A few days ago a friend of mine, Jesse Sublett of the Skunks, sent me an email letting me know he had uploaded a few band videos from his archives, playing at Austin's infamous and long dead Raul's niteclub down on the Drag. The grainy distorted videos, not helped by the YouTube process, were definitely not MTV worthy. In fact, at the time they were filmed there was no MTV. Despite the limitations of 70s home video technology, it still brought back memories of a club, and bands, long consigned to the history books, yet still having an important impact on Austin's music scene today.
In the 70s, long before Austin, was known as a live music town, there were few live music venues, and even fewer willing to risk their beer license by booking punk rock acts. No wonder; Raul's itself made national news AND Rolling Stone and was almost closed down after the Hun's lead singer, Phil Tolstead, was arrested onstage. Charged with inciting a riot during their debut performance after he tried to kiss a cop while singing the song "Eat Death Scum," the stage was bum rushed by undercover officers. For more on this boisterous period, and the band that made Austin a "scene,"check out "
The Improbable Rise of Asshole Rock" by Tom Huckabee, the Hun's former percussionist.
The Huns were psychodramatic chthonian performance art; and the gauche and vulgar, spectacular meaning of it all could only be fathomed live. On the eight or nine occasions when the alchemy really worked, we bore a hole to hell and stole the devil's own fire. Otherwise, we sucked.
— Tom Huckabee - The Huns
Hollywood Hills, February 1995
The good old, bad old days in Austin are gone, Raul's is gone, Phil Tolstead found god, the cops have found better things to do with their time like shooing away the homeless guys holding parking spaces hostage downtown, and the only musicians getting arrested in this town now are doing so for their off-stage antics rather than anything you could consider a performance. There seem to be no more envelopes left to push. It was an interesting time to live in Austin but one we won't see again.
Jesse's email sent me on a hunt to see if I could locate any more Raul's footage. After searching YouTube prodigiously and coming up with very little, I then started to look for bands that played Raul's in its heyday instead. I did find a number of videos by some of the bands of the period. Some of videos are downright awful, others are watchable, all of them are enjoyable and in a way each offers a little slice of time from Austin's musical history.
