Tex Pistol shoots back at country criticism

Press, 9 December 1988, Page 25

Tex Pistol shoots back at country criticism

By

NEVIN TOPP

THE COUNTRY elements in Tex Pistol’s debut album, “Nobody Else,” are causing some bother. Even this newspaper has not been exempt. The review of the album a fortnight ago was meant to start with "never mind the bullocks, here’s Tex Pistol,” but a gremlin changed the “u” in bullocks to an “o.” Oh, oh, what started out as a country play on the words of the Sex Pistol album suddenly took a serious turn.

Trevor Reekie, head of Pagan Records, which has released “Nobody Else,” says that the country elements of the record have bothered a few people. But he is enthusiastic about the LP, as it was at No. 43 in the charts two weeks ago after two days of sales/ climbing to No. 28 last week.

lan Morris, a.k.a. Tex Pistol, replies to the country criticism by saying that “Nobody Else” is not a critic’s album. “No offence, intended,” he says. It was just an album of good music, “the kind of record you can put on at a party or at some other time and enjoy it.” Another criticism of the LP is that it has material on it that has already been released, Morris says. However, “The Ballad Of Buckskin Bob” only sold 200 copies as a single, in spite of it being sent to all the critics and radio stations. The song was completely ignored. In the case of "The Game Of Love,” copies of the single were all sold out and the record company could not do any more. The hit song did not even go gold. Morris agrees that the album

is a tribute to New Zealand music. A lot of good Kiwi music came out in the last 10 years, but a lot of it was ignored, partly because of poor production, and out-of-tune singing and out-of-tune guitars, he said. Morris ought to know about good Kiwi music. He was a member of Th’ Dudes, led by Dave Dobbyn, and joined Dobbyn in DD Smash for a while. He was engineer behind the best Hello Sailor albums, produced DD Smash’s “Cool Bananas” LP and also one for the Screaming MeeMees, and was a member of the Pink Flamingos. Morris, aged 31, now works at Wellington’s Soundtrax studios, mainly making commercials. The album has great New Zealand standards such as “Sitting In The Rain,” the old Underdogs hit, “Hands of My Heart,”

The Warratahs popular song from earlier this year, and “Buckskin Bob,” by Les White, a former colleague of Morris in Th’ Dudes Who wrote the song when in Daggy and The Dickheads shortly after Morris left the band.

“If you want to be commercially successful — and they are not dirty words — then you have got to produce stuff that people want to hear. That’s what this LP is all about,” says Morris.

In spite of its country element, it is unlikely that Tex will ever make it to the Golden Guitar Awards in Gore. The country material on the album is too “tongue in cheek,” he says.

A Tex Pistol tour seems extremely unlikely. Morris has a full-time job, and the logistics of putting such a tour together, especially the finances, seemed too steep. Morris says that he has had a few nibbles from promoters, and there was talk of a joint tour with his brother, Rikki, but because his brother was in Auckland and Tex was based in Wellington the problem of getting together became too much. The other surprise of Tex’s LP, with the mixture of country, R. and 8., and pop, is how well the second single, “Nobody Else” sounds. Morris says that the pressing of the single was not good, and the song sounds a lot better on the LP. He also believes he could have dragged up another golden oldie and given it “The Game Of Love” treatment, but it would have meant a short career. “Nobody Else” was a gamble as a single, but the desire to do something different was important to Morris. “You get bored quickly doing the same thing.”