After trawling through dusty op shop crates, and despite my joy at having just picked up Ethel Merman’ disco album, John Laws’s You’ve Never Been Trucked Like This Before and a record of Australian bird calls, I just can’ shake a nagging suspicion that Dave Thrussell got here before me. And he grabbed all the good stuff. It’s a view further reinforced by each successive release of his Omni reissue label that continues to delight in trawling through the darker eccentric and unexpected side of Nashville. They’re selling Rex Allen’ Jr’ obscure first album as “Scott Walker having a bad trip in Nashville,’ whilst reviews colourfully suggest that he was “too weird for country and too country for the weirdos,” both of which are appealing concepts. There’ no doubt that Allen’ belting out some cutting words, “Hey pop, my girlfriend’ only 13, she’ got her own videophone and she’ taking LSD” (his cover of The Lovin Spoonful’s The Younger Generation’), willingly tackling illicit drugs, Vietnam, rebellion, morality and a whole heap of death. There’ darkness in Allen’ lyrics, yet instead of the unsettling poetic and at times incomprehensible world of Scott Walker (who at the time was churning out pop hits with the Walker Brothers), Allen just lays it out cold. Take it or leave it. It was recorded in 1969-70, and taps into the psychedelic craze of the time, not necessarily in an attempt to cash in, rather the LA-based Allen had played in rock bands and was profoundly influenced by Hendrix. Yet his father was a singing cowboy and a country star, so Allen inevitably moved to Nashville. Combine that with one year in Vietnam and you’ve got a collision of influences that can’ fail to produce something interesting. Attempting to make a lap steel sound like a sitar, washes of psychedelic organ, ’60s pop guitar and lyrics like “Sometimes I get lonely while walking on the moon, then the shadows chase me in the corners of the room” (Black Skies), don’ make a conventional country album. Yet Allen’ commanding baritone and desire for story telling does, and years later he was able to shake the more “difficult’s and uncommercial elements out of his repertoire, finding Nashville success. Yet it can’ compare to Allen attempting to find his form, such as the combination of French pop and mournful acoustic folk on decidedly un-Nashville outing ‘Corners on My Life’ in which he is the most naked, alone and dark. Today’ Generation is definitely one of the weirder and more interesting debuts around.
Bob Baker Fish
