Monday, March 19, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
consent decree and happiness for thee
So as everybody knows that cares by now... Eddie Van Halen has joined Britney Spears and SF mayor Gavin Newsom and Lindsay Lohan in announcing his rehab.
Only thing is he's got a least two decades of boozing experience on all of 'em...
jeez dude... took ya minute to figure that shit out eh?
I thought Michael Anthony was the whiskey sodded troublemaker... you know with the Jack Daniels shaped bass guitar. But apparently he's been booted in favor of Eddie's kid...
Sad...
So, whatever... we get no classic VH reunion tour ,or even mini performance at the lame Rock n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Nope... nothing, just my luck...
Instead, I hear Genesis are regrouping for a summer shed tour...
Sadly I bet that Phil Collins dude is more fun to hang around than Eddie anyway...he's at least got more common sense...
Genesis - Turn It On Again live
With that scariness out of the way...
I suppose my best bet for live music satisfaction for the foreseeable future will be the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Hank IV down at "your dive", El Rio in San Francisco on Saturday night.
It'll be my second weekend in a row catching the endearingly monikered Klaus Flouride ripping it up on stage, this time with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy... aka The Ledge.
Norman Carl Odam is a bit of a character apparently, a sci-fi rockabilly cowboy kingpin that has to be seen to be believed i suppose. The Wild West version of Wesley Willis...or something like that.
Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralyzed
Legendary Stardust Cowboy - My Underwear Froze to The Clothesline
bonus
New York Night Train's Oral History Project: Kid Congo Powers Remembers The End of The Gun Club, and working with the total kook known as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Kid Congo - Oral History
Another legend of sorts on the bill is Bob McDonald... kind of our own local lush version of David Yow...
All you SXSW attendees can catch Bob with his band Hank IV at a couple opportunities in the coming week...
Mar 14 2007 midnight
SXSW! Showcase at Lava Lounge in Austin. Hank IV plays at midnight.
Mar 17 2007 3:30PM
Trophy's (Austin) for the WHOOPSY MAGAZINE PARTY. Hank IV plays at 3:30pm.
Here's a couple tracks from Hank IV's debut CD/LP that recently came forth via Hook Or Crook Records... I met one of the proprietors the other night, and he seemed like a swell fella, who has big plans for his little label, or at least for his bar tab. Look for these folks in Austin...
Hank IV - Tonight We Ride
hank IV - Got Got
In other music industry twitchings...
A settlement, or as the Hollywood Reporter called it "consent decree" has been reached with the FCC & corporate chain broadcasters over the investigation into corporate radio playlist payola. Looks like Clear Channel & pals are agreeing to pay $12.5 million to make the Federal Communications Commission's investigators to sort of just go away. The "pay for play" probe involved transactions between major labels & Clear Channel Communications Inc., CBS Radio Inc., Entercom Communications Corp. and Citadel Broadcasting Corp. Of course none of these large broadcasters will admit "wrongdoing", but as a group have simply agreed to pay a collective fine and dedicate a total of 8,400 half-hour segments to "independent music" over the next three years. The indie quota agreement is through some sort of mysterious private 2nd agreement made with the American Association of Independent Music.
The organization has about a 100 or so labels involved including Epitaph, Koch, Hopeless, Matador, Ninja Tune, Relapse and Putamayo...
Here's their board of directors who represent a bunch of labels, many I notice who've had distribution deals via majors. One board member is from Lookout Records, the label that stopped paying royalties to most of their bands awhile back including cash cow Green Day, and lost control of the Berkeley based band's lucrative back catalog a year ago.
Mmmm, that's leadership...
Read an LA Times' story on the FCC probe by Jim Puzzanghera here. Of course known music biz ranter Bob Lefsetz has an opinion too...
Speaking of settlements & leadership...
