Friday Freak-Out: The 13th Floor Elevators perform "You're Gonna Miss Me"

Friday Freak-Out: The 13th Floor Elevators performing "You're Gonna Miss Me" on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in 1966. The track is available on the essential album "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators."

• [languagegame]

  the psychedelic sounds of high fidelity

• [B E Pratt]

  Thank you, thank you! In this here town (Austin), if you’re a guitarist or in a band, this song, along with ‘Two-Headed Dog’ is simply something that you must be able to play. Roky is alive and well (he is back on his meds, finally) and plays about town sporadically.

• [JoshP]

  Like man, that is. So. Groovy.

• [Viktor]

  Love these guys, especially Roky, good find!

• [angusm]

  It’s slightly unnerving to see Roky looking so clean-cut, yet sounding almost the same.

• [Crunt]

  If you’re ready to take a couple more steps forward (and upward) check out the 13th Floor Elevators songs “Slip Inside This House” and “Postures (Leave your Body Behind)”, both easily found on youtube.

  • [B E Pratt]

    Also go find the song ‘Starry Eyes’ which almost seems to be Roky channeling Buddy Holly.

• [John Christensen]

  Roky was a great, great artist, and tragic figure. But the Elevators also had two other geniuses in my reckoning. One was Stacy Sutherland, who was a guitarist as great as Hendrix (but very different). The other being  Tommy Hall, who although he was a manipulative weirdo, was a great lyricist, and largely resposible for the band’s philosophy which led them to be the world’s  first self identified “psychedelic” rock band, from Texas yet.

• [irksome]

  More milk-jug.

• [Fiddy]

  Yes, it surprised me to hear the narrator at the start of the video refer to the band as “Roky and the 13th Floor Elevators.”  I’ve never heard the band called by that name, and if any name should go before the band’s, it would be Tommy Hall who was largely responsible for the Elevators’ unique sound.  Roky was the last member to join the Elevators, if I remember the history correctly (referenced from a long, detailed interview with all the various members of the band that I saw transcribed on a web page years ago).  He was only 18 when he became the band’s lead vocalist, having responded to a newspaper ad from the band seeking a singer.  The documentary “You’re Gonna Miss Me” explores all the tragic circumstances that befell the band and Roky over the course of four decades, and is not to be missed by any Elevator fan.

  As a UT college student in the 1980s, I never missed a chance to see Roky performing with the Explosives at Raul’s Club, the Continental Club, Maggie Mae’s on Sixth Street, or anywhere else they happened to play.  I saw the Explosives many more times, and they were a fine punk band by themselves, but it was only when they were backing Roky that they seemed to achieve a level of greatness.  I remember especially a New Years’ Eve show they played on December 31, 1979, where Roky and they Explosives jammed for hours, pausing for an intermission only after he broke a couple of guitar strings and had to spend at least half an hour re-stringing his instrument and tuning it before the show could continue.  The intensity of this early video shows the way Roky has played his entire life, and is typical of his attachment to the music he’s created. 

  The next time I’m back in Austin, I hope I’ll be able to see him again.

  • [bibulb]

    I was going to note that I came at Roky from backwards through the Explosives – “Restless Natives” was played in our house for many, many, many years.

    (edit : also, don’t forget Club Foot!)

• [igpajo]

  Makes me remember the first time I ever heard music like that, I was in a crappy 80′s punk band and an older friend of ours sat us down, gave us a few beers and played all the Nuggets records for us.  Freakin blew our minds.   Pretty sure this song was in there somewhere.

  • [shull]

    Yes, it was on the Nuggets records. I mean, they got an electric jug player, you don’t even know that an electric jug is an instrument.

• [InsertFingerHere]

  These performances ..  good to see the band, but even better when they play for real.