Bottlecaps

"Nevada Smith"

A mini-review of the latest OW (Old Western) I've seen:

If you can get past the first 15 minutes of "Nevada Smith," where the obviously 30-something Steve McQueen is supposed to be a 16-year-old kid — including a scene with his "Indian mother" who looks to be younger than he is by a considerable margin — then you'll find yourself in a pretty good Western.

Of course, he's supposed to be a youngster throughout the movie, but the annoying references to him as a "kid" drop off pretty quick and you can just forget about it.

The 1966 Western goes like this: Three outlaws kill parents of "boy" McQueen. McQueen goes off in search of outlaws. He gets educated by a kindly gun salesman. Years pass. He tracks the outlaws down one by one.

As with any OW, it's worth watching just for the old-school actors. Among the highlights: Karl Malden and Martin Landau as bad guys and a young Pat Hingle as prison trusty Big Foot (he holds his own with McQueen, easily). Also look for Peckinpah regulars Strother Martin and LQ Jones in a brief appearance.

The high point of the film is where McQueen's character gets himself arrested to track down Killer No. 2 in a Louisiana work camp. This is more Cool Hand Luke than Western, but with Pat Hingle doing his part, it's the best part of the movie.

Sadly, I can't really give the movie too much of a recommendation, because the ending is pretty much nonsensical. I won't spoil it for you, but it ends abruptly and with a confusing mess of logic. It does have Karl Malden as a villain, though, and that counts for something.

I enjoyed watching it, but wouldn't watch it again.

Terminus

I guess, more than anything, our silence said it all about "Terminator: Salvation." Last fall, when Shannon and I went to see "Gran Torino," we talked about the movie all the way from the Alamo Drafthouse on the southwest side of San Antonio to the bar on the fringe of Boerne. 

Driving back from The Rim to Shannon's parents' house on Saturday night, all of about four miles, we sat in silence, probably because we had said all we could say about the movie on the walk to the car: "That chase sequence was cool." "I wished it had a bit more plot." "I wanted more robot-fighting." "But that big robot was cool." "Shit blowed up good." 

Don't get me wrong. I like mindless action movies, really I do. And if I had sat down in front of my HBO on a slow Saturday night and watched this with a couple of beers, I'd be happier than a tap-dancing water bug. But, the problem was, and usually is, that my expectations (or maybe just my hopes) were a bit higher.

Uber-nerd Harry Knowles of Ain't it Cool News ended his review with: "Fuck this movie."

Now, me, I'm not quite that nerdy. My life does not revolve around Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men or even Terminator. It does take quite a bit to get me to go to a movie theater (and we even saw this one on opening weekend!), but my life wasn't changed when T-4 didn't turn out to be what I had hoped for.

But … even so … I was looking forward to this movie for just, oh, the past 14 years. 

Did I see the original "Terminator" in the theater? Way back in 1984, when I was a wee lad of 13 years old, I convinced my dad to take me to see an R-rated movie. The R-rated part was not the problem. Getting my dad to go to a movie theater was the problem. (As far as I know, he has seen three movies in a theater in his adult life, beginning with "Star Wars" and ending with "Rambo: First Blood Part II.")

My dad ultimately agreed, and gave me the choice: We would either go see "Terminator" or "Missing in Action." It was a tough, tough decision at the time for a 13-year-old. Ultimately, I decided on the wrong one. ("Missing in Action" did, however, feature more boobs and Chuck Norris than "Terminator.")

When I realized I had made the wrong choice (when all my friends made fun of me and talked about how awesome "Terminator" was), I was fixated on "Terminator." I must have watched it on VHS about 100 times.

At one point, when "Kyle Reese" nods off in the car, he dreams of a futuristic scene with kick-ass robots with red glowing eyes and shooting laser guns. "That's the movie I want to see!" I said.

Well, last Saturday, I got the chance. And it wasn't all that, really. I mean, the giant "harvester" robot was cool. The action sequences were fun. But the movie got a bit "Matrix"-y toward the end, and gaps in logic appeared that my suspension of disbelief (which has always been healthy) couldn't quite overcome. Schwarzenegger's appearance was fun (I've been a fan since the "Conan" days), but couldn't quite salvage the movie. 

