13th Floor Elevators 10 cd Box Set

[darynm]

anyone noticed a bit of a drop out in some of the tracks on the contact sessions cd? Is it to do with the condition of the original tapes? Sound is incredible mind you! Just wondering

[redcloud]

anyone noticed a bit of a drop out in some of the tracks on the contact sessions cd? Is it to do with the condition of the original tapes? Sound is incredible mind you! Just wondering

Yea, somebody else hears it too!!! I posted this same question two or so months ago and nobody replied. I went into a couple psych sites I know and posted it and still no replies. I started feeling that maybe I had the one faulty disc out of the lot of 4000 sets! Phoned the distributor in England and he asked me to send him an email with specific points where I heard audio drop outs. I had a reply within 24 hours. Here is the answer from the International Artists label:

"Paul Drummond has come back already the query on the sound and reports that the customer (my name) is right that there are imperfections at the two points he mentions but it is not a question of faulty pressings but simply sound drop outs in the masters about which nothing could be done. Paul and the team with Walt Andrus have gone to great lengths to give the band back its original sound after all the many poor quality releases over the years but unfortunately some original masters have just disappeared so they are constrained by the sources available. Also there does seem to be a very minor print fault on the cover of CD6 EE which slipped past us all ."

This response put my mind to rest. The greatest collection and testiment ever assembled for one band? Damn straight! Drummond and co. have done us all (band included) proud.

[darynm]

i can hear it more than a couple of times on tracks 3 and maybe a few others - need to listen carefully i guess

but i reckoned it was the original tape, sounded like a bit of a drop out on tape

thanks for getting back to me though

do you only hear it twice?

[redcloud]

This is what I wrote to IA:

Disc one: "You're Gonna Miss Me' sound dips in track one at around 1'36 mark.
"You Can't Hurt Me Anymore" (track 5) sounds as if there was some audio dips/almost like the track had to be corrected? Sticking with disc one the sound on this is also a bit "liquidy" sounding,especially noticable on "Where Am I (Thru the Rhythm)".

I suspect though that the last query about the liquidy sound on "Where Am I" is actually me hearing the music as it was meant to be heard. I know that 'Levitation' on the mono EE disc blew my head off the first time I heard it. All of a sudden there were guitars, drums, cymbals, jug and bass jumping out of the speakers like none other version I had heard before. The one thing this box set has shown me is I feel like I have re-discovered this band all over again.

My query about EE mono cover was a small misprint on the gold ink. They acknowledged that in their response too. It's all cool...I'm just glad it wasn't just my set, which I feared as I received no replies to my initial questions here or elsewhere. I find satisfaction in the fact that other than my reply from IA you are now the first person to confirm my audio queries too!

Case closed....guess I'm not hearing things afterall!

[LunarTunes]

I finally got around to watching "You're Gonna Miss Me" last night and then discovered that Roky was right: I missed him. Or, more specifically, I missed this box set. Having no 13th Floor Elevators in my collection (an oversight, I know), I was actually going to go all out and order this box set. Sadly, but not surprisingly, it sold out. It's too bad that it will not be repressed as I'm sure they could sell another 1000 of them. As it is, it's up on eBay for $550-950US and one sold recently for $338US. The band and label and the folks behind the box set are leaving some money on the table and it's being grabbed by speculators, methinks. I'm hoping against hope that they do a limited second run. Meanwhile, I'm going to settle for I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE BEFORE...

Peace.

[marcvolta]

They are going to start selling all of the individual disks from the set tho...

[LunarTunes]

^Nice. I've signed up for their e-mail list so hopefully I won't miss out on that, too...

Peace.

[alan_cohaul]

I wish that i'd bought the set when it was available (kicks self). I'd recently finished the Eye Mind book, and it really goes into detail about how messed up their world was--getting busted and shut down by the cops at every possible point....music and rock n' roll was really still seen as something that was a serious plague on society. They'd went through tons of members--especially in the later stages of the band when Stacy was trying to hold the band together and was replacing everyone else in the band that wasn't in jail/ insane asylums/ financial crisis. Tommy Hall ended up living in San Fran in a squat hotel for grizzled Vietnam vets and hippies; Roky (before Sumner rescued him and got him well again) was living in solitude, rarely going out and had various radios and TV's all blaring in the same room on different stations. Acid and various drugs really did a number on those guys.

More interesting to note is that the band preceded the psychedelic wave, and by the time the drug and hippie culture broke through to mainstream acceptance, the band wanted nothing really to do with it--they felt like outsiders in their own circle even, and were already considered also rans in other circles. The problem was that they'd represented the underground movement, and after "You're Gonna Miss Me" broke and they were on Dick Clark's show and everything, it alienated a bit of the subculture--and to many at that time, they were just perceived as another one of the one hit wonders of the era. The band were left wondering if they should continue chasing the big singles, or whether they should continue trying to develop the album oriented thing that they wanted to do. They definetely had more in common with the punk scene--sniffing glue, doing drugs out of boredom, slacker culture/ outsider culture, etc. Roky was so messed up that he'd forget entire parts of songs' lyrics, and at one point, became too scared to go onstage because he thought that the feds were gonna arrest him onstage. As Eye Mind progressed, it just became more and more difficult to read, because Roky was in and out of the asylums even more, friends/ hangers on would get him high at every point (even though they knew it wasn't good for him), eventually he got out of music altogether, Stacy was killed (Bunny thought it may have even been suicide--he wanted her to kill him), John Ike lost MORE money and tried to chase down more royalties that were owed to the band (in vain), the reunions in the 70's bombed again because Roky wouldn't show up, and Tommy wanted nothing to do with his own vision anymore (he's since dismissed it as somewhat of an embarrassment).

