2012 February | Pink Floyd Videos

Posted: 02/29 @ 10:02 pmRoky Erickson: Manicure your mind

The word “legendary” gets bandied about pretty loosely these days. But it definitely applies to Roky Erickson, whose mind-bending music with The 13th Floor Elevators in the 1960s stands up as some of the most exciting and adventurous music of the era – but his long strange trip was far from over when The Elevators came unstuck.

Roky Erikson is from Texas, not the most enlightened state in the Union, then, or now. He was busted for possession of one joint and eventually committed to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he was forced to undergo electroshock therapy.

By the time Roky was released in 1972, he was a shell of his former self. Even then, he began making music again. His songs were inhabited with two-headed dogs, zombies, aliens and alligators in the sewers. Musically, he had turned up his guitar, unleashing a proto-punk sound that still resonates today.

The 1980s were a washout for Erickson, his brain giving way to the demons and voices in his head. It looked like he was doomed to become one of rock’s great lost souls alongside Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.

Things started to turn around for Roky over the last 15 years or so. His brother helped sort out his medical and legal problems and he began making music again. A feature length documentary, You’re Gonna Miss Me, was produced in 2005 and two years later a book on The 13th Floor Elevators was published. Erikson began gigging around his hometown of Austin, Texas, and in 2010 he released a new album, True Love Cast Out All Evil, with assistance from Austin band Okkervil River.

That’s a lot of history. Which makes it seem all the more remarkable to learn that Erickson will play a date in Auckland at the Kings Arms. With some trepidation, I placed a call to Roky’s home in Austin, spoke briefly with his wife, and then, there he was, greeting me with a strong Texas twang. It was a holiday in the US and Roky and his wife were relaxing, contemplating cooking up a barbeque.

“Just taking it easy. We got a new George Forman grill. They’re pretty weird, we love it.”
Talking with Roky proved to be something of an adventure. Sometimes his answers didn’t necessarily correlate with my questions. And he has a habit of ending each sentence with “you know”, which was rather endearing. When I called he was watching TV. I asked what was on and this was our exchange:

ROKY ERIKSON: Just lots of cartoons. Right now I’m watching cartoons and everything, you know.

MARTY DUDA: What’s your favourite?

Well, I like Bugs Bunny a lot, and I like Scooby-Doo. And I’m drinkin’ water right now – water with ice in it – yeah.

When asked if he enjoys playing his music from his days with The Elevators, Erikson responded with: “Yeah, I study it. I always asked them where they got their stuff, The Elevators, and apparently they read the Bible and would write songs about the words that they would discover in the Bible, you know.”

He was happy to recount the time he and The Elevators appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1967 to perform You’re Gonna Miss Me.

“We did one song there, that’s all we’d ever do is one song, you know. Seems like we’d do more, but we just did the one. We said, ‘Hey, Mr Clark, would you ask us who the head of the band is?’ Then Tommy Hall [Elevators' jug player] got up and said, ‘We’re all heads!’ Very strange.”

I was curious to find out if Roky was familiar with Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn since he has been compared so often to the Floyd’s Syd Barrett.

“No, I’ve never heard of Pink Floyd. I’d like to be introduced to his music some. You like him? Is he pretty good?”

I assured him that the first Pink Floyd album was impressive and moved on to asking him about the songs he wrote after his release from hospital in the 1970s.

“Oh, mostly just writing about things that I had studied in school. Reading about people like this janitor who went up in the attic and he’d make the sound of a hammer and people would wonder about him and everything. They wrote a story about him. Kinda strange, you know. He was a benevolent creature. One you could talk to and get to know.”

When asked if he was aware of his legacy, he answered with an appropriately psychedelic-tinged answer.

“I just have to rely on my friends and acquaintances and find out more and more about being attuned to different vibrations that have happened that are good. I’ve been having a good time, I know that.”

*Roky Erikson plays The Powerstation in Auckland on Wednesday 7 March.

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By Marty Duda

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Filed under: Pink Floyd News

Posted: 02/29 @ 10:02 pmMarijuana Is A Gateway Drug…To Junk Food, Pink Floyd and "Clifford the Big …

According to the Chicago Reader, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez doesn’t want to legalize marijuana because it is a “gateway drug.”

The latest to hedge is Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez, who says she’s opposed to “decriminalizing” or legalizing marijuana possession even though budget cuts have left her office stretched thin. “I think marijuana can be a gateway drug,” she says.

