Research Catalog

Title

A curious mix of people : the underground scene of '90s Austin / Greg Beets and Richard Whymark.

Author

Beets, Greg

Publication

• Austin : University of Texas Press, 2023.
• ©2023

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Whymark, Richard

Description

350 pages : black and white illustrations; 26 cm

Summary

"Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has been well-chronicled, there is no book about Austin music in the 90s. Greg Beets and Richard Whymark were part of the scene at that time, making zines, playing in bands, and DJ-ing at the college radio station, and have put together an oral history of the decade. Beets and Whymark are not trying to cover all of the music made in Austin during the 1990s; they're most interested in the underground/punk community in which they participated. While a few of those bands got big (e.g., Spoon), the music remained mostly local, DIY. It was driven by live shows, though local media (radio, TV, print), record stores, and a few labels were also important to the story. Beets and Whymark devote chapters to those elements, but almost half of the chapters are based around a particular club. Organizing the book around physical spaces is not only appropriate for telling the story of the music, it is nice framing for the larger story of Austin. As the authors note, the city was still a relatively sleepy place in the early 1990s, with vacant blocks downtown and loads of small clubs that opened and closed simply because music-minded people wanted a place to play. By 1999, longtime venues like the Electric Lounge and Liberty Lunch were bulldozed to make way for development and tech companies"--

Subject

• 1991-2000
• Underground music > Texas > Austin > History and criticism
• Punk rock music > Texas > Austin > History and criticism
• Rock music > Texas > Austin > 1991-2000 > History and criticism
• Nightclubs > Texas > Austin > History
• Punk rock musicians > Texas > Austin > Interviews
• Rock music fans > Texas > Austin > Interviews
• Alternative radio broadcasting > Texas > Austin > History
• Underground press publications > Texas > Austin > History
• Musique underground > Texas > Austin > Histoire et critique
• Punk (Musique) > Texas > Austin > Histoire et critique
• Rock (Musique) > Texas > Austin > 1991-2000 > Histoire et critique
• Boîtes de nuit > Texas > Austin > Histoire
• Musiciens punk > Texas > Austin > Entretiens
• Rock (Musique) > Fans > Texas > Austin > Entretiens
• Presse parallèle > Texas > Austin > Histoire
• Alternative radio broadcasting
• Nightclubs
• Punk rock music
• Punk rock musicians
• Rock music
• Rock music fans
• Underground music
• Underground press publications
• Texas > Austin

Genre/Form

• oral histories (literary works)
• chronologies (lists)
• Chronologies
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History
• Interviews
• Oral histories
• Oral histories.
• Chronologies.
• Histoires orales.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 330-335), discography (pages 322-326) and index.

Contents

Cast of characters -- Chronology -- Introduction. Nobody here but us wounded chickens -- The Cavity : the Cavity creeps -- Emo's : Johnny Cash sat here -- Radio : none of the hits, all of the time -- Hole in the Wall : cheap music, fast drinks, live women -- Blue Flamingo : those horses do bite! -- Chances : we'll just rock for ourselves -- Sweatbox Studios : Sweatbox is burning (or, honk if Dick Cheney shot your landlord in the face) -- TV and video : raw meat in the studio -- Zines, flyers, and the press : putting the word in the streets -- Sound Exchange : bitter people with no future selling music -- Record labels : bitter people with no future starting labels -- Trance Syndicate : Love and napalm -- Electric Lounge : my childhood hero is getting pelted with roses -- Liberty Lunch : by the '90s, we were rocking -- The end : it doesn't go on forever -- 100 essential underground releases (in chronological order) -- In memoriam.

ISBN

• 9781477328132
• 1477328130
• 9781477328149 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781477328156 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2022062249

OCLC

• on1367237166
• SCSB-14626086

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library