Light in the Attic Records is reissuing three of Roky Erickson’s early records – “The Evil One,” “Don’t Slander Me” and “Gremlins Have Pictures” – Sept. 17. I listened to them yesterday, and it’s just now sinking in how satisfyingly weirded out I am by what I experienced.
If the name Roky Erickson doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, don’t fret. Allow me to elucidate. He helped found Austin, Texas,-based garage/psychedelic rock purveyors the 13th Floor Elevators at age 18 and wrote and sang one of their most well-known tracks, “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” Erickson had to bail on the band in 1968 when he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to a psychiatric hospital. There, he endured forced electroshock therapy. After a brief interim period as a free man, a pot bust and resulting insanity plea put him in an institution for the criminally insane, where he stayed until 1974.
Erickson wrote a bunch of material during these stays, and he originally recorded and released these three reissues between 1981-86. He insisted aliens were attacking him in 1982 and ended up being arrested again in 1989 for taking neighbors’ mail and taping it all over the walls of his room – charges were dropped when he proved he had never opened the envelopes – so it’s safe to say he was coming at the record-making process with unconventional perspective.
These albums’ newly solo freedom, genuine idiosyncrasy and candid navigation of a tortured soul draw obvious parallels to Syd Barrett’s “The Madcap Laughs” and “Barrett” and Skip Spence’s “Oar.” But Erickson’s records have one thing the other guys for the most part lack: instant likability.
Check out the electric rockabilly jump of “Haunt,” from the album “Don’t Slander Me,” complete with a fun, frenetic sax solo and sprinklings of Erickson’s wacked-out falsetto. The single version of the same album’s title track punctuates its simple guitar drive with several jangly surf-rock solos. On “Bloody Hammer,” from “The Evil One,” and “Burn the Flames,” from “Don’t Slander Me,” he wails like Mick Jagger with his thumb smashed in the doorjamb.
A lot of the stuff here recalls the barreling-riff thrust of Erickson’s work with his first band. You hear a lot of the Elevators in Erickson, and you hear a lot of Erickson in many contemporary acts. You hear the Freddy Krueger gothabilly of the Cramps, the off-the-cuff fidelity of early White Stripes and Black Keys, or the quick, unrelenting attack of Nirvana.
You hear a lot of Erickson singing about monsters and ghouls. A lot. Just a few song titles as evidence: “Creature from the Atom Brain,” “I Walked with a Zombie,” “I’m a Demon” and “It’s a Cold Night for Alligators.” The demented cackle in “Burn the Flames” is sure to shoot ice clean up to your C5 vertebrae. The super-Sabbathy “Night of the Vampire,” from “The Evil One,” sees Erickson repeat the titular line eight times over funeral dirge drumming and an eerie crypt-keeper synth.
It’s hard to tell for certain if he wants us to take all of the vampires and werewolves and monsters figuratively or literally, but one thing’s for sure: Erickson’s demons are very real. My knee-jerk reaction was to call the content of these albums dark. But that’s inaccurate. These are some of the most adequately lit songs you’ll ever hear.
Every word, every sound, every silent space on these records is exactly what and where Erickson wanted them to be. In giving us this music, he’s turned his own mind loose in a room full of halogen bulbs. Erickson withholds nothing – not a tortured and paranoid and honest cranny escapes illumination. That’s why I’m wigging hours later, and that’s why you should go listen.
