Texas Platters

13th Floor Elevators: A Photographic History of Easter Everywhere

Edited by Stephen Curran

Prism Marketing, 32 pp., $40 (softcover)

The title says it all: This coffeetable book serves as a souvenir program from the 13th Floor Elevators' second album, 1967's Easter Everywhere. Editor Stephen Curran collected Guy Clark's photos (yes, that Guy Clark) in an oversize format on quality paper. The photos are few and the subject obviously limited, but this book remains the proverbial $20 bill in the old pants pocket – long forgotten yet as valuable as the day lost. Color and black & white photos alike fill its pages, close-ups of the enigmatic band and label producer Lelan Rogers. Here are little-seen shots of the late Dan Galindo, bassist on Easter Everywhere, and tragic Stacy Sutherland, so young and darkly innocent on guitar. There's drummer Danny Thomas with his hair dipping over one eye and rock mystic Tommy Hall. Roky Erickson is depicted in his animated youth, but the centerpiece here is a rare portrait of the radiant Clementine Hall, co-lyricist and occasional vocalist of the band. Unless you are a 'Vators fanatic, this book may not do it; you'd need two of those lost $20 bills to buy it. As a piece of visual history of this massively influential band from Texas, it's priceless.