Roky Erickson’s Back!!
(and boy was he missed)
I’m no expert on Roky Erickson. I am a fan, and have been ever since I first heard the alchemical treatise ‘Slip Inside this House.’
His voice is astounding, a blues-drenched psychedelic scream that is easily on par with the vocal styling of Janis Joplin. After a twenty-year hiatus, thanks in part to a severe mental illness further exacerbated by the treatments he received while in maximum security mental hospital, Roky Erickson is again performing music, now with The Explosives, and rumor has it that there’s an album in production now with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.
Here’s a performance from Roky Erickson and the Explosions live in Sweden:
Roky’s story, told in the moving documentary You’re Gonna Miss Me, is one that highlights both the surreal nature of the music he’s created as well as the disturbing sequence of events that led him to be incarcerated as a mental patient and subjected to extensive electroshock treatments and heavy psychiatric medication. Watching his story, I was struck by the catch .22 situation that seemed to evolve, shades of Titticut Follies springing immediately to mind. Here’s the documentary in it’s entirety:
His family life after the time in the hospital seems quiet and reserved in the face of the mythic status his psychedelic music has garnered. We watch as he catalogs each bit of junk mail, as he sleeps cocooned by noise from a number of radios, a television, stereo, as he shuffles about his daily life. He appears to be struggling to reintegrate himself, and through the documentary we see slices of his life and the impact his schizophrenia has had on the rest of his family.
The documentary was completed in 2005. By 2006, he was performing again and this footage from Earth Day of 2006 shows him on stage, belting out his unique apocalyptic blues with the same intensity, the same compelling presence he’d exhibited thirty years earlier:
Earth Day 2006 Performance
Now, with any luck, we’re going to see more new music coming from this great performer, music that is as haunting as he is haunted, and that helps bridge that line between madness and genius. Roky Erickson almost did slip away. Now he’s back, making certain that we truly will miss him when he’s gone:
For more: RokyErickson.Net
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Roger Kynard Erickson. . . “take me me to DMT place.”
I never thought I’d see Roky this in control of his facilities again (especially after all the interviews in the mid-90′s during his last comeback attempt — you gotta dig some of those interviews up, one in the now defunct RAYGUN magazine, one in SPIN I think– completely insane stream-of-conscious free-association weirdness, Roky asks the interviewer “what color is this car?” and “can you get the cartoon network in your car?” etc.
Way to go! little brother (Sumner). Thank you for bringing him back because the world of music needs more true artists.