#the violators

kurt vile & the violators at the hollywood palladium

“Oh, to be young. To still be one's own hero.” (David Guterson): the late Marilyn Dean & Kathy Valentine, drummer & guitarist of The Violators, Austin's 1st (?) punk band, here at Randy's Rodeo for The Sex Pistols show in San Antonio on Jan. 8, 1978, as captured by Tom McMahon.

austinchronicle.com/ :"When The Violators and the Skunks invade Raul's, fourteen days after the Sex Pistols break up and mainstream media declares punk dead, Austin's scene begins at a Tejano bar…", [before a crowd of no more than maybe 50 or 60, since a 100 was a big crowd at Raul's at those first shows.] "The Violators were very young kids," says [The Skunks'] Blackmon. "Marilyn was like 16, Kathy was 16, Carla was probably 21. Jesse was probably the best musician in that band, off the top of my head. Carla was good. They were just kids playing fast English punk music. Those were our influences at that time." "It was mainly people who didn't seem to know what to make of cute girls playing guitars and drums," remembers Valentine. "More than the music, it was the fact that we were female that they had no reference for. The only females in Austin doing this played fiddle – Marcia Ball was the only real musician in a band. Everybody else played fiddle or sang or were folk people." "…More than anything, it was the shock of the new. The Violators were mostly young, attractive women playing loud, fast, Sex Pistols-meets-Ramones punk. And they were doing this in a Tejano bar on the Drag, in a town musically ruled by Cosmic Cowboys and white bluesmen. Everything was changing. You either changed with it, or you opposed it. There was no room for the lukewarm…."

Marilyn & Kathy met in high school & quickly became best friends, the teen kind that does everything together: as Kathy Valentine recalls, they started bands, went to clubs, met boys and dreamt of big things in life, even moved out to LA together in 1978 but as it so often happens in life, they drifted apart after a falling out. Kathy later went on to play bass in The Go-Go's and sadly Marylin Dean passed away in recent years.

Photo & info via Tim Stegall's 'Austin Punk Chronicles' at austinchronicle.com.

book cover - The Violators - 1956

Rafael DeSoto

book cover - Stormy In The West - 1956