Roky Erickson - One flew east and one flew west....

Probably the saddest of the acid casualties was the singer and frontman of the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson. We lost him just over a year ago. He and the other Elevators were open proponents of various psychedelics, deep in the heart of Texas. Roky himself purportedly dropped acid about 300 times. In 1968 he was hospitalized after an episode wherein he began speaking gibberish on stage. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

In 1969 he was busted with a joint. In a move to dodge a 10-year prison term, he pleaded insanity and....um....won, subsequently being committed to a state psychiatric hospital. After several escape attempts, he was transferred to another facility where Nurse Ratched gave him shock therapy and Thorazine treatments.

No lobotomy, thankfully, but he was released in 1974, a changed man.

From then on, he labored in obscurity, producing a solid four albums worth your attention. Doug Sahm produced his first single release - "Two Headed Dog." CCR's Stu Cook produced his first album, The Evil One, playing on two songs. In 1986 he releases the harder-edged Don't Slander Me. As far as the sound and sci-fi horror vibes go, they fall somewhere between the Ramones and the Cramps. It's great stuff but if you were to walk into a near-empty bar where this was being played, you might want to leave.

In 1990 artists from REM to the Butthole Surfers to ZZ Top paid tribute, covering his solo songs alongside Elevator tunes on Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, raising his profile, and ultimately landing him with a label owned by Butthole drummer, King Coffey. Supposedly, Roky said the royalty checks that Coffey gave him for 1995's alt-country flavored All That May Do My Rhyme were the first that he'd ever received. Maybe it was the only one that sold. Maybe those were the only checks he could remember.

Roky was quiet until his last album, 2010's True Love Cast Out All Evil, with Okkervil River. Another solid album, it is heavy in parts, like his earlier work, and hushed in others, like Rick Rubin's productions of Donovan and Johnny Cash or Bob Weir's work with the National.

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