Wax on Wax #5: Psych Records
Today we explore psychadelic music, from some of the earliest examples to the Fearless Freaks of today. Psychadelic music can take all forms, and these four are just a small sample of what the genre has to offer. Take a listen to these four records, and sound off in the comments below. Which psychadelic records do you want to see on this list?
Something about Austin, Texas brings all the freaks out from hiding. All sorts of wild cards from Daniel Johnston to Gibby Haynes of The Butthole Surfers, Stevie Ray Vaughan to Townes Van Zandt, and Janis Joplin have called Austin home. Lest we forget the king of all freaks, Alex Jones is also an Austinite. Austin is a magnet for those in search of the wild, unencumbered American spirit. Some get their fill but many others spend their lives chasing that dragon to their own detriment. There is a dark side to the raw freedom that Austin provides, and from the outside looking in most Americans would seal it shut rather than let it out. "Freedom" is what people think they want, but in reality, it has been reduced to a buzzword devoid of its potency and meaning. Americans want a version of freedom that is sanitized, with designated operating hours, and never colors outside the lines. People now chant "freedom" while trampling on the rights of others. The word has become a complete perversion of itself. What do we do with those that stray from the designated path? We throw them in the brig, as we find out was the tragic case for Roky Erickson. Austin may be the last place in The United States where all walks of life are walked and that originalist spirit is alive and well.
Roky Erickson's band The 13th Floor Elevators were a group of true originals hailing from Austin, Texas, and they practiced pure brainwave anarchy. They were a band that fiercely advocated the use of LSD and other outlawed mind-altering substances to expand consciousness and open pathways that are covered over by regular life. A band that was so influential that not only did their peers at the time ape off their sound but so did the punks ten years later thanks to Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (compiled by Lenny Kaye who would later go on to play guitar for Patti Smith). The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators was released at the height of the freakout psychedelic era of the late 60s, and there is relative consensus that this album was the first to coin the term psychedelic as a musical descriptor. The San Francisco scene owes much to this album, and flower power may as well be a direct export from the 13th floor. It's an album full of thin electric guitars blasting through Fender Twins turned to 11, along with extremely liberal usage of reverb and an electric jug. Oh don't you worry, we'll get to the electric jug, trust me.
Where else could we have started from this week other than the very beginning? Groovy.
The 13th Floor Elevators were primarily made up of Roky Erickson (vocals, guitar), Stacy Sutherland (lead guitar), Tommy Hall (electric jug), and the temporary rhythm section of drummer John Walton and bassist Ronnie Leatherman. This quintet came together while most of them were under 20 years old and created music that is still to this day being replicated. The brew that makes up their sound is equal parts surf, garage, rock n' roll, and folk. Psychedelic music was a bridge between British blues-rock and the more sophisticated prog rock of the early 1970s, which fine-tuned and expanded upon the psych genre until it became something else entirely. Listening to The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, you can clearly hear the influence on Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, and countless other 70s bands. This debut album sold well enough for the band to continue on to make two more albums. But ultimately they were a niche band for a niche scene with a short shelf life. By '69 the psychedelic sound had peaked, and in a decade where entire genres were shifting from month to month, three years wasn't a bad run. What makes The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators special is that it is basically the dictionary definition of the genre. You could start and end here and get a great idea of what the entire sound was all about.
Speaking of sounds, how about that electric jug huh? Upon first listening to this album, I thought maybe my chair was squeaking, maybe there was an issue with my speakers; what on Earth is that weird noise on every song? Tommy Hall may not be as well known as Roky Erickson, but he co-founded The 13th Floor Elevators, wrote many of their lyrics, and was the chief LSD evangelist in the group. He advanced the cause for LSD so hard that it actually pushed their original rhythm section out of the band due to them being uncomfortable with how far he was taking it. For me to describe how the electric jug came about would be a great example of the typical LSD thought process. "Dude, what if I was inside the jug??" The electric jug is not a Minimoog or any kind of synth, nor is it even inherently electric. It is a simple crock jug with a microphone placed inside of it, while Tommy Hall blows and vocalizes bizarre, rhythmic noises along with the band. By recording it this way his voice distorts and bends in such a way that is true blue sci-fi. It is unusual, to say the least. Now, this may sound like it would be annoying, but after a while of listening it really is a part of what makes this band so unique. You'd be forgiven if you mistook The 13th Floor Elevators for the myriad of other bands from the time if it were not for that damn jug. The electric jug is a crucial element of the sound of this band. Trust me, just follow along, we like the jug, it's fine.
