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Recession Era Blues
Roky Erickson’s triumphant return
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It is rare in contemporary music where drama is executed with sincerity and emotion enough to make your heart swell. Most late America pop songs are so riddled with irony and insincerity, by they time you get to the bare Dionysian energy that initially forced the beast forward, the mind is exhausted and the emotion falls flat. How can we possible legitimize the decadence of our society after fifty-years of wars and rock n’ roll with sincerity? This is where we get tragic rock heroes that have become so popular in the 2000s: Daniel Johnston, Scott Walker, or Townes Van Zandt. The broken hero is much like Greek tragedian Euripides’, Heracles, who after a lifetime of conquering, slips into madness and destroys his family. It seems, that deep in the national psychosis, we may truly desire rock n’ roll to destroy us.
We should, can and will compare the end of Greek Tragedy to the end of American rock music, because these are dire times. The world watches America like a train wreck, our culture seemingly in flames. Whether we are aware of it or not, by most accounts from outside, the empire is falling and so are our heroes.
This is where Roky Erickson steps in: the under-appreciated patron saint of soul-psychedelic music, who pioneered the genre with his band, the 13th Floor Elevators. This style of music is in itself a symbol of decadence and a product of imperialistic wealth, founded on the LSD induced revelry of the mid-sixties. Here, musicians bounced around the American landscape attempting to imitate the effects of drugs with loud amplifiers and strange sound experiments. Strange sound experiments like the amplified jug of the 13th Floor Elevators that gave the band its distinct wobbly sound.
Roky Erickson spent the last forty years as tragically as any. Insanity, poverty, love, loss and a heart-wrenching family story have all made it into the lore of this brilliant symbol of late American culture. And all was documented in the tragic hero’s biopic, You’re Gonna Miss Me, which falls right in line with the biopics of Daniel Johnston and Townes Van Zandt. As it turns out, however, this biography now has a chance for a happy ending.
Roky Erickson’s condition improved. Then he made the best album of his solo career — maybe of his entire lifetime. Fellow Texan rock mechanics, Okerviel River, are backing Erickson now, and together they have produced an album to nearly match the drama of the story that lies in the folds of the elder musician’s life. The band currently has four concerts booked and one is at Webster Hall on May 25. May the heartfelt country-blues psychedelia wash over you like the recession blues.
For more information about the show, please visit websterhall.com.