Big Boys interview originally appeared in Thrillseeker #2. Special Thanks to Steve Kiviat for permission to use it.

The following interview with the Big Boys,from Austin Texas took place on Sunday January 2nd at the 930 club. The Big Boys were there to see the matinee show and were hoping to get added to the bill. But due to the large crowd, creating the need for a second show, 9:30 didn't want to add another band, so most of you missed seeing these guys, as I explain in the live review of their largely unpublicized show the night before at the Psychedelly. I forgot to bring a tape recorder along that night, but I hung out and talked to them afterwards, and set up the interview. This resulted in the interview not being quite as natural and smooth as I wanted. I also forgot to ask them alot of questions I wanted to ask; about how they write their songs, politics, etc. Actually the interview went pretty well, anyway.

--SK

• Biscuit - lungs
• Chris - bass
• Tim - guitar
• Fred - drums

TS: How did you enjoy last night's show? Not too many people heard about it.
Chris: It was pretty strange.
Tim: It was fun. It's just as fun to turn heads, and make people nervous, as it is to play to crowds that really like you.
TS: There were lots of people there.
Biscuit: Lots of normals.
TS: A real local crowd.
Biscuit: An elderly couple, that was the first band's drummer's parents, looked like opera goers. They came up to us and said, you guys were great, you obviously mean what you are doing. They took it in a lighthearted sense and had a good time. Which is what it was. We got the stage real sticky with marshmallows and white bread.
TS: Some of the crowd liked it when they realized they could throw the food back at you.
Biscuit: Though one guy who got white bread on him said he wanted to whip my ass!
Chris: Most of 'em were too scared to know what to do.
TS: Then when you pulled the sandwich out from under your arm...
Biscuit: And ate it. I don't think they liked that very much.
TS: You were telling me last night about when you were in Austin and played a Rocky Horror Show anniversary party at an old theatre?
Tim: It was like a total food fight.
Fred: 700 brownies. Brownies stuck up in the balcony. It was a mess.
Biscuit: And some tap dancers followed us!
Tim: The whole attitude that night was you never go up to the front of a crowd and throw shit all over them, but like tonight it was naah. Just do it.
TS: And you said it was a real nice theater.
Tim: Oh yeah, and they were screaming "get off the stage" while throwing stuff at us.
Fred: They threw the stuff out and it was in the wrappers.
Biscuit: And it came back with out the wrappers.
Tim: And at one point it got so wild, Biscuit was going "Instrumental, instrumental," and grabbed this huge box of stuff and was running up and down the aisles, and people were going, "Aaahh!!"
TS: Where have you played so far?
Biscuit: Houston, and we almost got to play New York, but the bill got dumped. The soundman pulled his microphones about halfway through the show, because nobody was getting paid hardly, the bands, the sounaman. And he just said "it's over." It was obvious he was going to get real screwed, and we got screwed. They told us we'd get $600, and we got $120.
Tim: Mimi, anybody booking show, don't book with a girl named Mimi--do not do it.
TS: I hear they were going to charge $20 to get in?
Tim: They finally knocked it down. To $15!
Fred: And nobody even knew till the day before the show. Which is ridiculous!
Biscuit: DOA drove from Vancouver through the snow. It took em' about 62 hours, and they got about $150. TS: New York City is always screwed up.
Tim: Then we went over to play with a show with MDC--the Stains that same night, the alternative show, but some guy was up on top of the building throwing beer cans and water balloons and stuff on cars, so the police came and shut the show down, so there wasn't any way we could play then.
Fred: That alternative show was put on cause of the 20 dollar cover charge at the other place.
Tim: And because that Mimi girl wouldn't book any New York bands. So the New York bands got mad, and got uptight. We would have done the same thing in Austin, if something like that was going on.
Biscuit: We had no idea it was coming. We were duped into coming, with this gigantic guarantee. Which dropped three times,when we got up here. Till, it finally ended up it didn't do anything, and we didn't get to play at all. Tim: And the thing is, they called us, and offered us the money, we didn't ask...
TS: You've been playing together three years?
Biscuit: Three years and a couple of months. Fred's our third drummer. It's all been good. Going to California the last two summers. Playing with X at the Whiskey (RIP), playing with the Dead Kennedys out there, Channel 3. We know all the people from Thrasher (skateboarding) magazine. We know Muffo and all those people from San Francisco, real good people. It's happening out there alot. But all over the United States there seems to be not enough clubs for everybody but when things are happening multitudes of people show up, like what happened today, so you know it's there.
Tim: There's a real big scene in Texas too. It's like whan we play we can consistently get 300 to 400 people coming, all these kids coming, lotsa bands starting, its real good. The Butthole Surfers are real hot; they're getting back together.
Biscuit: The Marching Plague are real, good. There's lots of real good bands in Austin too...
Tim: There's a mod band called Doctor's Mob that's real good. Kamikaze Refrigerators...
TS: You were saying that in Austin it's the attitude, you don't have to wear a leather jacket like in NY?
Tim: Yea, it'a not the music, it's the whole attitude of getting up and doing whatever you want to do. That's why we are classified as hardcore even though we do funk, it's just that attitude. Clubs don't want us because we don't care if people get up on stage, and there's slamming.
