The Armadillo World Headquarters is almost no more, Ever since it opened its doors ten years ago it has ranked hands down as the finest popular music showcase in Texas, but in five months the former National Guard armory will be razed to make way for a highrise hotel and parking garage. A hundred years from now musicologists will insist that a historical marker be placed on the property. But living legends don't qualify as landmarks. The nondescript if not downright ugly building might have been saved if it had the grande-dame facade of those vintage downtown theaters that civic groups so ardently protect. But the only architectural features about the facility that are really distinctive are the wall paintings of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, the Guacamole Queen, and other local celebrities and the wisteria-covered beer garden out back. The acoustics aren't the greatest, either, and the place can be unbearable on a summer night because there's no air conditioning.

But other things have made the Armadillo World Headquarters synonymous with Texas and with music. Foremost is an aggressive booking policy that presents live national and local talent two hundred nights a year, with enough variety to satisfy even the most hard-core music lovers. Perhaps that statement is weighted by the fact that the Armadillo has been an integral part of my life for the past decade and we share the same eclectic tastes. It makes perfectly good sense to me, for instance, to present Bill Monroe one night and Ravi Shankar the next, Fats Domino after that, then Mighty Clouds of Joy or Jerry Jeff Walker, and then a Sunday performance of Stanley Hall's Austin Ballet Theatre. Show me another club or concert hall as adventurous as that.

I'm not sure whether my all-time-favorite night at the Armadillo was watching psychedelic pioneer Roky Erickson share the stage with country-pop crooner Freddy Fender and hometown rocker Doug Salim, seeing a young Jersey kid named Bruce Springsteen for a dollar, watching Emmylou Harris open a show for Commander Cody, hearing the jazz of avant-gardist Ornette Coleman performed by his former associates Old & New Dreams, or listening to Dexter Gordon blow sax like it was meant to be blown. Or maybe it was hearing Van Morrison, or Captain Beefheart, or the Clash jamming with Joe Ely.