2610 GUADALUPE

FORMER LOCATION OF: RAUL’S

HEYDAY: 1978-1980

“It was everything you wanted CBGB’s to be, but it was in Texas. And it was by campus. And it was unconnected to any other scene. The whole connection between club and clientele just seemed so unlikely, but that’s the nature of Texas music — it always finds a way to survive in strange circumstances.
“I was there in January ’78 when the Violators became the first punk band to play at this Mexican bar and there was such a crackle in the air that you felt like something very powerful and important was happening. Austin was so far away from the punk vortex that it seemed like we had to invent our own ideas about what punk was. It was a very creative time. People like Biscuit and Tim Kerr from the Big Boys were always coming up with stuff and Steve Marsh and his band Terminal Mind were better than a lot of the touring bands that came through. Raul’s was Austin proving, yet again, that its local players can hold their own with the best music from elsewhere.”

TESTIMONY FROM: Margaret Moser, who started covering the scene in the pages of the Austin Sun in the late ’70s.