The Year: 1966The Album: The 13th Floor Elevators, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
Who It Influenced: Television, Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, the Butthole Surfers, Black Lips
Anti- Records —home of old renegades like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Os Mutantes&mdash announced last week they'd be releasing Roky Erickson's first album of new material in 15 years. Due out April 20, True Love Cast Out All Evil finds Erickson working with members of Okkervil River, and finds one of the legendary voices of underground music back.
The world was first introduced to a teenaged Erickson in 1966, with the mighty single "You're Gonna Miss Me." A minor hit for The 13th Floor Elevators in its day, the song had impossible staying-power: going on to become one of the most legendary and influential songs in the annals of alternative music. Though Erickson's band, The 13th Floor Elevators, invented the term 'psychedelic rock' and put it into practice by taking copious amounts of psychedelic drugs, they weren't couched in cockeyed flower-power rhetoric.
Instead, lead by the urgent, insistent tremors of Erickson's singing —a wail that would influence everyone from Janis Joplin to Iggy Pop— the Elevators played a striding, swirling, reverberated take on jug-band blues that still stands up nearing 50 years on.
Comments
Great to hear that a new Roky album is coming out! Thanks for the notice. Hope to read a review of it as soon as possible
Love the 13th Floor Elevators. I was lucky enough to interview Danny Thomas, the drummer, once. Great guy. You can check it out here: http://www.kreetik.com/1/post/2009/09/interview-with-danny-thomas-of-the-13th-floor-elevators.html