The context surrounding the release of this album, specifically concerning Roky Erickson is fascinating. Roky and Tommy flew the LSD flag harder than most and were openly taking it on almost a daily basis. During one of these trips in 1968, Roky was arrested, placed in a psych(!) ward, and given involuntary shock treatment. Sounds terrifying right? It's straight out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but it really happened and was a grotesquely prevalent practice at the time. Shortly after Roky's release, he was again arrested after being caught with a single marijuana joint. This time he chose to plead insanity rather than go to prison for 10 years, which is an almost impossible choice to be faced with. Given his prior experience with these institutions, Roky chose what seemed to be the lesser of two evils. After numerous escape attempts and years of involuntary shock therapy and Thorazine treatments, he was finally released in 1972. Years of institutionalization and drug abuse led to a fractured life, albeit more productive than other acid casualties like Syd Barrett. Roky had a brief solo career restart in the 70s, again with little success. By the late 80s, he was arrested for stealing thousands of pieces of mail from people in the Austin community and plastering it all over the inside of his house. Once caught for this bizarre act, he avoided punishment due to his prior history of mental illness and the fact that he never actually opened a single piece of mail. After finally getting straight and receiving proper medical help for the first time in his life in the mid-2000s, Roky was able to launch a proper solo career which led to numerous tours and a few albums before he passed away in 2019. It's the rare happy ending for an acid burnout.
It's not hard to see how The 13th Floor Elevators are seen as local legends in the Austin area. These guys were imbued with the free spirit that most Americans see as a 6th sense you acquire once you're born in The United States. You may think they'd be more at home if they had been a part of the Haight/Ashbury scene, but their enshrinement as part of Austin history is right where they belong. They're in welcome company with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Wayne Coyne and other gonzos that took "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" literally and without remorse or hesitation. So is this a cautionary tale? Kind of. If there were a sliding scale between Daniel Johnston and Alex Jones I believe Roky and co. would fall firmly in the middle. They had good intentions and didn't exactly deserve the pain they went through, but they weren't heroes either. As with most things, it's a grey area. But very few things are as colorful or vibrant as *The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.
Had The Beatles continued the notion they began on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club instead of the assortment of various sounds the arrived at on The White Album, it would have sounded like S.F. Sorrow. A story of a man who is born, falls in love, goes to war, and watches his wife die in a balloon crash before going on an incredibly dark journey to the innermost hole of his psyche where he realizes that he serves no purpose as an old man. Very heavy stuff. The music is just as heavy, with some songs being absolute proto-metal, much in the same way "Helter Skelter" is. S.F. Sorrow is a masterclass of mixing and recording, with actual magic tricks being performed by the staff engineers at Abbey Road. It's an incredibly experimental and progressive album that was unfortunately swept under the rug in its time due to poor reviews and the fact that it was released the same week as The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society and The Beatles' White Album. Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing, and S.F. Sorrow was truly undervalued in its time and was seen as a complete knockoff album. Surely psych fatigue may have set in, but even in 1968, the signs were on the wall for a shift in sound, and with its wild use of effects, dreamscape lyrics, and insane concept, The Pretty Things planted their freak flag with S.F. Sorrow. If this was the hill they would die on, then so be it. The Pretty Things made a remarkable album that proved to be massively influential to similar recordings that came after by The Who and Pink Floyd - and it might even be better.
S.F. Sorrow starts off with the song "S.F. Sorrow Is Born" which is the first chapter of the life of our protagonist. The peculiar thing about the narrative of this album is how much Tommy and The Wall borrow from it. Those albums now read as fantastic imitations of a concept that was set in stone years before Pete Townshend or Roger Waters had even conceived of their great works. That is not to disparage either of those albums, which are obviously fantastic; I just can't stop thinking about how different the history of rock music looks if this album got the kind of attention it deserved right from the outset. 70s prog used this album as a stepping stone, and it deserves to hold a unique place somewhere between Revolver, Piper At The Gates of Dawn, Tommy and The Wall. Even Dark Side of the Moon feels indebted to this album; the technical achievements by The Abbey Road engineers are nothing short of incredible. You don't get the sound of Dark Side without the advancements that were made here. Don't even get me started on the absolutely gorgeous album artwork that was created by lead singer Phil May. This was a complete thought unlike what most bands have, and it was executed flawlessly.
