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Monday, August 08, 2005
FRAT CARS
Big Boys
The Skinny Elvis
1980
[Buy It]
IN THE CITY
Big Boys
The Skinny Elvis
1980
[Buy It]
COMPLETE CONTROL
Big Boys
The Skinny Elvis
1981
[Buy It]
DAMAGE 43
Big Boys
Wreck Collection
1983
[Buy It]
SOUND ON SOUND
Big Boys
The Fat Elvis
1983
[Buy It]
You weren't there, but we had a non-formal Moistworks convention the other weekend, on the occasion of Brian Howe's poetry reading (yes, we were ALL at a poetry reading, okay?). No sorts of ends were reached, save for the bottom of pint glasses and the broken potato chips on the sandwich basket waxpaper. Joanna wanted to fire me for posting a Randy Newman song. And Yancey snarkily proposed making me read aloud as a sort of competing poetry reading.
At a slightly less contentious moment of the night, when I was prattling on about Texas punk, Joanna suddenly asked if I had ever seen the Big Boys. I would've been four at the time, so no, but she went on to say that someone is currently making a movie about Tim Kerr, legendary guitarist for the Big Boys, Poison 13, Jack O'Fire, Lord High Fixers, Now Time Delegation, and all-around punk legend (and to those who have ever witnessed him live, a true keeper of fire music's flame).
The shadow of the Big Boys looms large (hah!) over all future punks in Texas (or anywhere, really). This was the band that your awesome uncle, skater-dating older sister, or local band dude elder hepped you to. The Big Boys were luminous guides from the dark of the early 80s that continue to beacon on into the present. As people continue to bandy about Black Flag and Minor Threat, few whisper much about the Boys. Were they too much fun? Did the type of punk-funk they meld together instantly turn sour in the hands of woeful progeny like the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Was Biscuit too glamorous, too fabulous a frontman to birth many imitators? This was the band that ended every show with the shout to "Go start your own band!" And dozens of freaky kids in Texas did so, Biscuit's rasped command creating a (pink car) pyramid scheme that Mary Kay and Ian McKaye would've loved.
I had to learn about them through the dude-elder route and the crucial Touch and Go reissues that wow, came out some twelve years ago, as the handscreened copies of Fun, Fun, Fun tacked on the wall were in the three digit range. It didn't really help that most of the liner notes from heavies like Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Thurston Moore, and Steve Albini say that you 'had to be there' to truly get it, with Biscuit dressed as a record or in a pink bunny costume or in cowboy drag or as a mummy or the band playing as the frat org called Kappa Kappa Kappa. I never met Biscuit, and was dorkily awed to be in the presence of Tim Kerr one night at Emo's when he pointed at me and said, "Nice shirt." I was in too much of a daze to realize that I was in fact wearing an old Big Boys tee.
posted by beta
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