Customer Reviews

Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Roky Erickson was one of the 13th Floor Elevators, a legendary and very strange psychedelic garage band from Texas in the 1960s. He subsequently went solo and, rather famously, went a bit mad, resulting in his incarceration in a psychiatric hospital where he was given electroconvulsive treatment.

He struggled through the 70s and 80s and it was, oddly enough, with the production and release of this album that his fortunes began to revive. He had had little idea of how many people admired his music, but this album is a treasure trove of great alternative 80s bands - people like Thin White Rope, Bongwater, Angry Samoans, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Sister Double Happiness rub shoulders with 70s heroes like Doug Sahm, T-Bone Burnett, Richard Lloyd and ZZ Top. There is not a duff track on this album; every song is given loving and imaginative treatment, and the result is one of the weirdest, most tuneful and most invigorating albums of that particularly uninspiring period in pop music history (1980-1992 or so).

I am glad to see that this album is still available. So is Roky Erickson. In 2001, his younger brother Sumner was given legal custody of him, and he saw to it that Roky was (for perhaps the first time in his life) given appropriate medical and legal treatment, including medication to control his schizophrenia - which he has since succeeded in weaning himself off. As a result, Roky Erickson is now able to look after himself, drive his own car, play live, tour and even, it's said, record; he was last heard of as being in the studio with fan and fellow Texan Billy Gibbons. Cheers to him, and to his family. The Roky Erickson story is not yet over.

People tend to forget that not everything about the late sixties was peace and love there was a movement of musicians who saw themselves more as enraptured prophets. The prolific Roky Erikson of Austin was to the hippies what screamin Jay Hawkins was to the Blues. He roiled rambling tales of two headed dogs, spaceships, retrieved past life memory, and that might have been all fine and good except those were his love songs. And they thought Sid Barret was a tad off! Sadly, Roky succumbed to his demons and was commited to a mental home in the early 80's. That having been said, open yourself to a rare treat of hearing something more than just a run of the mill tribute from a roster of fasionable-nows and future one hit one wonders in their own right. If it weren't for the Obviously modern prescence of R.E.M. and ZZ Top, you'd swear this was a lost tape dug up from the late 60's. Everyone here is having a good time, even the Jesus and Mary Chain...how did that happen? I recommend this tape whole-heartedly to all my friends and people i run into on the street. It is that pervasive. Groovy, man...

Where else can you find ZZ Top and The Jesus And Mary Chain on the same CD, covering the same song? And honestly, both versions are excellent.

Roky Erickson, troubled bandleader of Texas' 13th Floor Elevators, notarized citizen of Mars, and acid casualty, was committed to an insane asylum for possession of marijuana. If his apocryphal psychedelic lyrics are any indication, he indeed journeyed somewhere from which there was no return.

Like their San Francisco psychedelic counterparts Moby Grape and the equally troubled Skip Spence, The 13th Floor Elevators are a bit of a footnote from the late 1960s. Like Grape, their recordings are in and out of print, often in inferior versions, due to legal wrangling with labels and producers that continues to this day. And it is a shame.

When John Cusack opens his window and blasts out the Elevator's "You're Gonna Miss Me" in the film High Fidelity, it is many people's only taste of Erickson's music. Still, it is abundantly apparent that these casualties of the Summer Of Love got their music out to a wide range of open ears, as this tribute is fueled by impassioned versions of Erickson's songs by the likes of the late Doug Sahm, ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd, Julian Cope, R.E.M., The Butthole Surfers, and T-Bone Burnett.

As with any tribute, there are a few missteps, and they are especially egregious here. Chris and Tabby Thomas turn in a wan R'n'B rendition of "Leave Your Body Behind" that leans heavily on paper-thin electric drums and psuedo-Prince vocal posturing. It's painful -- really, really painful. Lou Ann Barton's surfy, monochromatic rockabilly "Don't Slander Me," even at a mere two minutes, goes on a little long. And Thin White Rope's uber-creepy "Burn The Flames" with its ghoulish lyrics about candelabras and piano-playing vampires might be perfect for a kitschy Halloween mixtape, but it gets the skip button from me in the off-season.

Yet "Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye," while saddled with some filler, is ultimately a worthwhile listen. Cope's "I Have Always Been Here Before" is outfitted with an awesome bassline that carries his baritone through verses about pyramids whose existence "challenges the scientists" while "obelisks" mock our mortal remains. Weird, yes. But not only weird - danceable. Primal Scream gives "Slip Inside This House" a similar catchy dance makeover, taking it in a trippy and acid-drenched beat-heavy direction. Sister Double Happiness (a band made up of fellow Texans Gary Floyd and Imperial Teen's drummer Lynn Perko, both former members of Texas' legendary punk band The Dicks) gives us a righteously bellowed version of "Red Temple Prayer." If I could be reincarnated as a voice, I'd want to be Gary Floyd's voice. Bongwater delivers a suitably odd piece of psych-tortured folk with their gorgeous "You Don't Love Me Yet."

