TIME ONCE AGAIN FOR
FANZINE FANABLA!!!
You though/hoped I forgot, huh? Well, here are a whole batch of music fanzines
(Golden Age of Rock Writing or not) that I just know you'll want to know more
about, and given just how hard these mags are gettin' to latch onto please do
feel grateful, bub!
Unfortunately, most of the fanzines from the aforementioned GA that I oh so desperately want and maybe even need were printed up in rather limited editions, sometimes on spirit duplicators or ditto'd. Who knows how many of 'em were
thrown away by some mom prowlin' through her son's room looking for
pornography. I guess fanzines were just as fair game. I'd sure like to fill
up those gaps in the ol' collection and am in the market for loads of rarities, but after a
spell of thinking I figure why bother! I mean, how long do I really have on
this here planet and it ain't like I'm gonna hold and cherish these later
editions the same way I do items procured during my younger days! But sheee-yucks I'd sure like to read 'em!
Not only that, but there are entire genres of rock fanzines that I sure do need to know much more about especially now that I'm in my front porch and rocker years and wouldn't mind finding out about 'em before I make the great leap into that cruddy flea market in the sky. F'rexample, I sure could use a whole lotta them early/mid-seventies French fanzines that were plugged into the underground decadent current of the day...the kind like the one Patrick Eudeline mentioned where he copped Michel Bulteau of Mahogany Brain fame's want ad for a drummer and the two spent hours talking about everything but drums! I have some issues of PARAPLUIE and I saw via Ubupopland the one that the Pole label put out with the Mahogany Brain article I translated about a decade back, but there's gotta be more out there just begging to be eyeballed!
Golly ned, but I sure do welcome any information (personal or not) and even leads as far as obtaining any of these publications...I'm sure someone out there reading would want to be nice to me FOR ONCE IN YOUR PATHETIC LIVES and lend me a helping hand, or even foot for that matter. At this point in time I'll take any appendage you have.
Like I once said many a time, if any of you were making the kinda rags that I'm on
the lookout for and don't want to send
me some, if not all of your wares well, do you
REALLY want to go
to your graves without experiencing the honor and glory of having the world
remember you and your efforts which have until now been washed away by the
tide of utter banality? Face it bub...get your mag mentioned in this
blog and well...if somebody does happen to read this they'll know who you are and might even like you for it! But given the state of humanity these days I doubt it.
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Unfortunately COWABUNGA editor John Koenig doesn't have much to write about in this late '74 edition of the mag, but his few fanzine reviews are enlightening to the point when I sure wish I could scoop up the third issue of INITIAL SHOCK if only for the article on the various mid-sixties garage bands who managed to make their way out of the Midwest. The cover feature on the Astronauts (the Colorado surf group, not the anarchist punk rock band) was nice in that sorta just discovering 'em way, and I sure ain't complaining about the long review of the November issue of CREEM that reminds me of just how good the mag coulda been when their writers didn't drop the ball. Perhaps this was due to some of the contributors who eventually showed us all just how jerkoff they really were (no names mentioned, but I'm sure you know who these miscreants are) but still a good portion of your favorites managed to deliver in ways to make most all of us feel all warm 'n glowin'.
Editor John Koening's musings are also a hoot to read as he ponders what has happened to all of his favorite fanzines that have seemingly kicked the bucket, as well as what happened to THE NEW HAVEN ROCK PRESS's Jon Tiven, once a person who made many an appearance in the pro and fanzine publications of the day but who by the middle portion of that decade must have done a Houdini. I did get a kick out of Koening's editorial praising the various fifties rock 'n roll revival groups since he believed that they would spur kids on to listening to the real thing. Funny but Greg Shaw once felt the same way and said so in an issue of WHO PUT THE BOMP! a few years earlier. Anyway, it is somewhat amusing to see Koening lump together such definite grease band acts like Sha Na Na and Flash Cadillac in with Brownsville Station and the Flamin' Groovies, the latter two who I never saw as fifties revival acts in any wayshapeform. But if Ron Weiser thought the Groovies were on the same level of revival rot as Sha Na Na, well...
I can always use more fanzines like COWABUNGA in my cluttered up bedroom, and hopefully a few more will sneak their way into my abode and save me from the curse of stumbling across some rather dire rock writing that one can find on the internet. Hope more of these manage to make their way into my life but you know how blue I'm gonna turn holding my breath until some actually do!
***
Now here's one of those fanzines that it seems everybody knows about but nobody (at least that I know of) has ever seen. An ambitious one too, and even though THE LITTLE SANDY REVIEW does not necessarily deal with rock 'n roll music it still is something that any true fanzine aficionado would want to sink into if they claim even in the remotest to be a fan of the form.
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Well, they also covered those long-forgotten blues and backwoods country strummers and I don't mind reading about those innovators!
