#ksjs – The Boring Old Man

Back when I was a kid music was going through some serious growing pains. It was the early 1980’s, Disco was D.E.A.D., Top 40 music was horrendous and punk rock was being diluted by “New Wave”, and I mean no offense by that. With but a few exceptions, New Wave music has held up better over the decades than a lot of punk has, but I digress…

New Wave was a blanket term that covered a lot of sub-genres. You had the synthesizer pioneers like Depeche Mode and Eurythmics, the New Romantics like Adam and the Ants and ABC, the grittier guitar-based bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements and all sorts of combinations and mash-ups along the way. Rockabilly made a comeback in the EARLY 1980’s, due to the Stray Cats bursting onto the scene, and they somehow got embraced by the New Wave crowd as well. It seemed there was a band with “Cats” in their name popping up every 7 minutes, you couldn’t keep track of ’em all!

One of the smaller sub-genres of the day was sort of a rockabilly/New wave/southern rock & roll hybrid, called by some “Cow Punk”. Personally I never really cared for that moniker, it seemed derisive and frankly there wasn’t a whole lot of “punk” to their music, other than a high energy and a quick tempo. Nonetheless, for a good 5 years or so, these cow punks kept slippin’ out the barn and winding up on college radio, where I became enamored of the sound. Big shout out to KSJS, KFJC and KSCU, those crazy college kids opened my ears and my mind to SOOOOO much amazing music back in the day…

So without further adeue, I present some of my all-time favorite “cow punk” tunes, or as I refer to it – that Twang Sound! Slip on your boots, straighten up the Bolo Tie and Enjoy!