YouTubing Nashville Rock: Allen Sullivant's Top Ten

If you find yourself looking for '80s-era Nashville rock music on YouTube, the first place you should go is to Allen Sullivant's "Practical Stylists" page. Allen, former manager of brother Scott's popular local band Practical Stylists, was there back in the day and knew all of the players on the scene. The curator of the Nashville '80s Rock Archive, Sullivant has all kinds of vintage video hidden away in his secret vault, and he trickles it out onto YouTube at a maddeningly slow pace. Here are Allen's top ten clips (so far):

1. Jason & the Scorchers "Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This is the one that kick-started it all, Jason & the Nashville Scorchers (EMI dropped the "Nashville" from the band's name fearing that it made them sound "too Southern." Yeah, well...). The first blast of blistering Nashville cowpunk reinvents Dylan's classic tune with endless energy and a fresh perspective. Lots of local scene people among the crowd scenes, a great Warner Hodges' guitar solo and spectral Jack Emerson, the Scorchers' co-manager, overseeing the entire affair from his seat on the riverboat. Timeless, rocking, essential Scorchers....

2. Jason & the Scorchers "Shotgun Blues/Ghost Town"
By 1986 the Scorchers had played a couple hundred nights on the road and the chemistry between the band members onstage was undeniable. This high-voltage performance was taken from a short-lived late-night variety show called After Hours, broadcast by Nashville's local CBS affiliate, Channel Five. Skip to the show's closing credits and the boys cranking out the red-hot instrumental "Ghost Town" as the names roll.

3. Bill Lloyd & the December Boys "Nothing Comes Close"
Also from Channel Five, a performance of pure pop for now people by Bill Lloyd & the December boys, an appearance from Nashville's annual Summer Lights Festival, circa 1986. Gee, wasn't that Scott Sullivant playing bass? Better known as one-half of the country/rock duo Foster & Lloyd, it is Bill's pop/rock songwriting skills that have endeared him to at least two generations of Nashville rock music fans.

4. The Questionnaires "Window To The World"
This is a creative, visually-exciting clip for the title song from the Questionnaires 1989 major label debut album, Window To The World, featuring vocals by frontman Tom Littlefield, one of Nashville rock's best songwriters. The Questionnaires were one of the scene's most underrated bands, releasing two albums for EMI America before the onslaught of Seattle grunge stamped "paid" on the Questionnaires', and many other band's careers.

5. Guadalcanal Diary "Watusi Rodeo"
Not exactly Nashville - Marietta, Georgia, actually - but a cool clip nevertheless. Guadalcanal Diary did tour with R.E.M., who once slept on Jack Emerson's living room floor, who managed the Scorchers...okay, so it's a "six degrees of separation" thing. This low-budget video from 1983 rocks, though, Guadalcanal Diary one of the best bands among a vital early-80s Southern regional scene that included R.E.M., Pylon, Love Tractor, Let's Active, Jason & the Scorchers, Civic Duty, the White Animals and Practical Stylists, among many others.

Among these top ten videos, Sullivant's best find has to be the four part series on the Nashville "new wave" music scene that was broadcast as part of Channel Four Magazine, a news and entertainment show produced by Nashville's local NBC network affiliate. Hosted by long-time Music City TV personality Charlie Chase, the series is covered by reporter Lonnie Lardner, the daughter of famed screenwriter and journalist Ring Lardner, Jr. The series is every bit as laughable as one might think, with the lamentably unhip Chase predictably confused and Lardner honestly stating that she found this music to be a "little loud for me." Well, honey, like Ted Nugent once said, "if the music's too loud, then you're too old!"

6. Nashville New Wave 1983 (Part One)
Part one of this series focuses on "new wave" fashion, which Lardner attempts to describe as a mix of safety-pin '70s punk, '50s leather fetishism and '60s hippie youth culture, or "punk in drag." They use clips from The Donahue Show, with parents blasting kids for looking the way they do, combined with videos by the Sex Pistols and the Plasmatics for shock value. An interview with Jim Baker, owner of the "hip" clothing boutique Roxy, is not nearly as funny as the "new wave" fashion show set to Prince's "1999." This is not a particularly "new wave" song, but I guess that it was more familiar for the reporter than something by Ultravox.

7. Nashville New Wave 1983 (Part Two of Four)
Kicking off with a live performance clip of the Replacements blowing out eardrums at the concrete bunker that was known as Cantrell's, Lardner makes sure to point out that the band was so loud that it shut down the microphone on their video camera. They jump to In Pursuit - perhaps as close to a "new wave" band as you would have found in Nashville during the early-80s - and then to Jason & the Nashville Scorchers, live in Atlanta. An interview with a young, baby-faced Warner Hodges, the Scorchers' guitarist, leads to the infamous clip of Nashville Network host Ralph Emery dissing the band on air. Interviews with Andy McLenon, the Scorchers' other co-manager, and Warner's parents Ed and Blanche Hodges, are interesting, if short, and why the heck did they use a Martha & the Muffins' video clip in this segment?

8. Nashville New Wave 1983 (Part Three of Four)
Country-styled dinner at the Hodges house! More Jason & the Nashville Scorchers live! A Hodges family jam! Part three of the series is the most fun, because you get to hear more from Warner Hodges and his parents Ed and Blanche, who not only support Warner's rock & roll career, heck, cool rocking daddy Ed gets up on stage and kicks out the jams with Jason, Warner, Jeff and Perry!

9. Nashville New Wave 1983 (Part Four of Four)
The final part of the series has the reporter and the producers obviously going through the motions to just finish the damn thing. WKDA-FM program director Smoky Rivers explains the station's move towards a more "new wavish" playlist, we go back to Phil Donahue for more inter-generational wordplay, and Nashville hairdresser Rique fozzes it up with a spunky new 'do' for some young debutante. For some reason we get video clips from Flock Of Seagulls, Men At Work and the Thompson Twins, none of which have anything to do with Nashville music.

The "Nashville New Wave 1983" series offers no conclusions beyond a reassuring dismissal of "Nashville new wave" as a "trend among wealthy kids" looking for a way to look decadent on Saturday night. As brother Willie J. told me at the Psychedelic Furs show in Nashville way back when, "these kids are trying to get back at their parents for something." As somebody who was there, I can honestly say that the Nashville rock scene circa 1983 looked nothing like what Channel Four took nearly a half-hour of airtime to show us. No, kind readers, this is what the Nashville rock scene looked like at the time:

10. Practical Stylists "E=Mc2" & "Know What I Know"
Live at Cantrell's, you have the popular early-80s Nashville band performing their unabashedly pop/rock sound in front of an eager and energetic audience. Nuff said....