Once upon a time, there was a demented cat known as Roky Erickson. Those who are garage rock connoisseurs know him as the genius behind what was possibly the most lauded garage band in all of Texas, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Not very well known nationally except for their minor hit, You're Gonna Miss Me, they are now considered among the creme of the ceme of legendary sixties bands.
I guess the best place to start is with Roky's first band, the Spades. They recorded the original version of You're Gonna Miss Me for International Artists in 1965.
By the end of 1965, Roky teamed up with Tommy Hall and his electric jug, and Stacy Sutherland, the lead guitarist, and you end up with the Elevators.
And they quickly came up with the definitive version of, guess what?
You're Gonna Miss Me would chart in the summer of 1966. Aroud the same time, the Elevators released their first album, the Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, something of a masterpiece if I may say so myself. Here's a track from that album
In 1967, they released their second album, Easter Everywhere, a rather underrated album in my opinion. The album opens with this gem
A live album followed in 1968. They finished out with Bull of the Woods in 1969.
The band was fading a bit at this point, drugs possibly may have taken its toll, particularly on Roky as he would spend time in a mental institution. Stacy Sutherland would die tragically in 1978 in a domestic dispute while Tommy Hall found religion in the form of Scientology.
The story does not end there, for whatever problems Roky Erickson had, he would re-emerge with various bands he would head up throughout the seventies and eighties. We'll be getting into that later, as he truly was a musical genius.
In the meantime, we'll leave with another favorite of mine.