THE EVIL ONE (PURPLE VINYL)

œ 2xLP housed in gatefold jackets with 20pg book-deep liner notes by Joe Nick Patoski œ Originally released in the UK as the 10 song album Five Symbols in 1980 and as The Evil One in 1981 (with 5 songs replaced), this definitive CD gathers all 15 songs from the Stu Cook (Creedence Clearwater Revival) late 1977-79 produced sessions œ Rare / unseen archive photos and ephemera œ Available on black or purple haze colored vinyl Description: Celebrating a creative purple patch by a singular performer, Light In The Attic is to reissue the three albums issued by Roky Erickson in the 1980s: The Evil One (LITA 097), Don™t Slander Me (LITA 098) and Gremlins Have Pictures (LITA 099). Together, they™re a chance to pick up a missing jigsaw piece in the history of American rock ˜n™ roll in deluxe packages. As the core member of the 13th Floor Elevators and an undisputed pioneer of psychedelic rock, the ™60s were thrilling times for Erickson. His band riding high in their native Texas and beyond, the howling single ˜You™re Gonna Miss Me™ was his calling card, but Erickson™s ˜60s ended in the stuff of nightmares. Under sharp scrutiny by the authorities due to the band™s well-expounded fondness for psychedelic drugs, Erickson was found with a single joint on his person. Pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to avoid prison, he was sent to the Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane, where he was ˜treated™ with electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatment. Erickson pulled through his three and a half years at Rusk, and even put together a band while incarcerated. The Missing Links contained Roky plus two murderers and a rapist. Released from the institution in 1974, Roky found his legend had grown while he™d been away  not least because ˜You™re Gonna Miss Me™ was included on 1972™s Nuggets compilation. He formed a band, the Aliens, and set about honing a hard rock sound that placed the psychedelic garage blues of the Elevators firmly in the last decade. Though it was produced at a time when Roky was struggling to cope with drugs and life on the outside, he hit form on his first post Elevators album-proper, 1981™s The Evil One. Produced over a period of two years by Stu Cook, from Creedence Clearwater Revival, it™s a masterful collection of songs about zombies, demons, vampires and, yes, even the ˜Creature With The Atom Brain™. These tracks, inspired by schlock sci-fi and horror movies and colored by Roky™s distinctive, high-pitched vocal and squealing guitar, are among the maverick performer™s best. At the time, Roky explained the album this way: šIt™s gonna go back to the ferocious kind of rock ˜n™ roll of the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds. It™s the kind of music that makes you wish you were playing it or listening to it for the first time ˜way back when.™› But the record would not reach the mass audience of those bands, its success hampered by erratic release schedules and disastrously awkward press interviews. A year after its release, Erickson would become convinced that a Martian had inhabited his body. He would soon become obsessed with mail, and take to taping it, unopened, to his bedroom walls. Many of Erickson™s demons were yet to show their faces. But the B-movie demons he exorcised on this record gave us one of hard rock™s strangest, most inventive albums. Tracklist: Two Headed Dog, I Walked With A Zombie, Night Of The Vampire, It's A Cold Night For Alligators, Mine Mine Mind, Sputnik, White Faces, I Think Of Demons, Creature With The Atom Brain, The Wind And More, Don't Shake Me Lucifer, Bloody Hammer, Stand For The Fire Demon, Click Your Fingers, If You Have Ghosts