by Stewart MasonOne of several similar collections that appeared in the mid-'90s, Roky Erickson & Evilhook Wildlife collects interview excerpts and live tracks taken from a radio session in Erickson's hometown of Austin, TX, in 1983, larded with a couple of studio recordings made around the same time. The songs are a familiar lot, the usual suspects that have been trotted out at nearly every Erickson recording session since the early '80s: "You Don't Love Me Yet," "Starry Eyes," "Don't Slander Me," "Don't Shake Me Lucifer," etc. All of them are given entirely competent but not particularly inspired performances, and in the brief interview snippets, five of them lasting from ten seconds to nearly a minute, Erickson sounds about as lucid as he has since his mid-'70s release from mental incarceration. The inclusion of the same live version of "Heroin" that appears on the 1986 compilation Gremlins Have Pictures and elsewhere is the only obvious cheat, but only the most die-hard Roky Erickson fanatics need this pleasant but unessential addition to the oeuvre.