Detail from the “Taking Pride in Austin” record’s cover. Image: Impact Broadcast Marketing / James Rambin
The world didn’t discover Austin yesterday, even if it might feel that way sometimes. Our local tourism industry, booming roughly as long as the city itself, saw 7.5 million visitors in 1989, though three decades later we’re looking at a yearly count closer to 30 million. With a lineup of new towers downtown, the ongoing success of Aqua Fest, and a small music event known as South by Southwest beginning to attract national attention in the closing years of the 1980s, the city had plenty worth bragging about — and so, in the well-meaning interests of civic boosterism, Austin cut an album.
“Taking Pride in Austin,” a vinyl LP released in 1989, was a collection of cheesy soft rock cuts featuring anodyne lyrics about the strength of Austin’s local economy, the city’s ongoing growth as a wonderful place to live, and the unspecified bright future all this neighborly love would doubtlessly create — starting with the title track:
Taking pride in Austin
A special place to be
Building for tomorrow
Making history
Growing up together
Stronger every day
Taking pride in Austin
Believing all the way
Produced by local news station KTBC, now better known as Fox 7, between its eight songs the record features brief historical vignettes narrated by KTBC personalities Stephanie Williams and Neal Spelce — the latter anchor best known for his gripping coverage of the UT Tower shooting in 1966, but doing a pretty good job here too:
There was a chill in the morning air at a place called Waterloo on the banks of the Colorado River. One of the hunters that day was the president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, and when he rode to the top of a tall hill, he paused, perhaps in wonder, because he saw spread out before him a beautiful location for a very special city — a capital city. A city called Austin.
— Neal Spelce, Taking Pride in Austin
Details from the album’s interior, looking at downtown circa 1989. Image: Impact Broadcast Marketing / James Rambin
The album’s suspiciously generic lyrics, which only occasionally use the word “Austin,” might have already clued you in that this project wasn’t exactly the labor of local love it appeared at first — the record, though sponsored by KTBC and a collection of local businesses, was actually a creation of Impact Broadcast Marketing, a now-defunct Nashville recording studio that cranked out “Taking Pride In…” albums for such glamorous locales as Cedar Rapids, Wichita, and “The Inland Northwest” with unsettlingly mechanical precision throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Say it ain’t so! Images: Discogs / Impact Broadcast Marketing
And yes, though their boppin’ tunes are slightly adjusted for the necessary number of syllables in a given regional name, the song lyrics on each album are exactly the same:
Taking pride in the Inland Northwest
A special place to be
Building for tomorrow
Making history
Growing up together
Stronger every day
Taking pride in the Inland Northwest
Believing all the way
Sales of the Austin album, according to the record sleeve, supported the local Ronald McDonald House — though it’s unclear how much of a splash the project’s release even made, if any, since we can’t find a word about it in the newspaper at the time. Despite the assembly-line nature of its lyrics, the album’s historical narration and overwhelming goofiness makes it, if not a critical artifact of local culture, something you might enjoy throwing on at a party. Just make sure everyone’s in on the joke.
(Cheers to our good buddy Caleb for digging this thing up.)
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