AOR Mystery: Whither Galloped Blackhorse?
Written by Jason Daniel Baker
Sunday, 19 July 2015 03:40
Mysterious Dallas, Texas power trio Blackhorse only released one album – a self-press demo it sent out in 1979 to club managers in hopes of getting gigs. The obscure recording is something of a collector’s item. With an estimated 1,000 copies in existence after a 1993 re-release on vinyl I count myself fortunate that someone saw fit to upload a copy to Youtube so that I could have a listen.
Little is known about this outfit of proud Texans because they just never hit big beyond the North Texas scene under the name Blackhorse. The band consisted of guitarist/vocalist Gary James, drummer/vocalist Jonathan Landreth Teague and bassist/vocalist Paul Anthony Middleton. Some accounts suggest the band started out in the early 1970s.
Further online chatter suggests they are from Mineral Wells, Texas, were active in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area and rocked clubs/bars like the Lone Star club, Motherlode’s, I Gotcha and Spencer’s Corner. Excerpts of their legendary show at radio KZEW’s Zoo World free concert in the Dallas County Convention Center in 1980 can also be found on Youtube.
Blackhorse’s self-titled promotional LP is 35 minutes & 44 seconds of pure hard rock gold every bit as good as any of the southern rock released on major record labels in the late 1970s. Punctuated by hot guitar riffs and three-part harmonies their sound has much in common with ZZ Top but the soulful texture also evokes Blackfoot, Van Halen, Molly Hatchet and even Boston at times.
The album leads off with the blistering track ‘Fox Huntin’ which should have been an FM rock radio classic. Solid, sugar-sweet southern rock tracks like ‘Lucille’, ‘Velvet Angel’ and ‘Momma Gonna Love You Tonight’ firmly place the album amongst the best of raunchy redneck rock. ‘Hell Hotel’ is probably the best track of the whole album.
But the ten track release very obviously leaves quite a bit to be desired – namely a second album and however many more they could have made with the same line-up and in the same genre. What happened to them? My speculation at first was that they began touring the outer limits of the twilight zone sometime in 1982 and are still there now.
In fact the story is far more gruesome. I’m talking weird-scary-bad gruesome. They became a five-piece hair band in the mid 1980s calling themselves The Cauze. Under that name they released an utterly putrid self-titled album in 1987 and also a cheesy video for a shitty keyboard driven song called ‘No Way’ which was shown on music video shows on MTV. This version of the band sounded like a rip-off of Peter Cetera-era Chicago only with the nauseating level going all the way up to 11.
The gruesome mutation of Blackhorse into The Cauze might well illustrate one of rock ‘n’ roll’s truisms. Sometimes a hot band will fall down a rabbit hole via the call of personal demons. Other times a hot band will leap head-first down a rabbit hole via the encouragement of arsehole record company executives. Whatever caused the mutation (rehearsals next to a nuclear power plant?) the only thing that might turn my stomach faster than The Cauze would be clown porn bestiality.
Word online is that they went on to change their name to Incognito. Evidently they at some point split up and re-formed as Blackhorse. One can only imagine what motivated the multiple changes in name. Did these good ol’ boys skip out on one strip club bar tab too many? None of my business really and in particular because I really don’t give a fuck.
What is known with certainty is that guitarist/vocalist Gary James died in late May 2015. Mere weeks previous to that the band had played numerous live shows as Blackhorse and had been together going back to at least 2008. The current status of the group is thus unclear.