further t. tex edwards

watching t. tex edwards fronting the nervebreakers, i was reminded of my friend carl pack when he used to front the gideons. both tex and carl are guys with impeccable taste who've lived hard for a long time. i'm glad they're both still around. in the old days, tex usedta remind me of ray davies, not just because the nb's covered the kinks' "i'm not like everybody else," but because of a certain sardonic worldview that tex and ray seemed to share.

been listening to tex's cd pardon me, i've got someone to kill with out on parole, originally released by sympathy for the record industry back in '89 and reished in '07 by saustex media, the same fine label that's brought you crucial material by the hickoids and the loco gringos. it's a collection of honky-tonk murder ballads by the likes of johnny paycheck, porter wagoner, and wynn stewart, culled from fort worth expat mike buck's rekkid collection (a high recommendation in itself) and done up in the grand ole style, except for a couple of hallucinatory moments like "strangler in the night," credited to "a. de salvo" (you're probably too young to remember the boston strangler), which features an echolalic duet between overdubbed texes while the band plays a variation on santo & johnny's "sleep walk." it's an approach that's been emulated by fellow texan eccentric homer henderson (who, these days, plays with buck in austin's eve & the exiles), but tex got there first, a pioneering cowpunk with a sensahumour (and taste for the perverse) that makes this a more interesting listen than all those real _serious_ punk-'pokes like uncle tupelo.