The NERVEBREAKERS: "Mental Shakedown: Laurent Bigot gets the full story of these long-lasting Texas punks" from UGLY THINGS #30

 The NERVEBREAKERS: "Mental Shakedown: Laurent Bigot gets the full story of these long-lasting Texas punks" in ten pages from UGLY THINGS #30

The Nervebreakers & the first Cowpunk songs

 

The Nervebreakers performing at The Longhorn Ballroom in January 1978 opening for The Sex Pistols.

Someone recently made me aware of a mention of The Nervebreakers & T. Tex Edwards as "precursors" of the cowpunk movement in the WIKIPEDIA posting concerning "Cowpunk." Can't say I agree with all they've said, but it's nice to get mentioned...

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpunk

Tim Stegall says in this AUSTIN CHRONICLE article:

Raul's in Overdrive: "Have a Good Time, Get in Free, and Drink Some Beer"

1978, when San Antonio's the Next became Austin's Fourth Punk Band and Dallas' Nervebreakers beat locals in a battle of the bands for Chapter 6, Part 1 of the "Austin Punk Chronicles"

"...Preempting the rise of Jason & the Scorchers and Hickoids by eight years, the Nervebreakers were the first cowpunk band, before that designation devolved into a Los Angeles cartoon..."

Source:https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2022-12-23/rauls-in-overdrive-have-a-good-time-get-in-free-and-drink-some-beer/

The Nervebreakers started covering George Jones' "The Race Is On" back in 1979, and recorded it in 1980 for their first album WE WANT EVERYTHING. They wrote & were performing an original tune called "I Don't Wanna Hold Your Hand" in 1979 (although the recording of the song is from much later). Both of which are supposedly the first cowpunk songs.

"The Race Is On" by The Nervebreakers from the WE WANT EVERYTHING album on YouTube:

Source: https://youtu.be/4mD-XsE_xNw

"I Don't Wanna Hold Your Hand" by The Nervebreakers from the FACE UP TO REALITY album on YouTube:

Source: https://youtu.be/hPUi1nkRfuY

Neiman Marcus Trendies: SLASH MAGAZINE reviews The Nervebreakers/Sex Pistols show at the Longhorn Ballroom

The Slash Magazine article on The Nervebreakers/Sex Pistols show at the Longhorn Ballroom, where on the first page they mention three nonexistent Nervebreakers songs, "Neiman Marcus Trendies", "No Bull", & "Lone Star Anarchist"! Well if you didn't catch any of the song titles, just make 'em up...

Source: https://archive.org/details/slash_circulation_zero/page/n216/mode/1up?q=Nervebreakers

The first song on the first Tim Buckley album that amazes me to this day...

Happy Birthday to Timothy Charles Buckley III, born on February 14, 1947. "I Can't See You" is the first song off his first album from 1966. From this album sleeve, he may look like just some random folksinger. The latest in a never-ending line of folkies at the time. But from the first crashing notes it becomes evident that no, this isn't your average 1960s folkie. Yes, it's semi-electric folk, but there's also jazz, punk, & avant-garde elements here, in a tenor singing (his high school friend) Larry Beckett's beautiful poetic lyrics. And as he did for the rest of his life, Tim Buckley broke the rules. Leading off this, his very first Elektra Records release with not the most commercial radio-friendly tune of the collection, but the least.

I first heard Buckley at 13 years old, early in 1968, when my local Dallas "underground rock" station KNUS, the first of it's kind in Big D on the FM side of the dial that played at least one album cut from almost every new LP release of the time, & practically none of the Top 40, that dominated AM radio back then. It was where I first heard The Velvet Underground, The Jeff Beck Group, The Red Crayola, Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, Condello, The Ill Wind, & on & on. I'd save up my lunch money allowance all week, & on the weekend head over to Preston Record Center & pick out an album by the coverart & what I'd heard on KNUS radio. One week they were playing Tim Buckley's long epic, "Goodbye & Hello", the title song from his more psychedelic second album. So that was what I picked out to purchase with my hard-hoarded cash & was first introduced to the varied music of Tim. For some reason I never went back to this first album until much later in the 1970s. Maybe it was that folksinger cover. After the obviously drug-induced cover photos of "Happy Sad" & the likes, that first album coverart never struck my fancy until I later realized just how brilliant & different Tim Buckley was. But once I finally did investigate further, Wow!

But on to my own musical career. When I was finally putting together my last & possibly final musical project in 2017, my damaged hearing required a lower volume, different approach that started out as just a trio with my pals Eric Hisaw & Dan Hoekstra on guitars, & turned into a combo simply called The T. Tex Edwards Group, when we later added JJ Barrera on bass & Shawn Peters on drums. It had started out as a songwriting project with Hisaw. After years of mainly playing covers of semi-obscure 60s Brit & off-kilter C&W nuggets, I wanted to see if I could still write some meaningful songs like I had years ago with Mike Haskins in The Nervebreakers & Click Mort in The Loafin' Hyenas. I had started writing things down during a month-long rehab torture at Austin Recovery, & upon my release, contacted Eric about possibly getting together & putting some music to my scribblings. We cranked out a few songs & added a Tim Harden tune, a Bob Dylan song, along with some reworkings of some of my earlier Nervebreakers & Loafin' Hyenas originals. Plus this song from Tim Buckley, that I absolutely fell in love with upon my first listening all those years ago. When we later recorded our batch of originals, this song, (along with Gary Stewart's "Single Again"), were the only two cover songs that we recorded at those sessions. Hopefully sometime soon, those recordings will see the light of day...

