72. 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966)

1. You're Gonna Miss Me
2. Rollercoaster
3. Splash 1
4. Reverberation (Doubt)
5. Don't Fall Down
6. Fire Engine
7. Thru The Rhythm
8. You Don't Know
9. Kingdom Of Heaven
10. Monkey Island
11. Tried To Hide

Or: What happens when you give a Texas garage band access to hallucinogenics.

This is an intriguing little album. Reflecting the flourishing of overtly psychedelic music that was happening in '66, these guys release an album with 'psychedelic' in the title, no less. It's far from the tye-dye technicolor whirl most often associated with that music-being a garage band, these guys are coming from a far more simplistic style. All of these songs have the same basic structure: standard '60s R&B with this really murky tone that makes the band sound like they're coming out of a swamp or something, the lead singer alternating between being almost inaudible and shrieking his fool head off, and the inimitable electric jug.

Yes, the electric jug. Perhaps the most well known fact about this band. See, Tommy Hall was an important figure in getting the band together, but he didn't actually play any instrument! The only solution, naturally, was to make up a really shitty instrument. Which puts him a step above Bez from Happy Mondays, I guess. But seriously, in a decade of exciting innovation and new sounds, the electric jug is one of the least appreciated, and for good reason. It's not capable of melody, in fact it's not really capable of anything besides making a bunch of funny sounding noise in the background of all the songs. Probably a lot easier to play when you're trippin' out on stage though.

Seriously, these guys were totally tripping balls all of the time. Like, Syd Barrett level tripping. Read this excerpt from the album's liner notes:

"Recently, it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view (that is, his own basic relation with the outside world which determines how he stores his information). He can restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely.

It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs on this album."

Basically, you're only sane after you drop acid. You know, I think I may go to school with these guys.


Anyway, the songs. 'You're Gonna Miss Me' wins the slightly ignoble 'Clearly The Best Song' award by a long shot, being a nice slice of Sonics-esque garage rock with plenty of screaming, and, in case you forgot, electric jug all over the freakin' place. This song was the closest the Elevators got to fame, falling just short of being a hit song and being forced to live the rest of its life as an obscure garage classic, living on compilations just to get a rep, 'cause you can bet there's no way the buying public would've bought this bit of weirdness back then.


The rest of the songs tend to blend together in my head as one poorly-mixed jumble. They're not really bad, but for the most part none of them really stood out from each other! When all of your songs are forced to have a shitty gimmick instrument in them, it's gonna start hurting song writing quality, guys. No, stop licking the stickers, I'm trying to have a serious discussion. Mr. Hall, the electric jug is not for humping. Goddamnit, why couldn't I have managed the Monkees instead? I bet they don't have these fucking problems. 7/10