Busting out of Austin’s country and blues mold in the late ’70s, The Skunks were Austin’s first genuine punk band, playing everything so fast and loud that it cut through the city’s “cosmic cowboy” crap like a rusty straight razor. Led by Jesse Sublett and Eddie Muñoz (also of The Plimsouls), later replaced by acclaimed singer-songwriter Jon Dee Graham, The Skunks regularly opened for the likes of Elvis Costello and The Police before splintering in 1983, leaving behind a legacy that can still be heard in every slash-and-burn Austin group since.
