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They’ve done it again. This is my favorite magazine.

Actually, lest you think me totally partisan, the Georgia Music Issue might have been even better. Let’s start with the included musical cds, which make this very fine magazine even more desirable. I’m really enjoying the Texas cd, which includes tracks by Ray Price, Billy Joe Shaver, Rick Trevino, The Texas Tornados, Bob Wills, Freddy Fender, Kimmie Rhodes with Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark and Janis Joplin (whew). But I do notice that there’s not much here that bucks a traditional idea of Texas music – that is, country and Tejano. Contributions by Ornette Coleman and Spoon take a few steps off that path. But I thought the Georgia cd did a much better job of showing the wild variety available in a state prone to stereotypes. And it’s not because Texas doesn’t have the diversity available. Likewise, the text accompaniments to these musical tracks were a frank disappointment after reading the Georgia version. Rick Clark’s text is a just a little more basic, which is not to say I would have been let down, if only I hadn’t read that other one, in which each Georgia track was brought to life with storytelling unto itself that made me need to go back and listen again. Here, I’m listening again and again because the music is good, but not because a whole narrative world was opened to me. Perhaps tellingly, the write-up of the Texas cd is located at the back of the mag, not at the front.

But there’s something there, too: the cd and liner notes read a little better, feel a little fuller, after taking in the magazine as a whole. Joe Ely, Doug Sahm and others get attention in shorter articles, while features include Margaret Moser’s groupie diary (which I really enjoyed) and pieces on Guy Clark, Paul English (Willie’s drummer and bodyguard/door guy/gunslinger) and DJ Screw. The latter finally provided what I was looking for: a feeling that Texas music is as broad as its state lines suggest. I especially liked Amanda Petrusich’s commentary on the extreme localness of Screw’s reign – and here I am being partisan – in Houston’s rap scene, shortly before the internet blew the world wide open and, as she says, offered

more opportunity for cross-pollination, but less opportunity for the kind of place-specific identity-making that Screw wrought for Houston. The membranes are too permeable now.

Other highlights, for me, included the quirky perspective in Rachel Monroe’s “That Drifting Place,” where she examines Roy Orbison through the lens (excuse the pun) of his iconic dark glasses. “Texas Calling”, by Joe Ely as told to Alex Rawls, was a fun one to read: a bunch of recollections about playing with the Clash – with no real plot to hold them together, but it felt all the more like realistic recollecting that way. A very short piece of fiction by Bret Anthony Johnson provided an interesting departure – I don’t recall any fiction in the Georgia Music Issue. And I was thrilled to read Aaron Alford’s interview with Amanda Shires. She says,

When I bring people there [West Texas], they find it very odd, but they eventually love it. It’s unique in the way that it looks, and the people are so hospitable there, friendly. You have to be if you’re in a place that has a lot of prairie dogs.

Which is perfect, of course, and funny, and I can just hear it in her sweet drawl.

All in all? A different piece of work than the Georgia version was. Another very fine cd, more good writing, and again I learned a lot. Keep ’em coming.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: lit journals, music, Oxford American, Texas |