You had to be there

To you pop culture mavens I commend this Nashville Scene article, from last August, about the Music City's rock milieu in the 1980s. I was a youth there in those days, and it was a heady time, when the alternative-country genre known as cowpunk seemed on the verge of breaking through in a big way. That was thanks especially to the musical pyrotechnics of Jason and the Scorchers, a truly marvelous '80s Nashville band.

The breakthrough didn't quite happen -- quick, how many other cowpunk bands can you name? -- but there was a kind of fervor going around in that small network of clubs and bands. And then, suddenly, it was all over. Mainstream country's commercial triumph under Garth Brooks was about to get underway, and there was not much room left in Nashville for quirky alternative types.

After the Scorchers, my favorite group in the scene was Raging Fire, which combined the twangy urgency of cowpunk and the psychedelic swirl of another '80s musical subgenre, the paisley underground. Check out Raging Fire's magnum opus, "A Family Thing."