(I do want to correct one critic who called it the only Terminator movie that didn't pause to wink at itself: Actually, the inclusion, briefly, of Guns 'n' Roses' "You Could be Mine" in the soundtrack was pretty funny.)

But those critics, including an embittered Harry Knowles, who said it didn't match the spirit of the first couple of Terminator movies … well, how could it? 

A movie series that doesn't begin to fall flat by its third movie is rare, but out there (Indiana Jones), but name me one movie series that maintained a level of spirit and quality through four films. Name me one.

Star Wars' fourth film ("Phantom Menace") was light-years from the first two movies. Same goes for the Alien series. Same goes for Indiana Jones.

Sometimes, we just gotta know when to quit. 

I guess I'll see the next Terminator film. 

But it'll be on a slow Saturday night. On HBO. At home. With a couple of beers.

"Red Sun"

OK, I finished up a Western about a month ago, but I never mentioned it: The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.

Wasn't that great, actually. Had Spider-Man's Uncle Ben as Cole Younger. And Robert Duvall completely sleepwalking through a Jesse James role. Good thing we had Western stalwart R.G. Armstrong. Really, all I can say is that it's the only Western I've seen to feature a baseball game.

No, what I want to mention is "Red Sun," a Charles Bronson flick. This one features Bronson as a bad boy, Toshiro Mifune as a Samurai warrior (you read that right) and Ursula Andress as a good reason to keep watching.

Important things first: Ursula's appearance (in the brothel) was something to marvel at. I had to rewind about four times. This, of course, was the cable movie version, so I don't know if there was more that I didn't get to see. If there was, that would be an excellent reason to join NetFlix (do they have old Westerns?). She doesn't do much the rest of the movie, but just to watch her mount a horse in the background is a fine distraction. (No, not like that. Don't be dirty!)

Bronson is Bronson, the cinematography is flat and lifeless, but it's Bronson's interaction with Mifune that draws you in to the movie (they're on a quest — Bronson, involuntarily — to recover a Japanese sword that had been stolen. Bronson, for his part, is only interested in the gold also stolen by the villain).

It's worth a watch, though I didn't much care for the ending, which was pretty much a cheap cop-out. I don't particularly want to spoil things in the rare chance that one of you might watch it, but let's just say I think the real hero of the movie should have been Mifune, not Bronson.

Willie, Willie, Willie & Willie

I don't recall if I ever gave a completed review of the Joe Nick Patoski bio of Willie Nelson. I finished it a couple months ago. And, since then, I've finished another, less-exhaustive Willie bio.

For those who are keeping score, here's my countdown of the biographies:

No. 4: "Heart Worn Memories" by Susie Nelson. Eakin Press, 1987. I have the autographed copy that Susie gave to my friend Jalapeno Sam Lewis. It's a light read, but quite entertaining and not bad at all. Plus it has a collection of photos and memories that only come from family. I think I'm gonna have to re-read this one.

No. 3: "Willie Nelson: The Outlaw" by Graeme Thomson. Virgin Books, 2006. I just finished this 260-pager written by some British guy. Really. Gives a different spin on it, I mean, the book is written in English. No, not just "eulogise" and "colour" but the writing has a different feel to it. And, of course, there's some pitfalls, like when he's writing about the IRS taking all Willie's stuff and he talks about how David Zettner was told to drive around back to the studio and covertly fill up his boot with tapes. Well, he wouldn't fit very many … oh! "Boot" in Britain means "car trunk"! I get it ...

The book, true to its title, doesn't shy away from or gloss over Willie's marijuana use or his experimentations with drugs or troubles with alcohol in his younger days. But so much of the book sounds as if it was written by a music critic. And the problem with music critics is they are unabashedly critical. Here's a segment: "He is content to stick to a tried and tested formula. It has, in some ways, destroyed him as a creatively vibrant and relevant artist." And there's more where that came from.

I guess I've had enough of music writers complaining about Willie's little-changing shows. It's like someone complaining about Johnny Cash's wardrobe or Kristofferson's singing or Waylon's surliness. At some point, you've got to accept them for what they are and go a little deeper with the analysis.

The book did give me one revelatory shock. You know the classic recording of "Good Hearted Woman"? With Waylon in the lead and then Willie comes in? With the live crowd? Thomson says the song was taken from Waylon's 1974 album "Waylon Live" with Willie overdubbing his vocals in a Nashville studio. Even with extra crowd noise thrown in where Willie joins in.

