Big Boys Always Jump The Fence

Once upon a time in the early 1980s in Austin, Texas, one of the best fucking bands in creation was born. They were called the Big Boys and they are still awesome. Apparently I’m not the only person who believes this, as their first record – Where’s My Towel/Industry Standard has just gotten the deluxe vinyl re-issue and NPR felt it worthy to write about.

There is also an audio commentary to the record by Tim Kerr (guitar) and Chris Gates (bass) that you can listen to.

Seven paragraphs down in the NPR article we come to an incident that has unfortunately loomed large in the lore of American punk culture. When I first heard about it, many years after the incident, it went something like “HR from Bad Brains beat the crap out of the Big Boys for being queer.” Getting past the improbability of that, given the relative size of the participants, I’d never bothered to dig up any kind of facts in the case, despite the availability of search engines, facebook friendships and the like. As mentioned in the NPR article and described by Tim Kerr in his blog (scroll down to the 12/March/2012 entry – I trust Tim Kerr in all things, a greater man has probably never lived) something did happen, involving most of the Bad Brains being homophobic assholes who treated their hosts in Austin like shit and made their beliefs well known. Ugly stuff. I hope this clears things up for other people as well.

In the meanwhile… I’ve always loved this live clip of the Big Boys.