Here's the second half of my Sueddeutsche Zeitung article on underground culture and Austin Texas. It was published on Saturday, Oktober 16.

Searching for that Lost Cool Something

One of our greatest living philosophers, Grandpa Simpson, once said, "I used to be 'with it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what's 'it' seems weird and scary." Maybe only the jugendlich understand ‘it.’ So back in Vienna, which is where I call ‘home’ these days, I asked a fifteen-year-old friend how he finds out about new music. His words were 2010, but his method: classic. “Usually my friends give me a link.”

I asked the same of a colleague’s fourteen-year-old son, who has recently discovered punk rock in the recordings of Green Day. He told her that he finds out about bands from concert posters and handbills, and from the opening bands at those concerts. Sounds a lot like my methods of thirty years ago.

On the other hand, my Austin friends, being older Texans and therefore contrary, roundly dispute the notion that the underground is dead. “Bullshit!” says Davy Jones, guitarist for the Hickoids, Austin’s oldest country punk band. “Hickoids are known by a tiny group of folks, but sales and the nature of the material make it Underground, Cult, Counterculture, whatever you wanna call it today. It's not successful in any normal business sense of the word- it’s so niche.”

Another friend, who I once knew as Control Rat X, drops some very old school science on me. “What has been done will be done again,” he says. “There is nothing new under the sun." Then he tells me he’s quoting from Ecclesiastes 1:9-14. Gee, I always thought it was a record critic who had said that.

On a late summer afternoon, downtown Austin is like the Velvet Underground—all white light and white heat. Unlike the centers of some US cities, this part of town has never been successfully rehabilitated, and the lower blocks of Congress Avenue are a bit shabby. But one afternoon, as I stumble along the Avenue in the blinding, skin-searing heat, I remember to tip my hat when I pass number 316. This is the former site of the Vulcan Gas Company, a legendary sixties club which may be the true birthplace of psychedelic music, since it was the preferred haunt of the notorious Texas acid rock group, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Back then, everyone played at The Vulcan when they passed through Austin, from John Lee Hooker and Moby Grape to, well, the Velvet Underground. Today, 316 Congress Avenue is a Patagonia sporting goods and outdoor apparel super store.

The Armadillo World Headquarters is now a parking lot, and for the week that I’m in Austin, I involuntarily turn my head towards it every time I pass, searching for some trace of the first rock club I ever entered. The Armadillo was an ugly hangar with bad acoustics, great nachos and a crowd that ranged from cosmic cowboys and pink-haired punks to state politicians and off-duty policemen. I remember seeing Devo there in 1980, and goggling at one of the club’s murals, which depicted an armadillo bursting out of the chest of BB King. Then and now, the Armadillo would meet almost any standard definition of an underground club, and that’s how I remember it. But it wasn’t underground at all—Time magazine and Rolling Stone both wrote it up at the time. In fact, Frank Zappa recorded a live album called Bongo Fury there. This 1975 document of what I thought was an underground scene was distributed to the world by…Warner Bros. Records. When I look at that parking lot today, I think it may be time to revise our definitions of underground.

My host in Austin is my old friend Rich, who was also once the drummer for the Kamikaze Refrigerators. A few hours before I leave town, I am puttering around in Rich’s immaculately renovated, slightly kitschy nineteen-fifties house. Rich is in the next room working. Then I hear music. It has the unhinged tone of the Pixies, and all the leather mask perversity of Lubricated Goat. With a dash of Devo. I like this music. “What is this?” I ask Rich.

“Oh, it’s Adult Rodeo,” he shrugs. “Little local band who was playing around here a few years ago.”

Adult Rodeo aren’t the new Radiohead, but they sound weird and fresh. I believe I have made a discovery.

I guess I can leave Austin now.

Pictures of Home

Back at work today, though I probably shouldn't be. My chest still makes that ooey-gooey sound when I cough or laugh. Actually, I'm leaving early so I can go to the doctor. Maybe she can give me something to make my boo-boo all better.

I got a nice piece of news this morning though: I may be going back to the US again in the spring! On someone else's dime! I'm excited!!

In these times of financial calamity and associated disasters, maybe this is the best way for me to go back home: as a tourist. A business-traveler, frequent flyer zombie. The truth is, the longer I live in Vienna, the more a trip to the US will begin to feel like a trip to Pluto. But nobody has mentioned this to my heart.

So I'm happy. Working in DC for a week would mean eating amazing Ethiopian food, picking up some good books, and swimming in English, the sweet, profane jarbled-up and slanged out language of my life. And that would be okay.

I do think of Vienna as home, in a way. But in another, less laugh-out-loud sort of way, I think of the US as home. And always will.

But where bexactly in the US is "home" for me? Austin, where I grew up, ate jalapenos as a rite of passage, and got my heart good and broke for the first time? NYC, where I got slick, ate rock CD's as a rite of professionalism, and got my heart broke in a less laugh-out-loud sort of way? Seattle, where I discovered the most ironic pinball arcade in the country? Los Angeles, where I "hung out" with punk and hip hop stars, and otherwise lived like an expense account king? South Dakota, where we buried my father? Or was home for me truly the back of an Econo-line van, wedged in between the drum kit and the guitars, where I lay, furiously scribbling too many adjectives into a notebook just like the one I'm writing in today?