In a sign of where things stand, Alvarez and other stakeholders aren’t just concerned about changing marijuana policies—the very word “decriminalization” has them on edge. Technically it means that criminal penalties for possession have been removed or even lessened, but to nervous politicians, it sounds too much like endorsing the use of dope.

Alvarez, for instance, says she’s “willing to discuss” giving police the option of issuing tickets to some pot possessors instead of arresting them, an idea that’s been floated by Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy and a group of aldermen. That’s essentially what Evanston approved, and it was widely understood as a form of decriminalization.

Alvarez is correct that marijuana is a gateway drug, but since people who study law and plan a career in politics rarely endanger their futures by smoking a joint, she’s unclear on what it’s a gateway to.

Your Ward Room Blogger got high a few times a long, long time ago as a teenager, so I can tell you: Marijuana is a gateway drug to…junk food.

After I smoked that joint, my mouth felt pasty and dry. My stomach felt empty. I drank a Pepsi to lubricate my tongue and ate a bag of tortilla chips to satisfy my hunger. It’s also a gateway drug to Pink Floyd, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. In high school, I went to a college friend’s dorm room, where we got high and listened to the all of Dark Side of the Moon, followed by Natty Dread and Legalize It. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s probably happened in a lot of dorm rooms. Marijuana is also a gateway drug to watching Judge Joe Brown, Anderson and Clifford the Big Red Dog all afternoon. And a gateway drug to sitting in your room surfing the Internet for hours. As well as a gateway drug to getting fired from your janitorial job and living with your mother at age 45, which is what happened to the biggest dope dealer I ever knew. That’s why I quit. Maybe I’ll try it again when I’m retired.

Leaving aside the actual effects of marijuana, Alvarez doesn’t want to decriminalize marijuana because it would be bad for business. Fewer pot busts means fewer court cases, which means fewer assistant state’s attorneys, which means fewer jobs for Alvarez to hand out, and fewer employees to work for her re-election. So it’s in her interest to call marijuana a gateway drug. Let’s just be clear that the gate leads to a very comfortable couch.

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Posted: 02/29 @ 10:02 pmImmerse yourself in Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Roger Waters (back) spoke to Hit about the new editions.
Source: National Features

Pink Floyd are re-releasing two new editions of The Wall.
Source: Supplied

ROGER Waters – the slightly less-angry man behind The Wall – admits he raided his vaults for this latest Pink Floyd reissue.

The Wall is his baby. And he’s understandably protective of it. And cares much less about repackages than cashed-up Floyd trainspotters do.

If you pony up the cash for the incredible-looking Immersive edition, among the six CDs and one DVD are some of Waters’s archives.

He’s generously lent only tiny excerpts from his original home demos of The Wall, keeping the rest up his sleeve.

That also explains why there’s the remastered audio of the classic Is There Anybody Out There live album from 1980-81, but only a minute of vision of The Happiest Days of Our Lives from the mythical Earl’s Court footage from 1980.

The whole tour was filmed. And this professionally shot rock tease proves it. But, again, Waters has his plans for that. He told News Limited: “The ex-manager of Pink Floyd, Steve O’Rourke, hid it because he didn’t want me to have it as I have the rights to it. But he died, sadly … for his family.”

It’s that grumpy Waters who informs The Wall – an album more than 100,000 Australians saw him recreate this year.

Now, depending on your budget (the three-CD Experience edition has more demos than you can poke a flying pig at), you can hear what was going through Waters’s head back in 1979 – as well as the finished product remastered.

The Works in Progress tracks are fascinating sketches of what would become one of the most-loved rock albums. You can hear everything take shape, just with a few lyrics and track titles to be tweaked.

History says Waters offered his already-distant band mates two sets of demos – The Wall and the one they passed on, which became his solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. One track from that record, Sexual Revolution, surfaces here, recorded by Pink Floyd. Fan heaven.

Even the casual observer will love the skeletons of Comfortably Numb – there’s a David Gilmour demo as he hums the chorus before adding the words, and band demos when it was called The Doctor and even more twisted than the version you know and love.

PINK FLOYD

THE WALL: EXPERIENCE/IMMERSION EDITION (EMI)

4.5 stars

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Posted: 02/29 @ 10:02 pmImmerse yourself in Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Roger Waters (back) spoke to Hit about the new editions.
Source: National Features