Damn. That's one of my Top 3 favorite songs of all time. And I've been fooled all this time. I thought it was the two of 'em live at some show or other, a moment of magic. I'm trying not to let my new knowledge distract from my enjoyment of the song.

No.2: "Willie: An Autobiography" by Willie, or rather, by Bud Shrake. Simon and Schuster, 1988. Thanks to Half-Price Books, I have my own copy of this at last for $3.98. The "autobiography" part is fine, but the genius of the book is the transcribed personal stories of those around Willie. There's where you get the real nuggets of information.

Like the time Paul English refused to take a check from HBO and they had to scramble to come up with $70,000 in cash before Willie would play their private party. Or Larry Trader talking about how Willie broke his neck in Corpus Christi. Or Poodie Locke describing the stage set-up in detail. Or Dennis Hopper talking about God knows what.

No. 1: "Willie Nelson: An Epic Life" by Joe Nick Patoski. Little Brown & Co, 2008. This is the exhaustive final word. Or, at least, most of it. Some day, far off in the future, someone will be researching the life of Willie Nelson and will find out: "Man, we really don't know shit about what happened between 1994 and 2004."

I mean, Patoski's book starts off in the finest detail. So much of its journey through the 1950s and early 60s sounds like the slowest book in the Bible: "And Paul Buskirk begat Ray Price. And Ray Price begat Johnny Bush. And Johnny Bush begat Jimmy Day," and so on. And the heart of the book, the journey through 1970s is a joy to read, packed full of information that informs the most rabid of Willie fans.

But it looks like Patoski got up to the point where Willie was wrapping up the IRS troubles in '93 and '94 and said "oh shit, this book is getting huge, I better wrap this up quick." And he does. There is, for example, no mention of any of the Fourth of July Picnics in Luckenbach. I mean, there were 5 of them. And when the picnic first wennt to Luckenbach in '95 that was a pretty big story.

He just kind of zips on through to "present day," shares a few observations and boom, story over.

C'mon Joe. Give us a "Vol. 2" of the "Epic Life."

Oh shit. This blog is getting huge. I better wrap this up qu…

Top Westerns

Sorry, didn't mean to leave that last blog up all week. But I felt I had to say it, just wish I could've gotten more San Angelo people to read it.

We celebrated the boy's 2nd birthday yesterday (today is his birthday) ... but I'm too tired to go into all the birthday stuff right now. I need a quick and non-thought-intensive blog.

So ... here is the top 50 Westerns according to the voters on the Internet Movie Database (or imdb.com). The ones I've seen are in bold. And! With bonus commentary!

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) ... Sergio Leone takes the top 2 spots?
3. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) ... It's a real good movie, but is it a Western? I guess so.
4. The Wind (1928) ... Sorry, I'm not going to go back as far as 1928.
5. High Noon (1952) ... This is the "classic" that lives up to the hype.
6. No Country for Old Men (2007) ... OK, I liked this movie, but I don't think it's a Western.
7. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
8. Unforgiven (1992) ... So, Clint Eastwood has 3 movies in the Top 10 and John Wayne zero?
9. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
10. The Gold Rush (1925)
11. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)  ... I've seen it, but not since I was a wee child. And that doesn't count.
12. The Wild Bunch (1969) ... How could this one fall so low?
13. Beloe solntse pustyni (1970) .. A Russian Western?
14. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) ... Lee Marvin and Lee van Cleef as villains! Too bad the movie wasn't about them.
15. The Searchers (1956) ... The cinematography at some points was incredible.
16. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
17. Rio Bravo (1959)
18. Hud (1963)
19. 3:10 to Yuma (2007) ... This was a decent action movie.
20. Dances with Wolves (1990)
21. The Great Silence (1968)
22. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
23. My Darling Clementine (1946)
24. The Magnificent Seven (1960) ... Yul Brynner vs. Eli Wallach. You can't go wrong.
25. Stagecoach (1939) ... Yes, I know I need to see it.
26. Red River (1948)
27. Way Out West (1937)
28. The Gunfighter (1950)
29. Winchester '73 (1950)
30. Destry Rides Again (1939)
31. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
32. The Big Country (1958)
33. Blazing Saddles (1974) ... If this were a Western, really, instead of a comedy, it would make my Top 10.
34. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
35. Shane (1953) ... This is the classic that does not live up to the hype.
36. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
37. Lonely Are the Brave (1962) ... Based on an Edward Abbey book with Kirk Douglas. Can't go wrong here, either.
38. Giant (1956)
39. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) ... Really?
40. The Mark of Zorro (1940)
41. Little Big Man (1970)
42. Dead Man (1995)
43. Duck, You Sucker (1971) ... OK, I will try this one again.
44. The Westerner (1940) ... This is as far back into cinema history as I'll likely go.
45. Fort Apache (1948)
46. The Shootist (1976)
47. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
48. Tombstone (1993) ... At least it's not in the Top 10.
49. Ride the High Country (1962) ... One of Peckinpah's first.
50. Viva Zapata! (1952)