[LunarTunes]

^Sounds like a great read of a rather sad story. And with a Foreward by Julian Cope to boot! It's on my list...

I highly recommend "You're Gonna Miss Me" if you've not seen it. Although it's more about Roky than the Elevators. You really get a picture of what happened to this guy and, more importantly, how he was brought out of it with a good dose of brotherly love. If you rent the DVD, don't miss the extras! That's where the happy ending is along with a good dose of Roky performance footage and, if you can take it (I couldn't), his mom's home movies...

Want a weekend of great docs about fascinating people with mental health issues? Watch "You're Gonna Miss Me", "The Devil And Daniel Johnston" and "Grey Gardens". I don't know what the effect of those three in a row would be but they're all essential viewing as far as I'm concerned...

Peace.

[runcible]

I've read the book and seen that movie too. The book is fascinating and you really wonder what might have been had the timing been better and the band not hounded by the authorities. The movie is - sad to say - profoundly depressing for the most part even though it has an optimistic ending. My other half and I watched it - she with little knowledge of the band - and at the end I showed her a picture of Roky in his prime in late '66 or so and she couldn't believe it was the same person. He looks like a tramp for most of the film but that's contrasted by a happier and healthier looking Roky at the end when he's living with Sumner. Well worth watching but harrowing at the same time.

[alan_cohaul]

I've read the book and seen that movie too. The book is fascinating and you really wonder what might have been had the timing been better and the band not hounded by the authorities. The movie is - sad to say - profoundly depressing for the most part even though it has an optimistic ending. My other half and I watched it - she with little knowledge of the band - and at the end I showed her a picture of Roky in his prime in late '66 or so and she couldn't believe it was the same person. He looks like a tramp for most of the film but that's contrasted by a happier and healthier looking Roky at the end when he's living with Sumner. Well worth watching but harrowing at the same time.

I'll definetely have to check out "You're Gonna Miss Me"!

I totally agree on the "what could have happened" thing--I think that they'd just been too flagrant with the drug use.....there were other bands that got hassled around that era for drugs, but it seemed like the Elevators were really non-compromising in that regard. The other thing about dropping acid that much (as the band found out) and "playing the acid"--rehearsing or gigging while on acid--you can really only do it once every few days without being completely messed up after awhile (as both Roky and Tommy found out......John Ike didn't really like dropping acid, and Stacy had serious issues/ demons that were accelerated by that much substance abuse). John Ike, I think, was the most level headed guy as far as a business standpoint where he realized the importance of making gigs, showing up on time, paying people (his mother basically bankrolled the band), and even in the reunion, John Ike was furious at Roky for not showing up and sabotaging the momentum that they'd managed to regain.

Tommy was at odds with him, because Tommy just wanted to have it be about dropping acid and truthfully, Tommy had zero insight, information or care about the business/ industry side of it, and that really stung them in the end, I think. Tommy was always getting Roky high, he was forcing lyrics on Roky when Roky wanted to do the belting/ screaming thing (definetely an influence on Janis Joplin), and Roky couldn't even remember alot of those lyrics, either.

After the Elevators had their stay in San Fran, the scene got alot more electric, too--the Grateful Dead were originally totally different, and alot of that scene was otherwise acoustic and folk based. The Elevators took the garage rock of the time, but added much more to it......in that sense, that's why I think that even though they embraced alot of the excess that typified the hippie culture, even with longer songs like "Slip Inside This House", it's still really rooted in raw, electric rock n' roll that isn't steeped in huge guitar or drum solos.....there was an economy to their playing that they still managed to convey.

[redcloud]

'Eye Mind' is without a shadow of a doubt THE greatest rock bio I have ever read. It is a must read for anybody remotely interested in psychedelic music. Fans of rock music in general would also get a lot out of reading this excellent, well researched and brilliantly written book.

[redcloud]

After the Elevators had their stay in San Fran, the scene got alot more electric, too--the Grateful Dead were originally totally different, and alot of that scene was otherwise acoustic and folk based. The Elevators took the garage rock of the time, but added much more to it......in that sense, that's why I think that even though they embraced alot of the excess that typified the hippie culture, even with longer songs like "Slip Inside This House", it's still really rooted in raw, electric rock n' roll that isn't steeped in huge guitar or drum solos.....there was an economy to their playing that they still managed to convey.

While I agree with much of what you say, the Dead began to explore higher territories than the bluesy jug band of their earlier days (as the Warlocks) when they became Kesey's house band for the Acid Tests. Potent LSD had a lot to do with the Dead's metamorphosis. Galaxies away from their Workingman's Dead/American Beauty era albums some of the real early Dead recordings are actually very punky and garagey. 'Cream Puff War' from their 1st album being the best known example but earlier tracks that never made LP's and early live shows are even better sources to cite. But, I am sure the Elevators stint in SF influenced Captain Trips as well (and vice versa).

[niamhm]

'Eye Mind' is without a shadow of a doubt THE greatest rock bio I have ever read. It is a must read for anybody remotely interested in psychedelic music. Fans of rock music in general would also get a lot out of reading this excellent, well researched and brilliantly written book.

Heartily agree, fantastic book very insightful,recommended and brought to my attention by someone on this site who`s name escapes me but cheers anyway ,just goes to show another example off why this site is the best around for recommendations for the psychedelicly minded.