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* Show Log Mania, Part II of IV: 1989

Continuing on the theme from yesterday's blog, here are a few observations about my 1989 show log that I just finished typing in...

* Further to the Alejandro Escovedo career-development saga, the '89 logs find both the first Buick MacKane listing -- an April 7 show with Pork, the Wannabes and the Wild Seeds at the Texas Tavern on the University of Texas campus -- and what appears to be the first time an Escovedo show was billed as the Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra, August 12 at the Continental Club. The "Orchestra" gigs featured anywhere from three to more than a dozen musicians, though typically they leaned toward the larger end of that range.

* March 1 lists an event called "Texas Talent Night" at a meat-market-type country venue called the Lumberyard in North Austin. As I recall, I was among a small handful of judges for this small-potatoes midweek contest, along with my American-Statesman colleague Casey Monahan (now director of the Texas Music Office). The winner that night, Dan Harrell, was not heard from again (far as I know, anyway). However, the guy who finished second went on to have a pretty significant impact on Austin country music in the 1990s. This was the first time either Casey or I had seen him play. His name was Don Walser.

* South By Southwest sure was a different animal back then. The event didn't start until Thursday (March 16), and the only real activity that night was the Austin Music Awards, held at that time at the Austin Opera House. The big headliner of the '89 Awards Show was Doug Sahm. Friday and Saturday I caught six bands each night, several of them local, in part because the out-of-town draw was still relatively small compared to what it is now. Most of the acts I saw have long since faded from view -- Sidewinders, Gunbunnies, Wednesday Week, anybody? -- though the one I remember best was a singer-songwriter named Hub Moore, whose song "Lucky To Be Alive" became a personal mantra of sorts for the ensuing year or two.

* An eclectic evening on April 5: first the Kronos Quartet at Bass Concert Hall, then off to Blue Bayou for an acoustic set by Poi Dog Pondering, and finally over to Liberty Lunch for Athens proto-alt-rockers Guadalcanal Diary. Just a typical Wednesday night in Austin circa 1989. (Well, maybe not entirely typical...)

* April 16 at Chicago House, a terrific acoustic venue downtown: Something's wrong with this picture. The list of acts reads: Alejandro Escovedo, Peter Blackstock, David Halley. Something's really wrong with this picture...

* The entries for May 26 and May 27 read, respectively: "The Roches Faint" and "Return Of The Roches." In what was certainly one of the strangest concert experiences I've ever had, the renowned trio of sisters got about halfway through the first song of their show at the Paramount when Terre Roche suddenly just flat-out fainted, right in the middle of a three-part harmony. Suzzy and Maggie quickly explained this was not part of the act, and legitimately employed the old cliche, "Is there a doctor in the house?" After about 20 minutes, it was ascertained that Terre was OK, but obviously the show could not go on. They told the audience they'd gladly come back and try again the next night -- thus the "Return" notation on the 27th. No further fainting ensued.

* I remember rather well the final performance of the Wild Seeds on June 10 at Liberty Lunch. The band had earned modest national attention with their 1998 album Mud, Lies & Shame (and its minor hit single "I Can't Rock You All Night Long"), but leader Michael Hall had decided not to let the group slowly fade out, opting instead to end things with the band essentially at their peak. He was probably right; it was unlikely the Wild Seeds were going to make it any further up the career ladder, and the band members would soon enough have other paths to follow. (Hall eventually became an editor at Texas Monthly; guitarist Randy Franklin opened the celebrated South Congress art gallery Yard Dog; drummer Joey Shuffield had at least a small window of big-time success with Fastball.) That last show was bittersweet: Here was a legitimately great American rock 'n' roll band, giving its all, and saying....goodbye.

* July 18 lists a performance at Green Mesquite Barbecue by Bill Neely, one of the very few occasions I got to see the legendary country bluesman perform. He passed away in early 1990; I wrote the daily paper obituary, which happens to be posted online here:
http://www.lostartrecords.com/neely/articles.html

* Perhaps a bit of foreshadowing took place on November 29, when I attended an Austin City Limits taping pegged on the Dirt Band's Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. 2 album. Though I knew the pop-leaning ringers among the special guests (John Denver, Michael Murphey), I must admit I simply was not familiar with many of the others -- Jimmy Martin, Vassar Clements, New Grass Revival, Randy Scruggs, and two sisters named Helen and Anita who apparently were part of some influential country music family called the Carters. I'd learn a little more a few years down the road.

* One offshoot of revisiting a list such as this is that the time-markers of sequential events every couple days or so allows for surprisingly thorough reconstruction and recollection of other life events from that time. As such, 1989 was a difficult year to "relive" in many ways; no shortage of emotions flooded back as I typed in a year's worth of musical experiences and drifted back to what I was going through when many of those shows happened. It's all part of who we are today; but some of those things, I'm not quite sure how I made it through. And then again, some of them still echo within me to this day. That was (to borrow a phrase from Lynn Blakey) the beauty of 23.

tune in tomorrow for 1990....

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on April 18, 2007 10:07 AM | Permalink