"If it's not at Walmart, it's not real"

Quoting the late Randy J. "Bisucit" Turner, of Austin punk band the Big Boys. This guy had some things to say.

"I got a place over by the university for $45 a month," he recalls. "About a week after I moved here, they had a big music festival out where the old baseball park used to be by where the UT art building is now. I remember it was the Allman Brothers, It's a Beautiful Day, Pacific Gas & Electric – all for $3, with people rolling joints outside in full view. I just thought, 'God, I'm in heaven; this must be Mecca!' It was a wonderful time for me because suddenly I was surrounded by my kind of people, who reassured me that I wasn't nuts and who immediately gave me the encouragement to start being as weird as I wanted to be.

"Austin opened me up to the vastness of other people like myself, people I could really trust artistically and with my soul. People who would reassure me that I'm not crazy, that who I am is okay, and that the most important thing is to be happy. And I think moving to Austin showed me that right away.

"I had grown up in a horrid little backwater East Texas town and been earmarked almost from day one as resident weirdo. I remember I had to tuck my hair under my graduating hat in high school so that they'd let me graduate with the other students. I had a peacoat mod outfit and a little John Lennon hat I would wear that would freak people out. It was pretty weird, and that sort of leaves an impression on you. Even now I equate things like this: If it's not at Wal-Mart, it doesn't exist. And that's what I think all these small-town Texans think. If it's not at Wal-Mart, it's not real."

The rest of the article from the 8/19/05 edition of the Austin Chronicle is here at this link. Apparently Biscuit was found dead of natural causes at his home days after the article was published.