Commander in chief wannabee Barack Obama finally paid his parking tickets... ones he got while attending Harvard Law School -- 17 years ago. He had racked up $140 in fines and Obama's decade+ worth of late fees tallied another $260. The Somerville (Mass.) News published the story Wednesday.
So now we know how quickly the man can get things done, and that he truly respects & believes in the rule of law. Like, Totally Presidential Dude...
or at least like every other broke ass dude driving a bucket around here...
I know that Hollywood likes to tell us their industry is a gamble, and downloading & home copying and bootlegger's etc are all hurting bottomlines...but somehow the Motion Picture Association of America released figures showing Americans spent $9.49 billion on movies. That's about 1.45 billion tickets sold, 63 films grossing more than $50 million and Disney's Johnny Depp franchise sequel "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" -- made $400 million.
Psychologist's say that owning a piece of a $400 million film might not make ya happy. Actually psychologists don't even call it happiness, they call it "subjective well-being" and a new study says it's all relative. Long term studies captured levels of life satisfaction both prior to and after major life events like marriage, divorce, unemployment and illness or disability. What they found was that basically some people get bummed out easier than others...
No shit sherlocks...
Source:newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3014/content.htm
Busdriver - Happiness ('s Unit of Measurement)
Just saw that an old friend of mine is currently on tour on the East Coast, so if yer nearby you might wanna check out Mat Callahan w/Yvonne Moore. Callahan was a regular rabble rouser of sorts out here in the Bay Area for many years.
In the 70's he had a political folk group called Prairie Fire, and after that an innovative world beat band called The Looters. They were the first US group invited to perform by new Sandinista President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. They recorded discs for Alternative Tentacles, Island records and even Monster Cable's label Monster Music.
Mat helped start a musical collective in the Mission called Komotion International, that held benefit shows, and then permutated into a record label and a magazine we all ran together for about ten years.
He eventually split for Switzerland but I see is going to be back with his new musical partner Yvonne Moore and are doing dates with political folkie David Rovics. He has an album out currently called Wild Bouquet, that features some of his talented pals backing him up including Brain (Tom Waits, Guns & Roses) on drums, Joe Gore (P.J. Harvey) on guitar, Les Claypool (Primus) on bass and singer Zoe Ellis. It was recorded partly in San Francisco, and his new home near Lake Geneva in Mauer, Switzerland.
Here's some Mat Callahan tracks & tourdates
Mat Callahan - Jonny Refused
Mat Callahan - Deep Down
March 10 • Brooklyn, NY
Vox Pop
March 11 • Willimantic, CT
Wrench in the Works • 7 pm
March 12 • Boston, MA
Berklee College of Music
March 15 • New Haven, CT
March 16 • Dunkirk, MD
March 17 • Washington, DC
Fleming Center • 7 pm
March 18 • Norfolk, VA
40th Street Stage
March 20 • New York
Googie's Lounge above The Living Room •
March 23 • Hartford, CT
La Paloma Sabanera
Indy Media Group Show
March 24 • New York
Banjo Jim's • 8:00 pm
Currently Mat's label Broken Arrow are offering a free 4 song EP of Mat & Yvonne with each order while supplies last...hey it's deal !
Speaking of deals... and guys who refuse to cut one with the Feds...
The Feds are still keeping harmless blogger Josh Wolf languishing in prison...
While SF violent crimes spin out of control, and even more real criminals are in Washington, Wolf has done 6 months hard time. I bet Scooter Libby gets way less than that.
Josh Wolf offered to show the video tapes to the judge in chambers, without the prosecutors present. Judge & system though really just want to send a message and hope the kid rots. The Feds routinely spit on all our freedoms, look at the beady eyes on that pudgy smug Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and you learn everything you'd ever need to know about American Justice.
Nothing new here... Ironically despite Wolf's incarceration, this kid will do well once he is finally released... He's a Gen Y kid who now has more credibility going for him than the entire system run by suck up Baby Boomer generation reps that are coming down on him like a ton of worthless bricks.