This Roky Erickson tribute is a sprawling and ambitious affair, and mainly suffers from being too long and trying to straddle too many styles. It's a testimony to the power of Erickson's decidedly unusual songwriting and compositional powers that so many performers - from the lilting Poi Dog Pondering to the harmonized wolf-howls and handclaps of John Wesley Harding - lined up to pay their dues.

I hate to admit this but this was my first exposure the width of Roky Erickson's talent. To hear these songs done by bands/musicians that I liked, was to open a whole new door of music to me. Roky deserves better than he has gotten. Hopefully people will keep finding this and going on the discover Roky and other unsung heroes of music.

The thing about Roky - like Syd Barrett and Peter Green (and others) is that if he had had the proper medication to control his mental illness his life would have been much better. Also, none of the above should have touched LSD, it threw them over the edge and made their illness worse. Peter Green himself said "I took a trip and never came back"

The CD shows the love of many bands and musicians, both old and young towards Roky and his music. And the music IS great - inventive and just damn good.

Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top - an old friend of Roky's when he played in the Moving Sidewalks is on this CD and is currently playing with and helping Roky record again (along with a Butthole Surfers member, who I'm sorry to say - can't remember his name). I think it's great Roky is out playing again. Peter Green is back too, by the way. Syd, alas - was lost and never came back.

Roky Erickson is one of those artists that are few in number. Roky is a genius there is just no other way to put it.

When you listen to this album the evidence of that genius is that each song sounds like it was written by or for the artist covering it. That songs can be that malleable have that much space to them that you would think that Julian Cope or the Judybats were playing their own music is testament to how timeless true art is. You hear that same beauty when listening to Roky just playing guitar and singing by himself on one of his own albums. True quality is always evident no matter what the wrappings.

Though Roky has had troubled times his brother stepped up and took things over in order to protect Roky's interests and has guided him back to the world of performing and a rebirth of his career. He got a great reception at the 2007 Coachella festival and that's from a crowd of teenagers and twenty somethings who have never heard of him.

I normally can not stand tribute albums but I can't recommend this one enough.

Probably because of the GREAT material. Yes, Roky was the mad (? -- he was put in a mental institution for a while) genius behind the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Most of the covers here are exceptional and come from a variety of folks (ZZ Top, Jesus & Mary Chain, REM, Lou Ann Barton, etc.). I was lucky enough to see Roky soon after he was released from the hospital in the mid-70s (completely weird, he and Willie Nelson showed up unannounced and jammed at a free gig outside of Austin). I'm just pleased that so many artists did such a great job for a somewhat troubled soul.

I ran across the cassette version of this 13th Floor Elevators tribute back in 1990 in a 'cut-out' bin (remember those!) for $1, and boy did I wear that thing out! Anyway, it got fried on the dashboard of my lime-green 'bug' one summer much to my lament, but lo and behold, here it is again resurfaced. Their music was strangely drawn and interestingly rendered (the electric jug?!), but it grabbed ahold of me. The diversity of these covers proves out the quality of the song writing, which was very diverse. I know that Roky was the driving force in the band, but the song writing skills of Stacy Sutherland and Tommy Hall were instrumental and they are sadly overlooked now with the dawn of Rokymania. In fact, I really like the album "Bull of the Woods", which pretty much was recorded without Roky at that point (it does have one of my Roky favorites that closes it out though, 'May the Circle Remain Unbroken"). I am glad I found this again, but I notice that unlike the cassette version, it doesn't contain one of my favorites, We Sell Soul, by the Boston band 'Lyres'. That was an absolute scorcher, just great.....check it out...

excellent versions of 13th Floor Elevator and Roky Erikson songs....makes you wish their were clean recordings of the 13th Floor Elevator songs out there.....great great cd...buy it

This has got to be one of the best tribute albums I have ever heard. Before it, I had never even heard of Roky Erickson (who is credited with coining the term "psychedelic" to describe the type of music his band was playing) or the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. But after listening to it, I was inspired to go out and find most of the original versions of these songs. The bands offering their interpretation of Erickson's songs include big name groups like REM and ZZ Top as well as many lesser new wave groups. (Incidentally, in addition to the tracks listed above from the CD, the cassette contains bonus tracks We Sell Souls by Lyres and White Faces by the Angry Samoans.)