This album has guitars dancing all over the place, along with brilliant pads of organs and mellotrons. There are other 60s psychedelic hallmarks like sitars, tack pianos, and vocals wildly swirling out of a Leslie cabinet. But these elements do not sound dated; they actually add incredible depth and an exotic fever to these songs. The stereo image of the album is incredibly open, and the engineers play with every square inch of real estate between your ears. The pan knob is exercised with particular frequency, and imagining pulling off some of these things without automation is just hard to wrap my head around as a recording engineer. Drums will fly from left to right, in and out with reverbs and delays. Other times the entire band will be in one speaker while vocals are in the other, and something wild and unimaginable is swirling in the center. The audio truly has a mind of its own on S.F. Sorrow. If the goal is to recreate the psychic turmoil that can only be felt on an intense drug trip, S.F. Sorrow should be considered a hallmark for all acid tests moving forward. S.F. Sorrow was the first album Peter Mew engineered after being promoted from tape op at Abbey Road. The perfect sounds he gets from every element in each song shows that he believed he had something to prove. Given the incredible fidelity on this record, it should be no surprise that he later went on to become one of the chief mastering engineers at Abbey Road. Peter Mew may as well be another member of the band on S.F. Sorrow.
About a decade after this album was released Roger Waters completed work on his rock opera The Wall, another record about a disillusioned warrior with a dark vision of life. Listen to parts of "I See You" and tell me there aren't elements that were lifted directly from it for The Wall. Even in the 90's when The Pretty Things returned to Abbey Road's Studio 2 to perform the album live in its entirety, they employed the services of none other than David Gilmore to add lead guitar. Floyd was aware of this album, and this isn't some kind of "gotcha," it's just brilliant to be able to hear such a clear stepping stone for their development. This may be one of my favorite albums I've written about since this the genesis of Wax On Wax. The performances are fantastic, the recording and production are leaps and bounds ahead of most albums, and to top it off it has a concept that is years ahead of its time. It stumbled out the gate, but S.F. Sorrow is bound for another fantastic journey, much like S.F Sorrow himself. Only this time, I hope S.F. Sorrow isn't quite so lonely.
Those who have partaken know that Reefer Madness is bunk. It doesn't turn you into a lunatic, you're not going to jump out of any windows, and you surely won't have a mental breakdown if you use marijuana sparingly. Now, I can't say the same is true for other drugs already mentioned in previous pieces in this article, but weed is mostly harmless and legal in places governed by politicians with half a brain. The tragedy is that we have states in this country with billboards selling marijuana, while a vast percentage of those in jail in those states are incarcerated for marijuana. It's cruel, stupid, and archaic. Imagine being in prison for a joint right now while there are commercials on TV selling the very product you're incarcerated for? Time and circumstance can be devils. Gary Higgins was imprisoned for two years in the 1970s over his possession of a single joint, but in the days leading up to his incarceration, he created a beautiful album called Red Hash. It's a surprisingly serene and beautifully laid back collection of songs, made all the more aching by his looming prison sentence. Songs like "Thicker Than A Smokey" and "Cuckoo" are fantastical ballads, evocative of Tolkien and accompanied by wonderfully recorded cellos, mandolins, and acoustic guitars. Most copies of Red Hash spent their lifetime in Higgins' attic, and proper evaluation of the album didn't take place until it was rediscovered in 2005. It's a fascinating and dreamy journey created by a man whose freedom was in imminent danger.
Gary Higgins is a quiet man who mostly kept to himself. At the time, he had an enormous red beard, along with a wild red mane he hid behind that almost surely made him a mark for authorities. Even since the resurgence of this album, Higgins has still mostly shied away from any notoriety or spotlight. He's humbled, as any musician would be, for his music to be rediscovered and appreciated. Music like this is hard to come by, not just because it was lost. Most American folk music we're familiar with draws on southern music, and is basically proto country music in a sense. The music on Red Hash is positively druid-like. It's baroque music not really in content but definitely in spirit. It's a calming storybook sound more at home with Skip Spence or Vashti Bunyan rather than anything you'd find at a kool-aid acid test. Even the title Red Hash is evocative of warm early mornings, coffee, nature, reading, and peaceful quiet. I advise finding a similar setting once you sit down to listen. It's the kind of music that is perfect for contemplation, meditation, and connection.
