To some degree if like me you were an avid NME reader at 17 and record collecting was almost inevitably along with books going to be the great accumulation of the next forty ears then your record collection is almost predictable by my age, You'll have loads of Bowie. Beatle and Stones to make it goood to be alone. Kraurrock. Soul. Funk. Jazz. Funk and obscure Art Rock. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tickand tick. I am Lester Bangs vagrant son !
You'll probably alsp have a couple of 13th Floor Elevators records though you may not have actually sit and listened all the way through to them that often.. Err tick. I've got the first one and the one with Slip Inside This House on it for the moments when I need to scare the neighbours.
I'm listening through to The Psychedelic Sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators now and I'm damned glad I bought it. Thirty six years ago , In my last year at university at a second hand record shop in Norwich around the corner from the halls of residence where I lived .
I met a couple of friends there. While I was about to buy it. Music friends . Neil and Linda. Music friends are the best kind of friends in life I'd say. I still have a letter from Linda where she witters on about The Hit Parade and The Sun Shines in Gerrard Cross frim the golden days when we used to write letters. Before the Internet came along to set us free..
I can vaguely remember what we talked about that day when I bought this record. I had bought the first Suicide album about the same time so probably that. The Family Cat; Tom Verlaine twelve inch. . I had a ridiculous infatuation with Television which has endured until today. I used to go into record ships and check whether they had it in their racks. But I suspect The Psychedelic Sounds of - The 13th Floor Elevators was the album I bought that day
Neil and Linda were at important gigs that I attended in my last year at university, I am of an age when I refuse to call it 'uni'.. My Bloody Valentine . Pale Saints and Lush. The Norwich Arts Centre. .Stone Roses played and then took over the NME, Top of the Pops and colonised youth culture in Britain for a couple of years.U had a cold so wasn't there that night regrettably.
Now I'm sitting in my flat in Newcastle in 2026 and lustening to the record again. What strikes me is how utterly deranged it would have sounded to the straight community when it was released in 1967. Almost twenty five years from the day that I bought it, Almost sixty from today. It would have scared the hell out of people. These are people having a better time than anybody has a right to and the powers that be don't like them to but also takiing genuine risks which challenge conventional perspectives and ways if thinking and living. . Much of the record is entirely unhinged.
The terror generated I imagine was entirely intentional. The band and their circle were ingesting LSD at every opportunity. Never the wisest idea. But it wasn't just the recklessness of youth Read the sleeve notes from Lelan Rogers from a time when people wrote and read sleevenotes.because they were trying to say and learn something, These people had a manifesto and a mission.
Read the sleevenotes while you listen to the record. They're provicative and biblical. The band openly advocated the ingestion of mind altering substances and were targeted by the authorities subsequently. People genuinely thought society was going to change radically and in many ways it genuinely did over the ensuing years. Listen to The 13th Floor Elevators. Listen to The Velvet Underground. The Doors or Jefferson Airplane. Listen to the Beatles. The Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. Led Zeppelin. The conviction is in the grooves.
Now go to your local newagent close to where you live. Go to theshelves which house the music section and you'll see Rock & Roll encased. Enshrined as another set of shelves suggesting recreational options and further pyrchasing options. The 200 Psychedelic Albums to hear before you die. The 200 Glam or Punk or Soul or Shoegaze records you need to own.. Rock & Roll is still incredibly fertile and exciting but in 2026 it's essentially a commodity in the same respect as other lifestyle options are..Perhaps essentially it's always been that,
Listening to the album is still a visceral experience though. Most of the people involved in its making are now dead. But the reason people create is to attempt to make a mark. This record continue to be listened to. It offers alternatives to walking the straight path and thinking and adopting the given line. .
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