The death of live music in Austin

NY Times:

The closing of storied music sites, often accompanied by protest, fund-raising and other exercises in futility, has become a recurring spectacle in this growing city, where the official stationery carries the legend “Live Music Capital of the World.”

People tend to blame the latest influx of Californians, reliably traced to the latest technology boom associated with the University of Texas. The dropout who started Dell Computer in his dorm room did not personally tear down the Liberty Lunch club, but the general implication abides.

Inside the intimate listening room at the Cactus Cafe, arguably the most storied of the storied sites left standing, a sense of invulnerability has developed through three decades of performances.

Positioned on campus inside the student union building, sheltered to some extent from boomtown costs, the Cactus nurtured the early careers of Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams. It still books such luminaries as Loudon Wainwright III, Butch Hancock and Patty Griffin. And lesser-known acts like Matt the Electrician, Terri Hendrix and the Austin Lounge Lizards, all on the calendar this month, can expect to play to a full room of 150 reverentially quiet listeners.

So a sense of shock and dismay, as measured in the breathlessness of radio news reports and the size of a virtual rally on Facebook, has attended the announcement last month that the university plans to close the Cactus in August, citing, of all things, the university’s own contraction. Under orders from Gov. Rick Perry to identify potential spending cuts of 5 percent, officials say the closing could save the university $66,000 in its $2 billion annual budget.

“I was in the van crossing Texas on the way to a gig when I first heard of the proposed closing of the Cactus, and after the first wave of sadness a familiar despair set in,” wrote Guy Forsyth, widely regarded as the hardest-working bluesman in Austin, in a post on his blog. “This was not the first club I have seen close, nor the first home I have lost. And I wondered of the battle of Art vs. Cash, and the sad history of that long war.”

Musicians and their admirers have hardly been alone in their sporadic clashes with the university, which spent much of the last century gradually displacing the black population of East Austin by building a baseball stadium, fueling station and facilities maintenance buildings over the neighborhood once known as Blackland.

But in relation to the city’s much-acclaimed music scene, the university has evolved into a sort of double agent. Its undergraduate student body of about 30,000 provides a continually replenished source of clubgoers, while its research laboratories incubate new lines of business that draw downtown condominiums, soaring rents and, eventually, noise complaints.

Any respectable accounting of lost and lamented music sites opens with the Armadillo World Headquarters, the onetime armory that hosted concerts by The Clash, Willie Nelson and the Vans — Halen and Morrison — in the 1970s. Since the Armadillo closed in 1980, the Austin metropolitan area has grown to a projected population this year of 1.7 million, from about 846,000, gaining plenty of new clubs while losing such beloved haunts as the Black Cat Lounge, the Electric Lounge, The Back Room, Steamboat and (temporarily) the Hole in the Wall.

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The scene on 6th street has certainly changed since I was in law school in the late 60s. ?At that time it was a street populated by pool halls and porno theaters. A lawyer remodeled one of the store fronts into and interesting row house and the potential of the area seem to catch. More entertainers were hired at nearby establishments and it seem to take off.

I do remember the Armadillo with Willie and Waylon Jennings. It inspired one of my favorite songs, London Homesick Blues by Gary P. Nunn.

Well, when you're down on your luck,
and you ain't got a buck,
in London you're a goner.
Even London Bridge has fallen down,
and moved to Arizona,
now I know why.
And I'll substantiate the rumor
that the English sense of humor
is drier than the Texas sand.
You can put up your dukes,
and you can bet your boots,
that I'm leavin' just as fast as I can.

Chorus;
I wanna go home with the armadillo.
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene.
The friendliest people and the prettiest women
you've ever seen.

Well it's cold over here, and I swear,
I wish they'd turn the heat on.
And where in the world is that English girl,
I promised I would meet on the third floor.
And of the whole damn lot, the only friend I got,
is a smoke and a cheap guitar.
My mind keeps roamin', my heart keeps longin'
to be home in a Texas bar.

...

Well, I decided that, I'd get my cowboy hat
and go down to Marble Arch Station.
'Cause when a Texan fancies, he'll take his chances,
and chances will be takin, now that's for sure.
And them Limey eyes, they were eyein' a prize,
that some people call manly footwear.
And they said you're from down South,
and when you open your mouth,
you always seem to put your foot there.

I think they still have a problem with manly footwear over there.