I'm going to use the word "tragedy" to describe the circumstances surrounding Red Hash because I can't think of another way to put it. Higgins was arrested and sentenced to two years in jail for possession of marijuana, and in a rush of fewer than 40 hours, recorded what he thought would be his only album. In interviews, he mentions that the goal was just to get this material recorded because he knew his life was about to change forever. He was robbed of a potentially fruitful career in music, and in turn, we were robbed of what could have been many more beautiful albums with his unique voice. It seems jarring that something so peaceful could erupt from such an incredibly stressful point in time for Higgins. The weight that was bearing down on him is not evident in these songs, and it seems that in resigning himself to his fate, he was able to concentrate and deliver excellent performances. Higgins is just one example of the robbed potential of our country's historically disastrous drug policies. We find it reasonable to completely ruin someone's life over what is essentially nothing.
Red Hash is the dream I think every struggling musician has. Maybe they don't find success now, or even in this life, but someday their art will find its audience. It seems trite to bring up Vincent van Gogh, and even extreme, but I can't help but think that most artists would give anything to have even a modicum of his success in death if it meant that in life they had to toil on in relative anonymity. Luckily for Higgins he was rediscovered, and we all can appreciate his music while he is here, which is the bare minimum of what any artist of his caliber deserves. Higgins has gone on to perform live over the years and has even released a few new collections of music. It's a welcome return after spending a life forced to turn his back on the thing he was so clearly born to do. The small success he has found now is not adequate justice for the time he spent in prison, but it is welcome success none-the-less. Let Red Hash be a reminder to us all that people are more than their perceived transgressions, and that we as a society still have much to atone for.
I associate more incredible memories with The Flaming Lips than almost any other band. They are easily one of the top ten bands performing today that I believe you must see before you die, regardless of if you like their records or not. The Flaming Lips encapsulate the ideals of pure scattershot, no holds barred, creativity better than any before or since. They were a bunch of snotty punks in Oklahoma who took acid and proved to be too weird for the 80s or the 90s. They were never properly appreciated in their earlier years, but they also didn't start creating their best work until they'd been a band for nearly 20 years. Their run of records from The Soft Bulletin to Embryonic was so excellent and so fun, and I feel incredibly lucky to be a wildly impressionable teenager during that time. The DIY ethos that listening to this band helped instill in me was so crucial to my development, and they were a group of musicians that were unashamedly weird, and that was a selling point. Clouds Taste Metallic is actually one of the stranger records in their entire catalog because of how polished and conventional it can be. It's a really great 90s rock album that sounds almost like grunge if it didn't have such a chip on its shoulder. Grunge music often had a hard time having unironic fun, and I am glad for The Flaming Lips for that very reason. They fit the MTV mold well enough for a moment, but they came up before that and made their real fans after that entire medium dried up. They exist outside of anyone's notion of what they're supposed to be, even their own, and that is especially true on Clouds Taste Metallic. This would prove to be the last album they'd release before they drastically changed their sound, lost and gained a few members, and underwent a complete creative shift.
The albums that directly precede and follow Clouds Taste Metallic tell the whole picture of where they were at while they created this record. The album before was 1993's Transmissions From a Satellite Heart, which scored them a mild hit single with "She Don't Use Jelly." The song is perfect Beavis and Butthead material, and the video ate up the airwaves that year and showed that The Flaming Lips finally had hit their stride. Their album after Clouds, depending on who you ask, is either one of the worst records ever made or one of the coolest listening experiences one could ever encounter. That album was called Zaireeka, and I fall firmly in the latter category. Zaireeka was a quadruple album that was meant to have all four CDs played in sync all at once. One CD would have vocals and guitar another would only have drums, another would have bass and reverb, etc. The idea was to get a group of people together and try and sync them up as best you could on four different sound sources. What resulted, due to playback drift between sources, or even just human error, was a completely unique listening experience every time you listened to the album. If CDs 1 & 3 were slightly out of sync, you might hear the reverb from a drum hit before the drum actually hits on the other CD. Guitars and vocals drift in and out, and instruments find ways to combine in ways you'd never think of doing intentionally. It's truly an incredible experience to listen to, not to mention how intoxicating it is being in a room with four pairs of speakers. When my friends and I listened to Zaireeka, we had CD 1 playing through my Playstation 2 on a big TV, CD 2 playing through a regular stereo, CD 3 playing through a boombox, and CD 4 playing through my laptop with a bullhorn up to the tiny speakers. It was incredible, and I'd give nearly anything to go back and listen that exact way again, but such is the beauty of Zaireeka and in turn, The Flaming Lips.