TS: Have you heard Trouble Funk?
All: YEAH!!
Biscuit: We got tapes from Ian.
Tim: We also heard somebody "Ltd." They were good too.
TS: Experience Unlimited. They are a little slicker.
Biscuit: Punk is great. I grew up listening to Black radio stations. I used to lay in bed, up till 5 in the morning listening; and my mother would then come in, "Go to bed, go to bed." It's allways been part of us. TS: Around here there isn't much else to listen to if you can't pick up the college stations. You don't want to listen to Sammy Hagar and that shit.
Tim: Radio in Texas is awful. There's no radio at all there's hard1y any black radio stations we're just starting to get those.
Biscuit: A three hour show on a Sunday night in Austin, a four hour show on a Thursday night in Houston, is all that there is. And Houston is two million people and an outrageous amount of people go to shows there but there's like no music on the airwaves. Thare's good record stores. A band called Really Red from Houston has a real good record store, there's another really good record store in Houston,and there's one in Dallas; so all the modern up to date stuff is there.
TS: Some of you go to the University of Texas at Austin?
Chris: I used to. I'm a Radio, Television, and Film (RTVF) major. Mike, our roadie, is going there.
TS: Are students generally as conservative there as they are here and elsewhere?
Chris: Yea, I would say the bulk of them are.
Fred: Frats are the worst in Texas.
Chris: Half of UT is the business school so you got to expect them to be preps, and stuff like that. But then it's got a pretty big fine arts school and a pretty big communications school,and that's got the radical fringe. The whole scene in Austin started on campus basically. The club is right across the street from the school, and it was first alot of the RTVF people, but it reached a point where you were just playing to the same 125 people over and over again. It wasn't growing. And then we went to California two summers ago and saw these huge crowds of 15 and 16 year old kids. I said, OK that's the new audience. The 20 year olds have already decided they hate punk rock whether they've heard it or not, so when we came home we were putting up posters, trying to do minors shows; and now the scene on average--the age has gone down to 17. But the crowds are real big. There's a band in Austin called DOC and their average age is 15. They're not bad. None of em' have played real long, but so what.
Tim: Hell, when we started we were horrible sounding. That's the whole point, if we can find a place for all of them to play then they'll want to play more,and so on....
TS: So you're playing in New Jersey on Tuesday?
Tim: I don't know. They want us to play in Trenton with Kraut and Channel 3 because of the NY mishap, and then Thursday
we play in Cleveland, Ohio in a gig Oops magazine set up (a guy named Tommy from it). The next night in Dearborn, Michigan with the Misfits, and then the next show's gonna be wild. A total skate show--The Necros, Negative Approach, and us in Detroit. It's been neat really I like this better than going to California, because people have baen so nice to us.
Chris: LA's so big it's tough to make a dent there without moving there or going there for a couple of months. Unless your record's been there and done real well. I hear Minor Threat did well there. Maybe by the time we go out there again our record we'll be played and heard enough; otherwise it's hard to make a dent. And in San Francisco the hardcore crowd wears blinders. If you don't sound like MDC,forget it.
TS: That's what happened to Government Issue when they were out there.
Tim: They're starting to open up out there. Cause the first time we went there, they didn't like us at all, they couldn't figure us out--Biscuit was not dressed the way a punk is supposed to be dressed, whatever that is. They just didn't like us at all. The second time we went we did our funk stuff and this time everyone was singing along and having a good time. It's just that skaters out there know about us more than anybody else because of magazines like Thrasher.
TS: Did you get to go skating today?
Tim: Not really. It was cold and we slept late. They have a real nice street out there that's paved real good... The whole idea in Austin is that hardcore punk or whatever, is just doing whatever you damn well want to do, and then sticking with it. That's why most of the bands from Texas don't sound like mechanical hardcore. The Butthole Surfers are definitely hardcore, but they don't sound typical like it's more Flipper and stuff like that. People are just more open to playing lots of different things down there.
TS: How did you like today's show (Minor Threat, Faith, Marginal Man)?
Tim: It was great. I've never seen so many people flipping in my life. It was hot.
Biscuit: The first band was really good and it was only their second show. All the bands were good.
Chris: Minor Threat's been one of my favorite band's since I got that first single. Frankly, the Faith record I liked some of it alot, and some of it I didn't but after seeing them live it 'makes more sense.
TS: Thanks for the interview.
Biscuit: Everybody come to Texas, get in touch with us. Maybe we can find you a place to stay. Call soon enough and maybe we can get your band booked. But it's like here, there are hardly any places to play. It can change on three days notice. Please don't be too disappointed if you're scheduled to play and the place dies.
Fred: Except for fascist, closed minded bands.
Biscuit: There still is lots going on. Lots of people down there who are begging for new things and real open to other people around the country. We are at the end of the planet down there; it's 2,000 miles to California, it's 2,000 miles here. It's so far away. If you get there and take the chance to come we really appreciate it. People in Texas need you real bad, and we have alot to offer out to the rest of the world too.

--THE END