This 'un (#30) is a digest-sized issue with over 100 pages filled with a
plethora of reviews, snide attitude, and photos taken by noted snapper David
Gahr, a guy whose gypsy pix make it to these pages even if for the
most part gypsy music is not mentioned in the slightest. On the cover is Maria
D'Amato, a member of the Jim Queskin Jugband who would later be known to one
and all as Maria Muldair, once they scrubbed her up and gave her some modern
clothes. "Midnight at the Oasis" was far from what she was doing in the mid-sixties and I'll betcha that if someone would have told her that she'd have a laid back radio hit in a few years she wouldn't believe it either.
I really got into the brief snide reviews and neat historical trip into the
hardcore nature of the sixties folk movement even if for the life of me I
wouldn't buy a good portion, if any, of the records reviewed or patronize the artists
who recorded them for that matter. Too bad a mag along the lines of THE LITTLE SANDY REVIEW didn't spring out of rock fandom for that really would have boosted
the movement manyfold.
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This ish (#7) is just as good as the others even if the Grateful Dead take up the cover just like they did with the rest of those early-seventies English fanzines. Yes, San Fran rules hefty-like here,
but then again the Dead article is readable, not as good an historical and opinionated rundown as the one Nick Kent did in NME but swell enough The Mad River piece made for an intelligent if brief history of the group that of course
would be surpassed by future articles but whaddaya expect given this was 1972.
The reviews rank
high if only because none of them have that getting high on life
early-seventies dipsterism that was being sledgehammered into an entire
passel of kids who should have vehemently resisted. There are even some moments of
downright
SURPRISE here...take the review of Alice Cooper's KILLER done up
by a never heard of before and probably never heard from again person named
"ashley" who wrote these just gotta get'cha all hot and bothered words:
For high-energy rock, Alice Cooper ranks with the MC5, the American Dream, the Velvet Underground, Pink Fairies, and all the other tasty bands that seem bent on doin' our heads in.Dunno about you, but I tend to get all warm 'n toasty when I read words like that! And I didn't even mention the page-long review of the then-current two-LP Velvet Underground collection (the one with the imitation Warhol lips cover) that had just made its appearance in the record racks there and (with a greatly inflated price) import bins over here!
***
Maybe there's not enough here for this Amerigan to appreciate (steeply ensconced in the way things are over there) but otherwise OK enough
what with pieces on the Buzzcocks (one of those career roundups which read
like
NOW IT'S MY TURN TO WRITE ABOUT
'EM! which is cool enough for me), the Severed Heads (who I never heard
given their early-eighties artpose moniker!), Eurovision (???) and Ivor Cutler!
That "article" seems to be a letter to the mag from a 62-year-old guy and I
can hardly read it the print is so small and my eyes are so weak, but this
very same guy is the reason why I bought the mag in the first place! Well, it's a nice
enough way to spend a few moments out of your life and considering some of the
competition at the time (mid-eighties) its pretty hotcha.
***
Now back to the land of men with big tits, mainly AMERIGA. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to know that there has been a whole load
of important rock 'n roll gulcher out there that I have missed out on over my
many years of trying to keep you (as well as myself)
INFORMED. But like I
said, it would take about a few thousand me's to go through everything,
available or not, that is important to the entire cause of rock 'n roll as an
unchained form of suburban ranch house expression. But when something of
interest does hit the boards and I'm in a position to grab hold of the thing
well, you can bet that I'll go to town on it the same way Elton John did
changing his young charge's nappies.
Here's one fanzine I never even knew existed until very recently. You all know that most of the time I'm "out of the loop" as far as these things go, but when I find a long-gone item that is worth the time and effort to dwell into boy can you bet that I'm going to go full hog into my OCD mode which might be good for my own sense of rockist splendor but bad for my wallet.
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***A number of folk over the years have actually come up to me saying "Chris, you mean you never ever read an issue of __________?". And yes it is true. Hey, it's not like I was a pampered upper-class trust fund kiddie like most alla ya readers, and in no way could I have afforded to purchase even a slight portion of the top notch magazines that were catering to the more underground than thou crowd who were definitely richer beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, I once held an issue of MATTER in my paws for a good fifteen seconds and didn't get Jim DeRogatis' better than the rest REASONS FOR LIVING long after that publication had breathed its last. I never (even to this day) read most of the big 'uns like, say, TRULY NEEDY and although I wonder if I had missed anything important by not latching onto these rags I console myself in the fact that I'm positive very little that would interest me appeared in such publications. Kinda like the ol' fox and the grapes story, but unfortunately it rarely makes me feel any the better because of my past (and present, and future) financial hangups.
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The contents seem to be custom made for those of us who either lived through or were retroactively enthralled with the
wild mid-sixties of rock "coming of age" or whatever them intellectuals
called it. Suits me fine even if there are way too many fanzines and webpages etc. that have been doing that for years, but be honest for once and tell me that we always could have used more, eh?