I saw The Flaming Lips the first time on "New Year's Eve, Eve" at the Bill Graham Auditorium in 2006. Cat Power and Gnarls Barkley at the height of "Crazy" opened for The Lips, and up to that point, it had already been one of the best one-two punch concerts I'd ever seen. The Flaming Lips then lowered a huge circular light display rig down towards the stage, and it soon became clear what it was: a giant UFO. On top of this, the cockpit of the "UFO" was a bubble full of smoke, inside which was no doubt our fearless leader Wayne Coyne. Before any band members emerged from the craft, a cavalry of superheroes emerged from the ship. The bubble rolled forwards to the edge of the UFO and leaped into the audience. Wayne Coyne rolled right over the top of me, I'm positive in my effort to hold him up above my head, I grabbed his wallet through the bubble. The rest of the band emerged and blasted into "Race For The Prize" and when I tell you that in the chaos of bubbles, lasers, balloons, superheroes, UFOs, and psychedelic ecstasy swirling around me that I truly felt alive for the first time... you better believe me. The Flaming Lips played amazing, thought-provoking music that made you understand how beautiful it is that we're all pieces of dust floating through the universe with the capability to love each other. They played "Bohemian Rhapsody," and yeah, I just about died. The concert ended with literal canons of confetti being shot while what had to be 20,000 balloons fell at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve "Eve." An incredible night that I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
That concert was a solid ten years after Clouds Taste Metallic was released, and their sound had drastically changed in the interim, but what hadn't changed was how good they had gotten at articulating their freakout sound onto tape. Zaireeka is the real beginning of how experimental they would really become, but their run of great records began with this one. It took them longer than most to learn how to properly craft an album, write great songs, innovate, and most importantly, bring all those elements together while still maintaining what made them such a uniquely great band. Clouds Taste Metallic showed how much promise they really had as a group and is the sleeper album in their entire discography. It was around this time that drummer Steven Drozd had an immense heroin addiction, but also emerged as not only an incredible drummer but also the most formidable musician in the group. Wayne Coyne decided to go even deeper than before into psych weirdness and really separated himself from most rock stars and became basically a living art installation. Clouds Taste Metallic was the crux in the road at which The Flaming Lips had peaked with their 90s rock sound and instead decided to double down on the freak weirdness they've become so notorious for.
Recently in the leadup to their new album, Wayne Coyne has mentioned that he had always thought of The Flaming Lips as "an Oklahoma band," but that they are now starting to look at themselves in the larger pantheon of great American bands like The Grateful Dead. Personally, I couldn't agree more with that, and I think whether you like them or not, the fact that they have graduated beyond a cult band and into one of the great live rock acts ever is indisputable. Not to mention that their records are continuously inventive, creative, innovative, and consistent. The Flaming Lips take the dread of existence and make you understand how lucky we are to even feel pain or anything else at all. You don't need drugs for that, you just need some level of understanding how much you'll never understand. The first time I listened to The Flaming Lips was in Hawaii for my older brother's wedding. I was 15 years old, and I purchased At War With The Mystics, and The Velvet Underground & Nico specifically for that trip. Somehow I thought the vibrant colors on the cover of this Flaming Lips record, and the pop art happy banana on the cover of & Nico would be the perfect fit for the lush overgrowth and picturesque beaches of Hawaii. I found out quickly that I was half right, and At War With The Mystics baptized me into the world of psychedelia like nothing ever before. I've been a major fan of the entire genre ever since. Psych truly knows no bounds, no borders, and no limits, and The Flaming Lips are living proof of that. They're the torchbearers of it all at this point, and I am so ready to get weird at a Flaming Lips show as soon as the current weirdness we're all living under is over.
Check in next week, we’ll be covering Genre Soup.
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