Looks like I've got some watching to do.

If I had to name my Top 10 favorite (not necessarily what I would rank as the "best," but my personal favorites) Westerns, it would go like this.

10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

9. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

7. High Noon (1952)

6. For a Few Dollars More (1965) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

The top 5 can really be put in any order, but here's how they are right now: 

5. Unforgiven (1992) — The last 20 minutes are among the best in Western history.

4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) — Why can't Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood make another movie together? It wouldn't have to be a Western, it could be anything. I'd watch them in a chick flick.

3. Lonesome Dove (1989) — Guess it didn't make imdb.com's list because it was a miniseries. Watch any scene without Duvall or Jones in it, and it might be just another made-for-TV movie. But put either one of them on screen and it's a good movie. Put 'em on screen together, and it's magic.

2. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) — This Western was made for people like me. A Bob Dylan soundtrack, Kristofferson tries like hell to not let Coburn act him off the screen, and the characters all get drunk and shoot each other. That, and, oh yeah, it's got the one of the greatest collection of Western character actors since ... well, it was the last hurrah.

1. The Wild Bunch (1969) — If you watch Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country" and then watch "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" you might wonder how he got from Point A to Point B. This is it. This movie is the PERFECT mix of old-school Western and new-era Western. It is half "white hat" and half "Man With no Name."

Picnic posters / "Fistful of Dynamite"

Sorry I missed you guys yesterday. Was pretty sick. It's been circulating here in the Bottlecaps household.

But, on to important news: I met a fellow poster collector recently. His name is Byron and he used to work with Stevie Ray Vaughan. As a roadie of sorts? I'm not sure. Either way, he has collected music posters for years and years and now is selling them.

I found a posting for Willie Nelson picnic posters on Craigslist, which is how I got this guy's number. The posters he had on Craigslist were ones I already had ... but I called anyway and asked if he had more.

Long story short, I was soon in his office where he has boxes and stacks of posters all jumbled willy-nilly. Kind of a poster hunter's dream. He couldn't put his hands on any of the posters I was looking for — though he said some sounded familiar.

But as he was looking through the stacks, he stumbled across a poster for the 1972 Dripping Springs Reunion — the event, if you recall, which was the foreruner to the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. I think the first words out of my mouth were "holy shit!" followed by "if you want to sell that one, I'll buy."

He said he'd consider selling it, but I think he'll have second thoughts on that one. Still, to think that you could have that poster and not even know it ...

In any event, the trip was beneficial in that I met another collector (though on a different level than me) and I discovered the existence of another key poster that I'll be able to hunt through the coming decades. Very cool.

And if any of you are looking for music posters / Stevie Ray Vaughan photos, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the guy's full name and phone number. Even if you're looking to collect Willie picnic posters, he had several 1997, 1999 and 2000 posters on hand.

My picnic poster collecting blood is all stirred up.

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Really quick, since I have a lot to do before I head to work: Finished watching the 1971 Sergio Leone western "Fistful of Dynamite" (aka "Duck, You Sucker") on Saturday night. It has James Coburn and Rod Steiger in it and it also moves as slow as an old lady in the produce aisle of H-E-B.

Reviews on imdb.com are gushing in their praise, but I'm not getting it. It was interesting, no doubt. Had some moments, but at 2.5 hours seems to take forever to go not very far. I'm a Sergio Leone fan, of course, but perhaps this film just demands a higher caliber of viewer.

