HIPPIE HAPPINESS FROM SIR DOUG

Last summer, after offering 15 seasons of pop mania at a fair price, the Central Park Music Festival came to a spectacular end. The 10,000 paid admissions and God-knows-how-many freebies on the grass and trees were there to see the Pretenders, but no one was disappointed when the familiar humpity organ strains of �She�s About A Mover� identified the opening act. The �New� Sir Douglas Quintet was in town to cut an album, and their still-perky 60�s flavor was especially heartwarming to those of us who remembered being at the Festival�s opening in 1966. Was it true that some good things didn�t have to change?

One might have asked that question again six months later, as the three-fifths original Sir Douglas Quintet filled the Lone Star Cafe to bursting, and for an hour and a half, played everything from the tunes on Border Wave, their newest album, to Mexican accordian music, to a sweaty encore of �Wooly Bully.� Oh, and of course, �She�s About A Mover,� �Mendocino,� �Rain, Rain� and the rest of their signature tunes. Doug was in a frenzy, galloping across the cramped stage with wobbly legs shaking to an inner fire, encouraging the sardine-tight crowd to shake their neighbors to incendiary level, giving the high-sign to a pack of Chinese guys who stood out among the flannel-shirted and jeaned minions. They were country, they were rock �n� roll, they were a lot of yester-

days, they were a distinctive sound that we�ve heard so many times since in the pumping of Costello and Carrasco. Sir Doug Sahm is 39 years old, and these days, survival is more than half of the fun.

Doug gets where he�s going by keeping his mouth moving arid his body mellow. He answers the door of his hotel room in an embroidered shirt, jeans and bare feet. The unmistakeable aroma of weed fills the room, but it�s sure not your garden variety ganja. Doug relaxes with quality product, the kind that makes you forget the time and place, and what was your name again? OK, so we repeat the questions a few times, what the hell. He refers to himself and his many loyal fans as old hippies, using the v! word as the self-defining complimentary § reference it stopped being a dozen years | ago. After all, says Doug, cheerfully, « �we�re at the age where some guys have o' been dead 10 years. Guys who went down s the �65 destruction route which we didn�t. We�re all, proud to say, in it more than ever.�

The 60�s starmaking hotshots chose to call him Sir Douglas, but Sahm fits the role of court jester far more than some stiffnecked wimp royalty. He can�t sit down for more than a few minutes, and when he does, his hands and legs beat a ferocious tattoo. �I�ve got a 15-year-old son,� he rasps, in a twang molded by years of inhaling. �His friends always wonder if I�m on speed. A lot of people think I�m really jacked, but I�m not. My kids (his other son�s 11), God bless �em, are beautiful. But from time one, they learned from me what things are really like, whereas the school teachers would get �em turned around, and half the kids are stoned anyway. Shawn has a lot of friends he�s seen go down already, just like I talk about friends of mine like Brian Jones who was dead before he was 28, and he looks back on guys that are 15 who�ve OD�d on speed. It�s incredible, when you think about it. The syndrome is there, no matter what. Heroin is how they fight New York. Like in San Antonio, they drink too much beer.�

Times were different, or maybe it was difference of degree, when the Sir Douglas Quintet were transplanted from border region Texas to L. A. in 1965, and presented as the newest hot group from...England?!? The mind boggles at how anyone would have been gullible enough to buy Southern accents and unmistakable Chicano faces as the latest arrivals on BOAC.

�Huey Meaux had a lot to do with that. He�s a real P.T. Barnum of the South. He�s great at giving something real color. He�s a real genius. We cut our first hits with him. First of all, we didn�t feel like we were acting fake, and second, we knew that our musicianship would stand up regardless. That�s why we got started. Augie Meyers, Johnny Perez, they possessed that certain style of music. When it came along that way, we said, �Sir Douglas Quintet?� crazy, we�ll play that game. So all of a sudden, we�re Sir Douglas Quintet. Sometimes, we�d be with people we�d go: jolly, pip pip, outta sight!� (This is done in the worst British accent I have ever heard.) �Then Johnny would come along and talk Spanish. They�d go—these guys ain�t English! We were stoned all the time and it was a kick. We cracked everybody up. Like Dylan. First time Bob ever heard us, he said—they�re not English, man, don�t believe it!�

When Doug . and company weren�t pulling off the limey bit as frequent guests on Shindig or Hullabaloo, Sahm spent time with Dylan propping up the Kettle of Fish bar in Greenwich Village�s MacDougal Street. Those early visits started an ongoing love affair with New York for Doug, and he was delighted to live on Manhattan�s West

Side for several months while the group cut Border Wave at Electric Lady Studios. Surprisingly, Craig Leon, one of the original punk producers, was in charge. But Doug aims to have it both ways: �Border� true to his Texan roots and �Wave� exploring the new sound, a style that he laughingly refers to as �boom boom boom boom.�

I lived In Austlnforflve years. I could walk down to Soap Creek and fall In love. Now therefs a shopping center and a hundred tra^t homes...

