There’s A Little Bit Of Everything In Texas

TEXAS

Ah, yes, the name conjures up so many things to any American who has done his or her time in front of the old cathode ray: the Alamo, the oil wells, the Dallas Cowboys, the ranches big as the state of Rhode Island. Money. BIG — that’s what we all remember most — BIG, except that now Alaska’s BIGger. But the images continue — Lightnin’ Hopkins singing the blues, Ernest Tubb playing electric guitar in the honkytonks, Bobby Blue Bland shouting and sweating in a purple-lit lounge, Bob. Wills and the Texas Playboys cavorting at Panther Hall, Johnny Winter blazing albino blues at the Vulcan Gas Works, the Sir Douglas Quintet rocking a beer joint in San Antone, Janis Jopling duetting with Ken Threadgill, armadillos frolicking in the moonlight.

Armadillos?

Yes, living specimens of Dasypus novemcinctus, the nine-banded armadillo, moving like prehistoric tanks ac^ ross the Texas landscape, their stodgy bodies doing irreparable harm to the symbols of Texan grandeur — the longhorn, the oil well, the mustang — the humble armadillo, eating only worms, and burrowing at the first sign of danger, burning a crimson swath across the sage, the earth trembles with the thunder of their paws, as a nirte-banded horde sweeps through central Texas with a force as inexorable as that of a tornado, as a view from the air shows them converging upon the state capital, Austin...

“HEY, FELLER... HEY! HEY, PODNER! WHAT IN THE HELL’S GOIN’ON HERE?^\

What’s going on, indeed! What’s going on is just a continuation of what’s been going on in Austin for years, only this time they’ve agreed upon a symbol, or, rather, not so much agreed upon one as found themselves in close agreement with one.

You See, Austin is not only the state capitol, but it is also the seat of the University 1 of Texas (“TEXAS NUMBER ONE!” “HOOK ’EM, HORNS!”). The lot which has historically befallen any institution of higher learning supported by state funds has been the education — the total education — of. brethren and sistern from, let us say, the rural areas. These people come to college because of a desire for self-improve-, merit, however nebulous that may be, and .a'desire to escape the old home town. Sihce the old home town may, in Texas, consist of twenty or so close relatives, located on a piece of land that looks like an electron microscope escape is perfectly natural. And when they get to Austin, which has trees, | lakes (actually just wide spots in the Colorado River), and hundreds, thousands of other people their own age, they tend to want to stay.

Now, growing up Texan, it seems to * this outsider, does something very distinctive to one. All the Texans I knpw, whether' they’ll admit it or not, seem ", linked by ^ deep spiritual bond. Chief among the external characteristics of this bond is a strong individualistic streak. And one of the major manifestations of this streak is a powerful propensity towards eccentricity. If you want to make that bunch of sentences add up to “All Texans are crazy,” just remember, hoss — you said it’, I didn’t.

Austin has been a stronghold of Texas eccentricity for years. I’m just beginning to realize tor how many years since tne name Austin didn’t mean anything to me until a few years agh, but there is the incontrovertable fact that Gilbert Shelton was drawing Wonder Wart-Hog for the campus humor magazine in 1961, that the International Artists label boasted,a roster of Texan, Austinbased psychedelic rock groups back in 1966, and that at least half the energy tljat poured into the Haight-Ashbury scene, at least on an organizational level, came from Austin. v

In fact, only San Francisco chauvinism kept such Texas acts as the 13th Floor Elevators and; the Red Crayola from making much of a dent. “Sure,” remembers Jim Franklin, genial artist, “we went through all that shit — we had our psychedelic ballroom at the Vulcan Gas Works on South Congress, and we had the bands all fall apart, and now we’re .seeing a second wave of musical activity here.” Franklin oughta know — he has been a prime energy-source for the Austin community for years. In fact, his drawings of armadillos, his cartoons of them, his paintings of them, posters of them — Jim Franklin’s outright obsession with armadillos has been a crucial factor in the Austin freak community’s totemization and identification with Dasypus novemcinctus. His early posters for the Vulcan Gas Works, jiis first. Armadillo Comix, his artwork on an album by Shiva’s Headband which Capitol released some years back were all taken as evidence by the outside world that Austin was alive and kicking.

Today, it is mpre so than ever, ,in fact. Austin might be taken for a freak’s paradise at first glance these days with its liberal pot and liquor laws, its burdo whin their subconscious, I suspect, which led the Austinites to adopt the armadillo as a symbol. You have to be well-armored to have gone through the Texas Experience and have survived this long. And this attitude, I believe, makes many Austinites doubt that a full-scale invasion and takeover, a la HaightAshubry, will be allowed to happen.

The characteristics of the armadillo culture are subtly different from your mid-70s hippie’s trademarks. There is an outrageous identification with the cowboy image, even though a lot of these same cowboys used to get off on stomping these same hippies. “The-average cowboy looked around and saw that these hippies were dressing like he’d already wanted to dress,” says Eddie Wilson, proprietor of the Armadillo World Headquarters, “and that got him where it hurt — in the macho.”. Along with the dress, there is a subtle distortion of the traditional cowboy music, resulting in an esthetic which will accept Ernest. Tubb and Bob Wills, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, Asleep At The Wheel and the New Riders of the Purple Sage with no thought of there being any real difference between any of those people.

