I recently picked up a stack of vinyl from a local antique store, including that perennial bargain-bin favorite, a polka record. It included a polka song with which I was previously unfamiliar, titled “Strip Polka,” which I have ripped just so I could put it here for you:
Stanley Pulaski and His Orchestra – “Strip Polka”
It’s a polka about burlesque! Just what the world needs. This was evidently a kind of popular song? I don’t know. But I know that this video is amazing:
I’ve been thinking about Roky Erickson a lot lately. A native Austinite, he was in The Spades and the 13th Floor Elevators, the latter of which was a seriously influential psychedelic and garage rock band, and he has a body of phenomenal solo work. Many critics have cited his uniquely powerful vocal abilities as a cornerstone of the garage sound.
The Spades, “We Sell Soul” (1965) (57s sample)
He was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 21 (likely partially induced by heavy drug use) and spent time in the Austin State Hospital and Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, both of which administered non-consensual electroshock therapy to him. He more or less lost the middle 30 years of his life to institutionalization and mental illness, and has just started experiencing a personal and artistic revival in the past ten years.
13th Floor Elevators, “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (1966) (38s sample)
You’re Gonna Miss Me is also the title of a 2005 documentary by Keven McAlester, which is a little about the 13th Floor Elevators, but more about Roky at the nadir of his condition, and his younger brother Sumner Erickson’s (a classical tubaist) fight to emancipate him from the guardianship of their mother. Happily, he’s now free, in a much better mental condition, and has actually been performing and recording again.
My two favorite Erickson songs are both a little oddball compared to the rest of his canon. The first is a quiet little duet with Clementine Hall, called “I Had to Tell You.” It’s a 13th Floor Elevators song, and always makes me feel kind of like crying. The second is one of his solo songs, “Clear Night For Love,” and is maybe the poppiest thing he’s ever written, though it still breaks me heart a little.
I hope they move you as much as they do me.
One of my favorite figures of speech is describing something as being like “the love child of ___ and ___.” As in, “Have you seen Pan’s Labyrinth? It’s like the love child of The Pianist and the actual Labyrinth!” Or “Hey! Look at that guy over there! He looks like the love child of David Bowie and Bob Barker!” (How terrifying would that be? Actually, how terrifying was Pan’s Labyrinth?)
What would happen if two songs had a baby?
Freddie Mercury & Morrissey
If songs look anything like their singers, it would look like this: Continue reading →
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