Pop Montreal Day Three: The Explosive Roky Erickson

ChartAttack sent Lorraine Carpenter to check out the adventure that is Pop Montreal. Here's her Friday report:

7:30 p.m. Associacao Portuguesa
There's a lineup on the steps, and a smaller crowd gathered around the side of an open vehicle parked out front. Roky Erickson, once the lead singer of Austin, Texas' 13th Floor Elevators, is sitting in the passenger seat, chatting with a couple of fans and festival staff members. In the lineup, where the view into the car is obscured, I hear someone say they that can tell it's Erickson from the way he folds his arms.

Everyone is here to see You're Gonna Miss Me, a documentary by Keven McAlester about Erickson's struggle with schizophrenia and the recent custody battle that tore apart his already dysfunctional family. It's a great movie, chronicling the early days of the band, the extent of their influence on the psychedelic rock scene, and Erickson's abrupt descent into drugs, mental illness and the American prison system.

Erickson was sentenced to five years for marijuana possession and, after several escapes, was eventually locked up in a maximum-security mental institution, where he played in a band alongside child rapists and murderers.

Most painful of all (for the viewer, that is) were more recent scenes of Erickson's home in Austin, where all of the radios, televisions, amplifiers and other noisy gadgets were cranked, possibly to drown out voices in his head. The only substantial human contact that he had in this 20-year period were visits from his eccentric mother, a sympathetic character who failed to get necessary medical and psychiatric treatment for her son. Erickson's current legal guardian is his youngest brother, Sumner, who we have to thank for tonight's show, a performance by Roky Erickson And The Explosives.

During the 20-minute wait between the screening and the performance, everyone was booted outside. I stood around among members of The Planet Smashers, The Sunday Sinners, Starvin Hungry and Tricky Woo/The Mongrels.

Bionic's Jonathan Cummins, who recently wrote about Erickson, had just been told that he's going to get yelled at by Sumner, in person, for mentioning schizophrenia in the article. Apparently junior Erickson thought that the piece was going to be strictly "about the music," which makes me wonder if he's seen the film that he co-stars in. (Cummins later told me that he managed to dodge Sumner all night.)

10 p.m. Associacao Portuguesa, round two
We re-entered the building and I hit the washroom in the basement, where the old Portuguese folks were on dirty-looks duty in the social room. I could hear the band start up as I climbed the stairs, and any qualms I had about sticking around for a potentially sad, awkward scene faded away when I saw Erickson on stage. He looked perfectly comfortable, and his playing and singing were solid, if not magical.

The set was chock full of monster songs like "Two-Headed Dog," and The13th Floor Elevators' "You're Gonna Miss Me" was the obligatory pre-encore closer. The only problem was the blues-bar stiffness of his backing band. Mind you, I wasn't exactly expecting The13th Floor Elevators.

11:20 p.m. Club Lambi
Congratulations to Toronto's Upper Class Recordings, whose showcase was jammed. Last year, also on Pop Montreal's Friday night, I saw Cadence Weapon alongside a scant handful of people at the Jupiter Room. This year, I couldn't even get into his show.

11:23 p.m. Academy Club
Only a door or two north, I walked into a small crowd that was dispersing after a set by Giselle Numba 1 (a.k.a. Giselle Webber of The Hot Springs). Los Angeles MC Subtitle took the stage before long, and his verbose nerdiness wasn't lost on the local crowd, who've seen a lot of him lately via his collaboration with Islands.

The room slowly filled up in anticipation of Chicago's highly touted Kid Sister. Festival director Dan Seligman was in the throng, visibly relieved and relaxed after what must have been an ordeal with the Ericksons. He was later quoted as saying that dealing with Roky took three years off of his life.

Flosstradamus took the stage early, announcing that Def Jux's C-Rayz Walz was a no-show. Earlier, a disappointed folk fan told me that "75-years-young" Keith Fullerton Whitman was MIA too.

The DJs delighted the crowd with classics like "The Message" and "Pump Up The Jam" (the second time I've heard it in two days, at the same venue) but it was Kid Sister's show once the teen sensation took the stage. Her rhymes were bold, her stage presence confident, and her hype man loud. He demanded love for the lady, which the crowd happily handed over. Of course, the set was over in 20 minutes, but that's the way it goes at this stage of the game.

I was surprised to see local country figure Li'l Andy, who warned me that my boyfriend was around the corner getting hammered on scotch. It was after 2 a.m. when I collected him, flagged a cab and headed home for some much-needed beauty sleep. Three days down, two to go.