Psychedelic Jukebox: [1967] The Elopers - Music To Smoke Bananas By

 

The Elopers released a single in the autumn of 1967 that has since been treated by collectors and regional compilers as a compact curiosity and a telling example of a local American psychedelic instrumental: the 7" Music To Smoke Bananas By with its B-side Peak Beat appeared on the tiny RLW imprint under the catalogue/run number KCMS 1286, recorded in Colorado. The record credits the A-side to Randy Weatherington and Jay Ridge Jr., names that recur across later reissue tracklists and CD compilations that made the piece available to new listeners decades later.

The band is tied to the Colorado scene, and regional archivists and compilers place the origin point for the record in Manitou Springs and the surrounding Colorado Springs area, which is consistent with other tiny local imprints of the mid-1960s that documented high-school and college-age players issuing one or two singles for local distribution. The A-side is a short, focused instrumental of roughly two minutes, built on a steady low-end anchor and a repeating rhythmic motif under a fuzz-heavy lead guitar line with abundant reverb; the arrangement favors concision and an immediate hook rather than extended soloing.

The title Music To Smoke Bananas By maps directly onto a broader cultural moment in 1967 when a widespread hoax about smoking banana peels — often called “bananadine” in underground press accounts — circulated in student newspapers and the countercultural press. That story, which the mainstream press later covered and which figures in oral recollections of the era, fed a swath of ephemeral jokes, “how-to” articles and stage gag material in which musicians and audiences sometimes played along; the Elopers’ title sits squarely within that bout of psychedelic humor and rumor rather than implying any serious instruction. Reexaminations of the hoax, plus period magazine pieces, place the origin of the claim in the underground press in early 1967 and track how it spread through the summer of that year. 

 You might also like another song from the Psychedelic Jukebox: "[1967] The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - Light Bulb Blues".

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