Wolf didn't burn the mattress, break the tail light, organize the demonstration or smack the cop...and says he doesn't have any footage of the cop getting hit. But he is paying the price for all of that, and most importantly, for sticking up for his right not to be an informant. On the streets they call informants a "snitch"...
In real street crime cases, its a known fact that if you snitch ... then you die...
That's just a fact of life, on SF streets or any urban area.
It's why Lil Kim did time last year...because she wasn't a snitch.
Lil' Kim - Bad Girl
Would the SFPD offer to protect such a kid like Wolf if he did snitch out, or reveal who did what? That's a big rhetorical no.
The cops have no credibility for helping out their informants. Many are hung out to dry, get no protection and too many have died here in SF...
Even if he wasn't making a point as some sort of political martyr, he'd be wiser not to help the SFPD. Many of those who offered are dead...
In interest of justice & restoring order, Ive tried to help SFPD on occasions and have been regretful of it everytime. Those piglets won't appreciate you trying to help them, and they'll turn on you, leaving nothing but grief in return for your assistance. The cops total lack of professionalism amazes me. No wonder SF streets are sinking into a sea of swill...
Peter Plate - Snitch Factory
and that's all I got for now...
Shotwell - San Francisco's Withering
----------------------------------------------
Only thing is he's got a least two decades of boozing experience on all of 'em...
jeez dude... took ya minute to figure that shit out eh?
I thought Michael Anthony was the whiskey sodded troublemaker... you know with the Jack Daniels shaped bass guitar. But apparently he's been booted in favor of Eddie's kid...
Sad...
So, whatever... we get no classic VH reunion tour ,or even mini performance at the lame Rock n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Nope... nothing, just my luck...
Instead, I hear Genesis are regrouping for a summer shed tour...
Sadly I bet that Phil Collins dude is more fun to hang around than Eddie anyway...he's at least got more common sense...
Genesis - Turn It On Again live
With that scariness out of the way...
I suppose my best bet for live music satisfaction for the foreseeable future will be the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Hank IV down at "your dive", El Rio in San Francisco on Saturday night.
It'll be my second weekend in a row catching the endearingly monikered Klaus Flouride ripping it up on stage, this time with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy... aka The Ledge.
Norman Carl Odam is a bit of a character apparently, a sci-fi rockabilly cowboy kingpin that has to be seen to be believed i suppose. The Wild West version of Wesley Willis...or something like that.
Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralyzed
Legendary Stardust Cowboy - My Underwear Froze to The Clothesline
bonus
New York Night Train's Oral History Project: Kid Congo Powers Remembers The End of The Gun Club, and working with the total kook known as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Kid Congo - Oral History
Another legend of sorts on the bill is Bob McDonald... kind of our own local lush version of David Yow...
All you SXSW attendees can catch Bob with his band Hank IV at a couple opportunities in the coming week...
Mar 14 2007 midnight
SXSW! Showcase at Lava Lounge in Austin. Hank IV plays at midnight.
Mar 17 2007 3:30PM
Trophy's (Austin) for the WHOOPSY MAGAZINE PARTY. Hank IV plays at 3:30pm.
Here's a couple tracks from Hank IV's debut CD/LP that recently came forth via Hook Or Crook Records... I met one of the proprietors the other night, and he seemed like a swell fella, who has big plans for his little label, or at least for his bar tab. Look for these folks in Austin...
Hank IV - Tonight We Ride
hank IV - Got Got
In other music industry twitchings...
A settlement, or as the Hollywood Reporter called it "consent decree" has been reached with the FCC & corporate chain broadcasters over the investigation into corporate radio playlist payola. Looks like Clear Channel & pals are agreeing to pay $12.5 million to make the Federal Communications Commission's investigators to sort of just go away. The "pay for play" probe involved transactions between major labels & Clear Channel Communications Inc., CBS Radio Inc., Entercom Communications Corp. and Citadel Broadcasting Corp. Of course none of these large broadcasters will admit "wrongdoing", but as a group have simply agreed to pay a collective fine and dedicate a total of 8,400 half-hour segments to "independent music" over the next three years. The indie quota agreement is through some sort of mysterious private 2nd agreement made with the American Association of Independent Music.
