Line #17 Music/The13thFloorElevators


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/13th_floor_elevators.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:The 1967 lineup. Top row, left to right: Dan Galindo, Stacy Sutherland, Danny Thomas. Bottom row, left to right: Tommy Hall, Roky Erickson.]]
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4	->''"In this dark we call creation\
5	We can be and feel and know\
6	From an effort, comfort station\
7	That's surviving on the go\
8	There's infinite survival in\
9	The high baptismal glow\
10	Slip inside this house as you pass by"''
11	-->--"Slip Inside This House"
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13	The 13th Floor Elevators were a band from Austin, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, who served as one of the {{Trope Codifier}}s and the [[TropeNamers Trope Namer]] for the genre of PsychedelicRock back in TheSixties.
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15	They formed in 1965, when members of two popular local GarageRock bands (The Spades and The Lingsmen) united under the leadership of Tommy Hall, a flamboyant figure in the city's counterculture. While they became something of a RevolvingDoorBand, the core was centered on guitarist[=/=]vocalist Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson (of The Spades), guitarist Stacy Sutherland (of The Lingsmen) and Hall on "electric jug" (Sutherland and Hall also performed backing vocals). A variety of drummers and bassists came and went for the duration of their short career.
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17	Led by Hall, a self-styled "philosopher" who'd begun experimenting with peyote and LSD while he was a student at the University of Texas, the band were fervently dedicated to the idea of psychedelia and expanding the boundaries of the mind, religiously advocating use of hallucinogenics in their lyrics and sleeve notes, and becoming one of the first bands to release an album with "psychedelic" in the title.[[note]]The very first was The Deep, whose ''Psychedelic Moods'' came out just before the Elevators' album.[[/note]] According to legend, Hall's jug was tuned by the amount of marijuana stored in it.
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19	They released two albums in close succession, ''The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators'' and ''Easter Everywhere''. The first one yielded their only successful single and arguable SignatureSong, "You're Gonna Miss Me". However, the band disintegrated after they got busted by the Texas authorities for possession of drugs - Stacy went to prison, while Roky misguidedly pleaded insanity and landed in a state hospital for the criminally insane until 1973, and struggled with mental issues for the rest of his life. Stacy was killed by his wife in 1978 during a domestic dispute, while Tommy became a devout follower of Scientology in the same decade (Hall currently lives in a cramped, seedy, book-filled San Francisco hotel room and claims to have given up music to focus on "research").
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21	They've been really influential on the PsychedelicRock and AlternativeRock movements.
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23	Erickson maintains a strong [[CultClassic cult following]], often mentioned in the same breath as Music/SydBarrett in discussions of brilliant musicians who became casualties of the dark side of psychedelia, and is considered an Austin icon on par with Music/WillieNelson and Music/StevieRayVaughan despite not coming near either man's level of success. His solo career is highly influential in the Horror Rock genre, and counts members of bands like Music/ZZTop and Music/{{REM}} as fans. Erickson died on May 31st, 2019.
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25	Discography:
26	* ''The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators'' (1966)
27	* ''Easter Everywhere'' (1967)
28	* ''Live'' (1968) - actually an album of studio outtakes with overdubbed applause and crowd noise, put out by their record label for some quick cash
29	* ''Bull of the Woods'' (1969) - released after the band's breakup
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31	!!The Psychedelic Tropes of the 13th Floor Elevators:
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33	* BedlamHouse: The hospital Roky landed in and got treated with electroshock therapy.
34	* BreakupSong: "You're Gonna Miss Me".
35	* CarefulWithThatAxe + MetalScream: Roky gained fame largely because of his distinctive wild screaming. One of the vocalists he influenced was Music/JanisJoplin.
36	* CoverVersion:
37	** "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Music/BobDylan, "Before You Accuse Me" by Music/BoDiddley, "I'm Gonna Love You Too" by Music/BuddyHolly, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" by Solomon Burke, and several songs by SingerSongwriter Powell St. John, a friend of the band.
38	** On the other hand, there've been quite a few covers of their songs by AlternativeRock bands influenced by them. For example: "Reverberation (Doubt)" was covered by Music/TheJesusAndMaryChain, "Slip Inside This House" was covered (or CoveredUp?) by Music/PrimalScream on their album ''Music/{{Screamadelica}}'', "Rollercoaster" got a Music/{{Spacemen 3}} version, Music/{{Television}} used to play "Fire Engine" live, and so on.
39	** Though billed as a Roky Erickson [[CoverAlbum tribute album]], the compilation ''Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye'' includes covers of both the 13th Floor Elevators and Roky's solo work - the album is [[{{bookends}} bookended]] by Music/ZZTop's and Jesus and Mary Chain's versions of "Reverberation (Doubt)", and also features {{Music/REM}}, Music/ButtholeSurfers, and others doing versions of Elevators or Roky songs.
40	* DesignStudentsOrgasm: The colorful covers of ''Psychedelic Sounds'' and ''Easter Everywhere''.
41	* DrugsAreGood: The liner notes for ''The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators'' feature a text promoting the use of LSD and other psychedelics for mind expansion.
42	--> “Recently, it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view. He then can restructure his thinking..."
43	* EpicRocking: The eight-minute "Slip Inside This House".
44	* NonAppearingTitle: "I Had to Tell You".
45	* PsychedelicRock: Overlapping with GarageRock.
46	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: For a band who made their reputation for riff-driven freakouts like "You're Gonna Miss Me", lovely ballads like "Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)", "I Had to Tell You" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (among others) can come as a surprise.
47	* TheSvengali: Tommy Hall quickly appointed himself as the band's TeamDad and acted this way toward his bandmates to an unsettling degree, practically bullying them into using unhealthy amounts of LSD (making them dose before each show and urging them to "play the acid" in their performances), even after it obviously started taking a toll on everyone's mental health. Hall had ambitions toward becoming a Timothy Leary-esque psychedelic guru (he penned the infamous DrugsAreGood liner notes on their debut album), and saw the band as his main vehicle to achieve them.
48	* TheTeamWannabe: By his own admission, Tommy Hall, who had zero music background when they formed, came up with the "electric jug" instrument concept so he could have a musical role in the band. However, he [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zagged]] this since he was, by all accounts, the band's leader.
49	* TitleOnlyChorus: "You're Gonna Miss Me", "Reverberation (Doubt)", "(I've Got) Levitation".
50	* WatchItStoned: Their entire philosophy.
51	* WordSaladLyrics: "Slip Inside This House" in particular.

Context Music / The13thFloorElevators