*****
I have to say I didn't really care for his music nor the Drugstore Cowboy thing he was partly responsible for.
He opened up his clubs and suddenly we were overrun with people who have never sat on a horse or charged by a bull wearing pressed jeans, boots, huge belt buckles and cowboy hats with those ridiculous feathered hatbands, all going to the club on Saturday nights to line dance and do the bunny hop.
Yeah, I know, I can't blame him for that - he had an idea that was so successful, that shit went nationwide.
Anyways, he's dead.
I had a girl drag me to The Lonesome Cowboy in Modesto once. In the parking lot, I noticed a lot of sedans and damned few pickups, and none of those had anything in the back that showed it was owned by anybody that worked on a farm or ranch. Not a one of them was sporting a ball hitch or had a 5th wheel mount in the bed.
The place was packed. I mean packed packed. Down at the far end, there were a few guys showing off for their girlfriends on the mechanical bull and on the dance floor was a bunch of people line dancing - both men and women. Looked gay as hell to me.
I had one beer and left. I don't know what happened to the girl I came with. I never heard from her again.
I, for one, am glad those dumbass mechanical bulls have largely faded from the scene.
ReplyDeleteYeah the whole blow-dried urban cowboy crap is happily mostly dead. Lots and lots of crap music, much of it from highly respected crappy country stars, is also crap. I said crap, right?
ReplyDeleteMy brush with Mickey: I was tending bar in Branson in 94 and he and his road manager came in. They were talking about going back on the road for a tour and almost had me suckered in joining the road crew with all their talk about cocaine, women and good times. Glad, I never went, it probably would have been the death of me.
ReplyDeleteYee-Haw!!
ReplyDeleteI went to a few just for the hell of it. Stayed for a drink and left. A lady friend told me once that the one she liked to go to. Some of the guys where even wearing "spurs" so they could jingle-jangle when they danced............
ReplyDeleteI always thought line dancing was the silliest fucking thing I ever saw.
ReplyDeleteFriends don't let friends line-dance.
ReplyDeleteI see the same thing with those fancy pick-ups here in Michigan. Usually I see the big double door trucks with no trailer hitch being used by well dressed women taking their kids to school.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem with people spending their money on what they want to, and I am not trying to take their freedom of choice. I just find them to look silly, using a 60,000$ vehicle to bop around town and to get groceries.
As to Mickey Gilley, 86 is a long life, RIP, but his music never did it for me. I noticed that Willy Nelson is now 89. I heard a song from his latest album on late night radio last night, and it is still better than any of the stuff being pushed on us as country music today.
Stopped by Gilley's exploring between Galveston to Houston back in the early 80s. $20 dollar cover at the door. No thanks.
ReplyDeleteI went to GIlley's in Houston, beautiful girl I knew from College moved there. I remember doing the "two Step" which I had no idea what I was doing, but we went around the dance floor, almost, in ONE SONG! Huge place... She was a looker, but left her brains somewhere on the way to Houston...
DeleteBoots & synchronization. Because it worked so well in 1930’s Germany…..
ReplyDeleteDon't blame Mickey for the Urban Cowboy craze. He became a partner with Sherwood Cryer ten years before the movie, and Cryer owned the club under its previous name back in the 60s. It was Cryer who manufactured the mechanical bulls and insisted on using them.
ReplyDeleteWhere we live, the cowboys come clanking into the quickie-mart in their spurs, and that's real, honest to G-d manure on their boots. No dimestore cowboys here. Pickups outnumber cars probably 10 to 1, and a good number of them towing beat to crap horse trailers.
ReplyDeleteBack in the early 80's I was stationed in Texas. I had a coupe from home that were stationed there also. He was in the service and Lisa was the perfect military wife. She was also my best friend in high school little sister and my adopted little sister. We went twice to Gilly's in Pasadena where we dropped a stupid amount of money with little to show for it. We stuck with the local honkey-tonk where the Gilly's $20 cover per person was twice what we would spend including the cab ride back to their place to sleep it off.
ReplyDeleteThe "Urban Cowboy" craze lasted almost fifteen years, from about 81 to 93 or 94. I made a lot of money from it as sales manager of a huge SoCal country FM station. At one time it had 1/4 of the adult audience and that's a lot considering SoCal is loaded with Radio stations.
ReplyDeleteUsed to drive past Gilley's in Pasadena, TX while delivering lumber back in 1979 & 1980. I never went there, or to any of the other clone bars.
ReplyDeleteIt never mattered to me what the venue was as long as I got laid.
ReplyDeleteEh......I would like to clarify that with as long as it wasn't a gay bar.