Commander Cody and his Lost. Planet Airmen, however, the. armadillo culture does more than accept. They take them to their scaly bosom. It is a severe case of love at first sight and ever afterwards. Booking Commander Cody into the Armadillo World Headquarters, the reconditioned National Guard Armory which /Serves as the Austin culture’s current nexus, is siniilar to booking the Grateful Dead into Winterland, the MC5 into the Grande Ballroom, the Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center. ■ Totally appropriate.

When I first heard that Commander Cody planned to record their next album live, I had a mixed reaction. They hadn’t done too well when they had tried before. But when I heard they’d be cutting it in Texas, at the Armadillo, the idea souhd&d okay again.

The first thing I did after getting to Austin was collapse — it’d been a long ride by train and bus. The second thing I did was to score some Lone Star Beer. A legend which stands up in the 1970s, in this age of cynicism, is a legend well worth preserving. Everything you have heard about Lone Star Beer is the truth. Living out in California and drinking the fneasly 3.2% swill Coors and Olympia puts out is an easy way to lose one’s appetite for beer, lemme tell ya. I had almost forgotten that a sizeable percentage of Texas’ early settlers ; were Germans, and imagining Germans lasting a day in Texas'weather without beer is inconceivable. I could see that this would be a pleasant stay.

And that evening, walking into the backstage area of the Armadillo, that impression was given {mother boost: I tasted my first nacho. A nqeho is a crisp-fired tortilla, spread with refried beans, sprinkled with cheese, topped with pickled jalapeno peppers and baked till the cheese melts: a Texican pizza. Everybody was standing around eating them, because in addition to serving beer, the Armadillo World Headquarters has a kitchen which tulrns out some of the best sandwiches in the state of Texas, and what must be the ipost spectacular Tex-Mex cooking I’ve ever been honored to eat. Why, just serving beer is, revelation enough to an old California hand used to being dry in one of Mr. Bill Graham’fc establishments. But Graham could never serve alcohol at his functions — they would be out of control in no time. That was another thing that struck me about the Armadillo scene — drunk as they got, loud ^s they got, destructive as they seemed, I didn’t see one fight, I didn’t see one drug casualty (excepting one poor cat who found that antibiotics and beer don’t mix), and I didn’t see, in short, any of the behavior that usually kept me from enjoying myself in most of the ballrooms I’ve ever frequented.

Wage-A-War-A-Night Productions is what Eddie Wilson, Armadillos* chief, jokingly calls the >scene. He’ll also tryand have you believe that “I just run a bar,” which is, I guess, one way of looking at it. I mean, it is a bar — it is Lone Star Beer’s second largest outlet in the state of Texas, second only to the Houston Astrodome. In the four days Cody appeared there, 7500 people — at a conservative estimate — drank some ten thousand dollars’ worth of beer. I believe it — when Cody mounted that stage, there Went up sucji a whoop from that audience that somebody used to apathetic San Franpisco Bay Area :crowds would be justified in being scared. But like I said, it’s undercontrol.

And, naturally, Cody put on the best show I’ve ever seen them do for that crowd. That’s no idle statement, either — I go to see Cody every opportunity I get, since they’re still one of the rare bands in this neck of the woods that gets me off. But in Texas, their country stuff sounded qiore country, their boogie stuff boogied better, their swing swung authentically sweeter. They escaped with enough stuff for a double album with plenty left over, but the record company could only, score enough vinyl for a single record. -

And the crowd responded beautifully. In fact, that crowd responded so Well that in making the final album they had to dub in. an audience from somewhere else because the crowd didn’t sound like a crowd — they sounded like a thermonuclear bomb. Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen are heroes in Austin. I’d always wondered how they missed out being heroes in San Francisco, but 1 guess they don’t have the coke-dealer flash-style ambience going for them, and I guess that’s what it takes.

TURN TO PAGE 76.

C.CODY

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 48.

Well, 1 won’t go on at great length about the songs they played, the fact that they for sure have a couple of hits on the album, or how the artwork on the cover is one of Jim Franklirr’s most inspired creations — you can see and hear all that for yourself. Suffice it to say that this whole thing turned out right.

Cody’s going back to the Armadillo soon, too. They won’t be recording it, but that scarcely matters. The thing is, the Armadillo is one of the prime places Tor any artist to play. “We dig authentic pickers,” says Eddie Wilson, and that’s part of it. The audience there can make any artist forget the road blues in a hurry. The other part is an emerging style which is currently in Austin, one best characterized by a radio Station in town, KOKE-FM. They call themselves “progressive country,” and it’s an appealing concept — mainly because it can mean just about anything they want it to mean. You can sit listening to KOKE and hear everything from the Grateful Dead to Waylon Jennings to the Louvin Brothers to JerryJeff Walker to Poco to Hank Williams to Moon Mullican to Asleep At The Wheel in 4he space of an hour, and you’d hear much more than that, even, if they had a bigger record library. It’s1 not even a musical thing, necessarily. You could almost call it a new, and maybe even healthier way of looking at America. At worst, it’s very refreshing —!no doubt of that.

In fact, I’d say Billy C. Farlow summed the whole thing up in a song he recorded during that epochal weekend: “Too much fua? Too much fun? T\yo or three things I ain’t never done — I ain’t never had too much fun!!!” .