The Nervebreakers flyer with the fetish model & the story of DJ's & The Hot Klub in Dallas

 

Pat Blashill posted this old Nervebreakers flyer yesterday with a note that said: “Nervebreakers show at DJs, Dallas, 1980. The much beloved Nervebreakers pre-dated punk in the Big D, and are said to have had a quasi-New York Dolls phase. DJs was one of the first punk clubs in the city, although not as well known (or funded?) as The Hot Klub. Poster by Nervebreakers singer T. Tex Edwards. The woman in the photo is Tana Louise, who was once known as the Cincinnati Sinner, and like Bettie Page, was also a fetish model for Irving Klaw (ID courtesy of the lovely Mae Barone.)” 

My two cents: DJ’s was before the Hot Klub. There was a very short period of time where they overlapped. "Better funded" is an understatment. Punk stumbled upon Delores Nolley, DJ’s proprietor (who had some sort of Jack Ruby connection in her younger days). When some punks in a band called The Infants (ex-Dot Vaeth Group members David & Doug Townsend on guitar & drums, Linda Shaw on bass, who later played with me in Tex & the Saddletramps ’79-’82 & the early version of Out On Parole ’84-’85, & a limey cat named Jeff Westley on vocals, who hung out at the clothing store next door on lower Greenville Avenue, approached Delores about letting them set up & play in her tiny bar, a scene was born. She was ill-equipped to be booking bands above the local punk level, who just wanted any place to play that would let them come in & bash away for tips. Eventually, bands from Austin would come up to play DJ’s. I don’t know what payment they were promised, someone from one of those bands would have to chime in on that. But I do know that the first time The Cramps came to Texas, they played Austin & Houston, but no-showed DJ’s in Dallas because the word had gotten around that she didn’t always come up with promised guarantee She also promoted what I think was the first “punk festival” in Texas, ‘DJ’s First Annual New Wave Retreat’ at the historic Yello’ Belly Speedway in Grand Prairie.

The Hot Klub was a venture run by much more experienced Dallas musicbiz guys, Mark Lee (who had managed & promoted Dallas garagebanders Kenny & the Kasuals in the late 1960s) & Danny Eaton, formerly of Eaton-Page who ran The Palladium, up on Northwest Highway in Dallas, where The Nervebreakers had opened shows for John Cale, The Police, & The Clash on their first run through Texas. Coincidentally, The Clash show was the same weekend as Dolores’ New Wave Retreat (October ’79?) & Joe Strummer referenced it onstage into the microphone on that night. Just months later Lee & Eaton astutely saw where music was headed, & opened up The Hot Klub on Maple Avenue in a building that had formerly been a good sized Hispanic Disco, right across the side street from a Jack-In-The-Box drive-through burger joint. Local bands now had a bigger, more organized room to gig at, with a built-in good sound system & soundman. And every new wave, ska, neo-rockabilly, post-punk, up & coming touring band that came through Dallas in that 1980-83 period played at The Hot Klub. From Jeffery Lee Pierce wailing on his bugle, to the Stranglers’ roadies tossing Bobby Soxx out of the upstairs dressing room & down the stairs & Soxx subsequently slashing all tires on their rented Ryder truck parked out front. It was always hopping at the Hot Klub…

Above is the original image of Tana Louise I recently ran across, that I swiped from Andy Warhol's Interview or another of those New York City rags for this flyer & was later used for The Nervebreakers' first album coverart...

Also, check out Pat Blashill’s great ‘Texas Is The Reason’ book, plus he is currently working on an oral history of Lone Star punk for UT Press.

"Formerly Street Queen" the first Nervebreakers original song...

"Formerly Street Queen" was the very first song I wrote with my Nervebreakers songwriting partner Mike Haskins. I am guessing that was perhaps 1975 or ’76, when I was around 21 years old. “Formerly Street Queen” is an excellent example of it’s time & what is now referred to as “proto-punk,” with alternating fast & slow parts topped off with an epic-sounding final long section, building up to a resolution with a spaghetti-western turn at the end.

My old band from that era, The Nervebreakers, have a new/old album (FACE UP TO REALITY) released last year by Freddie Krc’s SteadyBoy Records, filled with original songs written & performed during the band’s late ‘70s heyday, but never documented & recorded until a 2009 band reunion. Got that? New in 2022, but recorded in 2009, but composed before 1980. "Formerly Street Queen" is included on this release.

Please check your local record store to see if it’s in stock. If you don’t find it there, I have some available here on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155359139433

The ‘street queen’ illustration included here was one I lifted from a social media post, with no attribution listed for it’s source, that I ran across recently. Since we had a song with that in the title I posted it to Facebook with a link https://youtu.be/OHUHncPED2w to the song. Lo & behold, the wonderful Miriam Linna of Norton Records commented & informed me: “That image was hacked out of Bad Seed mag!” Bad Seed was a famous groundbreaking fanzine she & her late husband, Billy Miller, put together many years ago. So I quickly inserted in my posting the real source for this image that you see here, with apologies. Miriam’s one of the coolest, cutest dolls around but I know you don’t wanna get on the bad side of the original “bad seed."