The organization has about a 100 or so labels involved including Epitaph, Koch, Hopeless, Matador, Ninja Tune, Relapse and Putamayo...
Here's their board of directors who represent a bunch of labels, many I notice who've had distribution deals via majors. One board member is from Lookout Records, the label that stopped paying royalties to most of their bands awhile back including cash cow Green Day, and lost control of the Berkeley based band's lucrative back catalog a year ago.
Mmmm, that's leadership...
Read an LA Times' story on the FCC probe by Jim Puzzanghera here. Of course known music biz ranter Bob Lefsetz has an opinion too...
Speaking of settlements & leadership...
Commander in chief wannabee Barack Obama finally paid his parking tickets... ones he got while attending Harvard Law School -- 17 years ago. He had racked up $140 in fines and Obama's decade+ worth of late fees tallied another $260. The Somerville (Mass.) News published the story Wednesday.
So now we know how quickly the man can get things done, and that he truly respects & believes in the rule of law. Like, Totally Presidential Dude...
or at least like every other broke ass dude driving a bucket around here...
I know that Hollywood likes to tell us their industry is a gamble, and downloading & home copying and bootlegger's etc are all hurting bottomlines...but somehow the Motion Picture Association of America released figures showing Americans spent $9.49 billion on movies. That's about 1.45 billion tickets sold, 63 films grossing more than $50 million and Disney's Johnny Depp franchise sequel "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" -- made $400 million.
Psychologist's say that owning a piece of a $400 million film might not make ya happy. Actually psychologists don't even call it happiness, they call it "subjective well-being" and a new study says it's all relative. Long term studies captured levels of life satisfaction both prior to and after major life events like marriage, divorce, unemployment and illness or disability. What they found was that basically some people get bummed out easier than others...
No shit sherlocks...
Source:newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3014/content.htm
Busdriver - Happiness ('s Unit of Measurement)
Just saw that an old friend of mine is currently on tour on the East Coast, so if yer nearby you might wanna check out Mat Callahan w/Yvonne Moore. Callahan was a regular rabble rouser of sorts out here in the Bay Area for many years.
In the 70's he had a political folk group called Prairie Fire, and after that an innovative world beat band called The Looters. They were the first US group invited to perform by new Sandinista President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. They recorded discs for Alternative Tentacles, Island records and even Monster Cable's label Monster Music.
Mat helped start a musical collective in the Mission called Komotion International, that held benefit shows, and then permutated into a record label and a magazine we all ran together for about ten years.
He eventually split for Switzerland but I see is going to be back with his new musical partner Yvonne Moore and are doing dates with political folkie David Rovics. He has an album out currently called Wild Bouquet, that features some of his talented pals backing him up including Brain (Tom Waits, Guns & Roses) on drums, Joe Gore (P.J. Harvey) on guitar, Les Claypool (Primus) on bass and singer Zoe Ellis. It was recorded partly in San Francisco, and his new home near Lake Geneva in Mauer, Switzerland.
Here's some Mat Callahan tracks & tourdates
Mat Callahan - Jonny Refused
Mat Callahan - Deep Down
March 10 • Brooklyn, NY
Vox Pop
March 11 • Willimantic, CT
Wrench in the Works • 7 pm
March 12 • Boston, MA
Berklee College of Music
March 15 • New Haven, CT
March 16 • Dunkirk, MD
March 17 • Washington, DC
Fleming Center • 7 pm
March 18 • Norfolk, VA
40th Street Stage
March 20 • New York
Googie's Lounge above The Living Room •
March 23 • Hartford, CT
La Paloma Sabanera
Indy Media Group Show
March 24 • New York
Banjo Jim's • 8:00 pm
Currently Mat's label Broken Arrow are offering a free 4 song EP of Mat & Yvonne with each order while supplies last...hey it's deal !