I think I'll read the reviews myself and maybe give it another shot sometime in the future.

'Gran Torino'

Thanks Lee & Bill for your comments on the Blaine blog — Blaine was a true character. He created a little piece of honky-tonk perfection in San Angelo, and then set about destroying it a little bit at a time. Still, I understand that there's going to be one hell of a send-off for Blaine in San Angelo today.

Kinda wish I could be there.

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Saw Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Antonio on Saturday night, thanks to the magic of babysitting.

We ate dinner there (two personal pizzas), plus dessert (slice cheesecake for Shannon), plus a bucket of beer (in San Antonio, a bucket is 6 beers — we had to leave half of one there at the theater despite my best efforts).

Well, let me tell you: The Alamo Drafthouse is proud of their stuff. Our little night on the town was plenty expensive. But it was worth it, totally. First, because my almost-terrible-2-year-old was just about to send me over the edge. Second, because "Gran Torino" is a great movie.

Yes, Clint Eastwood plays a grizzled ol' Korean War veteran with something bad to say for every ethnicity, and something badass to say to everyone.

But it's not the last installment of "Dirty Harry." I think, with this movie, Clint managed to make the statement about violence that he was aiming for with "Unforgiven."

Still, it was great to see Clint Eastwood being Clint Eastwood, one more time. Soon enough he'll pass on and then what? We'll see some pussy like Seth Rogen try to play a vigilante cop, an aging gunslinger, a bitter war veteran? Yeah, right. From here on out, it's probably comic-book action movies, gross comedies and lame dramas about dorks who couldn't find a chest hair with a magnifying glass.

Thank God there's still a lot of old movies I hven't seen.

I won't go into the plot of "Gran Torino" — if you've seen a preview, you've got it down. But I will give it my enthusiastic endorsement.

Go check it out. And if you go to the Drafthouse, get a pitcher of beer. Those buckets cost way too much.

'The Westerner' / Ray Wylie Hubbard / Bill Bryson

I usually struggle to find common ground with 1950s Westerns. For every one that still works — "High Noon" — there are many that just fall flat with me — "Shane" among them.

But 1940s Westerns? No way. Those are the days of singing cowboys and black hats and white hats and "Golly, gee, ain't that swell?"

The best of the few I've seen, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," was from the end of the decade and only sort of a Western.

Well, the other week I saw "The Westerner," a 1940 Gary Cooper flick about homesteaders vs. cattlemen in the land of Judge Roy Bean. And, though it was a bit maudlin in some spots, a bit slow in others, it really wasn't that bad.

It's not going to make my as-yet-unwritten list of must-see Westerns, I don't think, unless I feel compelled to represent the early 1940s, but it's not all that bad.

The highlights: Seeing a very young Chill Wills in a bit spot as a cowboy named "Southeast." And Walter Brennan's performance as Judge Roy Bean, at one point referring to the crop-growing homesteaders as "tomato-kissers."

The lowlights: The idea that you could grow massive cornfields in the area around Langtry or even graze a herd of cattle in the region. You'd have hell raising a herd of anything but scorpions in that desert brush.

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Among my favorite gifts of recent years was the USB turntable I got for Christmas. It's, as I understand it, a first-generation technology … something this late adapter NEVER goes for, but I had to make an exception this time.

You see, the idea is that you play your old vinyl LPs on this turntable while it's hooked up to your computer, and — using a program called Audacity — you capture the songs digitally. A little more work and you can save it as an MP3, which you can load into iTunes.

This means that right this very moment I am listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard sing "Texas is a State of Mind" over my iTunes.

"We've got some soul-savers / we got some hell-raisers / good-lookin' women / we got cowboys out the ass..."

"Texas is a real good place to live and to visit / we're down here with the grace of God and a little luck / they said that Texas would fall off into the Gulf ... except for the fact ... that OKLAHOMA SUCKS!"

Yeah, it's not the kind of poetry that Ray Wylie writes these days. You know he's not going to record this again. This is young-man-on-a-bender music.

But it's fun, fun stuff. And it makes me very happy. Once I finish picking songs from my four Ray Wylie LPs and capturing them on the computer (it takes a little time), I can burn myself a 20-something-song old-school Hubbard CD and cruise out to the Hill Country.

