Results tagged “13thfloorelevators”

Roky Erickson’s new album begins and ends with a field recording, made by his mother during a visit to the Rusk State Maximum Security Prison For The Criminally Insane. He’d been sent there after being arrested for possession of one joint in 1969, and served for three years. What happenned to him during those years profoundly altered the rest of his life, as he battled a raging depression and paranoia that left him only partly functional even at the height of his career. As of a decade ago, it was reported that his condition had deteriorated almost beyond hope of recovery, ravaged by dementia and a life-threatening dental abscess. He seemed, from the outside, to have been left for dead. more ›

Between our Gift Guide That Rocks, our Gift Guide For Classical Music Lovers and our Independent Music Store Guide, you’d think that LAist has already covered all there is to know for your Rock and Roll Christmas shopping. However, if you need some more rocking for your stocking, here are a few music books that came out this year that were enjoyed by LAist contributors. more ›

There may be no American musician more ripe for the documentary treatment than Roky Erickson. There’s the tale of great promise in 1966 as the 13th Floor Elevators invent psychedelic rock and gain a reputation as the most other-worldly group alive. There’s a long period of reinvention as he continues to produce great stuff – cryptic and haunted though it is - into the 1980s. There’s a backstory of madness and decline. There’s even a... more ›