Maybe one of the highlights of 2001 was seeing the Rev. Horton heat not once, but twice, in concert in a respective couple of cities. The second city was Melbourne at the renowned Corner Bar, Richmond. But the first was the more memorable, a place in Fort Worth filled with Psychobilly goons and their poodle-skirted ladies.
And the song the Reverend did not play? 'Cowboy Love'.
I remembered this because the song has always made me chuckle, mostly due to such classic lines as the opener "I want to go two stepping, with a good looking big black buck", and was guaranteed to start a riot. Also because I saw on the news this evening that Willy Nelson has gone and released a gay cowboy song. As you do.
Me surprised? No. Thing is, in 1989 while many at Robert E. Lee High seemed to think that guys wearing skin-tight clothes, big belt buckles and snappy shirts was 'macho', I wasn't really convinced.
When you come from the Mount you get used to seeing people in baggy tracksuits and the like. Then you get sent to Texas on a student exchange and get exposed to horrors in your peripheral vision. Like guys in tight jeans rolling their balls into more comfortable spots. Eeeeshhh...
Anyhow, if you're going to be exposed to anything from the Country and Western school, go the more modern versions. And psychobilly is one such way to go. Find yourself something off Sub Pop and get into it. If you can find it, get yourself a copy of the Flametrick Subs (they were on their own label when I bought the album). They're nutters. All I can really remember is the tiny cowboy hats and the stage lighting, only red, from below. They had these cheerleaders with red and black pomp-pomps and '666' on the front of their very small leather dresses.
Live, songs like "Beer-run" and "Plastic Jesus" are genius. If I had a band, or talent, I'd do a cover of their song "Government Issue Bathroom Tissue" in a second.
Otherwise I think I may have mentioned Supersuckers' "Must've been high", a classic known to far too few. The next cover I'd do is "roamin' round", or "Juicy Pureballs Hungover Together".
The theme to all this, you might notice, is Country and Western. Unfortunately, living in Texas kind of means that listening to crap country music kind of rubbed off on me. Before I left to go overseas a dude from school used to listen to Johnny Cash, and it was a long time in the South before I realised just how much foresight the guy had.
Just the other day I heard Radio Active playing Cash's cover of "Mercy Seat". His version of the song has been giving me cold shivers for years. It's far better than Giant Sand singing "Red Right Hand" (although the latter is still a good cover).
I digress though. Go and see Walk the Line. I'm sure in a week or two every second person in the office humming "Ring of Fire" will become tedious, but for now, it's kinda cool. Plus, I hear it's a much better film than Brokeback Mountain. Hayden has a report of the average response to the latter.
Yeah... cowboys... what I mostly remember was the way the place had barely changed. I had headed back to Texas as an ordinary tourist after spending a year at home. After spending a month or so in a smallish town working as a roofer with these guys who liked to call Arabs 'sand-niggers' (it was a few months before Gulf War One), a friend and I drove this 70s Mercedes down to Austin for a little contrast.
What I immediately noticed was the lack of really tight jeans. For some reason as Texas gets more liberal the dress becomes less homoerotic. Kind of a weird reverse-gayness thing going on there. Guys start doing stuff like actually 'hanging out with girls' instead of each other, and there's a lot less chewing tobacco. Hitting each other becomes less of a form of bonding.
Once again, there's nothing about the idea of a Brokeback Mountain-type film that surprises me. Any group that routinely refers to the best things in life being 'stallions', 'bull-riding' and that whole mythology Speights has bought into has got to be questioned.
Seriously. Two guys up in the Alps who prefer beer and each others company to women? You gotta wonder.