13th Floor Elevators, "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators" (International Artists, 1966)

Rock historians often trace the history of psychedelic music back to John Lennon interpreting what he was hearing in his head as "Tomorrow Never Knows," which appeared on the Beatles' "Revolver" album in the summer of 1966.

The Fab Four's willingness to experiment with sound certainly laid the groundwork for the genre to flourish throughout the rest of the decade, as everyone from the Beach Boys to Muddy Waters dabbled in psychedelia. The intent, of course, was to appeal to listeners who may have put themselves into some type of altered state of consciousness, the means of which don't need to be addressed here.

At any rate, many folks with perfectly clear heads still enjoy hearing the fuzz-toned guitars, Hammond B-3 organs, sitars, backward vocals and everything else that got thrown into the musical kitchen sink of the late '60s.

And in on the ground floor was a band from Texas, of all places: the 13th Floor Elevators, who started playing their brand of lysergically charged songs as early as 1965. One of those tunes, "You're Gonna Miss Me," came out as a single at the start of '66, and it while it didn't make the charts, it gained quite a bit of airplay in some farflung places. Still, it remained pretty much of an obscurity before resurfacing as the opening music for "High Fidelity," the Stephen Frears film starring John Cusack and Jack Black. A recommended movie, if only for that reason!

In August '66 - the same month "Revolver" was released - "You're Gonna Miss Me" kicked off the band's debut LP, "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators." While the Beatles and a few others had applied that label to one or two songs by that point, the Elevators plunged in feet-first with an album that must have caused quite a stir at the time. That is, for the few people who heard it. The record came out on the small International Artists label, run by Leland Rogers (brother of Kenny Rogers - "The Gambler," not the baseball pitcher), and the company didn't have the most prominent distribution.

True to its title, "Psychedelic Sounds" serves as a template for the music that would follow, in a primitive sort of manner. Summit Sound Studio in Dallas wasn't quite Abbey Road, so the Elevators had to make do with otherworldly sounds like Tommy Hall's "electric jug," which adds a unique texture to each of the compositions. Likewise, the late Stacy Sutherland didn't have an array of effects to put on his guitar, but his playing is suitably atmospheric, a minor-key mix of modal leads and subtly reverbed rhythms.

The focal point of the band, though, was lead singer Roky (pronounced "rocky") Erickson, whose voice went off in frenzied directions that really hadn't been heard previously in popular music. His screaming on "You're Gonna Miss Me," his only solo composition on the album, gave notice that his band wasn't exactly treading the straight and narrow.

As an album, "Psychedelic Sounds" holds together well, giving the listener enough of a variety among the 11 tracks to keep things interesting. Among the standouts are the melodic ballad "Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)," the call-and-response "Don't Fall Down," the menacing "Thru the Rhythm" and the funky, though manic, "Monkey Island."

The band nails the true spirit of psychedelia with two songs. "Roller Coaster" is a two-chord droner of epic proportions, with Erickson going on about an experience that definitely is not about an amusement park ride and Sutherland playing some minimalist licks that become more frenzied as the song moves along. And "Kingdom of Heaven" is a lurching, heaving example of what Dr. Timothy Leary just might have been hearing way back when.

"The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators" is available on CD, but unfortunately, the most readily available pressing is of decidedly low fidelity, sounding kind of like it was mastered from the LP by way of a few generations of audio tape. Speaking of which, I've read where the master tapes from '66 might not even exist anymore, which is a shame. Still, no matter what the sound quality, fans of psychedelic music will get a kick out of what the Elevators were doing at the very dawn of the genre.