Tag: 1975 Picnic
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Part Five: Homeward Bound
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I woke with a beam of sunshine streaming through a hole in the tarp into my face. I…
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Part Four: Help Me Make it Through the Night
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After a short rest and some food and beer, we began to make our way toward the stage.…
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Part Three: Riders On the Storm
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We arranged our tarp into a small tent. With our backs against the ice chest, the tarp came…
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Part Two: Things Get Weird
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“Who was that guy?” Mike asked. “He sounded like we should have seen him at the Prison Rodeo…

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Featured albums from the Listening Lounge

Read My Lips might be the purest example of Austin blues music available, and a statement album from one of the city’s biggest stars. Lou Ann Barton dominated the Austin Music Awards in the eighties. She won female vocalist of the year three times in five years before they gave up and put her in the hall of fame. Her voracious style was something legendary music journalist Margaret Moser liked to describe as “a voice that can peel chrome from a trailer hitch.”

Under the Double Ego was Kinky Friedman’s melancholic goodbye note to the music industry. It would be thirty-two eventful years before he recorded another studio album. When he recorded this one he was disillusioned and chose to work with the Austin based Sunrise label, despite their limited distribution network, rather than deal with corporate record executives. The album was produced locally by Sammy Allred (member of the Geezinslaws and long time radio personality who would eventually be included in the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.) The Texas Jewboys disbanded before the album was recorded leaving Kinky to assemble studio musicians from the crowded local talent pool, which included recruiting Chris O’Connell from Asleep at the Wheel fame.

On a cold February night in 1978 The Skunks played what is widely regarded as the first punk rock show in Austin, and for the next six years they continued to be a definitive presence. The three piece lineup evolved over the years, with bassist Jesse Sublett serving as the anchor. They pioneered a new sound leading acclaimed journalist Margaret Moser to declare, “In Austin’s punk rock history book, the Skunks are the first page.”
