The Stingler

I'm very excited, for today I managed to score tickets to a show by acid-fried psyche God, Roky Erickson, in June at the South Bank Centre. He used to be in the The Spades, and the 13th Floor Elevators , the 1960s trippy, electric jug-using group from Texas.

Roky has the best rock n roll scream of all time. I hope it hasn't been too badly eroded over the years. I learned everything I know about screeching by copying his agonised wail on the amphetamine-fuelled hurtle of You're Gonna Miss Me.

He vanished for years into a murky world of bad acid, mental institutions and shock treatments in Austin, Texas. When I visited that town, people who lived there told me that he'd sometimes peek his head over the parapet, and play a shambolic show. They also told me that his mother was even stranger than he was.

There's a film, You're Gonna Miss Me, coming out soon, which documents Roky's life.

He's playing as part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival on the South Bank. Jarvis has excellent taste - I could happily go to everything he has scheduled. Sadly, I can only afford Roky and the mysterious Disney Songbook evening, where various stars of the rock and the pop world will be singing their versions of Disney favourites.

Here's an amazing clip of a fresh faced Roky performing You're Gonna Miss Me by a swimming pool full of hot sixties chicks. It makes me a little sad to see him so young and full of life and blissfully unaware of the tumult to come. Listen for that scream.


You should really buy a 13th Floor Elevators CD, you know.