Texas has always had a complicated relationship with rebellion, but in the late 1970s and early '80s a new kind of rebellion was taking shape – not in politics or business, but in music, art, and culture.
Punk rock came to Texas not just as an import from New York or London, but as a force that reflected the state's contradictions: Angry, yet funny; sloppy, but brilliant; self-destructive, but surprisingly affirming in some ways.
Pat Blashill's new book, "Someday All the Adults Will Die! The Birth of Texas Punk," is a deep dive into that scene – the clubs, the backyard shows, the drag, the drugs, the defiance – from the first waves of The Ramones and Sex Pistols to the uniquely Texan sounds of the Big Boys, Hickoids, Butthole Surfers and more.
He joined the Standard to talk about his new book. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Your book captures this first wave of Texas punk. How would you describe that scene to someone who's never been near a punk show in the Lone Star State?
Pat Blashill: Well, I broke it down into kind of sub-waves, I suppose, but I mean, a lot of groups in Texas sort of were inspired by groups from England and New York and Los Angeles later, but the first wave of Austin bands were, I think, very excited, but a little derivative.
And then there was a sort of second wave that came around the time that American bands started going hardcore or playing hardcore punk.
Most Texas bands didn't sound like other hardcore bands, but they were kind of infused with this energy that was for many intimidating and frightening. But the bands here took this idea of hardcore, not as a sound, but as an aesthetic about being extreme. Whatever you're doing, it just had to be extreme.
And for me, that's where things got really, really interesting around '81 or '82.
You said "Austin," and I want to underscore something here because of course there were punk scenes in a lot of Texas cities, but you're focusing here on what I think many consider to be the epicenter of Texas punk. Why Austin?
I focus on Austin because I was here. I focus on it because I'm an Austin snob and I thought that it was the center of the universe.
I was corrected and I was wrong, because the things that were happening in other cities were notable and striking. There were great bands in those other Texas cities, but I think even people in Dallas and Houston and San Antonio might agree that there was kind of more stuff happening all at once in Austin. I was lucky.
Certainly there was a big music community in Austin, but completely different strands. I mean nothing that would seem to sort of parallel the spirit of punk, I think.
You'd be surprised – the history of music in Austin is much more connected than some people might think.
There's an easy line from punk rock in Austin back to '60s garage rock groups like the 13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erickson, pretty much the center and star of the Elevators in the '60s, then resurfaced in Austin in the '70s and was playing at punk clubs with punk musicians.
Compare, though, what was happening in Austin with, say, the scene in New York or London or L.A. at the time. Do some name-dropping here about some of the punk rockers that were making noise in Austin and creating waves beyond Austin city limits, pardon the pun.
Well, my personal favorites were the Big Boys, The Dicks, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid… There was a really crazy sorta queer folk-punk band called Meat Joy.
So, you know, pick your influence, pick your kind of fame. The Butthole Surfers actually defied everyone's expectations and had a Top 40 hit eventually.
Poison 13 was a group that didn't make a big splash outside of Austin for some. They only toured once, I believe. But they ended up being a big influence on the Seattle grunge bands of about seven or eight years later.
The Big Boys were a touring band, a touring punk band that was very beloved nationally, but they didn't ever sort of break out and have a hit. I don't think they were interested in that.
So, it kind of breaks down to you describing or defining what you would call a success.
I'm not so much thinking of success. I was more thinking about the shockwaves. There was something that was seen to be uniquely wild about what was happening in Austin.
But I think you're touching on something that really comes out, and that is the social engagement and identity this scene sort of represented and, in a way, embodied. Wouldn't you say?
Yeah. And I mean, I think that in New York and in England, you had people that were reacting to their local conditions, but also they had media and money – record labels, producers – that were there sort of transmitting and translating what they were doing. You didn't have that in Austin.
So in Austin, you just had an incredibly creative community. And Texas also, not just Austin, but the Texas bands were an incredibly creative bunch and a community that were interacting with an extremely repressive, conservative, political, religious, and cultural environment.
You know, Texas, as much as I love it, is very, very old-fashioned, I guess is a nice way to put it. And most of the bands and the people that I knew, we loved that part of Texas, but we felt, you know, straight-jacketed by some of the things that seemed to be expected of us.
This book touches on some of these stories that have taken on a sort of larger-than-life legend. Decades after it happened, people in Austin still talk about the lead singer of The Huns kissing a cop during a raid, right? The Big Boys' frontman performing in this suit made of bologna sandwiches.
There was something about what was happening in Austin that really did seem certainly different than just the shock value of spiky hair and safety pins.
Yeah, and I think, you know, in its own way, it was good, clean fun.
I mean, maybe not that clean, but it was – we were just having a lot of fun with this and none of us could take ourselves too seriously because the bands knew that they probably weren't going to get some sort of major label record deal. And so you didn't have these delusions of fame that might follow. So I think that lets people off the hook and they don't feel like they have to sort of conform in a certain way.
But I think generally there was a playful, very smart, very literate attitude, and what a lot of people did was to sort of turn inside-out the stereotype of a Texan. People were sort of playing with this idea of a hick or a redneck, and they made that into a shtick that was interesting and fun and was very self-aware.
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