Shout Factory
2005
I Have Always Been Here Before
About This Album
If Roky Erickson had vanished from the face of the earth after the 13th Floor Elevators released their epochal debut single, "You're Gonna Miss Me," in early 1966, in all likelihood he'd still be regarded as a legend among garage rock fanatics for his primal vocal wailing and feral harmonica work. But while Erickson has become something of an icon among fans of rock at its edgiest, far too many regard the man as some sort of acid casualty who peaked with his first record and has been babbling about movie monsters ever since. Though Erickson's first two albums with the 13th Floor Elevators are watershed works of the early psychedelic movement (especially the wondrous Easter Everywhere), his later solo releases (recorded after a stay in a Texas mental hospital took a fearsome toll on Erickson's psyche) contain many moments of brilliant, bare-wired rock & roll despite their freak-show reputation, and his occasional forays into folk-rock (especially on the lovely All That May Do My Rhyme) possess a gentle wisdom and mesmerizing beauty that are genuinely inspiring. Erickson's body of recorded work has long merited an intelligently assembled critical overview, and thankfully Bill Bentley, a longtime Erickson partisan who assembled the 1990 multi-artist compilation Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, has created just such an album with I Have Always Been Here Before: The Roky Erickson Anthology.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,6,7 and 10)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

Disc 2

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.