stu cook Archive
28 Jul 2021
Remembering Roky Erickson, Part Three
Continued from Part Two… But Luckin “couldn’t find any commercial American label that wanted to put this guy out,” says Chris Knab, co-founder of San Francisco-based independent label 415 Records. Selecting songs from the UK release and adding five other tracks from the sessions, 415 released the music as The Evil One in 1980. Taken
27 Jul 2021
Remembering Roky Erickson, Part Two
Continued from Part One… Bill Miller would play amplified autoharp in Roky’s late ‘70s band, The Aliens, but by that time he had been a fan for years. He says that Roky was always unpredictable. “One thing about working with Roky: any day might be the last day,” he says. “Back in the days of
26 Jul 2021
Remembering Roky Erickson, Part One
The Bay Area’s rich psychedelic music tradition has its roots in familiar places: Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and The Grateful Dead laid the groundwork and built upon that foundation. More than a half century later, artists like The Fresh and Onlys, Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall carry on that tradition.
17 Sep 2019
Played a Set for Everyone: CCR at Woodstock (Part Two)
Continued from Part One… The story that gained traction over the years is that the band’s performance was somehow wanting or otherwise subpar, but that’s not at all what I hear on this recording. Doug: Well, thank you for that. Because John Fogerty said we – meaning the rest of us – didn’t play well.
16 Sep 2019
Played a Set for Everyone: CCR at Woodstock (Part One)
There’s a tired cliché that goes something like this: “If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t really there.” A half century later, an unfortunate reality is that if an event wasn’t properly documented, in the minds of current-day audience, it didn’t happen. And that has been the case with Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Woodstock
14 May 2009
Album Review: Jackdawg — s/t
Jackdawg is a heretofore unreleased one-off project from 1990. The group features Stu Cook from Creedence Clearwater Revival, plus John McFee and Keith Knudsen from the Doobie Brothers. The fifteen songs rock fairly hard in a late 80s/early 90s way. From anyone else, “Bayou Rebel” would be tarred with the too-close-to-CCR tag, but seeing as
13 Jan 2008
The Strange Odyssey of Roky Erickson
The history of rock ‘n’ roll is replete with all manner of tragic stories. In a few rare cases, the stories turn around into something more positive. Roky Erickson’s is one of those stories. Erickson was the founder of the first psychedelic rock group, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. The group was renowned for its 1966