Don’t Fear the Reaper: The Blazing Story of the 1979 Texxas Jam

The wild story of the 1979 Texas World Music Festival, aka “Texas Jam,” which took place at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.  Part 2 of 3.

READ PART 1 HERE

Rock n’ roll was meant to be played really loud.  But sometimes, the serenity of a calm voice among the roar is remembered as the most powerful.  If you want to be heard–don’t shout.  When you want to be heard–whisper.

Heart was the whisper of the 1979 Texas World Music Festival, a.k.a. “Texxas Jam.”

To understand what a Texxas Jam concert experience was like, we must remember what the rock n’ roll scene was like during the late 1970s.  Bands we typically associate with “classic rock,” mostly rooted in blues and folk, had largely splintered apart or died off giving way to a phase of extravagant show bands fronted by flamoyant lead singers seemingly more concerned with the craftsmanship of putting on an electrifying stage show as writing and recording great music.

Boosted by advances in audio technology and the excessive demands of the album-buying public unleashed, rock was king and big hair became the kingdom’s crown.  Tight pants were its suits of armour.  Guitars wired to amps cranked with enough decibels to blast away eardrums were the weapons of this revolution.  Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll wasn’t a catchphrase.  It was a lifestyle.

But rock also had its rivals.  There was pop.  There was disco.  And, there was R&B.  These boundaries weren’t crossed nor did the musical silos mingle.  You were in one camp or the other.  Rockers didn’t listen to disco.  Pop music has its own channels.  There were Top-40 radio stations, R&B stations, country stations, and rock stations.  Playing a different genre of music was unthinkable.

Indeed, I remember when playing a country song at a party triggered whistles and catcalls.  Having a Manilow record on the turntable was blasphenous.  Admitting that you liked the Bee Gees risked social excommunication in some circles.  Listening to disco got you labeled as a faggot.  Yeah, the times were homophobic and mysogynistic.  Rock stripes were measured by how many AC/DC albums were in your collection.  Should you doubt any of this, recall that same year, something called a “Disco Demolition Night“ was held at a baseball game in Chicago attended by 50,000 die-hard rock fans, and a full-scale riot broke out.

A few years later, director Rob Reiner would capture this quirky subculture in his gloriously wonderful 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap.

Peer pressure is a big thing when you’re in high school, especially at 17 which is that strange number gap right in between not knowing what you’re doing and thinking you know everything there is to know.

Full confession:  Although Boston and Van Halen and Aerosmith and Ozzy Osborne and the rest were the soundtrack of my age group, I never indentified with late 70s rock.  Most of my freinds knew the words to each song on every album, but my vinyl collection was from a decade earlier, or older.  I listened to blues, jazz, Broadway show tunes, and especially recordings from the Great American songbook.  No music recorded by a 25-year-old rocker in spandex pants and double-necked guitar could top a classic Gershwin tune, nor the serenade of Sinatra’s soothing voice, nor the swing of Ella Fitzgerald, nor the majesty of listening to The Beatles.

So here I was at Texxas Jam.  At 11 o’clock in the morning.  I’d be here until way past 11 o’clock at night.  I wasn’t particularly thrilled to be there but strangely, there was no place else to be.  The show was a calling.  And, a rite of passage.

In the next chapter, I’ll do my best to remember all the acts in the 1979 show, and convey why Heart’s performance was the greatest rock moment onstage I’ve ever witnessed.

Much more to come soon in Part 3.

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