Speaking of deals... and guys who refuse to cut one with the Feds...
The Feds are still keeping harmless blogger Josh Wolf languishing in prison...
While SF violent crimes spin out of control, and even more real criminals are in Washington, Wolf has done 6 months hard time. I bet Scooter Libby gets way less than that.
Josh Wolf offered to show the video tapes to the judge in chambers, without the prosecutors present. Judge & system though really just want to send a message and hope the kid rots. The Feds routinely spit on all our freedoms, look at the beady eyes on that pudgy smug Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and you learn everything you'd ever need to know about American Justice.
Nothing new here... Ironically despite Wolf's incarceration, this kid will do well once he is finally released... He's a Gen Y kid who now has more credibility going for him than the entire system run by suck up Baby Boomer generation reps that are coming down on him like a ton of worthless bricks.
Wolf didn't burn the mattress, break the tail light, organize the demonstration or smack the cop...and says he doesn't have any footage of the cop getting hit. But he is paying the price for all of that, and most importantly, for sticking up for his right not to be an informant. On the streets they call informants a "snitch"...
In real street crime cases, its a known fact that if you snitch ... then you die...
That's just a fact of life, on SF streets or any urban area.
It's why Lil Kim did time last year...because she wasn't a snitch.
Lil' Kim - Bad Girl
Would the SFPD offer to protect such a kid like Wolf if he did snitch out, or reveal who did what? That's a big rhetorical no.
The cops have no credibility for helping out their informants. Many are hung out to dry, get no protection and too many have died here in SF...
Even if he wasn't making a point as some sort of political martyr, he'd be wiser not to help the SFPD. Many of those who offered are dead...
In interest of justice & restoring order, Ive tried to help SFPD on occasions and have been regretful of it everytime. Those piglets won't appreciate you trying to help them, and they'll turn on you, leaving nothing but grief in return for your assistance. The cops total lack of professionalism amazes me. No wonder SF streets are sinking into a sea of swill...
Peter Plate - Snitch Factory
and that's all I got for now...
Shotwell - San Francisco's Withering
----------------------------------------------
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Monday, March 05, 2007
I Roky-ed like a zombie
I am a wee bit exhausted here... what a frickin week...weekend...whatever. I gotta get up and help with a stage breakdown but i ain't done whooshing through my memory banks enough to sleep... hence this middle f the night reflection...
Oranger - Donald, You're Freaking Out
Birdman Records
Here's something Roky's got cookin back home in Austin this month...
ROKY ERICKSON UPCOMING SXSW SHOW
Roky and The Explosives, Spoon, Robyn Hitchcock and Peter Buck, Michelle Shocked, Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, Tommy X Hancock, Black Lips, Powell St. John, J. T. Van Zandt & Sumner Erickson of The Texcentrics
March 15th, 2007 2:00 PM (DOORS) to 8:00 PM
Threadgills WHQ,
S. Austin, Texas
Tickets available at
http://www.frontgatetickets.com/ and at Threadgills.
$20.00 General Admission and children 12 and under Free with an adult.
Other Stuff:
While the RIAA last week announced they would be aggressively suing thousands more of those caught downloading music, a legally operating Canadian music download service made headlines for going just partially DRM free, and the financially troubled EMI apparently broke off all talks about releasing it's catalog DRM free.
Strangely enough as the rumors surfaced that EMI was willing to let the mp3 cat out of the bag it was also rumored that Emusic, I-Tunes and other leading online sellers balked at EMI's "DRM free" pricing model, one that was hardly free.
