Imagine if the late Syd Barrett came to control his demons and emerged from isolation to showcase his pioneering rock genius. Psychedelic rock pioneer Rodger "Roky" Erickson accomplished just that, ending two decades submerged in schizophrenia's depths to rise again.
At 62, Erickson doesn't play live much outside his hometown of Austin or an occasional big-city show. So when an e-mail alerted me to his show in Louisville Friday, I scrambled to buy a ticket as soon as I put my jaw back in place. How in the world did he pick Louisville? Louisville picked him, or more accurately, the owners of Wild and Woolly Video picked him for their 13th anniversary celebration.
During the opening sets by several local bands, I made friends with Ryan and Rachel, a local couple who I got talking to after I heard them raving about True Love Cast Out All Evil, Erickson's stellar new record with Okkervil River (see April 2010 for review). We talked Roky and Louisville, and poured down some beers awaiting the main attraction.
When Roky and company entered stage right, there was no more talking, just heavy doses of garage rock beginning with A Cold Night for Alligators.
Erickson and his young band blistered through more than a dozen songs, mostly from the 70s and 80s. But he threw in enough surprises to sate any casual fan. The closing number was never in doubt, the seminal You're Gonna Miss Me; now I can have seen one of the original Nuggets tunes performed by its author.
If I wagered on what other 13th Floor Elevators song would make the cut, Splash 1 (Now I'm Home) would not have made my list. Now it will, after watching Erickson's voice shed its age and skate close to the original recorded almost 45 years ago. Splash 1 one of the few tender moments on the Elevators' debut, and it didn't sound as if it aged a day.
Without Okkervil River, Roky didn't touch the new material, save one glorious exception, the warm country-rock of Be and Bring Me Home. In a set that stuck with heavy rock, it was a easy standout, a heartstring-tugging moment. Starry Eyes was a close second.
While his horror-rock songs might seem easy to dismiss as nothing more than proto-Misfits garage rock, they tell a different story in the context of his institutionalization. Knowing that, does I Walked With a Zombie sound less about old horror movies and more about heavily sedated mental patients lumbering through the halls of Rusk hospital?
Granted, Two-Headed Dog and Night of the Vampire represented lighter fare, but they cut through those songs with the same grinning intensity. Part of the joy was watching Erickson smile at his bandmates, discuss what numbers they would tackle next, and to see how he had come to control his illness. They never broke their pace, or even acknowledged the crowd, but they didn't have to - the sheer amount of audience sing-alongs more than proved Erickson got a crowd just happy to see him vibrant again.
In the 1990s, Erickson blared TVs and radios to block out the noise in his head and couldn't function. Now, his vocals burn with the fire of man making up for lost decades.
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