BIG BOYS from SP #7, fall '83
The Big Boys, from Austin, Texas, are one hell of a good time. Combining a number of musical styles into their own "neo-bopism," the Big Boys exude a genuine warmth, both on and off the stage. The Big Boys are Randy ("Biscuit"), vocals; Tim, guitar; Chris, bass; and Randy, drums. All members except Randy were present for this interview outside The Club...SP: What did you think of Boston and Western Mass.?
Tim: Great. You never know what to expect when you're going into an area for the first time. Some scenes are reluctant to accept you right away, but here and especially yesterday it was great. Much wilder than I expected.
SP: Where did the "skate tough or die" come from?
Biscuit: Where we skate board in Dallas. There was this guy Joe Newton that runs this store and, actually, first it was "Skate tough or go home." But it's been changed to "skate tough or die." "Skate tough or snowmobile" is what they said in Battle Creek.
Tim: And then when we left Austin, there was "skate tough or dye" and it had pictures of everyone dyeing their hair. It was cool.
SP: Why do you think there's such a strong connection between skating and punk rock?
Tim: 'Cause it's like, you're just on the edge. Skating's really edge-type stuff. When you go into a pool, there it is, it's just happening like that and the same thing happens when everybody's dancing. It's like when you get down and start slamming, it's there--right there and you've got to face it. The music's the same way.
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| PHOTO: MURRAY BOWLES |
Tim: Spot. Everybody calls SST, asks for Spot and asks him what neo-bopism is and he'll talk to you for 2 hours explaining it.
SP: And that's how he labelled your music...
Tim: Yeah. Actually, The Minutemen are neo-bopism, too. And Saccharine Trust verges on it.
Biscuit: Neo-bopism is happenin', man!
Tim: Yeah, happenin'! Either things are happenin' or not happenin' and neo-bopism is happenin'!
SP: What inspired you to cover "Hollywood Swinging"?
Tim: It's a cool song.
Biscuit: It's a fun dance number. We speed it up.
Chris: It was first favorite funk song in high school. 9th grade.
SP: Do you ever tour with a horn section?
Tim: In Texas, but we haven't gone out of state with them. We're trying to. That's how come we've got this truck, now. If they can go, then we've got enough room for them to come.
Biscuit: They're all real young. They've all been in high school for the last 3 years of our existence. It's just now that they're all out, so now they're old enough. We're going to try to find a section that we can travel with. It is fun and it definitley makes us step to showtime. It's like carnival showtime or something. People see we've got a brass section and ask, "what's next?"
SP: Tell me a little bit about the Texas scene right now.
Tim: Austin is the biggest. Not because we live there but it just is. The shows there generally run from about 300 on up and we've been consistantly getting about 400 kids at our shows and then it gets bigger or smaller, depending. San Antonio's got a lot of cool bands and a real cool little scene. It's not real big. Houston and Dallas keep switching back and forth. It'll be happening in Houston and nothing really going on in Dallas and then it'll be Dallas. So right now, both places are not really happening that much. There's a lot of bands trying, but there's nothing much going on.
Biscuit: Yeah, for the first time there's people in both cities trying to get things happening, 'cause usually it's, 'well, there's nothing going on here. I guess we'll sit around until somebody does something' and then somebody'll open a club and then something will be going on again. Now there's bands trying to do it and that's the only real way to make it happen.
SP: Yeah, that's the best way because if the bands do it themselves, the shows tend to run a lot smoother.
Biscuit: Tim's been real good about helping get lots of bands coming through Austin. He's the person to contact if bands are thinking about coming through. He's helped out a lot of bands. Minor Threat...
Tim: There's like this network and everybody helps each other. Black Flag literally put everything on the map and they laid the groundwork and I've got lots of numbers and Ian's got numbers and you just call.
Biscuit: If you need a way to get through the south, people end up calling us. If they need things for the west or east coasts, they'll call people there. We got this number from Ian.
Tim: And it works real good 'cause for the most part you don't play in clubs where nobody really cares and they're shitting you over and stuff like that.
SP: People that care put the shows together.
Tim: And then when somebody fucks up, it's more on terms of just yourself. It's like, if I ever set up a show in Texas and I didn't do anything or I told a band I have it set up and they come and it's not set up and all that, I'd be off the list next day and this band would be shit from then on.
Biscuit: I don't think we've played a show that was over-age yet without doing a minor show that went along with it.
SP: Have you had trouble with the cops shutting down shows in Texas?
Chris: Not so much shutting down shows...
Biscuit: ...as busting people at shows.
Tim: The worst thing is not so much the cops as much as the alcohol commission. They know what shows are happening and they show up and try to bust the club, which makes the club, in turn, real scared to have shows because they know the alcohol commission is going to show up and bust them. The Houston police are really bad.
Biscuit: We've had our shows stopped there. But it wasn't like they came in and shut the show down. It's like 3 bands played and they stopped the show right before we went on.
Tim: They actually stopped it while we were on the stage getting ready to start. It was real wild.
SP: Do they really throw stuffed animals at the shows?
Tim: That was wild. That was in Dallas.
Biscuit: We played like 2 nights. One night we played with this totally Eurodisco band that's real good friends of ours from Austin caled Body Nightclub. And then we were playing this hall the next night and all those guys in that band are real crazy. The singer went to this garage sale and bought all these really cheap stuffed animals and showed up at the gig saying, "I have a surprise, I have a surprise." About 5 songs in, he pulled out these bags from under the stage and starts throwing 'em. I mean giant. Stuffed rabbits and stuff and is throwing them in the air at us and they got volleyballed around for about a minute and then it's rip-rip-rip-rip.
Tim: It snowed. It's funny because I've seen this picture where it shows us and the whole stage is clean and everything and we're all there and in the next picture it looks like a blizzard. The funniest thing of all was Biscuit, at one point, had this teddy bear by the legs and the crowd had the head and RRRRIP...
SP: What happened with the Bad Brains?
Biscuit: Let's not even talk about it.
Tim: It's old--old hat. It happened a year and a half ago.
Chris: It's a million times told.
Biscuit: We had a run-in with them and it's over.
Tim: The whole thing is live and let live. They were still one of the best bands I've ever seen.
Biscuit: Oh yeah!
Tim: They were cool live.
Biscuit: Everybody was saying that around that time, then all this stuff started happening. Everybody was going, 'they used to be the coolest guys. Now they're fucking up left and right, what's the deal?' They buried the Rat Cage and a $900 phone bill and stuff like that. They just went through a weird period where things got real strange with them.
SP: Where did the title of your new album come from? (Lullabies Help The Brain Grow)
Tim: From this bible pamphlet. I don't have any idea what it means. Biscuit saw it in a fanzine called Idle Time but it's originally from a bible pamphlet.
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