“I was quaking in my boots,” said the guy sitting next to me in the movie theater.  “I thought Tex was gonna fuckin’ kill me!”  I’d just met this dude a few minutes ago, when he and his wife plopped down next to me and my boyfriend as we waited for the movie to start.  He introduced himself as Eric, and wow, could he ever talk a blue streak.  Eric was in the middle of telling me a story about punk legend/Nervebreakers singer T. Tex Edwards, whose frequent Tweets about the “DFW Punk” documentary (click on the link to watch the trailer) had brought me and my better half to Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse theater to see it.  

Eric’s story began with a stage-dive at a punk-rock concert in the mid 1980s, when he was 16 or 17.  As he hurled himself off the stage during said dive, he struck a girl in the crowd, whose nose started bleeding.  Tex walked up to poor teenage Eric and told him that if the girl was hurt, Tex was gonna take this-here beer bottle and break it over Eric’s head.  After an ambulance arrived to attend to the injured girl, Eric stood outside trying to make himself invisible, when Tex walked up with a beer bottle in his hand, looked at Eric as he shivered with fright, handed him the bottle, and said, “I know it was an accident, man.”

My new friend turned out to be Eric Tucker, the singer from the Agitators.  I found this out when they played some Agitators footage, and he nudged me and went, “That’s me!”  There were tons of old Dallas scenesters featured in this film; we were there because I heard that my better half, Mark, aka MC 900 Ft Jesus, would be one of the people interviewed.  Mark didn’t remember being interviewed for this movie, but it turns out that filmmaker Laura Tabor-Huerta has been collecting footage and interviews for nearly two decades.  Mark’s brief bit was filmed in the mid-1990s, as were most of the interviews with local stalwarts like Barry Kooda, George Gimarc, the Dirkx brothers, and others.  Tabor-Huerta collected some remarkable old footage of bands like the Ralphs, the Telefones, Riot Squad, the Nervebreakers, and others; lots of this stuff probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the ’80s.

Some bits were fun to see because they featured people I either knew or had heard a lot about from Mark, who was very involved in the punk scene in the early ’80s.  Highlights included George Gimarc waxing cheesily poetic about the Sex Pistols at the Longhorn Ballroom; according to Gimarc, the skies opened up and the hand of God touched Johnny, Sid, and the throngs of teenagers watching, but according to a girl they interviewed who was also in attendance, it was too crowded, she couldn’t see very well, and everyone was kinda disappointed because the Pistols pretty much sucked.  The late Bobby Soxx, whose name elicited a smattering of applause and cheers from the audience, emerged as a bit of a polarizing figure; he was batshit crazy and had a history of domestic abuse, but his fuck-you attitude made him the embodiment of the scene’s collective id.

A few acts, and people, emerged as standouts in the scene.  Ralph Williams’ New Wave band, The Ralphs, provided some of the most bang-up band footage of the evening.  The folks at Radio Free Burro (and the graffiti that supported them) got some hearty laughs.  But it was Tex Edwards who really emerged as the most singular figure in the documentary.  Crazy, charismatic, and infinitely endearing, Tex’s bits had us all rolling in the aisles, especially one scene where he and a friend were hosting Dallas Music Videos; the drunken duo decided that it’d be a good idea to rename Central Expressway “George Jones Highway”.  Tex grabbed a bottle of bourbon, hollered a toast to George Jones, and proceeded to down almost the entire thing in the course of about thirty seconds.  We hooted with laughter as Tex’s friends behind the camera feeblyprotested that he was “gonna get sick, dude”. 

Tex Edwards, along with fellow Nervebreaker Mike Haskins, was sitting a couple rows in front of us during the movie.  A few seats down were some of the guys from Hagfish.  Everyone in the audience seemed to know someone who was involved in the scene at the time, which made the movie all the more fun. 

And now for critique of the film itself.  In all honesty, Tabor-Huerta’s filmmaking skills leave much to be desired - misspelled captions, sloppy editing, and awkward pacing were common, which bugged me at times.  I got the impression that the project was begun at a time when technology didn’t allow for the kind of fine-tuning I’m used to on my computer.  One cannot expect Scorsese – this is a scenester girl with a camera, who did everything – filming, producing, writing, interviewing – herself.  Yeah, the film itself could’ve been better, but the great subject matter made up for it, for the most part.  Plus, the DIY look of the film was very punk rock in and of itself, if you think about it.

All in all, we had a very good time.  Mark kept nudging me throughout the movie to tell me tidbits about the people featured.  The next day, I called up my friend Rockula and told him about our Austin adventure.  His response: “Eric Tucker?  You sat next to Eric Tucker?  Tucker Buttfucker is still alive?  Wow!”  It seems Eric has been friends with all my friends since time immemorial, and they’ve all wondered what happened to him over the years.  Apparently, the world is a very small place.

Now for the obvious question: when is it playing next?  Answer in the form of a question: you got a place to play it?  Tabor-Huerta said she has the necessary equipment to show the film at a bar or party, and is willing to take it wherever people want to see it.  I’m gonna try and ask some folks at area bars, as well as independent theaters, if they’d be willing to show “DFW Punk”.  I’ll let y’all know more when I know more.