13th Floor Elevators - "Sign of the 3 Eyed Men" 10 CD Boxset

A few dozen more threads like this, perhaps...

 

Awesome stuff, Devotional.

I saw on the G45Central forum a couple days ago that Stacy's "It's You" is actually the track "I Don't Ever Want to Come Down", seen on the Never Ever Land COMP. Still that looks like an awesome CD. Have you seen the original cover yet?

 

My pleasure, Chris! Pre-ordered my set today!

 

For some reason, this is starting to sound more like a fan-compiled box set (needle-drops, acetates, live archival tapes from personal collections, etc.) rather than a legitimately licensed master tape project, but maybe I'm reading into it too much.

 

Thanks! That makes perfect sense! And what a fantastic track that is! On the Roky CD-R it is listed as an acetate from Gold Star Studios, March 1968, so that's probably it. Do you mean the cover for the box?

I've seen Never Ever Land, but I haven't heard it yet. Read a couple of negative reviews regarding the sources. Been listening to the first two albums from Red Crayola lately. Looking forward to the reissues.

Have you read Paul Drummond's book Eye Mind - The Saga Of Roky Erickson And The 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers Of Psychedelic Sound? It's a great read, and most of the information I've got on their studio work is gathered from there.

 

I suppose that it is a fan-compiled box set, on one level. But seriously, given that this group was an "indie" label texas band from the 60s, how many professional sources would you expect? They didn't even know that any master tapes existed until recently. On the other hand, I will delay all attempts at pot-shots until I have an opportunity to listen to the whole thing myself. They managed to get the original engineer to review and remix master tapes (when/where they existed) so I guess that's a pretty good thing. In short, I will give benefit of the doubt until I hear it. I was a sucker enough to pre-order it so I'm going to stay positive, on account of the money I've already invested in it.

 

Never Ever Land blows chunks. Avoid it, but it's the only place to get many of the IA 45's, like early Endle. St. Cloud 45 and the the Rubyyat stuff, which is awesome, despite the terrible Noise Reduction. Red Crayola is great too, but the first album is the keeper. The mono version slays the stereo issue.

I bought Eye Mind as soon as I saw that it was available. I've read it about 2-3 times from front to back and it's whetted my appetite for the box set.

 

I don't know exactly what you mean by a "legitimately licensed master tape project", but Walter Andrus, who recorded their early work was involved, and helped identify, re-mix and remaster the tapes. It's a labour of love. Which is a first for the Elevators.

 

Here's a recent (but brief) posting from Kiloh himself in regards to the origins of the EE multitrack:

http://groups.google.com/group/Texas-P/browse_thread/thread/530c41187ef12bc5

 

http://www.internationalartistsrecords.com/images/10-albums.jpg

The third cover on the bottom is the original planned cover for "A Love That's Sound", BTW.

 

Here's his most recent post and I have to ask, how credible is a guy who says he's never seen It's a Wonderful Life?

"You know, meeting Roky and Dana last Halloween kind of got me
thinking... Then tonight I watched It's A Wonderful Life. It's the
first time I have seen that film. Man, that was like a bolt of
lightening through my soul. I've come to a conclusion; I shall swim
toward the light rather than the darkness.

As of now I am turning over a new leaf. Billy? You're an OK guy in my
book. Luckin? Sumner? Drummond? Lama? You're all OK in my book. Maybe
we can combine all the groups again into one. We can all be friends.

This drama between us has hurt the Quest for Pure Sanity amongsts us.
Let's put down the sword and beat it into a plowshare.

Peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Kiloh"

 

That fellow Kiloh has nearly made me stop liking 13th Floor. He showed up on several other discussion groups I frequent, and just made trouble. A real mixer as some Beatle once said. I'll have to look over the offerings here before I can spring that much for something that I have already in various forms. I've got original lps, and all the stuff that came out in the 80's with the alt versions, various live things on lp and CD, the Sundaze mono reissue.

How many more times? Still those first two albums are hard to beat...

 

It's beautiful!

 

Is there an I.A. comp on ceedee?
Thanks.

And BIG thanks for all the 13thFE stuff. Really enjoying this thread & hope too be really enjoying this music in '09!

 

"Never Ever Land" is a 3xCD IA comp, from the Charly label. Some have complained about the sound - but it's about as good as any IA product has ever been. It's worth it for many outtakes and demos from the Red Crayola, loads of 7"-only sides worth hearing and a pretty nice booklet. I got mine for about $19 new via an Amazon seller - a great deal for 83 tracks.

 

The Epitaph For A Legend 2 CD set from Collectables actually sounds very good but it's mostly demos and alternate versions.

 

I apologize for any rants I may have made last night. The snow completely screwed up my whole weekend and I was NOT in a good mood (I lost about $1000 worth of gigs because of the weather and since they were Christmas parties they probably won't be rescheduled)!

I think the point I was trying to make was that since this isn't really a major label release and the material comes from a variety of sources, it just seems more like one of those fan compiled collections like the Have You Got It Yet Pink Floyd series, but I could be totally wrong. That being said, if I had a choice, I would rather wait for the individual albums, but since we don't know if that's going to happen, I may end up ordering this set after all!

 

I don't pretend to know the whole history of the Texas psych group, but when I started to get into the Elevators, I joined the group hoping to get more information about them. What I got was pretty much a personal soapbox for this Kiloh guy, ranting and raving about Paul Drummond and "Sumterd" (as he would often call Roky's brother). When I replied back, defending Paul (who is a longtime friend of Julian Cope) this Kiloh got even angrier. I said feck it and left the group, which didn't seem like much of a group anyway, just one guy and his rants. I really don't know what kind of exchanges went on between the two parties, but all I can say is Paul published a book and organized the release of the definitive boxed set. Kiloh on the other hand is writing on his blog, and apparently trying to make amends.

 

Does anyone think that Kiloh really has the Easter Everywhere multitracks? I'm far from an expert on the Elevators tapes but that strains credulity.

Can someone give us a breakdown of the sources used for the studio matrerial. Which tracks are remixes, from acetate, from masters, from 1:1 copies of masters, etc?

 

Perhaps this was the 8 track source that they used...

 

I remember back in the 90's when I would visit alt.music-psychedelic, there was a dude named Kiloh who posted there. He was an Elevators freak if it is the same guy you're referring to. It must be him.

Anthony

 

Kiloh is a controversial figure, but he has done a lot - especially for Roky. He has released over 20 AMAZING non-profit CD's of Elevators-material, including several interviews with band members and associates, who've been very co-operative and supportive of the group. The releases were traded as leaves (before torrents), and for each CD traded you were asked to donate $3 to Roky. This was way before Sumner got custody of Roky, and there was no Roky Trust. The group has also collected money to Stacy's mother Sybil (she's 95 years old, and still looking after her son's grave), and they're preparing a gift for her next Easter.

Several of the interviews in Paul's book are taken directly from Kiloh's CD-R's, and Kiloh and the group was not given credit - or even thanked in the book, which illustrates the friction quite clearly.

 

Problematically, figuring those discs out nowadays is really tough for the non-obsessive. It seems as if there's an awful lot of overlap between basically *everything*.

 

That and the few Texas Psych discs I've heard had massive NR and processing. To be fair this was several years ago.

 

There is some overlap, but most of them are straight upgrades. I think they've done a fantastic job with the CD's (save for some bad processing), although I get your point about them being hard to figure them out for a newbie.

I see I wrote over 20 discs, I meant 40. The full list is here:

TexasPsych's Roky Erickson CD Club Discs