Pat Blashill was born and raised in Austin. In 1979, he began going to punk shows while studying photojournalism at the University of Texas. In 1987, he moved to New York City, where he worked for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Wired, GQ, and other publications. Texas Is the Reason is the first collection of his photographs and writing.

An instant must-read for music nerds, students and those looking to explore the old Austin through revolutionary music...Blashill expertly investigates the intersection of geography and music, highlighting the importance of Texas as a backdrop in fostering both progressive ideas and sound. Blashill becomes a tour guide, traversing interviews and personal thoughts while expertly navigating readers through a compelling and inspiring narrative on the Texas punk scene.-- "The Daily Texan" (9/11/2025 12:00:00 AM)

Blashill's pages contain all the fiercely contradicting viewpoints, loyally contrarian attitudes, and angst-fashioned reveries that have come to characterize punk...[He asks] political and cultural questions with a willingness to take accountability for intersectional failures of time, place, and whiteness within the scene and a skeptically nuanced eye toward historical revising...Someday All the Adults Will Die! bridges the gap between a history made to memorialize those who enacted it and a guide to let everyone else in on the secret.-- "The Austin Chronicle" (9/19/2025 12:00:00 AM)

A riotous, freewheeling oral history of punk rock in Texas from the late 1970s to the 1990s...The narrative mixes rigorous musical analysis, fans' affectionate musings, and such colorful anecdotes as the Huns' lead singer kissing a cop during a raid and the Big Boys' front man performing in a 'suit made of bologna sandwiches.' It makes for a comprehensive portrait of a vibrant subculture.-- "Publishers Weekly" (9/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)

Unflinchingly honest and wildly entertaining, Someday All the Adults Will Die! captures the rise and fall of Texas punk in all its chaotic glory. As a photographer, Pat Blashill captured that scene from the inside--he didn't just document it, he lived it. Here, he gives the rest of us the same access, with an oral history that's as raw and emotional as the music itself.--Melissa Maerz, author of Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused

Texas had America's wildest, weirdest punk-and-after scene--a primal playpen of shock rock, instinctive Dada, psychedelic freakout, performance art, scream therapy, and absurdist anti-politics. Austin native Pat Blashill was in the thick of it, photographing the messy madness as it unfolded. In Someday All the Adults Will Die!, Blashill shepherds the ultra-vivid memories of his contemporaries and threads through his own hindsight insights, forming an essential document rich with the textures of a long-gone real-gone time. Hilarious and poignant, this is a story never before told--and an inspiration to future freethinkers and troublemakers.--Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984

Someday All the Adults Will Die! is packed with thrilling images and stories from a wild scene in a crazy state.--James Hannaham, author of Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

There's a new voice and a punchy story in practically every paragraph [of Someday All the Adults Will Die!]...In telling the story of the Austin scene, Mr. Blashill also underscores how punk functioned as the force that pulled a community together.-- "The Wall Street Journal" (9/5/2025 12:00:00 AM)

A remarkable story of becoming that plays out in a bygone era of weird Austin, told by much of its original cast...The book dedicates a chapter to sexuality, one to gender, and another to race, setting it apart from other punk oral histories that gloss over issues of identity, inclusion, and sexual violence...This critical tome of American punk history can be seen as part of a Texan tradition of warts-and-all self-reflection that forms another core theme of the book.-- "Bandcamp" (10/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Pub date: 2025-09-02

Length: 272 pages