WHEN MATES MAKE BOOKS - Pat Blashill, Someday All the Adults Will Die! - The Birth of Texas Punk

 

Writer-photographer Pat Blashill is a very old mate. We've been friends since 1989, after working together on some stories in New York for Melody Maker - he did the artist portraits and I wrote up the interviews. One of them was Sun Ra, would you believe!

Before he moved to New York, Pat was involved in Austin's punk-and-after scene, documenting the mayhem in real-time with his camera. That pictorial trove fed into his first book Texas Is The Reason. Now Blashill has written the definitive history on the Texas punk and postpunk scene. Someday All The Adults Will Die! For which I was glad to offer this ringing endorsement: 

"Texas had America’s wildest, weirdest punk-and-after scene – a primal playpen of shock rock, instinctive Dada, psychedelic freakout, performance art, scream therapy and absurdist anti-politics. Austin native Pat Blashill was in the thick of it, photographing the messy madness as it unfolded. In Some Day All The Adults Will Die!, Blashill shepherds the ultra-vivid memories of his contemporaries and threads through his own hindsight insights, forming an essential document thick with the textures of a long-gone real-gone time.  Hilarious and poignant, this is a story never before told – and an inspiration to future free-thinkers and trouble-makers."

Published by the University of Texas Press, Someday All the Adults Will Die! is available here. 

Texassquake

Had a blast chatting with Paul Leary and King Coffey of Butthole Surfers for Pitchfork about their latest batch o' reissues: Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis, Locust Abortion Technician, Hairway to Steven. 

The chaos-capturing pix are by my old friend Pat Blashill (author of Lone Star punkscene photohistory Texas Is The Reason), reuniting us on the same page for possibly the first time since Melody Maker days.

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Had a really interesting chat with Greek journalist Angelos Kletsikas about Futuromania -  touching on subjects like retro culture, AI, politics + pop, form versus content, and the imperishable appeal of raves. 

RIP Teresa Taylor

 

Sad to hear about the way-too-early departure of Teresa Taylor of the Butthole Surfers

Well remember her contribution to the sonic and visual impact of the Buttholes live, flailing flame-haired at her kit as half of the group's double-drummer attack. For a flashback taste, jump to about 2.58 into this, or 3.48 

And of course her steals-the-show appearance in Slacker.

Met Teresa just the once, when doing an interview with the Buttholes in late '87 - an experience akin to being a supply teacher assigned a particularly unruly class and being completely unable to keep order. For nothing resembling an interview took place - it was more like I was a witness or eavesdropper on an hour of Butthole banter.  But that makes them sound fearsome, when in fact they were absolutely amiable - and she was particularly sweet.  

This picture with her and Gibby entwined in TP is by Andrew Catlin and is from the Melody Maker - as used in David Stubbs April '88 cover story (the first of two Butthole Surfers front covers in 1988). 

WHEN MATES MAKE BOOKS

My old friend Pat Blashill, writer and photographer, has just published a book of his pictures of the Austin punk>postpunk>80s-alt scene: Texas is the Reason: The Mavericks of Lone Star Punk.  Pat came of age in the thick of the scene that included bands like Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, and Scratch Acid. Alongside the photos, there's guest texts from Richard Linklater (whose Slacker was filmed there and effectively documented that scene as it reached the '90s) Theresa Taylor the flame-haired Buttholes drummer (and Slacker actress),  David Yow of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard, and others.

Here's some excerpts from Texas is the Reason at The Austin Chronicle, plus an interview with Pat. Here's a quote where he explains the book's title:

'There’s a Misfits song called “Bullet” about the assassination of JFK in Dallas. It includes the line, “Texas is the reason that the president's dead.” I read a review of that single that made a really great point about how America, and maybe especially Texas, has a death wish. Texas is this crazy extreme place, and I think that extreme stuff is what made this music happen in Austin. The bands were reacting against racism, sexism, and conformity, and all of the things we grew up with. They messed around with this idea of being stupid, conservative redneck people. One of the interviews I did was with [Butthole Surfers drummer] King Coffey, who reminded me that when they started the band, they were well-versed art students, and you could say that about a lot of people in the scene. The Buttholes really tried to portray themselves as these weird perverts from the backwoods. None of us really were that, but some people could play with it and turn it on its head.' 


                                           

The book is available from Bazillion Points, the publishing imprint specialising in heavy 'n' hard musics launched by Ian Christe.

Me on the Austin slackerdelic vibe when it reached the shores of the U.K.

maxed out

The theme of the new issue of The Wire is maximalism. It's a really enjoyable read that explores the appeal (or repulsion-edging-into-fascination) of musical manifestations of aesthetic excess and sonic surplus.

There's Greg Tate on P-Funk, Michaelangelo Matos on psy-trance (complete with ultra-garish photo of Shpongle and their audience!), Daniel Wilson on the history of explosives in music, David Toop on syrupy strings in countrypolitan and soul,  and many other treats. There's also me with a piece about overcoming postpunk less-is-more conditioning and learning to take pleasure in guitar solos.

Now that was a really fun piece to write. Not least because I remade the acquaintance of some overloaded and obese tracks that I hadn't listened to in many a year. I couldn't quite put back on the head that wigged out to Butthole Surfers and ransacked Bataille's Visions of Excess for a conceptual language adequate to the soiling immensity torrenting out of Paul Leary's axe. But Royal Trux's ruined majesty sounds as glorious as ever.

"The Buttholes tear up the petty list of inhibitions, no-go areas, size restrictions and taste directives which impeded the thinking of 80s indie and college types. Now, everything is wide open and justifiable. Nothing is sacred, all things are possibly art"

- the Wingco on Locust Abortion Technician, c/o the Quietus