Today in 1983 in Oklahoma City, we played a Friday/Saturday pair of gigs at The Bowery, a club in the basement of a building, that our manager, Curtis Hawkins had booked to get us out of Dallas.
The Oklahoma liquor laws were interesting. Liquor-by-the-drink could not be sold legally at that time in Oklahoma. So behind the bar, sat rows of liquor bottles with names taped on them, alleging that each patron had brought their own bottle with them for the bar to make them mixed drinks. Which of course was not true, but necessary, for the club to be able to create the facade of following the law. I later learned Texas had been the same way up through the 1960s, but by the time I had turned of legal age, liquor-by-the-drink had been legalized.
In Oklahoma City, we met lots of cool people. Basile & Miho Kolliopoulos, Greek brothers who had a band called The Fortune Tellers. Basile had previously lived in New York City & played with the great band, The Senders, for short period. Wayne Buckner& his then-wife Stava (who was French), let me crash overnight at their home. Much later, in 1984, I would start a band in Austin with Wayne, who became the Reverend Ottis Moon, & named our new outfit Out On Parole.
The photo on the flyer is funny. Because I was a city boy & had never owned a saddle, or ridden a horse more than a few times as a kid visiting a relative's ranch down in south Texas. But one of the girls I ran around with, Barbara LoMonaco, came from a family that was well off & owned horses & saddles. She also dabbled in photography & took the shot used on this flyer. However, I did already own the hat, by the way...
A couple of years before, my fellow Nervebreaker Mike Haskins & I, had started a rockabilly/C&W side band, & named it Tex & the Saddletramps as a joke. Thus I became "Tex" & here I was carrying my saddle...
"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 Linnaof 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."
Way back in the 1980’s, Mr. Mike Buck gave me a cassette mixtape he made called THE RUBBER ROOM, comprised of old C&W songs about murder, madness, jails etc. but mainly about murder. Nowadays it’s a whole genre of it’s own. But back then it was just tapes of weird old tunes that record collectors like Buck shared amongst friends.
I had a friend named Danny Whittington back in Austin with some recording equipment at his house & on a lark, I suggested we record some of those songs next time I was back in town visiting from my then-current home in Hollywood, California. That was how this album came about. What started out as a kind of sick joke turned into a semi-serious music project.
As it turned out, the songwriting on the most part was strong, the musicianship of the friends & friends-of-friends who were recruited was sure, & somehow my drug-sick, mumbled warbling fit right in & some minor magic was created.
Weirdo Austin artist Bob “Don’t Call Me Robert” Frye, another friend-of-a-friend was tagged with coming up with some coverart. Something along the lines of Porter Wagoner’s COLD, HARD FACTS OF LIFE (one of the songs included) & this fantastic creation of Bob’s was the lynchpin in convincing Long Gone John, indie record guy & collector of transgressive art, to release a vinyl LP of the project on his Sympathy For The Record Industry label.
Much, much later, after the century turned & I had moved back to Austin, Jeff Smith of Saustex Media, consented to re-releasing a CD version in 2007.
Which brings us to the present where I still have some of those CDs left to peddle to you here on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155359257397
AMAZON BLURB:
'Pardon Me, I've Got Someone To Kill' is a re-issue of the classic 1989 Sympathy For The Record Industry release (also New Rose in France, 1991) by T. Tex Edwards & Out On Parole. T. Tex is a true Texas Punk pioneer dating from his work in the 70's with the Nervebreakers and his later Hollywood outfit the Loafin' Hyenas. 'Pardon Me,...' is a collection of obscure C & W 'murder' songs rendered in Edwards' singular style. Top-notch backing on the disc is provided by Austin Roots luminaries Mike Buck (Fabulous T-Birds, Leroi Bros.) on the drums, John X. Reed (Doug Sahm, Jesse Taylor, Lucky Tomblin Band) on a variety of guitars, and other lesser-known but equally talented weirdos. 14 tales about drinkin', cheatin', killin' and prison rendered in high Texan fashion for your listening enjoyment. Includes the previously unreleased 'Last Will and Testimony (of a Drinking Man)' by Tex and the Affordable Caskets.