�When we played in L. A., we opened for a real new wave band who had their own fans. The rest of the crowd was a bunch of old hippies going, �look at these kids with purple hair!� The next night was our old fans. Imagine these new wave kids in L.A., checking out our Mexican bit with the accordian and all, after Oingo Boingo, Fireplug, Adam & the Ants and all that.� He comes close to hysterics considering the mix. But then, the Sir Douglas Quintet has a right to poach on new bands� territory, since their original hits were some of the movement�s major influences.

Wanna get an instant dose of culture shock? Drop on any uptempo Costello tune and see where Steve Nieve trespassed on Augie Meyer country for his sprightly riffs. Next, put on your copy of �Mendocino,�

(you do have one, right?) and cross-fade it into Joe �King� Carrasco�s �Buena.� Damn, it�s the same song, or close enough for nasty threats if Dpug and Joe weren�t pals.

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�The press really gets on his case for that,� Doug chuckles. �I think everybody takes from everybody. He�s a good friend of mine. He and Johnny Perez wrote a few songs together. Joe is a very ambitious guy, and he works hard. It�s funny, cause one of the main questions people ask me is something leading to his band and when they do an interview there�s something leading to us. I think being on Fridays helped a lot. The old hippies were going, �I haven�t seen you guys since Hullabaloo!���

Keyboardist Augie Meyer has a graying ponytail cascading down his back, but his staccato Vox organ style is as contemporary as ever. When the Quintet started its many appearances, guitarist Alvin Crow, who played on Border Wave, worked live with the band, but had to quit from the pressure of simultaneously leading his own group. In his place is another long-time friend of Doug�s, Louis Ortega. When Ortega was Sahm�s teenage neighbor back in 1972, Doug produced an album for his group, Louie and the Lovers. Despite the passing of eight years since they last worked together, Doug talks about Louis, onstage and off, as if they were blood relatives. He�ll be working on a new album for Ortega when the group tours Europe later this" spring.

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�Running into Louis was just another stroke of magic. He�s got 3Q new songs that�ll just blow your mind! He�s always been a super talent on vocals, and he also plays more lead guitar, which gives me thefreedom to get up and do my thing. Because I still do the old steps, the way James Brown did and Jagger did in the early days when he was still hungry...�

The Sir Douglas Quintet�s set and album includes additional echoes of the tarnished golden years. The record kicks off with an uproarious version of The Kinks� �Who�ll Be The Next In Line,� which Doug says has been one of his old favorites that he considered ripe for updating. They also devote considerable energies to commemmorating one of Doug�s less stable colleagues, Roky Erickson, whose 13th Floor Elevators made their mark on the psychedelic era with �You�re Gonna Miss Me.�

�That�s one thing I really love this time around,� smiles Doug, at last starting to relax as the memories and substance take over. �We did that song on TV and a lot of people were really thrilled to hear some Elevators. I knew Roky for a long time. Stacy Sutherland�s dead, he did most of their arrangements. They used to play at the Avalon and they had an act that drove everybody crazy. They come up the same time we did, when we were just a bunch of kids that had hits and didn�t know what to do about it. I think they were in worse shape than we were. We all got busted.

�Roky had to go to the mental home for a while and that�s when we split, went to San Francisco, and lived there for five years, �til things got saner, back in the Lone Star State.� When Texas� pot possession laws were considerably relaxed ip 1973, Doug felt able to return to his home. These days, what bugs him, apart from the abuse of drugs by kids his sons� age, is how the �Sunbelt� mystique is ruining his favorite landscape.

�We�ve got a song called �Proud To Be Stupid.� It�s about all the nurdism going around in America today. Like in Austin there�s a little new wave clan but all the students look straight like Ronald Reagan, and they hate each other. Where everybody used to be—stoned. I lived in Austin for five years. I could walk down to Soap Creek and fall in love. Now there�s a shopping center and a hundred tract homes. Every area has its time. There�s only so much space left until it goes boom.�

Similarly, Doug has watched enough of his compadres run out of time and explode. He�s determined to come out alive, free, with tales to tell. �Nobody�s tried to change us,� declares the man who wears his freak, status like Abbie Hoffman�s old flag shirt. �It�s not a high pressure hoop-de-doo trip. We don�t have a manager that sets there and tells us when to go to the bathroom.� Maybe that�s why the four other Quinteters haven�t shown their faces this evening, despite Doug�s eagerness to introduce his boys around. He realizes what�s happened, just like it does everywhere. The guys got paid after the show and promptly passed over to party land, where they�ll stay until the money runs out and it�s time to return to the loose-limbed nights of teaching audiences how to whoop and holler as if the dudes were real Texas Tornadoes.