The story goes that then KLBJ-FM owner Lady Bird Johnson personally called to demand that "Too Young to Date" never be played on the station again.
The tongue-in-cheek 1979 song about a precocious young girl was clearly tongue in check to its co-author and singer De Lewellen, but that didn't stop nine college radio stations from banning it. Or fans at Pasadena, Calif., radio station KROQ-FM from proclaiming it their favorite while their mothers picketed outside.
It was a natural from the theatrical Lewellen, a former member of Esther's Follies and the Blandscrew Sisters, who one reviewer described as an "emaciated Judy Garland."
Behind Lewellen's powerful Garland-like vocals, D-Day, which included David Fore of Bubblepuppy fame and John Keller (now Lewellen's husband), was a force to be reckoned with both in Austin and on the
West Coast. Lewellen even passed on a chance to audition for Saturday Night Live to chase her punk rock dream.
Lewellen continues both musically with Zydeco Ranch and comedically with Jokers Wild, a troupe of ex-Esther's performers.
But three years ago after recovering from hepatitis C and weening herself from alcohol, she found another artistic outlet: nechos, small Mexican altars she fashions from cigarette boxes. The pieces focus on the Virgin de Guadalupe, Mary Magdeline and the power of women, Lewellen said, and are sold at Alternate Current Art Space on South 1st Street.
"I have to have a release of creativity somewhere or I go totally berzerk," she said.
David Cardwell, television crime reporter
David Cardwell was in the crowd at Raul's the night in 1978 when Phil Tolstead of the Huns was taken from the stage in handcuffs and arrested for bad mouthing cops infiltrating the bar.
Many say Punk Rock Austin-style was born at that moment. University of Texas students Cardwell and Larry Seaman lived in the Ark Co-op with the Huns drummer, and the pair got a serious case of the punk bug. The Standing Waves were born of Seaman's penchant for cutting edge music such as the Velvet Underground and Roxy Music. Originally a cover band, popularity forced them to write songs.
"It felt like an exciting, slightly dangerous cultural explosion," Cardwell said. "We all got swept up in it. We wanted to get on a ride and see where it took us."
The Standing Waves were influenced by the band Talking Heads, now Cardwell works with real talking heads. He covers the crime beat for FOX channel 29 in San Antonio. That follows reporting stints in the
Waco area and at Austin's KXAN.
"Both are fun, full of adrenaline and excitement," Cardwell said. "You do TV news because you always liked show and tell in school. You do music because you want to share something. You want to say, 'look at
this!' "
