When my  husband and I went to London in 1985, it was at the height of the "Dark Cowboy" craze in Britain.  I remember shopping at this tangled maze of shops in a big building on Kensington High Street.  You could buy all kinds of "western" themed apparel.  Decorative silver tips for the collar of your shirt and the toes of your boots.  Bolo ties.  Black gaucho hats.  Long duster coats.

We had already been through the "Urban Cowboy" thing in the U.S., and of course, there is probably no period of time more romanticized and mythologized here than the old west.  But it was really interesting to see this quintessentially American myth interpreted through the British fashion and music scene.  These weren't shit kickin' cowboys.  These were melancholy and mysterious gunslingers.  They wouldn't have lasted two minutes out on the prairie.

Also available at the Kensington Market were an endless array of bootleg cassette tapes.  And it was actually a friend of ours who picked up one called "Texas Instrumentals" that still survives to this day. Before I could wear it out, though, and after cassette players became virtually extinct, we transferred it to CD, where I just came across it again recently.

Most of the tracks are actually from the very early 1960's, which makes it even funnier that these bands and their guitar interpretations of the American west made a resurgence in post-punk London. I am always fascinated when American music and culture is filtered this way.  (It's worth noting, too, that it was around 1960 when the "spaghetti western" film emerged.)  I think it's incredibly enlightening to see your own culture reflected back at you.

Through the miracle of YouTube, here are a few of my favorite tracks from "Texas Instrumentals", by way of 1960's and 1980's England.  Some of them really stretch the defintion of "western", but that's part of what makes it so interesting.

 The Fentones - "The Mexican"