Really LOVING this reissue!! IN STOCK: ROKY ERICKSON - THE EVIL ONE [2LP] (D-SIDE ETCHING, GATEFOLD, DOWNLOAD) “Most of the time Roky would have a yellow legal pad, and he’d be sitting in the hallway somewhere, writing music, real weak and slumped down like that. He was a real nice little guy, didn’t have a whole lot to say.” So remembers Bob Priest in the 2005 Roky Erickson documentary, You’re Gonna Miss Me. According to Priest-- a psychiatrist at the maximum-security mental institution Rusk State Hospital in East Texas during Roky Erickson’s imprisonment there in the late 60s and early 70s-- writing music is what kept Erickson going during those horrifying years of compulsory electroshock therapy and Thorazine doses: “He wanted to write his music, and he wanted to play his music. And that’s all. At least it took his mind off where he was. The legend of Roky Erickson is one of the most compelling in rock history. As the leader of the 13th Floor Elevators, he codified 60s psychedelia-- helping establish the genre’s American vernacular, distinct from the prim Sgt. Pepper’s-isms of its British counterpart. Even further, the native Texan staked out a parochial claim on druggy, transcendental rock that was fuzzier and more deeply fried than the West Coast’s more cultured iteration. Regardless of geography, it was clear Erickson claimed citizenship in one place and one place only: his own head. At Rusk, he was forced to explore-- or retreat into-- previously uncharted fringes of that psychic territory. There he peered inward, hummed to himself, and wrote. And when he was released in 1974, he took that yellow legal pad and set about making those visions real."
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:44:36 +0000
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