"Man, I haven't seen some of these people in 20 years."

It was a sentiment heard over and over again — with minor variations for time served in the Austin punk scene — during Friday night's wake for Randy "Biscuit" Turner at the Pedazo Chunk video store.

The Austin singer, artist and larger-than-life personality's body was discovered in his South Austin home Thursday evening. A couple hundred friends and admirers filled the South First Street video shop and art gallery to eat, drink and talk about their departed friend, bandmate and idol.

Known for his wild performances as the frontman for the legendary Austin punk band the Big Boys, Turner was a key figure in the establishment of Austin as a crucial city in the American punk scene during the 1970s and '80s.

Kathy Criss sported a Big Boys T-shirt and hung around Pedazo's back porch, where the muggy air had settled in for the night. Criss said she had known Turner since 1978. A black woman interested in a music scene dominated by whites — that also often attracted racist skinheads — she felt frighted by punk clubs.

"But you were never worried at a Big Boys show," she said. 'They were just so much fun." Criss went on to play in the Negroes, a band that "played one show and lasted three weeks."

Her experience reflected the Big Boys' do-it-yourself worldview. The band's guitarist Tim Kerr's lifelong motto is "What are you doing to participate?"

Kerr was not present at the wake, but former Big Boys bassist Chris Gates stopped by, recalling Turner's never-grow-up attitude.

"I met Biscuit when I was 13 years old," Gates said. "It was about 1974 and he was 13 years older than me. He had what must have been the first skateboard with urethane wheels in Texas. I met (Kerr) soon after and we spent the years before we started the Big Boys just skating all the time. Biscuit was always singing when he would skate or riding his bike in crazy outfit. When we started the band, it was like, 'Let's get the guy in the gold choir robes whose riding around blessing people at the 23rd Street Market.'"

Joe Sebastian works the door at Room 710, the last club where Biscuit's latest project, the Texas Biscuit Bombs, played its most recent show on July 24. "I was always fond of Biscuit's 'clothes visits' to the club," Sebastian said of the singer who treated his life — and especially his clothing — as art. "He would bring bags of clothes, laundered and

pressed, that he didn't want anymore and just give them away. I scored a whole bunch of his socks. You can never have too many socks."

Pedazo Chunk was supposed to host a show of Turner's visual art Friday night, but Chunk co-owner Dannie Ramirez said she became worried Wednesday when Biscuit, know for his precision when it came to the public display of his art, didn't show up to hang paintings.

"I knew something was really wrong when he still hadn't shown up on Thursday," Ramirez said as a video of Biscuit performing played on the store monitors. "This was not the sort of thing he would leave to other people. He even wanted to totally remodel my screening room."

In lieu of Turner's art, which remains in and around his Austin home, the screening room was given over to a selection of photos and prints. Bearded Lady, a local printing company owned by members of the band Oh, Beast!, who recently performed with Turner, gave away an original silk-screen depicting Turner. The prints vanished quickly, as did stacks of the fanzine "Left of the Dial," to which Turner contributed.

Ramirez taped large paper hearts and a "Biscuit timeline" to the outside of the store. Attendees wrote remembrances from all parts of Turner's career:

"Won the costume contest at Cub Scout Indian Day Camp."

"Your voice soothed my soul I'll always remember the Swine King years love David + Carol" (Swine King was Turner's band in the late '80s.)

"Rollerderby Penalty king circus freak galore. He will be missed by all."

Former Swine King band member Dottie Farrell summed up the general mood as she greeted friends with a sad hug: "What a sucky way to see everyone I love."

Tributes also poured in from those not in attendance. All of underground America seemed to know about Turner's passing. WFMU, the New York-area free-form station, aired a half-hour tribute to Turner on DJ Mike Lupica's show Friday afternoon.

"Randy inspired so many Austin music folks to listen to themselves and not their televisions," Texas Music Office director Casey Monahan said Friday. " He was a kind, creative, loving and funny man without a trace of meanness — even when he was tossing refuse at fans from the Club Foot stage. His DIY ethic was tempered by his own sense of always trying to do right."

Ian MacKaye, former lead singer of the influential Washington, D.C. hardcore punk band Minor Threat and head of pioneering punk label Dischord Records, expressed regret at Biscuit's passing.

"I think Biscuit and Tim (Kerr) were really visual artists from the get-go," MacKaye said Thursday. "The Big Boys had a extreme idea of presentation. It was beyond merely camp, it wasn't ironic, it was really confrontational."

MacKaye once saw the Big Boys at a Bethesda, Maryland venue called the Psychedeli. "Biscuit was in his usual colorful jumpsuit," he said. "Suddenly, he unbuttoned it, pulled out pieces of Wonder bread from under his arms and ate them. It's so absurd-sounding and most people would find that disgusting or ridiculous, but there was something about that image at that moment that I've never forgotten."

Though Minor Threat was a popular band with a national reputation, MacKaye says they were outclassed by the outré Big Boys.

"They opened for us the first time I saw them. They were completely confounding, and I felt like I didn't have any business being on the same stage with them. It was as if they set the table for like an banquet and we came in with a loaf of bread. It was good bread, but not banquet material."

Early Friday morning, Butthole Surfers King Coffey said Biscuit could change the mood of a room with the force of his personality.

"I keep thinking of the memorial for D. Montgomery," he said. Montgomery acted in 1991 film "Slacker" and ran sound for the production. "She died a very drawn out battle from cancer (in 1997). Her memorial was at the big church across from Dobie Mall. A lot of people stepped up and told stories, everyone was crying. It was horrible.

"As people were filing out, Biscuit started yelling at the door, 'The reviews are in!' He had made flyers of reviews of D.'s life — all rave reviews, of course — and passed them out like a newspaperboy hawking a special edition. It was so funny, so Biscuit. It was relief to walk out of there with a smile."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926.