Roger Miller:
01. Footprints in the Snow
02. Invitation to the Blues
03. That’s the Way that I Feel
04. Half a Mind
05. Tall Tall Trees
06. Billy Bayou
07. In the Summertime
George Jones:
08. Ragged but Right
09. Accidentally on Purpose (breaks up, not good quality)
George Jones & Roger Miller:
10. Ways of the World, Ways of a Woman
11. Long Time to Forget
George Jones:
12. White Lightnin
13. Window Up Above
14. Treasure of Love
Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three:
15. Big River
16. I Guess Things Happen That Way
17. Rock Island Line
18. Instumental
19. Five Feet High and Rising
20. I Got Stripes
21. Folsom Prison Blues
22. I Walk the Line
23. Lead Me Father
24. Ballad of Harp Weaver
25. The Rebel Johnny-Yuma
26. Luther’s Boogie
27. Goodbye Little Darling
REMOVED: Johnny Western, Gordon Terry, Claude Gray, Rose Maddox
Notes: Johnny Western, who emceed this 1961 show, would later become part of Johnny Cash’s band. Roger Miller, who had already written hits for Faron Young, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Jim Reeves, and George Jones, was just getting started as a performing artist. Fiddler Gordon Terry joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1950 and played with Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. His biggest single, “Wild Honey”, charted in 1957. Claude Gray’s career was hot in 1961: "I'll Just Have a Cup of Coffee (Then I'll Go)," was a crossover pop hit at that time. George Jones, still basking here in the glow of his 1959 hit “White Lightnin’”, would soon move away from his honky-tonk, rebel image: His smooth ballad “Tender Years” was Number One for seven weeks later in 1961. Rose Maddox (formerly of the fantastic hillbilly band Maddox Brothers and Rose) had five Top 20 hits in that year, including both sides of the 45 “Kissing my Pillow” and “I Want to Live Again”, which are performed here. Finally, Johnny Cash performs his hits, in- cluding “Luther’s Boogie”, which, interestingly, was the highest charter of all of them.
Sometimes I like to mirror (or copy) what I think are important posts made elsewhere online because occasionally the original source will disappear completely. I've only had the original author complain about this but once. But in a couple of cases, the original online source has disappeared and the author or subject of the post has contacted me relieved that someone had preserved the post and gratefully thanked me. The following post was posted on Facebook by Miriam Linna. I know the odds of Facebook disappearing seems low at this point. (Think Myspace.) But sometimes someone innocently posts material Facebook deems outside their "community standards" and suspends the account and years of posts are lost. Odds are this material from Miriam will resurface in a new future edition of KICKS Magazine. Hopefully.
“REMEMBERING RAT PFINK RON HAYDOCK DEPT. Here at HQ, we remember Ron, our ultimate #1 culture mangling superhero, every day, all day. On Aug 14, 1977, Ron's life ended his life under the wheels of an 18-wheeler in Victorville, California. For a guy who struggled with mental health issues for his entire life, he was insanely productive. The rock n' roll uber-fanatic played guitar, inked songs, made records, wrote about records, horror movies, monster movies, western movies, film stars, forgotten lore, and wrote, inspired, and starred in movies himself, plus delivered a staggering number of paperback books under various pseudonyms. Documenting his life has been a main focus here.
In 1987, ten years after his passing, I visited Ron's brother in trying to wrap my head around why the supernova known alternately as Lonnie Lord, Vin Saxon, Arnold Hayes, Don Sheppard and Jerry Lee Vincent (among others) would choose to end his days as he did. The brother gave me the briefcase that Ron was carrying that night in August. He had added to the mix, the death certificate, various insurance forms linked to the event of his death, and two pocket-size loose leaf binders. One was his address book and the other was a meticulous accounting of his stories, submissions and publications. Those two little binders have lead me into a life where all things must measure up against the Haydock yardstick.
