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13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS
The term psychedelic hardly seems enough to contain the mighty 13th Floor Elevators, true rock visionaries. They were exceptional in a variety of respects, first appearing out of the wilds of Texas, featuring wildly unusual instrumentation and a true genius/madman in the form of guitar/vocalist Roky Erikson. Erikson was poached from The Spades by The Lingsmen, featuring Stacy Sutherland (guitar), Benny Thurman (bass), John 'Ike' Walton (drums). Once they'd acquired the electric jug prowess of Tommy Hall, they became The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Their debut single You're Gonna Miss Me was written by Erikson while he was still in The Spades, but the Elevators rawness and Hall's amazing 'chooga-chooga' jug sound ensured the record's success. However, the band soon developed a reputation for bad behaviour and drug use and were constantly under the scrutiny of local Texas law enforcement. The band headed out to the West Coast while the heat died down, developing a live following, particularly in San Francisco. They created, perhaps, the first true psychedelic artifact with the release of The Psychedelic Sounds Of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators (1966), produced by Kenny Rogers brother Lelan and released on the tiny International Artists label. Featuring an often imitated garish cover it contained a unique sound that couldn't be replicated, particularly the Texas punk masterpieces Fire Engine and Reverberation. Around the time of their second album Easter Everywhere (1967), disaster struck the band. Following yet another drug bust by the Texan authorities, Erikson faced a long prison spell. Pleading insanity, he was confined to the Rush State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for several years, an experience from which he never recovered. The band released one more album, Bull Of The Woods (1968), that only contained one Erikson track, May The Circle Remain Unbroken, one of their finest and most unusual moments. SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
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