Someday All the Adults Will Die!: The Birth of Texas Punk

by Pat Blashill

A deep dive into the early days of punk in Austin, Texas, this oral history immerses readers in a diverse and influential music scene.

Texas has always teemed with music and counterculture. When punk came to the state in 1978, it flourished in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and, especially, Austin. Punk and post-punk musicians, including nationally acclaimed bands like the Butthole Surfers, the Big Boys, the Dicks, and Daniel Johnston influenced local culture before slashing into the American musical psyche. (See Kurt Cobain sporting Johnston’s “Hi, How are you?” T-shirt.) Someday All the Adults Will Die! is an oral history of punk in Texas, from its rise in the late 1970s, through its strong anti-racist, feminist, and queer peak, to its dissolution in the late 1980s.

Now a seasoned music journalist, Blashill experienced the zenith of Texas punk as a teenager, and he captures its intensity in words and pictures. Someday All the Adults Will Die! is rife with electrifying images and firsthand tales of what made this scene such a storm of pleasures and terrors, uncompromising artists, and wild performances. This dynamic portrait of an untamed, all-out musical era is a must-read for fans of punk music, counterculture, and live music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As an Austin teenager in the 80-85 timeframe, I spent several enjoyable moments at many of the places mentioned in the book coincidentally with many of the people interviewed. I had a lot of "oh yeah, that's who that must have been " moments reading this. I'm a world class observer and noticer - with a memory like an elephant- but was definitely not in the middle of anything so it was good to make some connections to memories. Highly recommend if you enjoy music, punk rock, or just a compelling history of a time and place.

[John Spiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Someday All the Adults Will Die" is the oral history counterpart to Pat Blashill's photographic documentation of the early Austin punk scene, "Texas is the Reason." If you enjoyed "Texas is the Reason," you will like this one. Blashill knew the major players in the Austin scene, both band members and fans. The book is probably worth it for the Butthole Surfers stories alone.

My minor nit to pick is the same one I had with "Texas is the Reason": Austin is basically treated as synonymous with Texas. I get it, Blashill was in Austin when punk broke, so Austin is naturally going to be his focus. I think it is more accurate to call this the "Birth of Austin Punk". I am cautiously optimistic that this book will inspire a like-minded person to do a similar oral history of the Houston and Dallas scenes.

[Shannon Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book and explores the punk rock scene mostly in Austin, Texas. it takes the form of interviews with various people in the punk scene in Austin, which at first is
a little offsetting but ends up being a really perfect way to write this book.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that if you want a book to chronicle the punk scene or a particular area, you must, have to, by law, make it an oral history. There have been so many of them and many of them are good. This one was actually pretty great. But I kind of enjoyed the sections where Pat Blashill wrote about the scene with his personal experiences. I hate to say it, and i know I will be vanilla rock all over, but I think if he just wrote it as prose, it would have been just as good if not better. I did have an excellent time with the book and like always with books like this, I have now discovered a nice amount of interesting bands to listen to and explore.