And then everybody goes their own way, on their own Lear jets,” he laughs. “It became the biggest music in America, along with hard rock and some of the other things that were going on, but it all came out of this small community that was built around the Troubadour at first.”Īnd after the Lear jets faded, it was back to the vans, as the cowpunk era emerged. Says McCall, “That’s something a few of ’em talk about” in the exhibition’s video installations. The rise of a rowdier roots-rock in the ’80s “wasn’t so much a complete reaction against just country-rock, but against corporatization and glossy music and how slick things had gotten in general.
There was a lot of hedonism around (the commercial style), and the whole idea of punk music was taking it back to the streets a little bit and taking off the gloss. We thought it’d gotten too careful and too nice.'” Dave Alvin (of the Blasters) talks about it really well: ‘We wanted to bring energy back to it. Michael Nesmith’s Nudie’s hat and boots, circa 1967-69 (Bob Delevante)Īn influential outfit if ever there was one in the genre.
