Capturing the Texas punk scene with his camera since his time as a photojournalism student at UT, Pat Blashill invites readers into the start of punk across the Lone Star State with his new book, \u201cSomeday All the Adults Will Die!\u201d The Daily Texan sat down with Blashill to discuss the makings of the book and UT\u2019s impact on the early punk scene.<\/p>\n
The Daily Texan: You mention in the book a piece of advice you received from your professor, Dennis Darling, is to, \u201cTake pictures of our own lives because those photos would mean more to us later.\u201d Can you tell me more about how you took that advice to heart?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pat Blashill: Dennis Darling is a man of few words, and he was a believer in teaching by showing. That advice rang true to me, and it made perfect sense to me because at that time, the thing that was exciting for me was (punk) music.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: Was there a moment when you realized you were part of something more impactful than you have imagined?<\/p>\n
Blashill: In retrospect, I knew that there was something happening that I cared about, but I didn\u2019t really entertain the idea that it would make too much of an impact outside of Austin. \u2026 I don\u2019t know if I was as much of a booster of it as I could have been (at the time), and now I feel 40 years after the fact that\u2019s my job. I\u2019m, like, the world ambassador to Texas punk rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: In the book, you often mention UT\u2019s role in the emerging punk movement, but how much of Austin\u2019s growing punk scene at that time do you credit to UT or the fact that Austin is a college town?<\/p>\n
Blashill: A great deal, but in a kind of abstract way. Most of the first (punk) groups, as somebody in the book says, had at least one or two college students, and many of them were radio-television-film students, journalism and media students. \u2026What changed with the Dicks coming along was that there started to be some groups that were more \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t say they weren\u2019t intellectual, but they were kind of anti-intellectual, which made them intellectual. There were people that weren\u2019t in the classes at UT or had dropped out, and were questioning this idea of that kind of an education. The fact that Austin is a college town had everything to do with the audience, and it made the audience and the context receptive to all these groups. \u2026 That influx of people that were questioning this context of an educated college town (was) what really helped people to start thinking of making our own kind of punk music.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: What were you hoping readers would take away from \u201cSomeday All the Adults Will Die!\u201d?<\/p>\n
Blashill: In my mind, the subtitle of the book was, \u201cHow to make a scene.\u201d\u2026 My big hope for the book is that people \u2014 young people \u2014 read it, and they think, \u201cWe can do this,\u201d or, \u201cLet\u2019s think about how we can make something with our own hands that matters\u201d because that\u2019s really powerful. It doesn\u2019t even have to be something that ever makes money or means something important to people outside of your own circle. The fact that people can make for themselves is the most important thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Capturing the Texas punk scene with his camera since his time as a photojournalism student at UT, Pat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-17310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}