This week in Texas music history, a live album captures the dawn of Texas punk
Episodes written by Jason Mellard, Alan Schaefer, and Avery Armstrong
Big Boys and The Dicks record Live at Raul’s
Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University
I’m Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University. This Week in Texas Music History a live album captures the dawn of Texas punk.
On September 19 and 20, 1980, two of Austin’s early punk rock mainstays, the Dicks and the Big Boys, descended upon Raul’s, a bar at 2610 Guadalupe on the Drag across from the University of Texas. The result was a split live album entitled Recorded Live at Raul’s Club.
Roy “Raul” Gomez and Joseph Gonzalez had opened Raul’s as a Tejano bar on New Year’s Eve 1977, featuring the music of onda chicana artists like Salaman. It gained a new and different following quickly, though, when the Violators, arguably Austin’s first punk band, played in early 1978. Raul’s was ground zero for Austin’s emerging punk scene, helped along by the notoriety of a skirmish—some called it a riot—when Huns vocalist Phil Tolstead and five others were arrested on September 19, 1978 after a confrontation with Austin police. A 1979 LP captured this first wave of Raul’s denizens with recordings from the Explosives, the Skunks, Standing Waves, and Terminal Mind.
In 1980, it was the turn of the Big Boys and the Dicks, both known for raucous performances bolstered by scorching musicianship and hard-to-ignore frontmen. The Big Boys’ Randy “Biscuit” Turner, accompanied by guitarist Tim Kerr and company’s punk, funk, and soul rhythms, railed against a status quo music scene, while Dicks vocalist Gary Floyd brought a confrontational queer voice to punk that has perhaps never been equaled, buoyed by the Hendrix-meets-hardcore guitar of Glen Taylor.
The Big Boys and Dicks recorded their Raul’s album at a relatively early point in both bands’ histories. The Dicks had debuted at Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters just months prior and released their debut single, “Dicks Hate the Police.” The Big Boys also released their first record in 1980, a four-song 7” titled “Frat Cars.” The bands’ meeting on Recorded Live at Raul’s Club documents the fast-moving evolution of Austin punk and offers a fly-on-the-wall account of the action at the infamous Raul’s.
Sources:
Barry Shank. Dissonant Identities: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
John H. Slate in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
Tim Stegall, “Austin Punk Chronicles: The Shock of the New – The Violators and the Skunks Invade Raul’s, Austin Chronicle, August 5, 2022. https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2022-08-05/austin-punk-chronicles-the-shock-of-the-new-the-violators-and-the-skunks-invade-rauls/