In the meantime Edgar Bronfman's DRM proponent Warner Music Group announced they were making an offer for EMI & it's valuable assets including the Capitol and Virgin back catalogs, definitely halting the process.
Meanwhile Puretracks.com kicked off the launch of their DRM free MP3 music selections to Canadian's only with a free MP3 download of something only a Canadian might want, namely a Barenaked Ladies tune "Sound Of Your Voice". Puretracks, while garnering publicity for the supposed 50,000 DRM free songs they have, doesn't seem to be offering anything to North American users that isn't already out there on Emusic. Namely it;s non-major label controlled catalog tunes from labels like Concord Music, Nettwerk and Beggar's Banquet. Nothing particularly unique or different than the competition already has...
While the top two legal download websites get 90% of the attention, there are dozens of other ones you can check out. Wal Mart, the discount retalier for example offers much of the same material on I Tunes for at least 20 cents cheaper per track...
Here's a list of several authorized websites besides I Tunes & Emusic operating in the US market
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While it came and went this past week already, if you blinked and missed the 15th year of Noise Pop you also missed the most ambitious edition of the festival yet. Thousands of folks were enthralled at various venues around town over the past few days, checking out almost any type of event the organizer's felt secure in branding under their umbrella. In addition to indie rock sets were film screenings, literary showcases, and even a line snaking around the block on Divisidero Sunday afternoon for a "Noise Pop" comedy show at The Independent w/ Patton Oswalt.
While it started as a one off show in 1993 at that same venue when it was known as The Kennel Club, it's morphed from a pop punk focused rock thing into a multiday event with almost no entertainment genre boundries. This years festival kick off event was a free party last Tuesday at Mezzanine including the antics of the Extra Action Marching Band and MC/DJ David Cross.
Even the Clear Channel controlled Fillmore was hosting so called Noise Pop shows, with local folk chanteuse Jolie Holland's Friday night headlining set at The Fillmore that included songsmith David Dondero's opening set with his "saw" player Jamin celebrating his birthday onstage.
The previous night's Noise Pop event at the Fillmore was SF's own crown prince of Asian rap Lyrics Born along with politically adroit funksters The Coup...
Lyrics Born w/ Mistah FAB - L-I-F-E
After the "Dangerous Highway" Eddie Hinton doc film directed by Deryle Perryman played ATA on Sunday, Annie's Social Club hosted a great Muscle Shoals sound tribute after party thang with a bill rich on local southern fried talent like Chuck Prophet, Jon Weiss, Eric Moffett, Bart Davenport, Dave Gleason and the show stealing Mike Therieau.
Mike Therieau - Fly Away
It was all down home enough to make this lil' blogger head home to prepare some spicy okra filled gumbo and smoky collared greens and order up some of those long lost Hinton tunes from the Zane record label.
With so much entertainment crammed into just a few days, it literally boggles the mind as to how to budget time & bucks to attend even half of the shindigs. By far though the most sought after tickets & buzz I encountered seemed to be surrounding the return of Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators after a 25 year absence from the stage.
Roky has a special relationship with San Francisco, having been the founder of one of the first "psychedelic" rock bands, His music influenced many Bay Area musicians including Janis Joplin. In the late 70's & early 80's he was also based in San Francisco and his band Roky Erickson & The Aliens were signed to CBS and played around town quite a bit, with Roky rambling on about demons in radio interviews of the era.
Preceded by Wednesday night's sidewalk clogging crowd attending his "Your Gonna Miss Me" doc screening at the Roxie about the troubled musician, his gig on Thursday at The Great American Music Hall was sold out over a month before he came to town...
I've been to a lot of shows in this town, and while occasionally there's a bit of a line, or even some anticipation afoot for a performer, the Roky buzz was odd. Here's an obscure Texas based musician who hasn't put out any new material in over a decade, yet their appears to be a diehard cult fanbase scrambling to get a glimpse of the guy. As your humble scribe attempted to merely get into the club, I was accosted by one panicked youngsta who literally was trying to impede my path & snatch the apparently scarce ticket I held right out of my hand. In 20 years of concert going I don't think I'd ever seen that.
