Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
June 29–July 6, 1995
book quicks
Openers II: The Lyrics of Roky Erickson
(Roky Erickson, 2.13.61 books, 318 p., $9)
Published in conjunction with Erickson's new All That May Do My Rhyme CD, this complete volume of Erickson's lyrics and poems comprises a lifetime of psychological disturbance and psychedelic dabbling. From his halcyon days with Texas' own 13th Floor Elevators through his UK-based Alien Mystic '80s phase to the present day, Erickson seems to be acting as a conduit between forces beyond our hemisphere (literal, spiritual, imagined) and the ground floor of our very being.
Whether it's trekking, whispering or humming electrically throughout the years, Erickson is as apt to be polite, even delicate in his lyrics, as with material like "I Believe in America,""I Am Her Hero," or the sweetest and loneliest treatise on unrequited love to date, "You Don't Love Me Yet." In a flash, with minimal effort and angular grace, he's frightening, as on "Mad Dog" and "Devotional Number One" — complete with demons, Christ and angry spacemen duking it out for control. Throughout it all, he maintains a steady sense of homespun humor. I hope.
Erickson may have relinquished control in this universe, but somewhere far away, he is the Grand Wazoo!
