Lubbock in your rearview mirror
Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band–Cocktail Desperado
(from the cassette Sounds From True Stories, Sire Records 1986)
Wrapping up a couple of loose threads from last week, we have something that ties two topics together quite neatly from that David Byrne piece. The one worthwhile artifact from the whole True Stories debacle was the cassette Sounds from True Stories, which as far as I know has never been reissued. This is the true soundtrack to the movie, combining some instrumental Byrne originals (and a simply lovely arrangement of Meredith Monk’s “Road Song”) and tracks by south Texas superstar Esteban “Steve” Jordan, Brave Combo’s Carl Finch, and kicking things off, Lubbock’s own Terry Allen.
Lubbock is, frankly, a nice town to be from. That is, I’m glad for my years there and equally glad that I don’t live there anymore. One of the key truths of Lubbock is that, eventually, you’re gonna have to leave: ask Buddy Holly, Mac Davis, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely or Natalie Maines. Terry Allen left Lubbock in the early ’70s, and I don’t believe he’s lived there for any real length of time since then, even though most of his best albums were recorded at Lubbock’s Caldwell Studios in the years following his departure. This includes his double-LP classic Lubbock (On Everything), arguably the very first alt-country album and still one of my favorites in the genre.
“Cocktail Desperado,” with its bass line provided by a farting tuba and a slide guitar hook that I guarantee is going to stick in your brain, is one of Allen’s best songs from the ’80s, a period when he was mostly focusing on his sculpture and conceptual artwork. This blend of country, jugband blues and art rock quirk is a fairly good starting point if you care to explore further.
–Stewart Mason
