By around '82 or'83 it seemed like there wasn't a club left in Austin willing to book punk bands. The schism had long happened between punk and new wave, and new wave bands had no problem getting bookings except that there really weren't any new wave bands left…

It was the dawn of the "New Sincerity" scene in Austin, the worst named musical movement ever (like sincerity has any place in rock'n'roll). Assorted highly placed characters championing Austin as the next Athens, Georgia or Twin Tone Records' Minneapolis (instead of the first Austin, Texas) decided to throw their weight behind the bands that sounded exactly like they could've come from Athens Georgia or be on Twin Tones Records (poor man's REMs or Replacements, basically) while the punk bands that were kicking up a lotta dust across America got shut out in Austin by the very same characters who only a few years before despaired the fact that the only "local" artist played on Austin radio was the abysmal Christopher Cross.

So a band like the Offenders might have an album or two out and be pretty highly regarded but the only place they could play in town was at house parties.

This sorry state of affairs did result in one of my favorite rolls of film, though. There's something so Depression era about the house with the unfinished wood walls and that gorgeous old school light fixture (so 1930s) hanging over JJ's head. Is this a punk band or a bunch of sharecroppers partying after a hard day pickin' cotton?

If I remember right, this party, like most of 'em, was at someone's house out in East Austin—the barrio—(how come the wrong side of the tracks is always the east side of the tracks?), and the cops had a tendency to leave the folks in the barrio alone, reckoning they're not really worthy of attention as long as they stick to their part of town…the cops finally did show up, I seem to vaguely recall, and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" was playing in the background when they arrived.

I think this party was around Halloween. I have some recollection of Spot and I endeavoring to use an electric drill and assorted other power tools on a pumpkin in order to make a jack'o'lantern. I remember the drill flinging pumpkin flesh all over everybody who was in the kitchen, and I remember little Felix Griffin the 14-year-old drummer of Crotch Rot lighting his farts on fire, which was something I'd never actually seen done before that night.

Check out the sign behind the stoner in the kinks t-shirt. It says "No skating inside". Somehow I'm not totally sure that anyone paid much attention to that sign.