Best Band on Earth, 1966

Missed yesterday on account of the yuletide obligations.  Now, on for another underground hipster snob pick for 1966:  The 13th Floor Elevators.

Though I'll be one of the first to tell you that Easter Everywhere blows the debut away, the 1966 Elevators are the greater band.  The core of Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall, and Stacy Sutherland was augmented by a rhythm section that matched them on a more even level and included the highly-underrated drummer John Ike Walton who many considered the band's secret weapon.

These days people focus the most on the Elevators mystic/psychedelic aspect, but Erickson's energy and the band's attack made them as much a proto-punk group, making "You're Gonna Miss Me" a staple of Lenny Kaye's Nuggets.  The band's debut is furious statement that was originally intended to be a crash-course in psychedelic enlightenment orchestrated by Tommy Hall which would have made it one of, if not the first concept album.  The 1966 Elevators truly vied up to the 4 P's with their attack, concepts, freeform experimentalism, and great catchy songs.

The Elevators were on a speeding upward trajectory this year as the quintet and their entourage of new age contributors including Clementine Hall and Powell St. John created a massive, yet under-appreaciated shockwave.  They scored a national hit, released an Erath-shattering album, and moved on to show San Francisco the real meaning of psychedelic rock thanks to Janis Joplin.  The band was on top of the world and still had great music ahead of them, and the raggedy that surrounded the band had not yet begun to destroy it.

Honorable mention:  The Kinks.