Whoosh! What a year! Bands failed, clubowners found their existence
increasingly difficult, and the music scene in general had a good choke on its
own vomit. Oh, there were a few signs of Christmas spirit, from pseudo-raves at
the neighborhood of lights around Guadalupe and 35th to people like the drummer
from the Onlys, who decorated his kit with red and green lights, conveniently
equipped with a switch to turn them off between songs for maximum effect.
More noticeably, though, Austin lurched into the final days of 1996 bearing
the poise of a sinking ship, with rumblings of desertion having started to rise
up among its rodentia. Sure, one former Hickoid may have returned to town, but
that doth not a reunion make, especially with vocalist Jeff Smith announcing
that he plans to exit Texas very soon (“I think I’ve been here long enough.”).
Even Hunter Darby, longtime Wannabe and current (though temporary) Spoon
bassist — the man who perhaps defined what a Slacker and therefore an
Austinite is by not showing up for his part in the movie — is threatening to
move this year. Sure, it sounds far-fetched, but then who ever believed that
Cindy Toth would split, either?
Both Erbie Bowser and the Grey Ghost left this plane altogether, seemingly
taking Austin’s blues scene with them as the once-mighty “Home of the Blues,”
Antone’s, had trouble finding someone other than Maceo Parker and Chris Whitley
to fill the shoes of all those great bluesmen, living month to month and
entertaining notions of relocating but not quite getting anywhere. Luckily,
Discovery Records bailed the label side of operations out of a deep, dark hole.
And why shouldn’t people think of bailing? The year opened with the Austin
Outhouse shutting its doors (being put to good use now, I see) and closed when
the White Rabbit died (though, admittedly, the Rabbit was replaced right off
the bat with the Mercury Lounge). In between that, Paul Sessums’ Black Cat
spinoff, the Split Rail, split, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of what was
looking like an old/new entertainment strip extending up Red River from Sixth
Street. (That didn’t seem to harm one of the year’s success stories, Stubb’s,
which rose quickly from an inauspicious debut with the Fugees during SXSW to
become a formidable bringer of barbecue, beer, and balladeering.)
And don’t forget the other bringers of music; local labels recessed along with
the rest of the nation’s music industry, with Dejadisc folding altogether (and
owner Steve Wilkison fleeing to Nashville), while alternative stations like
K-NACK and 101X struggled with the reported death of their genre. Lounge
music’s re-emergence was fun at first, but now it, along with the thundering
comeback of cover bands (okay, I guess they never really left us) and places
like Bob Popular — not to mention the overall sad state of live, original
music on Sixth Street — seems like a harbinger of the nuclear chill just over
Austin’s musical horizon.
The Same Auld Lang Syne
So here we are, entering another year in Austin. For me, that’s another yearof waking up every Thursday morning wondering if my faulty memory has resulted
in some horrible error being printed in this column; another year of trying
desperately to remember the names that go with the zillions of faces I meet in
various clubs and elsewhere; and another year of Dave Thomson nagging me about
setting him up with Drew Barrymore. (Okay, Thomson, it’s in print. Now what do
I get??) I know I’ve been dwelling on the bad rather than the good, but
don’t worry Austin, you’ve made it to the end of that hard road. And since it’s
important to try looking forward and upward, I’m running the photo you see on
this page. The image, my friends, is from the Baldknobbers’ Review, one of the
fine attractions of Branson, Missouri, the other “Live Music Capital of
the World.” It represents what thousands and thousands of folks haul their
Winnebagos down to see in Branson every year. In other words, yes, there is at
least one good reason to look forward to living in Austin in 1997 — not living in Branson. Actually, if things keep going the way they have, and since
Liberty Lunch doesn’t seem to have a prayer of surviving the City’s development
of the “West End Arts District” (their lease expires in mid-’97), Austin may
just become real competition for Branson. At least I think they’d
approve of Bob Popular.
You Can’t Say That on the Radio!
My personal best wishes go out this year to Cheryl Bateman, quite possibly theperson who has written the word “fuck” more than anyone else in history. No,
she’s not a caption writer for Flynt Publications, nor is she a famous graffiti
artist, pulling herself out of the slums of Harlem and landing in the galleries
of Soho. Instead, Bateman is the person at KUT who is in charge of listening to
all incoming CDs to determine whether they’re fit for airplay. Bateman doesn’t
just write “yes” and “no” on some index card; her job entails actually spelling
out each offensive epithet on the back of the CD packaging in large, clear
letters — along with warnings of homosexual or racist themes. (“White
Christmas? How did that get in here?”) Thus, KUT’s vaunted collection of
albums looks like the music library at a Tourette’s clinic (this despite the
fact that, as a rule, the station’s overnight crew are the only folks who might
“accidentally” play the kind of “alternative” music most likely to contain
dirty words, during a time when FCC regulations are loose enough that they
wouldn’t get the station in trouble). Most recently spotted among the new pile
was a compilation album of tracks by eccentric Brits called Misfits,
which bore the mark of Bateman with several “fuck”s, a number of “shit”s, plus
occasional “cock”s, “cunt”s, and the seemingly self-explanatory “asshole at
end.” Also among the markings on Misfits and many other albums in the
KUT library, was the dreaded “instrumental”; apparently the only thing more
offensive to KUT’s listeners than a song with dirty words is one with no words
at all.
An Early (Jack) Frost
Lest this whole column be a total downer, I’ll end it on an up note: CurrentSuperego member and former — well, a bunch of things — Jon Sanchez got
perhaps the earliest jump on playing Santa this year. Barely had December
reared its sunny, humid head when one of the kids he works with at the Texas
School for the Blind and Visually Impaired announced a desperate, burning need.
The kid, who is blind and retarded, is also a Pantera fan (one is tempted to
say, “Well, duh!”) and wanted to go to their show at the Austin Music Hall.
Well, the folks at the school decided that if he raised the money for tickets,
he and two escorts could go to the show.
The kid came through, and as one of those accompanying him, Sanchez sent a
note backstage to frontman Phil “I woke up this morning and found myself dead”
Anselmo. Soon enough, a couple of burly bouncers appeared before the group and
slapped backstage passes on them. It seems Sanchez and Anselmo go back to the
days when the former was a member of Agnostic Front, so after Pantera performed
an AF song and dedicated it to Sanchez, he took the kid backstage to meet his
heroes in person. Merry Christmas, kid, let’s hope 1997 turns out as good.
— Contributors: Christopher Gray and Raoul Hernandez.
This article appears in January 3 • 1997 and January 3 • 1997 (Cover).