Bhob Stewart, who would become my best friend and in all ways, mentor (and I dont toss that word around), was Ron's NYC roommate in the late 60s), told me when we first met to discuss Ron, that unemployed Ron would get dressed for work every morning and sit down at the kitchen table to type. BHob said a stack of typed pages grew and grew and grew ("thousands of pages!") and that he'd read some of these "incredible tales", thinking Ron would submit them to publishers. One day, the stack disappeared. Then Ron vanished. Bhob never saw the stack-- or Ron-- again. For years I wondered about that stack of stories.
As fate would have it, and this, proof that nothing is an accident, I was visiting in Burbank with Ron's friend Don Glut. As I went to leave, running very late for the flight home, Don asked me to come into into his garage. He had something to give me. He pulled out two cobwebby (really!) legal-size boxes that had been passed along to him when friends sorted through Ron's apartment after his death. Don had not opened them since 1977. When I got back to NYC and cracked open the boxes, I came very close to fainting. Inside, tightly packed, were the "thousands of pages" that had vanished from Bhob's kitchen table decades earlier.
Forry Ackerman told me that he chose Ron as heir apparent to Famous Monsters. Ray Dennis Steckler said that Ron was visionary, and "the talented one." I've been unraveling his story, for over thirty years. The big revelations at one time were in "Runnin' Wild" in Kicks #7 and on the Norton anthology "99 Chicks". It's time for an update to honor our hero, Midwest everyman superhero Ron Haydock. Always in memory. Here's my favorite photo. And the slowest tune he ever recorded.”
Debra Paget commits a murder for which Terry Moore (as club singer Lois King) is arrested, tried, and condemned to die. The story line wanders through the trial and Miss King's final hours on Death Row. The true killer is finally ready to confess, but already Miss King (who has by now been strapped into the electric chair) is at risk. Will she be rescued in the nick of time?
This post was originally posted here on April 18, 2017. The accompanying video has since been removed from youtube. Luckily someone else has reposted the Rockpile documentary, "Born Fighters" and I have updated this blogpost. So here it is (again)...
Rockpile was a British rock and roll group of the late 1970s and early 1980s, noted for their strong rockabilly and power pop influences, and as a foundational influence on new wave. The band consisted of Dave Edmunds (vocals, guitar), Nick Lowe (vocals, bass guitar), Billy Bremner (vocals, guitar) and Terry Williams (drums).
Rockpile recorded four albums, though only one (Seconds of Pleasure) was released under the Rockpile banner. Two other albums (Tracks on Wax 4 and Repeat When Necessary) were released as Dave Edmunds solo albums, and one more (Labour of Lust) was released as a Nick Lowe solo album. Scattered Rockpile tracks can also be found on a few other Lowe and Edmunds solo albums. Additionally, Rockpile served as backing group on tracks recorded by Mickey Jupp in 1978 and Carlene Carter in 1980.
When Robinson and Jake Riviera co-founded Stiff Records, Lowe was the first artist signed to the label, and he and Edmunds recorded new material for release under Lowe's name. Stiff promoted its ties to Edmunds. However, the relationship between Edmunds and Riviera was always rocky, and in 1976 Edmunds signed a solo contract with Led Zeppelin's Swan Song Records, rejecting Riviera and Stiff. With help from Lowe and Terry Williams, Edmunds recorded a new solo album, Get It. Lowe and Edmunds then formed a new version of Rockpile, with Williams returning on drums and Billy Bremner joining as rhythm guitar and third vocalist.