Inside the venue was a bit more subdued, not surprising considering that while Roky was popular in the late 60's, many of his fans are also pushing 60. The older silver haired folk sat patiently at tables in the balcony while bearded pretenders to the throne made a retro rock din below. The opening bands all had some sort of smoke hash & play rehash agenda, like Wooden Shjips blaring away in a fuzzed out drone fest that coulda roused Syd Barrett up from the dead, or Oranger who mine a pop-stomp-psych turf with a theramin in tow.
Oranger - Donald, You're Freaking Out
Howlin Rain from their debut:
Howlin Rain - Roll On Rusted Days
Birdman Records
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at Insound
The crowd was getting thicker as the headliner's set time got closer, and i spotted dozens of music biz scenesters all vying for good spots to watch the gig from. The lawyers, radio programmers, booking agents, record company guys, poster artists, record store clerks and musicians of all eras and semi failed/retired versions of all of the above were packed in tight.
Roky finally arrived at the venue and people including cameramen surrounded his car, folks were hi fiving & cheering him on like a returning war hero who been away at the front, or perhaps rock n roll's version of Walter Reed Hospital. It had actually been announced just days earlier that Erickson was again his own man, having regained his full legal autonomy, ending the 6 year legal guardianship established by his little brother Sumner.
Perhaps similar in some ways to the problems of much more well known 60's popsmith Brian Wilson, Erickson had spent a good portion of the last 40 years battling inner demons, and not enough time making music. Both musicians hit career peaks in their teens, Roky's 1st regional hit happenend in 1964, and his single "You're Gonna Miss Me" was in the top 20 in 1966 when he was just 19. Unlike Wilson though, Roky had no great fortune to carry him through his darkness, and after a few minor drug busts in tough talking Texas circa 1969, his life fell apart.
Roky Erickson & The 13th Floor Elevators - "You're Gonna Miss Me"
Eventually declared insane, as a ward of the state he went through thorazine & electroshock treatments, and was released from the maximun security Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Austin after three years in 1972 only after his brother Mikel and attorneys rallied behind the scenes. Roky recorded occasionally throughout the years, mostly releasing albums on obscure labels, but never reached the commercial heights & promise of his earliest efforts. Worse yet, his material was often bootlegged and he received nothing in return, like the illicit disc pictured at right.
He made sporadic attempts at comebacks, was in and out of care facilities and lived in state sponsored housing projects on government checks. At one point he was once arrested for "stealing other people's mail". He was known for keeping the radios & tv's cranked to drown out the voices and also dabbled in Born Again christian theology at one point...
In 1993 it's said that Erickson, long diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, was brought out for another attempt at a comeback in Austin and went on stage one night to play and just grinned silently at the mic while the band played on...
Things looked grim, his money and nerves had all but been exhausted. It was his little brother Sumner a classical musician in Pittsburgh, who battled to establish legal guardianship and a trust for Roky that could extract the missing royalty payments he was due, and put that money in a fund to care for his sibling.
Finally in 2005, Roky started gigging again around Austin Texas, and eventually he played a few other high profile shows including one last year in Chicago as well. These shows are all tentaive steps for a mellow guy who likes routines and to sleep late and watch cartoons, and hasn't adapted to a constant life on the road just yet.
His handlers were all around in SF, including his brother Sumner, and they seemed to take good care of him, although their choice of local eateries made me question their foresight. Within a 24 hour period Roky ate at The Pinecrest Diner, Arinell's Pizza and Tommy's Joynt, proving that if the road doesn't kill him, maybe the menu choices will.
