Infamous nights in Austin Music
Murder of an artist, desecration of a football field, and "The Standells."
• ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barn Dance and Bar B.Q. On Labor Day weekend 1974, the rockin’ trio from Houston booked Memorial Stadium to celebrate their breakout LP Tres Hombres with a Texas-sized blowout, co-starring Santana, Joe Cocker and Bad Company, with Jimmy Page on guitar. The University of Texas was ready for a crowd of 40,000 max, but twice that showed up for the only Texas show of the tour. Many without tickets crashed the gates as overwhelmed security could only watch. The stadium ran out of food and water even before a very drunk Joe Cocker was finished heaving onstage in the brutal afternoon heat. Anarchy reigned, as fans found a mattress in a Longhorns office and set it on fire. The plywood field covering was pulled out so the crowd could carve an outline of Texas on the 50-yard-line of the brand new astroturf. This was a couple weeks before the home opener and Coach Royal was livid. “No more concerts!” was upheld for 21 years until the Eagles played the stadium.
• Greg Dulli gets sent to the hospital 1999. The Afghan Whigs singer had been snarling at Liberty Lunch stagehands named Taiter and Porkchop since an incident at load-in. Witnesses say that after the show Dulli came at “Billy Goat Boy,” which is what the singer called Taiter because of a goatee, and got laid out with a single punch. Hitting the back of his head on the concrete floor, Dulli suffered a fractured skull and spent more than a week at Brackenridge. Dulli claimed he’d been attacked and Liberty Lunch suffered a black eye that it couldn’t recover from before then-mayor Kirk Watson ordered the wrecking ball.
• The murder of Ken Featherston of the Armadillo Nov. 10, 1975. Handsome, talented, a team player, Featherston was just 23 when he was shot to death in the parking lot of the Armadillo World Headquarters by a drunk customer who had earlier been prevented from leaving with an open container. One of the rising stars of the Austin poster scene, Featherston also worked as a doorman at the ‘Dillo because of his muscular build. The Pointer Sisters had played that night, which was special for Featherston because he’d drawn the poster for the Sisters’ show a year earlier, almost to the day.
Who killed Ken? The shooter had vowed to come back and do what he did, but nobody’d ever seen him before. Wait a second, ‘Dillo security chief Dub Rose thought. About two years earlier he had a scuffle with a man who fit the killer’s description and turned him in to police. Earlier that night house photographer Burton Wilson had taken a picture of Rose in a new cowboy hat. If the date of that photo could be found there would be a mug shot from that night. Wilson’s organization was so precise, he easily found the dated contact sheet, and the killer John Randolph Bingham was identified through his police mug shot. He was sent to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and later moved on to prison, where he died.
The death in the family hit the Armadillo crew hard, with not only survivor’s guilt but the realization that evil could penetrate the euphoria of a great night.
• James Brown at Municipal Auditorium Aug. 1, 1966. If that date looks familiar that’s because it was the day UT engineering student Charles Whitman killed 11 people from the observation deck of the UT Tower, after killing three on the way up. JAMES BROWN PLAYED AUSTIN ON THE NIGHT OF THE SNIPER MASS MURDER! You would think that would be a substantial event, except that, until last year, hardly anybody had even known about it. This wasn’t like the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the James Brown show went on to quell rioting in Boston. There had been absolutely no trace of this concert in Austin lore until Tim Hamblin, a video archivist for the Austin History Center, was going through some old footage from 1982 at Club Foot and found an interview with James Brown. Asked if he’d ever played Austin before, the Godfather of Soul said, “Yeah, I played here the night that guy went crazy up there on the tower!” Hamblin had never heard that before. Intrigued, he went searching for a newspaper ad for the show and found one in the Statesman.
Did anyone write about that infamous show? That brought me to the Austin History Center last year to peruse copies of the Capital City Argus, Austin’s black newspaper of the time. There I found a review of the Monday Aug. 1 show written by “Roving Eyes,” which is one of the pseudonyms Bert Adams used. According to the review, James Brown sat in with the 18-piece band for about half an hour on organ before he took the spotlight. Nowhere in the review did it mention the day of terror, which began just 11 blocks from Municipal Auditorium (later renamed Palmer) at the Bouldin Creek house at 906 Jewel Street, where Whitman stabbed his wife to death while she slept.
Austin was pretty much segregated in 1966 and what happened over at the white college didn’t affect the goings on in the black community. So, although it’s a tad surprising the review didn’t mention 16 murders in town that day, it’s not a shock. “Those of you who had to pay $3.00 or $3.50 can say it was well worth it,” the review concluded. “James Brown, gold suit and all, is out of this world.”
• Gang of Four at Club Foot Nov. 4, 1980. On the night of November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan was declared the winner of the Presidential election and the politically-radical Gang of Four took the stage at the jam-packed club on 4th and Congress. The juxtaposition of these two events made for two hours that no one there would ever forget. After reminding the crowd of the world of trouble they were in with Reagan in charge, Gang of Four firehosed the room with danceable punk rock that left everyone dripping. “It was one of those great rock shows that crosses the line into pandemonium,” said photographer David C. Fox. “You know that saying about how ‘rock and roll saved my life’? That’s how that night felt.” The lines were becoming clearer that night and the Gang of Four made their side the one to be on.
• The “Standells at Big Mamou 1987. This was the night Austin caught an impostor and threw his ass in jail, while the guy he was playing stepped in and finished the show. Steve Chaney had booked a band billing themselves as the Standells of “Dirty Water” fame, with original member Dick Dodd in the group. But when “Dick Dodd” showed up for a radio interview, a local music journalist in
the studio knew that wasn’t the real one and told Chaney, who asked for the real Dodd’s number. It turned out Dodd, who lived in California, hadn’t received any royalties in two years and suspected that someone had been cashing about $15,000 in checks. Dodd flew to Austin later that night and notified the Austin Police Department of the fraud. Five officers were sent to the S. Congress Ave, location currently home to C-Boy’s. The fake Standells played one song, a metal version of “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” then the lights came up and the cops took it from there, arresting 36-year-old Jimmie Lee Dean of Houston. About half the audience was in on what was happening and back then there was no social media to tip off the perps. As one officer led away Dean in handcuffs, the path crossed with the man whose identity he had taken. “Dick Dodd,” said the officer, “meet Dick Dodd.”
• The Muffs destroy the “Electric” neon sign at the Electric Lounge 1996. The band wanted the sign turned off during their set, but that was against club policy, so bassist Ronnie Barnett- not singer Kim Shattucks- smashed the sign. The band eventually paid to have it repaired.
• AC/DC’s first U.S. concert was at the Armadillo on July 27, 1977. The Australian riff maestros were big back home, but had yet to conquer the States when Atlantic Records booked them to play a club tour to promote Let There Be Rock. They were so unknown in the U.S. at the time that AC/DC opened for Canadian band Moxy on four Texas shows promoted by Stone City Attractions of San Antonio. In a 1995 interview with guitarist Angus Young, he told me how the Austin show became their first-ever concert on American soil. “We were supposed to play in Phoenix the night before, but Bon followed a girl off the plane in L.A. and he missed the flight.”
The setlist for their U.S. debut at the ‘Dillo was “Live Wire,” followed by “She’s Got Balls,” “Problem Child,” “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Dog Eat Dog,” “The Jack” and “Baby Please Don’t Go.” That Chuck Berry metal, with Bon Scott’s vocals slicing through stole the show no doubt. The next time AC/DC came to Austin, in July ’78, they headlined a sold-out show at Willie’s Austin Opry House on Academy Drive.