Post-punk percussion discussion to Oak Cliff cometh

Since attending the author event for Pat Blashill's Someday All the Adults Will Die: The Birth of Texas Punk at congenial Oak Cliff bookstore/coffeehouse/bar The Wild Detectives a couple of weeks ago, I've been binge-ing Big Boys and Dicks and contemplating the hardcore moment that I narrowly missed between unassing Austin to make a band in Aspen, Colorado (what was I thinking?) and spending a decade Guarding Freedom's Frontier during the Reagan era (some people will do anything for medical insurance; we thought we won the Cold War, didn't see what was coming). 

Back at the ass-end of the '70s, Gang of Four's Entertainment! was a crucial spin, combining as it did those Leeds Uni kids' critique of the society in which they lived with a jagged punk take on funk that was echoed Stateside by the likes of Big Boys and Minutemen. A few years later, Fugazi emerged from the fertile DC scene to make powerful music while epitomizing the moral and ethical DIY aesthetic better than anyone else, to the point of discouraging the crowd violence that had characterized hardcore. Both bands represented a more rigorous version of the weird, smart kids that started punk before it became an orthodoxy. 

So imagine my surprise when I learned that both bands' drummers -- Gang of Four's Hugo Burnham and Fugazi's Brendan Canty -- will be appearing in conversation at Texas Theatre on Sunday, October 19, as part of this year's Hay Festival Forum Dallas. The two will discuss percussion as protest, band dynamics as a reflection of political struggle, and the ongoing role sound plays in social upheaval -- a topic particularly germane in this moment of authoritarian breakthrough. Tickets are available here. I plan to be there, flush with energy and engagement from the previous day's No Kings action in Fort Worth. Y'all come.