In the late 1980’s - 1990’s I liked club music. We had a few nice live music clubs in OKC, like VZD’s on Western, and some near campus. I made out to Eurotrash music with a very pretty young woman I didn’t know at time on the second floor of some dimly lit club near the campus. I don’t remember what the name of the club was, or the girl, but she had to have been one of two or three. But that was decades ago, and I was young – two are since passed.
Come to think of it, I don’t think it was a good idea to have stairs in a bar, but that’s an aside.
Funny how your memory holds certain things and trashes other, more important ones.
End of digression.
Supertramp and the 1980’s banking crisis (probably not connected)
Supertramp came to Norman, OK in 1982 and again in 1985, I think, and performed at the Lloyd Noble Arena, a sports venue at the very south end of campus. I saw both shows (Famous and Brother). They are excellent musicians, write great songs, and are meticulous about their concert sound, so the shows were a treat.
Sidenote: at one of the two shows, I forget which, a tile fell from the ceiling onto the stage, and seemed to startle some of the artists. I don’t think it was planned, but it was a nice addition to the theatrics, and if the band were Pink Floyd, you would know that it had been on purpose.
Oklahoma attracted big acts at the time because it was awash in oil money, but all that money was speculative due to a symbiosis of East Coast bankers looking for something to invest in and good old boy cowboys convincing them there were oceans of oil under the prairie soil.
When the investments turned out not to be backed by liquid gold , a national bank crisis ensued, the Oklahoma economy tanked, and we were lucky to attract a show by the members of Quiet Riot who got kicked out of the band for drug abuse, which itself is a pretty low bar.
First or second essential postscript:
Until a fellow fan jogging my memory:
I remember it vividly – Nervous Wreck was the sign off song for the local station that had to shut down at sunset before WLS swept the airwaves with its mega powerful broadcasts. Not to mention Mexican radio.
I was rounding a broad curve of a two-lane highway, and the fading sunset was briefly ahead of me then to the left as I completed the curve. Purple-blue-pink-orange, but Old Sol was already in bed, and the prairie air smelled fresh, like the tall tossing grass was giving back all the moisture it had absorbed during the day, but with perfume.
Concluding atmospheric digression:
This all occurred in the context of “Urban Cowboy” and “Dallas.” The nation was in a cowboy craze. I even bought a nice pair of boots, more expensive than I could afford, from a tack shop in the stockyards district along Agnew. But I never gave in to a straw hat because my head is oddly shaped, and it would only have drawn attention to it.
Appendix
I attended college at the University of Oklahoma in the late 1980’s-early 1990’s. I now live in its hometown, Norman. I also went to Oklahoma State, but that scene was about 98% country music at the time (mid 1990’s). Still fun to hear live music when the performers are good. And I met my wife there.
Second or third postscript that maybe only a college rival can appreciate:
Wben you drive to Oklahoma State University from Oklahoma City, the only road to campus goes past a huge experimental pig farm, and you can smell it long before you see it. A wall of stink.
Appendix II: (For more on the Oklahoma-then-National bank crisis, set off by the domino of Penn Square Bank, see the book “Funny Money.”)
Postscript 3, part 2:
I have forgotten it.
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