Home is all of those places and none of those places. In other words, home is just an idea. Home is old times, good times, a lost world. I can't go back there.

I am sure I'd like to go shopping, stuff my face and even maybe see some old friends in the USA. That would be so fucking...fun.

Virus

Ever get that feeling that your eyeballs had headaches? Your cough has this extra catchy melody, and your chest sounds like some industrial-strength, extra-glitchy techno? Then you notice that other, smaller people in the room are coughing the same way? That's how it is here today.

Adinah is sick, I'm sick, Anette has gone to Innsbruck to teach a class. V. is the only one who feels close to 100 %. Unfortunately, she's three, and not entirely capable of taking care of her sister and her father.

Sigh.

Don't know if we have Swine flu, the Piglet virus, or just Stinkfoot. I took Adinah to the doctor the other day, and she said it's a virus, but she couldn't tell which one. She was reassuring, but I wonder if maybe we should go back for a second visit. Neither one of us has a fever, no puking nor excessive pooping, just low intensity 'blah's. Yuck.

It's a good thing Adinah likes to watch tv and sleep. That's about all I want to do.

overloaded

Sometimes my life is too full.

Like days when I meet an 18-year-old hate crime victim who's experienced such senseless violence but can somehow still smile. And then I see a friend's snapshot of her kid on his first roller coaster ride, taken at the instant his car went into free fall--so much terror in that young face it hurts to see it. And then the man in front of me at the subway ticket automat walks away and leaves an ATM card in the machine and I'm standing there with a co-worker I barely know and we have to figure out what to do because the guy is already gone.

So then I come home and almost the first thing I do is scold V. for running out of the front door when my back is turned but she's just exhausted from a busy day and anyway she just wanted to say goodbye again to Rosa, her favorite (and only) babysitter in the whole world. Then Adinah draws me beautiful pictures of princesses and African dancers. And V. sits next to me to help make the mashed potatoes and she tells me, "I love you, Papa," for the first time ever. Then she lays her head on my shoulder.

And Anette comes home and asks me how my day was and suddenly I'm trying to explain to her and Adinah (a simple version of) what happened to the hate crime victim and I get a lump in my throat and then I tell them what V. told me and I do cry and V. comes over and says, "Are you sad?" and I say, "No," but the truth is I don't even know exactly what I'm feeling, but I'm feeling a lot.

Sometimes it's too much. Too much.

the Problem of Leisure

Toilet seat up. "Hmmn...?" Both of my computers on the dining room table, along with the external hard drive, burner and speakers. "Whazza--? You'd think...." Seventies hard rok squawking from the stereo. "YEAH! That's what I'm--yeah!" Children's toys, not put away but merely shoved back against the walls.

Uh-huh. My wife and daughters are out of town. And in this very quiet apartment, I have become Talking to Myself Guy.

I can stay up as late as I want, and sleep late too. I could be Go to a Rave Take Ecstacy and Become Convinced that the World is One Guy. Or Walk the Streets All Night and Experience the Real Vienna Guy. Or even just drink two beers and Walk the Streets Part of the Night Guy. No. I think I'll stay home, edit family fotos, watch an old Western movie, and mutter. "The lighting in this scene--wait, lemme back it up--this is-whoa."

That's the kind of guy I am.

I really did drink two beers the other night. I mean two of the big ones. Tall boys.

Plus, yesterday, I did leave the house. I went to Prosi, our Asian-Latin-African grocery and bought a can of refried black beans and a jar of sliced jalapenos. Then I went to the main public library, and spent a few hours listening to music I've never heard while looking at coffee table picture books about sixties cinema and twentieth century Russia. Then I came back home, edited more family fotos and made nachos for one.

Completely useless, entirely exploratory, unhurried looking and listening. That's my excess.

Come and Get it

I'm flying back to the US today. For a little play and a lot of work. For two weeks! It's gonna be great. I must make preparations.

My itinerary is...energetic. I fly from Vienna to Washington, D.C., then three days later to Los Angeles, then three days after that to NYC. Thirty five hours later I take a bus to Boston. Then I fly back to DC, and two days later, I fly back to Vienna.

It's a work trip--I'm flying on someone else's dime--but the detour to NYC is purely personal. So far, my personal plans for the journey have focussed mostly on those thirty-five hours in the big apple. To precise, I've been try to calculate how many meals I can squeeze into my short time in Manhatta, and where I will be taking those meals. These are agonizing calculations. These are what my friend, Monkey, who I will see in Los Angeles, would call "quality problems." The kind of problems I wish I had more often.

In Vienna, your dining options are pretty much Schnitzel or Serbian. In New York, you got your Thai, Indian, Japanese, cracker-fried catfish, fresh bagels with whitefish, and the best goddamn cheeseburger in the world. That last would be at the Corner Bistro, on West 4th and Eighth Avenue. I'll make it there for sure.