Roky Erickson is playing a show at the El Rey! If you haven't seen the documentary You're Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson you should, it's so great!ROKY ERICKSON
EL REY THEATRE
5515 WILSHIRE BLVD, LA
FRI OCT 31 2008 8:00PM
In the annals of spooked rock, Roky Erickson is a legend. When you hear his wobbling, impassioned, vocal yowl, you have to admit: He could've been a sort of psychedelic, proto-punk, American Van Morrison. Alas, history has been less kind to Roky. Kevin McAlester's documentary discloses precisely why (and how) Roky's early status as an icon--a maverick rock genius as demonstrated by his band, the 13th Floor Elevators--went sadly awry. At the center of You're Gonna Miss Me are some crucial dramatic tropes: a terribly broken family; a pressing, age-old "Am I my brother's keeper" predicament; and a relatively simple case of schizophrenia. The film opens in a courtroom, Erickson's aging and awkward mother, Evelyn, and his youngest brother, Sumner, locked in a battle for guardianship over the then-53-year-old, mentally imbalanced singer. The film captures Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Patti Smith, and Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), among others, testifying to Roky's non-pareil genius. Also present, however, are tales of Roky's singular madness--extended acid and heroin binges and, alas, his then-present-day condition, living in cramped, decrepit quarters with an array of transistor radios, stereos, TVs, and keyboards, all cranked fully as he placidly reclines or wanders aimlessly.
The film painstakingly shows the Erickson family's longstanding fissures, contextualizing Roky's schizophrenia and, disarmingly, putting his mother's own awkward idiosyncratic behavior on display. Lee Daniel's cinematography brilliantly captures the desolation and desperation of Roky's life, camera shaking and panning and finding hidden angles to show the strange, seemingly endless schizophrenic signs around the singer--dozens of antennae, stacks and stacks of mail strewn throughout his apartment, and Evelyn's complicated obsession with Roky's history--from his highpoints as a rocker to his tragic three-year stay at the Rusk State Hospital for marijuana possession (where, for example, he played in an ad hoc band with a couple of murderers, a rapist, and, improbably, a hospital counselor) to her own, eerie film project where she casts Roky as "the king of the beasts" in a home-movie she undertakes as a "legacy" for the family. The film is all about otherworldly dimensions, centering in large part on youngest brother, Sumner--himself an accomplished musician playing tuba with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra--and his legal battle to become Roky's guardian and get Roky "simple medical care" and medication for his schizophrenia. This is an important chapter in the history of rock, without the underlying humor that made Dig! an indie film hit in 2005 but with a much larger historical purview. --Andrew Bartlett
The film painstakingly shows the Erickson family's longstanding fissures, contextualizing Roky's schizophrenia and, disarmingly, putting his mother's own awkward idiosyncratic behavior on display. Lee Daniel's cinematography brilliantly captures the desolation and desperation of Roky's life, camera shaking and panning and finding hidden angles to show the strange, seemingly endless schizophrenic signs around the singer--dozens of antennae, stacks and stacks of mail strewn throughout his apartment, and Evelyn's complicated obsession with Roky's history--from his highpoints as a rocker to his tragic three-year stay at the Rusk State Hospital for marijuana possession (where, for example, he played in an ad hoc band with a couple of murderers, a rapist, and, improbably, a hospital counselor) to her own, eerie film project where she casts Roky as "the king of the beasts" in a home-movie she undertakes as a "legacy" for the family. The film is all about otherworldly dimensions, centering in large part on youngest brother, Sumner--himself an accomplished musician playing tuba with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra--and his legal battle to become Roky's guardian and get Roky "simple medical care" and medication for his schizophrenia. This is an important chapter in the history of rock, without the underlying humor that made Dig! an indie film hit in 2005 but with a much larger historical purview. --Andrew Bartlett
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