Orb Productions Keeps Alive
the Music of Roky Erickson
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Over the course of the last 25 years, I have
been the friend and cohort of Craig Luckin, the owner and flame
keeper of Orb Productions and it’s music publishing arm,
Orb Music, which owns and controls the majority of the Roky Erickson
master recordings and musical compositions for the period following
the demise of the seminal Texas psychedelic rock band, 13th Floor
Elevators.
Our friendship started out when David Stein and I were in our
second year of law school, and started a rock club in San Francisco’s
North Beach district called the Back Dor. At the time Craig and
his partner Bruce Young were managing Roky, as well as his back
up bands the Aliens and at other times, the Explosives. All of
them appeared at the Back Dor, on bills with other SF underground
bands such as the Mutants, SVT, Zeros, and Eye Protection.
In the last few months, there has been plenty of Orb/Roky Erickson
activity, including the recent licensing of classic albums, “”Gremlins
Have Pictures” and “Don’t Slander Me”
to Rykodisc. Both albums will be remastered and reissued with
bonus tracks, and improved liner notes and artwork. Orb also licensed
22 masters to be included on the upcoming Roky Erickson/13th Floor
Elevators 2-cd anthology being assembled by Shout Factory, the
new company run by Richard Foos and Gary Stewart, formerly of
Rhino records. This Sony-distributed package promises to be the
greatest overview of Roky’s career ever to be released.
All of these releases should be available by the end of the year.
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Also in the works is a cd collection of live
Roky & The Explosives tracks assembled by Explosives drummer
and bandleader, Freddie Krc. Most importantly, currently in production
is a documentary biopic about Roky, entitled, “You’re
Gonna Miss Me”, by southern California based independent
filmmaker, Keven McAllester, which contains dozens of Roky songs,
recordings and videos which were recently licensed by Orb. This
film promises to further shed light on Roky Erickson’s legend
and music.
All of the foregoing is only the most recent news, after recent
releases in the last year on noted indie labels, including “The
Evil One (Plus One)” on Sympathy for the Record
Industry and “Don’t
Knock the Rock” on Norton Records, both of which
have been documented on these pages.
Links
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