson, rhythm guitar and vocals, Stacy Sutherland, lead guitar, John Ike Walton, drums, Tommy Hall, jug and backing vocals,  and Benny Thurman on bass. (Thurman was shortly replaced by Ronnie Leatherman for the Huston Psychedelic Sounds sessions.)

Charly's special issue of Headstone: The Contact Sessions coupled with their double disc reissue of The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators  is an immersion experience into the Elevators' first album that Pink Floyd would be envious of. And that's all for now on the Elevators' seminal debut album. 

 

The claims that the band influenced everything from early punk, modern alternate rock to Robert Plant's vocals always seemed way overstated to me. I just get satisfaction of knowing that the Elevators did a lot of things first regardless of who or what they were said to have influenced.

 

It's only been within the last 15 years that both Psychedelic Sounds  and it's follow up Easter Everywhere have come to be critically regarded by everyone from Allmusic's Rock Record Guide, Q  and Uncut to Rolling Stone Magazine as American rock essentials.

 

The live Spades' material on your album might be available on a U.S. reissue called Gremlins Have Pictures.

 

I will definitely check it out.  

 

Charly Records (U.K.) double CD standard hard cover booklet reissue.  

 

The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, recorded and released in 1966, is not a great psychedelic rock album or a great hard rock album. And it's as certainly as far from prog rock as you can get. The album is simply a great mid sixties American rock album that was performed by amateurs and recorded, mixed, and mastered by amateurs. The band were proponents of LSD and did have suggestive lyrics that tried to emulate the experience of an LSD high and the enlightenment that the use of this drug offered. What amazes me personally  is that the band recorded this album under the influence of LSD or the more potent DMT as was  actually able to make coherent music. According to the Elevators' biographer and album reissue producer for Charly Records U.K., Paul Drummond, this is what has fascinated him about the group for decades and the man has gone to extraordinary lengths to find every available decent sounding tape source, acetates and when he had to, original vinyl.

 

The mixing and mastering of Psychedelic sounds... was done in a rough shod manor with heavy echo and reverb heavily plastered over the bulk of the songs and the album was cheaply mastered to vinyl to offer nothing more than a foggy dense soup of sound that diminished highs, muddy up bass and rendered Roky Erickson's vocals only half audible or partly faded. The previously release singles You're Gonna Miss Me, Reverberation and their two B sides were spared some of the heavier applied reverb, but heavy echo was still applied.

 

The common wisdom is that the record's producer, not the band who were touring in San Francisco,  who applied  the exaggerated eho and reverb that the band themselves requested for the eerie song Kingdom of Heaven, thought it would have been a great idea if it was applied to the who album.

 

There's no crime with an independent show string low budget label (International Artists of Texas) making a decision like that at the time.

 

Again, we are talking about amateurs. The crime is that none of the original multi track session masters still exist so that the album can be remixed, restored and remastered, as is common practice in the modern recorded music world.

 

Charly's double CD 2010 remaster includes a mono mux of the album that was pain staking to remaster as all surface noice like scratches and pops had to be digitally removed and the album re EQ'ed the best the could as reverse mastering sound is only possible to a certain extent.

 

The second CD contains a remaster of the only surviving stereo safety master with an uneven sound mix and the echo and reverb applied. Again, Charly and Drummond did fantastic work to clean up tape noise and make a presentable album.

 

To drive the point home, Drummond was able to locate original engineer Bill Sullivan's better balanced original stereo reference mixes devoid of any added tape echo or reverb on the following five tracks: Roller Coaster, Thru the Rhythm, Fire Engine, Tried to Hide and Monkey Island.

 

These few reference mixes show what the album could have sounded like with Roky's vocals and Sutherland's guitar for more prominent and the drums centered in the sound mix. Drummer John Walton's heavy handed ride cymbal is still loud in the mix for Tried to Hide but without the added echo so that it no longer sounds like an annoying cow bell from outer space.

 

It's these glimpses of what the Elevators' actually sounded like and how articulate Roky's vocals were, even with all his banshee wailing, (God bless him) is what makes this album so much more impressive.

 

As I stated, if you're looking for heavy psych or prog, you will not find it here. But if you're looking for good Americna rock produced in the mid sixties that is a cross between Blues rock, the Kinks, heavily reverbed guitars that owe much to Dick Dale  and  his California surf sound all tied together with a vocalist that is a equal parts James Brown and Little Richard, then you've come to the right place.

 

Next time I'll take a look Chary's cache of Elevator masters that were recorded prior to Psychedelic Sounds... and actually were actually used for the singles You're Gonna Miss Me and Reverberation, on the 2010 Charly compilation Headstone: The Contact Sessions.

 

 

 

Though I like those 2 Elevator albums ..I'm not as enamored of them as you are. I always thought they sounded a bit rough around the edges and some of the tracks just weren't that good.

At any rate this is the Roky collection I have on cd.

I've never heard the best of album that you have, but from the title I'm guessing it's a mix of Elevators and Roky solo songs.

 

Though I like those 2 Elevator albums ..I'm not as enamored of them as you are. I always thought they sounded a bit rough around the edges and some of the tracks just weren't that good.

At any rate this is the Roky collection I have on cd.

Charly Records (U.K.) double CD hard cover booklet standard issue

 

It's impossible to examine the 13th Floor Elevators' two seminal albums, the dated revved up 'turn on' driving rock of The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators and it's radically different quieter, poetic, esoteric and time transcending follow up Easter Everywhere, without considering the band's many contexts that they inhabited from 1965 to 1967.

 

A few for example were their isolation in and detention in Texas following drug busts, paranoia resulting from same and their own heavy intake of hallucinogenic drugs. 

 

Live Evolution Lost is a recent unearthing of the groups February 1967 concert at the newly built Huston Music Theater. This concert has previously turned up on bootlegs over the years and is famous (infamous) for the fact that Elevators' lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland dropped a large dose of acid before the show and was tripping out of his mind.

 

The sound quality of this concert recording is poor and really should have stayed in storage where it belonged. However,  it is a gem for die hard Elevator fans as they will scoop up any rare releases that feature the band.

 

I can only find interest in knowing that this concert took place directly before The Elevators recorded Easter Everywhere at the end of February 1967, so it helps to put the bands output into context. As to the sound quality, give this one a pass.

 

I will deconstruct both The Psychedelic Sounds... And Easter Everywhere albums in later posts as time allows as both require a fair bit of exposition to get at the heart of their appeal and importance.

Some great music on Country Joe & The Fish' Electronic Music For The Mind And Body.  "Section 43" on that album may be my favorite track in the genre. Thus far, because there is so much to discover...

There are many obscure bands in the genre that only released only one album.

Many of them quite good!