Researching what the Houston music scene was like 20 years ago has been an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly. In that benighted era, the world was very analog. Musicians could design a gig flyer or type up some lyrics on their computers, maybe fiddle around with some primitive MIDI-type software, but that's about it. To communicate, people had to use a telephone tethered to a wall jack or use the good old U.S. Postal Service. The telephone poles of Montrose and the Heights were littered with those flyers.

The way the Houston Press covered music back then was also vastly different. The paper did not have a full-time music editor, and some weeks the music pages were completely given over to classical music; a few weeks there were only club listings. Apart from those listings, weeks could go by without a local artist being mentioned at all, and then it came in bunches; several recent local 7-inches reviewed all at once, for example.

And yet somehow, Houston musicians managed to make and sell records, book shows, occasionally go on tour and get reviewed in the local paper just like they do now. It's still a scene full of people hoping to make it big while looking for just a little respect.