Rockpile appeared as a backing band on one track of Lowe's debut solo album, released in March 1978 with different track listings and titles in the UK and the US. The UK version (Jesus of Cool) featured Rockpile on the live recording of "Heart of the City", while the US album (Pure Pop for Now People) featured the Rockpile studio track "They Called It Rock", credited as being written by Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds/Rockpile.
Meanwhile, Edmunds' 1978 solo album (Tracks on Wax 4) was the first album to be completely a Rockpile album, but with Edmunds on all lead vocals. The album included the same live version of "Heart of the City," except with Edmunds' lead vocal overdubbed in place of Lowe's. Rockpile toured behind both the Lowe and Edmunds releases in 1978. The band also backed Mickey Jupp on side one of his Stiff album Juppanese, produced by Lowe.
In 1979, Rockpile simultaneously recorded Edmunds' Repeat When Necessary and Lowe's Labour of Lust.
Rockpile (under solo artists' names) enjoyed hits in 1979 on both sides of the Atlantic with Edmunds' "Girls Talk" (a top 20 hit in both the UK and Canada) and Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind" (top 20 in the UK, Canada and the US). Rockpile also played in the 29 December 1979 Concerts for the People of Kampuchea with Elvis Costello & The Attractions and Wings, where they were joined onstage by Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant (co-owner of Swan Song). Two of the band's songs were included in the concert album.
In 1980, Edmunds submitted the solo album "Twangin...", which was mostly a collection of outtakes from his prior solo albums, to complete his Swan Song contract, freeing Rockpile to record a true band record for Jake Riviera's new label F-Beat Records. Released in the fall of 1980, Seconds of Pleasure featured lead vocal turns by Edmunds, Lowe and Bremner, and spawned the minor hit "Teacher Teacher", sung by Lowe. Twangin... was issued six months after Seconds of Pleasure, and featured Rockpile on nine of its eleven tracks.
I've started a new blog called The Eternal Rhythm of Gardeningabout gardening, food, plants, locations, observations. I will reproduce the first installment below. If you like it, please head on over to Wordpress at the link above and follow it.
My mother always loved her plants, and I dabbled with gardening in my twenties back during my first life. That is one good thing I can attribute to my horrible controlling ex-wife. Back in the 1970s, she got me started planting a few vegetables in our back yard. I’m sure there are other good things too, but I just can’t remember them right now. After the escape and divorce and eventual severing of all ties with the city of my birth, Dallas; I decided to plant some tomatoes and peppers in the front flowerbeds at the dilapidated duplex I lived in during my first Austin residency in the mid-1980s. Then I moved to Southern California in 1986, and it was urban apartments in Hollywood and no gardening. When I moved back to Texas in 1990, I finally had vacant space at a tiny rent house set way back from the street with a big yard in Dallas. I have planted a garden every year continuously since then. By 1995 I moved back to Austin, and by the end of 2004 my sweetie and I got away from the rent houses and into our own place to landscape and garden forever. Even at my lowest points of drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression; I have always managed to gather the desire and energy to put some transplants in and hope for the best. I learned that every year is different. Different weather, different bugs and diseases, different varieties did better and worse than last year. I learned you can’t predict the future, but there were a few things that remained constant. Yes, there were actually a few things I observed and remembered through the last 30 years. I also noticed that the traditional gardening season coincided with one of my other loves, the baseball season. Gardening also taught me how to be mindful and remain in the present. To observe every single day and not regret what happened yesterday, and not get too far ahead of myself. How to endure adversity and sit with it until it passes. How to be happy and satisfied with what I have. That happy is an unobtainable goal. But rather happy is a by-product of my going with the flow. When I have relapsed and had that somehow forgotten again misery come flooding back into my thoughts, gardening gives me concrete proof that things have before and will soon be better again. I guess it is my religion, my medicine, my drug of choice, my salvation, my inspiration, my best friend, and my favorite creative outlet. Not to get too carried away here, but along with my soulmate of the last 32 years, it is my rock and the thing that keeps me going. And I am most appreciative.
