TOM X SEZ...

Tommy & Charlene Hancock's
50th Wedding Anniversary!
April 1, 2006


 

Perhaps you saw what was written regarding the movie 'Lubbock Lights' (now out on DVD) in the Austin Chronicle, posted online at:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-12-23/music_roundup5.html
on December 23, 2005, page 60 I believe.  It appeared as follows:

Lubbock Lights
(289 Films)

Local director Amy Maner claims Lubbock Lights shouldn't be viewed as a complete retracing of this West Texas town's music scene back to Buddy Holly and his predecessors. Rewriting history by glossing over the rock & roller and then having someone state on screen that Tommy X Hancock was more important isn't an improvement. That aside, Lubbock Lights concentrates on those who are alive, and it's heavy on the Flatlanders – Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock – along with Tommy X and Terry Allen. Archival footage of the original group at the Kerrville Folk Festival in the early Seventies is a delight, while a version "If You Were a Bluebird" from Montreux, late-Eighties, confirms that a bad rendition of the song is nearly impossible. Through extensive interviews, Maner connects Lubbock's native artists to what Butch Hancock calls "the land where everything looms on the horizon." An engaging chronicle of the area's history and legends (the original "Lubbock Lights" were supposedly UFOs), answers as to why so much creativity has come out of Lubbock remain elusive.

I hope that you also saw the response I sent, which was published in the Chronicle's 'Postmarks':

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-01-06/cols_postmarks.html
January 6, 2006 - page 10    It appeared as follows:

Lubbock Beyond Holly

Dear Editor,
In the Lubbock Lights documentary review [Music DVDs, Dec. 23], Jim Caligiuri says that the film glosses over Buddy Holly and concentrates on lesser figures.  That's true, but sensible.  The Buddy Holly story had already been told very well in many ways.

The director, Amy Maner, could only hope to recognize some of the Lubbock Lights.  So she told the story more from the perspective of a Lubbockite. There are many incredible musicians from West Texas and everywhere else that will never be recognized as such.

Many people, even music historians, may not know that Buddy's music, during his lifetime and for many years later, until the Beatles, was virtually unknown in Lubbock except in his own age group.

I was taken aback at one point when a big celebration was to occur in Artesia, N.M., and they called me to play and asked for a recommendation for a "young people's" band to also play.  At the time, I didn't realize that we weren't a young people's band anymore.

Both the Roadside Playboys and the Crickets went to Artesia and had a great time at the two dances. Since then, I've always been very aware that it's time to rock & roll!

Tommy X Hancock
 

And on a separate note:   there was also an excellent feature in the Austin American-Statesman on January 6, 2006, written by Brad Buchholz, entitled "Where Music Roams" which you can read here.  (Thank you, Brad.)

The terrific television show "Sex and the City" is very satisfying to me because it fulfills my curiosity and fantasies about what life in New York City could be like.  Also, to me, it cries out for balance in the form of parody.

So, I put together a collection of my funny songs, that in some way deal with sex, to fill this balance and title it "Sex and the Country."  These songs taken from previous releases make fun of porn because they are not actually sexually stimulating.  I call it corn porn.

A voice somewhere inside me says, "How can you, with many female loved ones, put out filth like this?"  Well, they are just jokes. Male humor perhaps.  Unlike my book, "Zen and the Art of the Texas Two-Step," the songs do not reflect my philosophy. They are mostly about real people I've known and each has some enlightening point. The songs are true stories and strange romances.

To be sure that my point is understood, I'll clarify some of them.

• "No Pussy Blues"
  For a few years when I was teaching in a small town, my roommate was steady dating the only eligible woman in town. When he drank a lot of booze, he often would tell me how tough life was with his sexy, charming, good-looking girlfriend.  POINT: Consider your listener's situation before you spread your blues around.
   

• "Swangin'"
  Words have different meanings. Sexual limits are varied for different people and need not be taken seriously.
  POINT: To each his own.
   
• "The Rest Room Wall"
  At a little honky tonk where I played, a guy who I grew to really like would sometimes come dancing after getting off work as a mechanic.  He would cruise the whole place for a dance partner, then say to me something like "What's the matter with the women in this place?" If he had a date, this story could have happened.
  POINT: Talking about people can backfire.
   
• "Jack to a Queen to a King"
   I didn't know the guy/girl in this story but read about it in the paper and my imagination soared.
  POINT: It is a great blessing to be happy with what you've got.
   
• "Lucille and Leroy"
  Just to be safe, I checked this song out with gay friends before releasing it. They agreed that what is being laughed at is outrageousness rather than homosexuality.  Bizarre actions are not the domain of any particular sexual orientation.
  POINT: Good taste in clothes may pay off with lovers.
   
• "Rubber Dolly"
  When I was living in Mexico on the border, I would occasionally visit "boy's town", not for sex but for entertainment and education. I developed a respect for the hookers because they offered the human touch to those who no one else wanted to touch. Drunks, cripples, mentally retarded or ill, old, unclean, all need the human touch. For those unable to find a prostitute there are sex toys.
  POINT:  Be thankful that some men will use a rubber dolly or a paper doll rather than a real live girl. Lighten up.
   
• "Goldie"
  After the original release of this song, I asked a mutual friend who knew Goldie well if she liked it and mentioned that I hoped she wouldn't beat me up.  He said he didn't know but that I'd better be hoping that she doesn't sue me. It seems Goldie is quick to sue and the circumstances described in my song may be toward that end.
  POINT: Be very careful about publicly telling other peoples' stories.
   
• "Grandma's Secret"
  One of the first times I saw a tattoo on a young woman, I wondered what she would say to her grandchildren about it.  As more and more young people had tattoos and the mentality changed I realized that the new grandmas would probably answer that a tattoo makes her ass more interesting or some such.
  POINT: Old people may be much more interesting than our usual impressions.
   
• "The Male Chauvinist Bull"
  I believe this song to be intellectually air tight. The Truth is not in the mind therefore the mind can rationalize any point. In this story, polygamy makes sense. Whether or not it is morally air tight I don't know. I am sometimes unconscious of my own chauvinism, so I invite you to awaken me toward being a better man.
  POINT: If others are happy, let it be.
   
• "A Winter Evening"
  This song is not funny, not vulgar, not weird, None of that.  It and "Young Romance" are the little white dot in the black half of the yin yang symbol.
  POINT: Some sex in the country is romantic and beautiful.
   
• "Home in a Honky Tonk"
  One winter when our family band lived in Florida, we had a job at a seamen's hangout playing from eight until four every night. The cleanup guy there appeared to be Afro but was actually a white man who, after cleaning up the club until about six or seven in the morning would drunkenly go to sleep in his convertible with the top down.
  POINT: Skin color is unreliable.
   
• "The Born Again Zenner"
  POINT: When you have a choice of how to die, be very honest.
  One of the great East Indian sages who is considered to be the world's foremost authority on reincarnation says that we are reborn in the general geographical area where we died. If so, that explains why I, as well as many other native Texans, feel an identify with American Indians. This is usually expressed as "having some Indian blood." Maybe so.  But more likely we modern Texans may be those Indians killed in the white man's fulfillment of manifest destiny.

AND ON AND ON THROUGH LO, THESE TWENTY THREE MUSICAL PORNS.

Love from tOMmy X
 

The Dixie Chicks
(originally sent via email Mon, Mar 17, 2003) 

"Every number is a 'take' for the akashic records."