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RIP Roky Erickson 21:04 - Jun 1 with 1172 viewsGuthrum


Good Lord! Whatever is it?
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RIP Roky Erickson on 21:16 - Jun 1 with 1152 viewsMelford


I remember reading some Rock outlaws book I got free with one of the music papers years ago, he pleaded insanity to get out of a dope bust from some bum advice and ended up getting sectioned for it. A bit like Arthur Lee from Love who was a fellow psychedelic crusader who ended up at the wrong side of the law at times.

Dragging TWTD into the gutter since 2009
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RIP Roky Erickson on 21:26 - Jun 1 with 1133 viewsBLUEBEAT

We’re gonna miss him












(see what I did there?)

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RIP Roky Erickson on 21:36 - Jun 1 with 1114 viewsMelford

RIP Roky Erickson on 21:26 - Jun 1 by BLUEBEAT

We’re gonna miss him












(see what I did there?)


This compilation album blew my tiny mind when I finally got my hands on it. I heard a lot about it in the music press, a lot of artists and reviewers referencing it. A lot of this 'must listen' stuff you listen to and it leaves you a bit cold and it's a bit Emperor's New Clothes but Nuggets is the real deal, the Mutt's Nuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuggets:_Original_Artyfacts_from_the_First_Psyched

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RIP Roky Erickson on 22:23 - Jun 1 with 1082 viewsBLUEBEAT

RIP Roky Erickson on 21:36 - Jun 1 by Melford

This compilation album blew my tiny mind when I finally got my hands on it. I heard a lot about it in the music press, a lot of artists and reviewers referencing it. A lot of this 'must listen' stuff you listen to and it leaves you a bit cold and it's a bit Emperor's New Clothes but Nuggets is the real deal, the Mutt's Nuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuggets:_Original_Artyfacts_from_the_First_Psyched


Yep, Nuggets comp should be a cornerstone to anyone’s record collection.

And if you liked it, the next step should have been Pebbles!

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RIP Roky Erickson on 11:22 - Jun 2 with 992 viewsBLUEBEAT

Now the emotions have settled, here’s a little story...

When I was maybe 15 or so, I discovered a record shop in Clapham called Zippo’s. Relations lived in Stockwell at the time and on visits, I’d hop on the northern line down there and have a good nose around.

The most memorable thing about the shop was the mural inside of the first 13th Floor Elevators LP cover and it was (I think) here that I purchased my first copy of that album in maybe 1986. I already knew You’re Gonna Miss Me from Nuggets and it was one of the very first songs my first band ever covered (badly, no doubt, as how can you touch the untrammelled intensity and burn of the Elevators version? The yelp and holler of the vocals, the wobble and bend of the jug, the incredible harp playing...). This 45 is always close to my turntable and even now, every time the opening chords ring out I get goosebumps and shivers.

The debut LP, The Psychedelic Sounds Of ...., is widely regarded as one of the very first LSD-inspired records and takes the bite and raunch of The Kinks and The Yardbirds and drags that on a dense dark desert trip into spaces and places no-one had been to before. I listened to it compulsively/obsessively for months on end and it sparked a general craving to know about the Texas scene that had created such a remarkable piece of outsider art. I ordered in copies of the now-legendary Not Fade Away zine, I snaffled all the Pebbles/Texas Flashback comps, The Wig LP, The Golden Dawn, and anything on International Artists, but mostly I bought anything and everything the Elevators main man Roky Erickson had touched.

Along with Syd’s Floyd, the band’s second LP Easter Everywhere was no doubt directly responsible for leading me into my own psychedelic experiences and for me nothing ever captured the feeling of coming up quite like the hammering white heat and terrifying joy of Levitation. The record has doubtless soundtracked the journeys of countless bedroom explorers and remains an unparalleled testament to the dark magic and mystery of the mind.

I read everything I could about the band and knew about Roky’s issues and incarceration and treatment. I’d listen to the later recordings of Right Track Now with Clementine Hall and find it almost unbearably poignant in its fragility and ragged hope. Years later, when I read Paul Drummond’s definitive account of the band - Eye Mind - some accounts of the sheer extremity of the band’s use and hectoring evangelism chilled me and reminded me of folk I’ve known who cane back through the doors different to how they left.

Roky was clearly in this category and who knows what he would or wouldn’t have produced without the hallucinogenic stimuli. What he’s left us with are postcards from the edge and sonic soundscapes from way beyond the outer realms of where most of us ever take our brains. They have always startled and thrilled and shaken me to the core. And always will.

I only saw Roky play live once a decade or so ago at the Royal Festival Hall and beyond all the obvious outpouring of love from the crowd and the sheer unlikely triumph of seeing the man still able to just about perform, I also felt a sharp pang at witnessing someone visibly confused about the where, what, when and why and only just hanging on by a thread.

He did well to reach 71 and his songs will live on past the space age (and the yellow balloons) and stay with me till it’s my time to go (and, who knows, beyond).

May his essence become one with the cosmos that flies through us all and beyond.

Here is a photo of the wall at Zippo’s, which no doubt influenced my adventurous early record buying habits...


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RIP Roky Erickson on 11:32 - Jun 2 with 988 viewsWeWereZombies

The uppie was for the track, not because he is no longer with us.

Still, maybe he will return:


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RIP Roky Erickson on 11:52 - Jun 2 with 980 viewsWeWereZombies

RIP Roky Erickson on 21:36 - Jun 1 by Melford

This compilation album blew my tiny mind when I finally got my hands on it. I heard a lot about it in the music press, a lot of artists and reviewers referencing it. A lot of this 'must listen' stuff you listen to and it leaves you a bit cold and it's a bit Emperor's New Clothes but Nuggets is the real deal, the Mutt's Nuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuggets:_Original_Artyfacts_from_the_First_Psyched


Yeah, 'Nuggets' is, well, full of real nuggets, isn't it? Loved it when I bought it on vinyl as a double album sometime in the '80s but somehow never got around to 'Pebbles'. Also, after seeing The Patti Smith Group last year I looked up Lenny Kaye's Wikipedia page and saw that he has also written a book 'You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon', based on 1930s singer Russ Columbo which sounds like an interesting read.

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