There's an unusual book world angle to a photograph tweeted Tuesday by the Texas GOP meant to attack Democratic Senatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke. In the picture from the 1990s, O'Rourke and two others in dresses pose for the camera. @TexasGOP wrote: "Maybe Beto can't debate Ted Cruz because he already had plans..." and scrawled on the photo: "Sorry, can't debate. We have a gig."
It turns out that O'Rourke is a musician, and the image is of the band Foss. Besides O'Rourke (l.), the band included Arlo Klahr (c.), who works at Skylight Books in Los Angeles (and now plays in the Fragile Gang), and Mike Stevens, who's now a journalist.
John Byrd, marketing director and CFO of Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas, noted that Foss musicians often switched instruments after songs. The Sheeps, a band that O'Rourke and Klahr were in after Foss, always played in disguise, usually as sheep, and "claimed to be the most famous punk band ever to come out of New Zealand."
Incidentally, Cinco Puntos published O'Rourke's book about marijuana legalization, Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico, which he co-wrote with Byrd's sister Susie Byrd.