Roky Erickson & the Explosives

Halloween: Live 1979-1981 (SteadyBoy)

Varying degrees of sound quality make this new collection of vintage live recordings a mixed bag. Recorded in Texas and California during his horror-movie-driven re-emergence, Roky Erickson and his unflappable young backers blast through “Two Headed Dog” and “I Walked With a Zombie” before an appreciative Raul’s audience. Clocking in just shy of eight minutes, “Stand for the Fire Demon” gradually grows into a smoldering, shrieking menace of epic proportions. The first 11 songs on Halloween sound like cleaned-up soundboard tapes, but the last third’s fidelity reeks of a condenser microphone on a cheap handheld recorder. Songs like “Creature With the Atom Brain” and “White Faces” lose their eerie snap in the translation, as does an off-the-cuff cover of the Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” This one is definitely for the completists. (Wednesday, March 12, Austin Music Hall, 11pm.)

**.5

This article appears in March 7 • 2008.

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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.