AUSTIN, Texas — If you've been in Austin for even a short amount of time, you've probably heard someone say the city has changed a lot over the years. Maybe even that "it's not like it used to be," or "it was better back then."
Based on the popularity of our KVUE Rewind series, nostalgia runs rampant in Austin. Old and new Austinites alike like seeing glimpses of what the city used to be and comparing it to what it is now.
One fantastic example of a snapshot that shows how much Austin has changed – and how much it hasn't – is an MTV News report from the early '90s. A YouTube user named Juice Pod uploaded the full 17-minute episode last year, and local writer and radio host Andy Langer – who is featured in the clip – shared the link on social media this week.
And what a treasure trove of throwbacks it is.
The episode features a number of long-gone Austin businesses, from coffee shops and restaurants like Quackenbush's and Threadgill's to shops like Tesoros and the record store SoundExchange. In fact, only a small handful of the businesses shown still remain in some form today.
But what's almost more surprising than the fact that the clip practically serves as an "in memoriam" segment" is the number of things that are the same about Austin, then and now.
"What is the one thing you'd want the rest of the country to know about Austin, Texas?" correspondent Alison Stewart asks Threadgill's owner Eddie Wilson.
Wilson's reply? "We're full. Y'all stay home, watch us on TV."
Sound familiar? How about this one, from Patrick Lamire of SoundExchange:
"You don't really run across many people who were actually born in Austin. And it's a place that has attracted people from outside the area for a long time."
Of course, something else that has remained somewhat the same and also changed tremendously is Austin's music scene. In the episode, MTV News spotlights what Langer called a "who's who of Austin musicians from the era," including Charlie Sexton, Doyle Bramhall, Chris Wall and others.
The episode comes across something like a love letter to the music scene, filmed just a few years after Austin declared itself the "Live Music Capital of the World." But while the cost of living was certainly lower in the early '90s, the musicians that give the city its reputation still faced some of the same struggles they do today.
"You can't make a lot of money in Austin, period. And you won't," musician Sue Foley tells MTV News in the clip. "And I'm going to tell that to all the bands that are moving down here – don't expect to make a lot of money."
