Chronicling Austin Music

The staff of the Austin Chronicle didn't have to search far to fill their music section when the alternative weekly was founded in 1981. Music was all around, and not only because the city had become an outlaw country mecca a decade earlier. “It's in the air, in the intense unending heat of summer, in the brief cold of a short winter,” Louis Black writes in his intro to The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology (University of Texas Press).

And so it must be if the contents are any indicator of what goes on musically year round in the Texas capital. The Anthology runs chronologically, starting with an April 2, 1982 article on Joe Ely, who was then among the best known Texas musicians who didn't look like Willy Nelson or ZZ Top, and continues across the decades through a June 4, 2010 piece on San Francisco-to-Austin transplant LZ Love. In between is a richness of music other American cities would be hard pressed to match, especially for roots Americana. Austin was where blues and punk musicians found common cause with devotees of old time country and new model thrash. Little wonder the city gave birth to one of the world's truly important (as opposed to merely money-making) music festivals.

The writing in the Anthology is always lively as a kick to the rear with a pointy-toed boot and, especially in the '80s, serves as a reminder of times when music seemed to be about more than entertaining individuals plugged into their iPods