Summer, Part 2

While Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys captured the summers of my boyhood, the Sir Douglas Quintet remind me of the late-college summers I never had. I mean I could have been listening to the SDQ, lounging on the porch sipping a beer in the warm summer afternoon, but I lived in Bellingham so summer was two days of heat and 3 months of hazy & wet, and besides, I was probably listening to Genesis. Forgive me, dear reader, the follies of my youth.



Doug Sahm may have been the first Cosmic Cowboy, a mixture of Texas drawl and San Francisco hippie. Who else would write a song titled "Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day"? Doug started playing clubs in Texas early, then came the Sir Douglas Quintet, where their agent tried to cash in on Beatlemania by presenting them as a British band along the likes of Freddie and the Dreamers or Gerry and the Pacemakers. Yeesh. Anyway, the Sir Douglas Quintet fused Mexican norteno with blues and Haight Ashbury rock. Their albums can be spotty, so pick up "The Best of Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet" for a taste. Doug Sahm was a treasure (and the later Texas Tornadoes albums are a hoot too.)