Roky Erickson, one of the most crucial contributors to the American canon of garage rock, pyschedelia and proto-punk, will be in Los Angeles this week for two rare appearances. Tuesday night he’ll be at the Music Box (moved from the Mayan), and Wednesday, in what promises to be a supremely unique experience, will be playing an afternoon set at the Eagle Rock Center For The Arts, a free show and ice cream party at which all adults must be accompanied by a child. This trip to California is in support of his excellent new album True Love Cast Out All Evil (read our full review here.) He’ll be backed by Austin band Okkervil River, whose leader Will Sheff produced the album and selected the material from Roky’s entire history of un-released or under-released material, dating back to the mid-1960s. While much of Erickson’s work following his departure from the 13th Floor Elevators in 1969 was deliberately fearsome and disturbing, True Love brings out a side of his music that has been under-represented till now: his ability to be hauntingly beautiful. more ›

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 ›