When people ask me my ethnic background I have been known to say that I am 1/4th Swiss, 1/4th Scottish and 1/2 Texan.  I am not quite sure of the hillbilly roots on my fathers side, but its a pretty reasonable guess that his family was living in Texas between 1836 and 1845 when Texas was known as The Republic Of Texas and was in no way part of these United States.  And since I don’t really know what else I am made of (I have heard rumors of French, Irish, Dutch and German) I just consider myself part Texan.  My father spent the first 20 sum years of his life living in Denton, TX a small one horse town suburb of Dallas.  My grandmother still resides in Argyle which is a 0 horse town which is pretty much a suburb of Denton.  (Full disclosure, my grandmother owned at least one horse and at some point in my life it tried to buck me off and I held on because even at 9 years old I was a bad ass.)  My grandmother is also pretty much a bad ass and she proved to me that living in a trailer home is not as bad as it is made to seem in the movies.  She also retired from her job when she was 70 in order to become a truck driver with her husband who taught me to shoot a gun when I was like 7.

Anyway, I could write many paragraphs about my father’s life in Texas before he quit eating meat and became a sell out corporate lawyer and bought me this Mac Book, but that is not the point of this blog entry.  The point is to show you this NY Times article my dad sent me this morning about the Denton, TX rock scene.  The article talks about how Denton is the new Austin and the hipsters are leaving Austin because it is too commercial and trendy.  Now I have spent a good deal of time in both Denton and Austin and I will tell you this:  Denton is pretty much the town that George McFly grew up in in the first Back To The Future… Austin is not.  The funny thing is, that the NY Times article said almost EXACTLY that about a decade after I first thought it.  Denton has like one record store and 3 bars and this amazing hardware store that my dad told me has not changed since he was a kid in the 50’s.

There is a college there UNT, of which my father is a proud alum.  He briefly played on the same football team there as Mean Joe Green and he played clarinet in the school marching band. That is not exactly living the rock and roll dream but I do now own a copy of the UNT marching band’s record, which is exactly one more records than I have from his surf rock band who’s dream of fame was horrifically ended when their lead singer was run over by a motorboat and killed.  But these are the things you have to deal with when you are living in Texas.

Anyway, next time I am in Denton, I am going to have to check out this so-called rock scene.  It sounds fun.

Download: Midlake – Roscoe
For more Free Denton music check out Anyone’s Guess.

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