The Funhouse Show - Monday 10/28/1985

There are two things that I can point to from my youth that are responsible for me getting into punk rock:

1.) In the early/mid 80's, my older brother went away on a school debate trip, and came back with a bunch of LP's dubbed to cassettes that he had copied from a friend. This is how I first heard any punk/hardcore.

And:

2.) The Funhouse Show - Houston's weekly long running and much beloved punk rock radio show on the user supported Pacifica radio station 90.1 KPFT. I would listen to the Funhouse show every week, often on my Sony Walkman while laying in bed late at night when my mom thought I was sleeping since the show was on from midnight - 2am. Before I knew where to go to buy punk rock records, and before I was old enough to go to ANY shows, I had a weekly dose of punk and other weirdness delivered to me. I would often tape the show onto 90 minute tapes, usually not starting to tape until about 15 minutes in because the host of the show, Chuck Roast, would inevitably play some weird industrial crap to start the show which I (at the time) wouldn't like anyways. I knew that I couldn't fit the full 2 hours of the show on my 90 minute tape, so I would make sure that I stayed awake long enough that I could flip the tape over, listening to whatever I missed the following morning on the school bus on the way to school. The following afternoon I would compile all the good punk songs from the tape onto a second tape, making my own "Best Of Funhouse" tapes... some of which I still have to this day (the "Tape #7" pictured above is actually one of them). I would then tape over that weeks show the following week, and get a bunch of new stuff for my "Best of..." tape, and repeat.

The above process was great for getting into all these bands that I would have no way to hear otherwise, but in retrospect I wish I had the unadulterated tapes of these broadcasts. Luckily, I wasn't the only one taping the Funhouse show. And even more luckily, other people were smarter than me in that they sometimes taped the entire show and wouldn't tape over it later. I have collected about 10 different digitized funhouse broadcasts from various sources over the years, but most of them came from the "Houston Punk Archives" site 5 years or so ago. The HPA site has come and gone in recent months, and although it's not up as I type this, a message from the site dated 10 days ago says that it's coming back soon.

Anyways, this is the first of many installments of the Funhouse Show which i'll be putting up on the Texas Punk Treasure Chest. A little history of Chuck Roast and the Funhouse Show can be read HERE for those unfamiliar, a 1999 Houston Press article/interview with Chuck.

The Funhouse Show would eventually go off the air around 1989 or so, and I would remain a loyal customer of Chuck's record store and would later end up working there from 1990-1996. Vinal Edge Records still exists, continuing to offer the Houston northside punk, hardcore, and weirdo industrial noise records. Buy things from their web store HERE.

This episode of Funhouse, from Monday 10/28/1985, has plenty of the non-hits while having a "creepy" theme running throughout because it was just before Halloween. Even the most well rounded old punk/hardcore fan will here something on here that they're into, including but not limited to Misfits, Spastic Rats, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Social Distortion, Controlled Bleeding, Tales Of Terror, Fang, No Trend, and Condemned to Death. With these old broadcasts, some of the most interesting parts (to me anyways) are the times when Chuck or the other DJ's speak, and this episode is no different. The concert calendar includes lots of talk about legendary Houston venue Cabaret Voltaire, mentions that Stark Raving Mad has an upcoming gig at Pik-N-Pak (!!!!!), shows from S.N.O.T., Bark Hard, Contortion Session, Fearless Iranians From Hell, and mentions the Party Owls Halloween bash that just happened the weekend before.

DL: The Funhouse Show - Monday 10/28/1985

As this was originally broadcast over the radio and taped to a cassette that probably sat in a cardboard box for 20 years before someone digitized it, the sound quality isn't great. This shouldn't keep you from checking this out, though, as it's really like ripping a page out of the Texas Punk history books.

If people enjoy this, let me know in the comments and i'll post other episodes. And if anyone out there happens to have a box of old Funhouse tapes sitting in their closet, let me know! I would love to digitize them for you (and me!)