Jon Carroll is a regular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the best things about the paper at times. ======= He's About A Mover JON CARROLL Wednesday, November 24, 1999 URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/24/DD75336.DTL FOR ME, LIVING in the Bay Area in the late '60s, Doug Sahm started out as something of a mystery. The name of his group was the Sir Douglas Quintet, and the first album I bought by him, "Honkey Blues,'' featured psychedelic lettering, the always popular dumb collage of family photos, plus a picture of Sahm looking a lot like Stevie Winwood. So, another British invasion group, I thought. The one tip-off that this might not be the whole story was that something called "Amigos de Musica'' shared co-production credit. And then there were the songs, which had some strong Brit/Cal influences (titles included "Can You Dig My Vibrations,'' "Whole Lotta Peace of Mind'' and "Song of Everything'' -- those of you experiencing flashbacks are urged to loosen your clothing and not operate heavy machinery -- plus what remains one of my favorite song titles ever, "You Never Get Too Big and You Sure Never Get Too Heavy, That You Don't Have to Stop and Pay Some Dues Sometime,'' and ain't that the truth, brother?). But there was this accordion thing going and organ riffs throughout the album that sounded nothing at all like "A Whiter Shade of Pale,'' the only song about vomiting ever to become a standard, and it was, well, different. I was listening to Tex-Mex music and I didn't know it. There was a time when San Francisco was a mecca for every sort of popular musician, a time when everyone had to check it out if only to leave disgusted, a time that can be roughly dated from the arrival of Janis Joplin from Brownsville to the last echoing chord of Garth Hudson's organ in the "Last Waltz'' concert. And we audience-like people just took it all in, assumed that the world was always like this. There's a guy on sitar and there's B.B. King and there's Buck Owens and hello Miles Davis and "Dark Star'' and Frank Zappa and, wait, Lou Reed, and I really didn't know anything about anything except that it was all music. And Doug Sahm was right in there, a psychedelic cowboy. He had a couple of hits with "Mendocino'' and "She's About a Mover'' and kept churning out albums, getting Texier and Mexier all the time, so the songs had titles like "Nuevo Laredo'' and "Seguin'' and the astonishing "Oh Lord, Please Let It Rain in Texas.'' And I just kept listening. DIGRESSION: THAT center-of-the-world thing is happening again on a much larger scale -- everyone has to come to the Bay Area because right now it is the engine room of the globe. Maybe it's true in music too -- I lost track of that when I stopped going to clubs and changed the buttons on my car radio -- but it's definitely true for writers and artists and hustlers of all stripes. Silicon madness. We should just breathe deeply and think that it will not be always like this, but right now 90 percent of the truly amusing humans on the planet are north of Salinas and south of Boonville, and we should remember it and watch for the artifacts of the accidental collaborations. Of course, it's all about money. So was the Dutch mercantile empire. Money is unwitting; it does not know what it is making. Somewhere: Rembrandt comma 21st century equivalent of. DOUG SAHM DIED last week, way too young, of undisclosed but natural causes, in a motel room. I am so bloody tired of musicians checking out early I could scream (Randy Newman: Get some exercise! Tom Waits: Have you had your annual checkup?), but at least Sahm's music stays behind because he never stopped working, never stopped recording. His later stuff, after he renamed his band the Texas Tornados, was far more straight-ahead Tex-Mex rock /blues, with side trips into Mexican conjunto tunes, and it was always honest music honestly delivered. Wish I could have shaken his hand and said "thanks''; this will have to do. Another one bites the dust, and we sigh and sing laud and remember. Oh Lord, Please let it rain on jrc@sfgate.com