Sporting a clean shaven look that was a far cry from the classic pyramid meets the eye Manson-esque imagery his t-shirt hawkers were selling, he looked less menacing 70's biker ala Rob Zombie, and perhaps more 80's era Lebowski party guy, with dare I say, some sort of mullet-esque hair cut. Despite his rep as king of the garage rock sound, the band occasionally treaded a little to close to the slick Austin bar band sound ala the Fabulous Thunderbirds. They came out looking tidy, even a bit too tidy if ya ask me. The crew cut sporting bassist held his instrument up so high , like it was doubling as a breastplate, maybe to keep any sweat from dirtying his shirt.
As Shay Quillen of the SJ Merc News put it "Anybody who came to the Roky Erickson show Thursday at the Great American Music Hall expecting a freak show was sadly disappointed."
The set, while somewhat tame, was well received by an enthusiastic crowd, and was less about psychedelic noise explorations and more about a man regaining musical control, which Roky seemed to be in. Halfway through the set Roky started hitting his stride, or at least playing the tunes people really really wanted to hear...
His spooky spacerock horrorshow crowd pleaser classics like "I Walked With A Zombie", "Two Headed Dog", "Creature With the Atom Brain", "Don't Shake Me, Lucifer" and the poppy and purty "Starry Eyes" all rattled the rafters. After all those years, it seemed over all too quick...
Roky Erickson - Starry Eyes ( excerpt)
pssst ... don't forget to go buy a record now & then
oh and
Maybe i'll see ya'll next year at Noise Pop's sweet 16...
Here's something Roky's got cookin back home in Austin this month...
ROKY ERICKSON UPCOMING SXSW SHOW
Roky and The Explosives, Spoon, Robyn Hitchcock and Peter Buck, Michelle Shocked, Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, Tommy X Hancock, Black Lips, Powell St. John, J. T. Van Zandt & Sumner Erickson of The Texcentrics
March 15th, 2007 2:00 PM (DOORS) to 8:00 PM
Threadgills WHQ,
S. Austin, Texas
Tickets available at
http://www.frontgatetickets.com/ and at Threadgills.
$20.00 General Admission and children 12 and under Free with an adult.
Other Stuff:
While the RIAA last week announced they would be aggressively suing thousands more of those caught downloading music, a legally operating Canadian music download service made headlines for going just partially DRM free, and the financially troubled EMI apparently broke off all talks about releasing it's catalog DRM free.
Strangely enough as the rumors surfaced that EMI was willing to let the mp3 cat out of the bag it was also rumored that Emusic, I-Tunes and other leading online sellers balked at EMI's "DRM free" pricing model, one that was hardly free.
In the meantime Edgar Bronfman's DRM proponent Warner Music Group announced they were making an offer for EMI & it's valuable assets including the Capitol and Virgin back catalogs, definitely halting the process.
Meanwhile Puretracks.com kicked off the launch of their DRM free MP3 music selections to Canadian's only with a free MP3 download of something only a Canadian might want, namely a Barenaked Ladies tune "Sound Of Your Voice". Puretracks, while garnering publicity for the supposed 50,000 DRM free songs they have, doesn't seem to be offering anything to North American users that isn't already out there on Emusic. Namely it;s non-major label controlled catalog tunes from labels like Concord Music, Nettwerk and Beggar's Banquet. Nothing particularly unique or different than the competition already has...While the top two legal download websites get 90% of the attention, there are dozens of other ones you can check out. Wal Mart, the discount retalier for example offers much of the same material on I Tunes for at least 20 cents cheaper per track...
Here's a list of several authorized websites besides I Tunes & Emusic operating in the US market
Yahoo! Music
Here's a new single on Wichita Recordings from a 6 member band out of Cardiff UK called Los Campesinos!..
Despite having literally nil of a latino influence do have a Glockenspiel wielding gal & the mother of the guitarist teaches French to youg'uns, so there...
Los Campesinos - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives
Here's a new single on Wichita Recordings from a 6 member band out of Cardiff UK called Los Campesinos!..
Los Campesinos - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives
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