It's All Very Cool
Glorium—Iced The Swelling (1992 / Art Punk)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re hitting the local bin, with a band of San Antonio (via Austin) mysteriosos, with lots of swearing.
Hey freaks, do you like fuckin’ music?
Imagine if someone greeted you like this every day. It’s like pure 1990s ‘zine energy.
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Well, I like music. I like it so much that I have wasted all of my life trying to be as close to it as humanly possible at all times, even to the detriment of my health, or any functional career or pastoral life. I just love, love, love it.
That is why living in Austin in the 1990s was such a swell idea for me. In fact, as much as I daydream about all the quantum possibilities of the future (like the one where my teeth and gums are perfectly healthy and I’m living in a small Mediterranean seaside town, living on a diet of oily fish and running a small cantina that international actual-cool, interesting people come to hang out with me at because of the impeccable music and general chill fucking vibe), I’d be happy if the scientists in the movie Brain Candy dosed me with Gleemonex and left me in my happiest place: a sweaty Friday night on Red River St, 1994.
When Austin started getting not-weird, thanks to extremely un-fucking chill vibe of the new SXSW Interactive Fuckfest, the people responded with a grassroots sticker campaign, a perfectly 90s gesture. That sticker slogan, which—thanks in huge part to the Austin Independent Business Alliance adopting it as a slogan is now so well-known that it has become toothless: Keep Austin Weird. The only thing that would have actually kept Austin weird would have of course been keeping housing cheap. But I’m not bitter. I left so long ago that the famous Taco Wars™ between the two different Tamale House restaurants is but a faint memory, one that I imagine few Austinites would probably remember, those veterans of the 49-cent tacos. I’ve had other places to be.
Someone in San Antonio, which has always been undeniably less self-conscious as Austin, responded with a sticker for their own: Keep San Antonio Lame. San Antonio doesn’t need that shit, doesn’t want that shit. In fact, keep your shit in your yard.
Keeping Austin Weird was always a joke. But I don’t ever think of Austin as a victim of its own success. People are doing well there, having fun doing the exact same things they did in the 90s, except it’s all Instagrammable now. I do blame SXSW for a lot though—they became too attached to the identity of Austin, like a remora that somehow grew big enough to become a shark itself.
This post was supposed to be about the band Glorium, who were very good, very mysterious and very cool. The singer worked at the coolest record store in town. He was intimidating, as all 90s record store clerks mandatorily were. His girlfriend was also super cool and also worked at the super cool record store, and they were both just so fucking super cool; I was still just barely out of high school and was trying to figure out so many goddamn things about who I actually was because I was newly free from the judgements and rules of a step-father who probably didn’t like that I was half Mexican, but most assuredly didn’t like that I wanted to be nothing like him, and probably saw everything I wanted in my life as a challenge to his entire East Texas country club self—and I was definitely not as cool with my baggy Dickies jeans cut into huge knee length shorts, oversized Fuct™ t-shirt and knee high tube socks, now that I could wear this all without getting shit on. These 2 looked smart, practical, a different kind of punk: artistic and well-read. I was in a new town, and things were different ‘round these parts, up here in the college town.
I don’t remember Glorium playing often, although I know I saw them a few times. I was pretty obsessed with them at a point, as obsessed as you might be about a local band, anyway. While I did later sell my copy of their first album, I still have this 7”, which I had to buy at a different record store because there was no fucking way I was going to buy it at their record store and run the risk of him looking down his nose at this kid buying his record—when I now know that probably would’ve shown the kind of solidarity I always wanted from all the music and the musicians in Austin in the 90s, all the scene I wanted so badly to be inside and not just around.
Fuck, I love this song though and when I think about it, I was way more a part of where I was than that little kid understood. And it remains a part of me, like a normal sized remora, one that didn’t become the shark.
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Yeah, SXSW is a cooked goose. I was there this year, for a night, though—it did feel toned down, so maybe the pirates have plundered enough to move on and let it feel cool again.
Portland and Austin have been those sister cities, tied by a highway of people going back and forth trying to catch that little piece of gold that really was the actual dream of the 90s: an untouched oasis. Like Athens, Georgia probably still is. No one ever says 'Keep Athens Weird'. At least that I know.
You should visit Austin, though. No one has a bad time there. And you can replay that Glorium song, full volume with your wife again, as you head this time o one of the great Austin dive bars; some still exist!
One day I'll hit Portland and maybe you can show me where they are, I love a good dive.
I always wanted to go to SXSW, but when I returned to the States in 2007 with no family in Portland, our kids were too young for us to split town to enjoy a festival. When we became empty-nesters in 2018, we started to look into it. My wife now has an ex-colleague who has since moved there, but my god, the costs are disgusting (for SXSW), and it seems to have succumbed to the predatory profiteers and corporations.
There are striking similarities between Portland and Austin. We used to have the Northwest Music Fest (NWMF) which was so cool, I saw so many great bands in various tiny bars throughout the city. But once people realized there was money to make, it all fell apart.
We had very groovy Art events in the city that were so unhinged they reminded me of the parking lot at a Grateful Dead show. But our lame mayor at the time stopped it and then reintroduced it, and now it is a watered-down, blah-blah-blah, no-fun, and shallow version of what it once was.
And, the whole "Keep Austin Weird" is a slogan here in Portland too (Keep Portland Weird), it is emblazoned on the exterior back wall of a dive bar and venue in a grimy part of downtown. Stickers and t-shirts sold in record stores with the slogan. It's been here since we moved here, but Portland's weirdness really changed when 'Portlandia' marketed the idea of a city where artsy, indie, weirdness lives. People who were not creative wanted to live near creatives moved here in en-masse, driving prices up, bringing the exact problems they had left their old cities for to Portland. Ironically it forced many creatives out as Portland is now significantly more expensive to rent or buy than it was back in 2007, let alone the 1990s.
Once a city believes its own hype that is always the sign of the remora becoming the shark (I love that analogy, btw!). That said, I still like it, and it has been home for 17 years. In 45 minutes to an hour's drive, I can literally be in geographical paradise. But I sometimes yearn for that unhinged, creative, and weird old Portland we originally moved to.
And, one day, I will make it to Austin. It's definitely on the radar.
Cheers also for the tune, which for its 3'30 minutes at top volume, sandblasted the 2024 gentrified Portland's remora from my brain. My wife and I are now ready to grab a couple drinks at one of our favorite old-school Portland dive bars! 😎