A week or so ago SA over at the Bagging Area posted a rather splendid track by The Third Bardo which got me reminiscing over a tape that I got from a mate's older brother when I was in 5th year at school. It had the likes of The Velvet Underground and Stooges amongst a load of other stuff that I had never heard of before things like H.P Lovecraft , the afore mentioned Third Bardo and other bands that I would later find on the Nuggetts series of albums. It also had a rather strange bit of dialogue from Nico lifted from a bootleg at the start of it. This tape opened up a whole new world of late 60s music to me. The older hippy types I was friendly with had introduced me to Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Love and the like a couple of years earlier but this stuff just sounded even more "out there" and therefore much cooler. What gave this tape further kudos was that it was compiled by alternative face about town and genuine nice guy Willie McArdle who had played and recorded with the BMX Bandits. Cool or what?
At the moment I am trying, with limited success to remember all of the tracks on the compilation for a playlist for the iPod. I may even try to make up a tape just for old time's sake. Anyway, this track from the 13th Floor Elevators was on the cassette. It was the band's third single released in 1967 a fact that I would not be aware of until much, much later.
13th Floor Elevators - (I've Got) Levitation
5 comments:
Not heard this great great song for ages. And nice bit of name-dropping too.
George - subtle or whit? One day I will regale you with the story of when Willie introduced me to the guitarist in the Soup Dragons in my local.
And I look forward to reading about it...
the lineage thing was great though back in't day. as you describe it, older blokes passing down the info via tapage. its interesting now that everything can be found in a filterless way, it seems to inform everyone of nothing. whereas when you had the discerning types pointing it out to you...or maybe I'm talking bollox....but it seemed somehow correct when someone said, if you like joy division, wait 'til you hear this.
NOt talking bollox Anto, point well made. Better somebody putting you onto something than reading customers who bought this also . . .
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