Eventually, I've got a stack of old vinyl that I can load onto my computer, burn onto CD, and listen to while driving (which is where I listen to most of my music).

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Just finished reading Bill Bryson's travels through Europe, "Neither Here nor There," about a week ago.

You know, I read "A Walk in the Woods." And "In a Sunburned Country." And then "The Lost Continent." And I enjoyed each enough to read the next one. Then I read "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," Bryson's collection of essays that, for the first time, really introduced his family to us in ol' Bill's charming way.

Then I read "Neither Here Nor There." And in the second chapter he spends 16 days in Norway waiting, just waiting, to see the Northern Lights. And the whole time I'm thinking, "Hey, aren't you married? What the hell does your wife think of you spending 16 days in Norway just waiting for some fucking lights?"

After that, he goes back home to prepare for his trip across the continent of Europe proper. And soon he's off, days and weeks on end, walking around, taking trains, eating in restaurants, drinking coffee and gallons upon gallons of stout beer.

Only at the very end of the book does he mention his family, that his wife is "pregnant with her semiannual baby" — a phrase he'd only use if he already had at least one kid waiting at home.

I understand that travel is his business, and I'm guessing it provides a comfortable life for his, obviously patient and tolerant, wife. But I don't really understand how a man could have a good time away from his family (by choice) for several weeks.

I'd like to try explaining to Shannon that my job entailed sitting in pubs in Europe and drinking beer for the next month or so.

Not that I wouldn't mind a weekend in San Angelo...

Oh yeah, the book. Well, it's excellent, as usual. That Bryson fellow sure can write.

Hour of the Gun / Kristofferson / Nunn

Watched Sunday night the 244th version of the Wyatt Earp story I have seen in my lifetime: "Hour of the Gun," a 1967 western that begins with the shootout at the OK Corral and sees through Earp's vengeance on the bad guys.

I'm hardly a judge of cinematography, but the whole film looked washed-out, and not in an artistic way. James Garner (as Wyatt Earp) might as well have been cardboard and the entire movie lacked any sort of character development — only Jason Robards (as Doc Holliday) and Robert Ryan (as Ike Clanton) managed to develop any sort of personality.

Really the movie felt as if we had joined in on a long-running TV show halfway through the season. Still, it seems this movie is where the men behind "Tombstone" took their post-shootout cues; many scenes are strikingly familiar — though certainly not the Hollywood love interest part that threatened to turn "Tombstone" into a chick flick. No, "Hour of the Gun" had not a single speaking role for any woman. If not for a few glimpses of women in the background, one might think that Arizona was a lonely place indeed.

And in this one, Ryan's Ike Clanton was the brains behind the operation, while Curly Bill Brocius (a young Jon Voight) was the drunken lackey.

Anyway, "Hour of the Gun" does not make my yet-to-be-constructed list of Westerns that need to be seen. And I'm thinking that I have seen quite enough of the Wyatt Earp saga for at least a decade or more.

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Among my Christmas gifts were two albums: "Live at the Philharmonic" by Kris Kristofferson and "What I Like About Texas: Greatest Hits" by Gary P. Nunn.

The first album I had on cassette a decade ago, the second was a CD stolen from me when our house was broken into in 2003. Listening to the both while driving to Austin on Dec. 26 was like a reunion with old friends.

Kristofferson's album (and you have to like live albums to like this one) is a fantastic mix of wry and painfully dead-on sarcasm ("Jesus Was a Capricorn," "The Law is for the Protection of the People"), old-school hits ("Sunday Morning Coming Down," "Me and Bobby McGee") and drunken obnoxiousness ("Out of Mind, Out of Sight" and his cover of Haggard's "Okie from Muscogee.")

Nunn's album is just a good time in a CD case. I mean, just listen to the opening track. You find me a Texan who doesn't smile reflexively upon hearing the first 10 seconds of "What I Like About Texas" and I'll show you a Texan with his ass caught in a bear trap. The rest of the album is just the soundtrack to all the good times I had between 1994 and 2002: "Think I'll Go to Mexico," "Roadtrip," "Guadalupe Days," "My Kind of Day on Padre" and, of course, "Terlingua Sky," among them.

I hadn't heard either album in a half-dozen years when I listened to them again last week. But I still knew every word.