The sound of split-knee brushed denim

Tomorrow night at Music Muziek Musique I'll be playing a selection of tracks by the so-called 'cocaine cowboys' - Southern Californian singer-songwriters and country-rock acts from the early 70s, including Gene Clark, Joni Mitchell, Judee Sill, Bonnie Raitt and Little Feat.
Pre-Punk, anything from the US singer-songwriters, in particular stuff on the Asylum label and out of Laurel Canyon was the hippest thing around. I remember going into Virgin Records on Newton Street in Manchester, which was about the size of a telephone box compared with today's Megastores and rushing to the last rack in the corner where they had all the latest US imports. You had to pay more for the privilege, but you got a thicker card sleeve and 180 gram vinyl.
If the album was released at all in the UK you would usually have to wait at least three months, and there weren't many import copies, so you had to be quick to get there first.
Having that import sticker was a badge of hipness - some people would buy anything on Asylum.
Another shop in Manchester where you could get imports was Black Sedan, near the poly on Oxford Road. When I first moved to Manchester at the end of '74, for 3 months I stayed at a guy called Phil's place who had spent 400 quid of his student grant on American imports from Black Sedan. We spent most of our time sitting around smoking joints and listening to the stuff.
The US material was completely different to the excesses of prog and metal, the main sounds coming out of the UK at the time. It was song-based and prog had disappeared up its own arse. The 'cocaine cowboys' were a big influence on pub rock - groups like Brinsley Schwarz, Chilli Willi and Man, they were big West Coast fans. In fact, a lot of those groups were active from the early 70s, so it was really proto-pub rock.
I was in a pub rock group that was originally called Loose Salute, after one of Michael Nesmith & The First National Band's albums (Loose Salute, 1970). Later, we changed the name to Bicycle Thieves, in homage to Vittorio De Sica. I sang and played rhythm guitar, and a guy called Richard Wright played lead (not the one from Pink Floyd - this Richard Wright would later achieve some success with Latin Quarter). For a time we were joined by a Fender Rhodes electric pianist and songwriter called Howard Jones (yes, the same one).
But by the time we had come out of the rehearsal room perfecting our West Coast harmonies and winsome guitar interplay, the winds of change were upon us and punk had arrived. Although we did manage to record a few radio sessions, sell out several nights at the Band on the Wall and get a nice review from Paul Morley.
When punk came along it wiped away everything before it, good and bad. And it's taken a while for stuff like this to get reassessed. Barney Hoskyns' book [Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967-1976] has certainly helped spur interest and bands like Midlake have something of a a Laurel Canyon/country-rock feel about them, while Norah Jones has covered Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark.

Stuart James, aka DJ Jammer (with thanks to Justin Toland and Nick Tomlin)