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August 19, 2005
Randy "Biscuit" Turner, RIP
Randy "Biscuit" Turner, former lead singer of Austin punk legends The Big Boys, was found dead in his home yesterday afternoon.
No details on cause of death yet. The Statesman article is here.
Ironically, he's on the cover of this week's issue of the Austin Chronicle (cover here, article here).
Last night Cassidy and I went out to eat and then picked up a few school supplies at the HEB, and on the way out I grabbed a copy of the new Chronicle, looked at the cover and went "Cool! It's Biscuit!" Cassidy said "Oh, that's scary!" (He's dressed like a very freaky looking clown...yeah, yeah, same old Biscuit.) I tried explaining to her who he was, and who the Big Boys were. Sometimes I can tell Cassidy about music and she gets it. This time I don't think she was getting it. I tried to explain to her how cool it was that a skate punk band could do Kool & the Gang covers. She wasn't getting it.
I first heard the Big Boys in 1983, when I was in the depths of my hardcore phase and trying to sort out all the doctrinaire "loud fast rules" naziism I saw at punk shows from all the other non-punk music that I liked. And then we got a copy of "Lullabies Help the Brain Grow" at the radio station, and my eyes, as they say, were opened.
Right around that time, the Big Boys came to Houston to open for X, and we went up to to a record signing at Rat Records in the Village. And I remember getting out of my friend's car right when the Big Boys were getting out of theirs, and they saw me and walked up and said "hi" and just started talking to me like we were buddies. They were just these normal, unassuming, friendly guys. None of your typical Houston snot-nosed punk attitude.
I liked that they did what they wanted. I liked that they wrote songs about flouting the rules that the punk scene tries to lay down for you. I liked that they made it OK for a kid in a flannel shirt and a mohawk to try to shake his ass to "Hollywood Swingin'". They were more than a band to me. They helped me get over and through a lot of petty bullshit punk attitude. They helped me grow the fuck up. They were a really big deal to me.
And now one of them is gone away, to play with Joe Strummer and Joey Ramone.
Last night while we were walking back to the car, while I was trying but failing to explain all this to Cassidy (and not yet knowing that he was dead), we both remarked on the sunset. It was one of those where the setting sun was showing beneath a line of clouds, with big golden rays of light, so spectacular it was almost like a parody of a sunset, like you expected the Monty Python version of God to come out of it. And then I noticed, off to the east, a huge glorious cloud, like a giant upturned scallop shell, like no clouds I'd ever seen before, and Cassidy noticed that the almost-full moon was just rising over the horizon beneath this cloud. I said I wish I had my camera with me, because we'll never be able to explain this to anyone, and Cass agreed. We just stood there in the HEB parking for five full minutes and looked at the cloud in the east, and then back at the sunset, and then back at the cloud and the moon.
And, y'know, you don't want to think that this was some big glorious send-off for Biscuit, because it was so not his style. But when I heard this morning that he'd died, I first thought of the Chronicle cover, and then of Cassidy, and then of the clouds. And y'know, it makes a good story, even if it's hokey. When I tell Cassidy tonight, she'll probably want to dig out my Big Boys records, and she'll want to talk about how cool the clouds were. Because that so is her style.
Supposedly there's a memorial tonight at Pedazo Chunk, on South 1st, at 8pm. If I learn more, I'll update.
Update from the Chronicle web site:
In the worst form of happenstance imaginable, Randy "Biscuit" Turner was found dead in his home late Thursday afternoon. Close friends had not heard from the local musician/artist for several days when Chronicle staff writer Marc Savlov, author of this week's cover story on the ebullient Austin icon, stopped by Turner's house to ascertain his whereabouts. Sensing something wrong, Savlov called the police, who arrived and found Turner's body inside. As of 11:30am Friday morning, the medical examiner's initial autopsy report attributes cause of death to "gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to cirrhosis associated with chronic [alcohol] abuse." Although time/date of death has yet to be determined pending a final report from the medical examiner, it's believed that Turner, 56, had been dead for at least several days. Needless to say, the entire Chronicle family is shocked and terribly saddened by this news. Pedazo Chunk, 2009 S. First, where Turner's art installation "Mental Volcano" was to be displayed this weekend, will instead host an informal wake tonight, Friday, Aug. 19, beginning at 7pm. 441-3505.
Posted by ray at August 19, 2005 10:04 AM | Permalink
Categories: [austin | music ]
Tags: worthy
Comments
That's sad. I remember seeing the Big Boys at the Agora Ballroom in 1981. They opened for the Go-Go's. They were good. I went and bought their record the next week.
Posted by: Stan at August 19, 2005 11:33 AM
You can hear that very show (and six others by the Big Boys, plus two by the Dicks) at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thedicks/
~Toby
Posted by: Toby at September 17, 2005 8:58 PM
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