Liles doesn't know of any Austin artists who have moved to X-Plus, but he says they are taking note of the changes. Some even blaspheme their own hallowed hometown, he says. "I'm telling you straight-up, they enjoy playing the Kessler because there is nothing in Austin like the Kessler," he says. "All the artists who come up here love being from Austin. They are very proud of the fact that they are from Austin. But they come to the Kessler and they see this neighborhood and they say, 'Damn, this is the way Austin used to be. There is nothing in Austin this cool right now.'"
Meanwhile, Houston has at last apparently stanched the exodus of young rock bands to Austin, a stampede that began in the '70s and finally started slowing about five years ago. Ellis, a 35-year veteran of the music scene in the Austin area, Dallas and Houston, ventures to say that Houston's scene is better than Austin's right now.
Photos by John Anderson
Eddie Wilson helped shepherd Austin cool from the hippie era to the dawn of punk...
Photos by John Anderson
...and his Armadillo World Headquarters was the epicenter of cosmic cowboy redneck rock. Now a sterile office building stands where the 'Dillo once was, and Wilson is wondering where his legacy still lives on.
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"You can't live cheap [in Austin] anymore," he says. "There's no cool places to play. There's nothing really happening. It just doesn't have the appeal anymore. Certainly someone like Blaze Foley couldn't survive there anymore, though the argument could be made that he couldn't survive then either. But today nothing like that would even be embraced."
Today's Houston finds more rising young rock bands choosing to stay here than at any time since the 1960s. Fitzgerald's is back as a cutting-edge venue after years in lunk-core alt-rock purgatory. The Heights, Houston's own mini-Austin, is filling up with fun beer gardens and low-key restaurants, and there are other scattered pockets of cool in Montrose, the Museum District and the East End. Taking in a concert in Discovery Green can trick you into thinking you are in Chicago, only with better weather, and Austin so loved our Art Car Parade, they've attempted to steal the entire concept, just as they've attempted to steal the memory of our Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark/Steve Earle/Rodney Crowell songwriting history.
What's more, Houston is a city and proud of it. Masliyah loves living in the kind of city where it's easy for her to buy her dressmaking supplies and also to travel the world without leaving home. "The other day I went shopping at Phoenicia and it was like I'd gone around the world," she says. Youssefnia also loves Houston's cosmopolitan atmosphere and realistic sense of itself.
"Houston has a strong scene and many hidden elements that keep it interesting," she says. "People realize the problems it has — the corrupt oil money, the sprawl, the pollution — and don't deny the problems like people in Austin do."
Back in Eddie Wilson's bungalow, the man is still railing. "I'm still an Austin booster," he says. "I've gotta be, but it's kinda like bein' in an arm-wrestling contest. You've just gotta persevere and hope that sooner or later the other side gives in."
He doesn't think that's going to happen, though. "Greed never sleeps," he says. "It never takes a day off. Everybody from the jolly side of life wants to celebrate, at least here, there and yonder, but greed can't afford to because it's always after what it is you've got."
He catches his breath. "When you run the cops and schoolteachers out of the town they are servin'..."
"It finally happened," he continues. It has finally come to pass that Austin really and truly was better before you got there, and won't ever see such creative days again.
"We had 'em on the run for a while, but I believe they've taken over the goddamn front-end loader now," he says. "C'mon. Let's go on over to Threadgill's and have a beer. On the house."
john.lomax@houstonpress.com