Slapping Krazy Kat on the cover with an actual article and strips
inside was an interesting enough move as was the selection of acts
STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING chose to feature. A somewhat
eclectic choice too what with the Dukes of Stratosphear battling
it out with Genesis P'Orridge and the Weirdos and beach moom pitchers
fighting it out with Syd Barrett for precious space. It was mags like this
that sure made me feel inadequate with my own crudzine knowing that, given my slim finances (selling scrap metal for money
to publish the thing) and general pariahness I'd never get something like
this outta my own gassed up bedroom cut/paste/collate/staple efforts.
***
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***
In past "fanablas" there were a quite few reviews regarding a rather
spiffy English fanzine entitled PANACHE, a mag that was definitely
at the tippy top of the 'zine realm as far as content, layout and general
fan-oriented attitude went. So like, what's keeping me from giving
this should-be legendary mag yet another plug? Haw, the joke's on me
because this particular PANACHE is not the same one that
photographer Mick Mercer had been putting out since the late-seventies but
a totally different effort that came out of the wilds of San Francisco!
Considering that there were a number of fanzines entitled
WHITE NOISE and at least two goin' 'round calling themselves
NEW AGE why not a pair with this particularly neeto title that
conjures images of class and style, something a few fanzines out there
sure coulda used a whole lot more of.
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Gotta say that this PANACHE does not quite sway me the
way that Mercer's effort did. Like a whole lotta these nineties-on
publications the layout is too slick, the writing tepid (certainly not
of the post-Meltzer growl or suburban slob energy that makes
HOMEMADE SHIT such a highly-anticipated read) and for some
strange reason I don't think any of the staff nor their readership could
fathom the deep down beauty of a song the stature of "I Heard Her Call
My Name". Still gets hefty points for featuring the should-be-infamous
Japanese gal group the 5678's on the cover. The rest though, is just too
new (with all of the negative connotations that might imply) for my own
personal sense of sartorial inelegance.
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More honest than George Washington me must admit that this issue of
REAL STUFF ain't one of those grab me by the psyche
fanzines in the way a whole number of these self-produced efforts tend
to appease my own warped sense of rockism. However I should say that
this English effort does get the points for layout, the ability to
wrangle interviews with biggies like the Go Gos, Wall of Voodoo and
that guy from Drinking Electricity whoever they were not to mention
devote a page to San Fran scenester Vermillion Sands listing her past
accomplishments and interests. Bonus points for a two-page
retrospective on the GTO's who sure needed some rememberin' at the
time. This is issue #3 in case you're keeping count.
I never knew that Ireland produced their own version of
ZIGZAG. It was (is?) called HEAT and
as far as copping the look and feel of ZZ they sure did a
fairly swell job what with the flippant writing and coverage of
things both pertinent to the cause of "rock 'n roll" and not. Most
if not all of the text was lettered a la
THE NEXT BIG THING and as far as covering alla the new
and hipster sounds that were comin' outta the late seventies go they
seemed to be about as much on the ball as all of those English
weaklies that the rich Amerigan kids could afford (but not me ---
have I told you about my financial straits lately?!?!). It's what
you'd expect meaning there's no heavy emphasis on the grittier
underground thud of the day and the records you would expect to be
reviewed most definitely are, but it sure filled its purpose filling
the locals in on a whole load of music from a local perspective.
I'm sure that more'n just a few kids o'er there were mighty grateful
that HEAT came along and if I were in Ireland at the time I
guess I would have liked it a whole lot as well.
The mid-eighties were just filled to the brim with fanzines dealing
with a whole slew of rockist-related genres both past and present. I sure do recall a whole buncha 'em out there that would have broken the bank had I decided to snatch 'em up.
MAKING TYME is one I missed out on back then and to be truthful about it this is no great lost because this issue, although somewhat good, is rather predicable. Then again so is this blog so who am I to act all huffy puffy about it!
So why'n heck was this particular fanzine entitled
NOSTALGIA anyway? You got me because like there's
nothing calculated to extract the warm 'n toasties outta either the
depression-bred old folks or the baby boom ingrates in these pages.
Sheesh, a mag with Carla Bley on the cover has about as much to do
with nostalgia as Howard Stern has to do with good taste! 'n not
only that but there's not one attempt to dig into the more
superficial elements of just how ginchy groovy leather jackets and
skirts with poodles on 'em to be found. Why the heck this mag was
called NOSTALGIA is way beyond me although I'd bet'cha
that an explanation can be found in some other issue.
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Unfortunately this particular ish of 3:AM (Vol. 2 No. 1)
just didn't thrill me the way that the one I reviewed in the
previous Fanabla sure did. Probably cuz there ain't enough rock 'n
roll in it for my tastes, and although I sure like reading about
those old horror and pre-glitz films that I'll never see in a
millyun years I also like editor Joe Johnson's takes on various
musical maniacs that I either grew up with or sure wish I had grown up with.
Back in the seventies people would put out anything and
claim it to be a fanzine. That's just what Cy. K. Delic did here and
if I ever saw him on the street I'd definitely pulverize him for
attempting to pass these five one-sided pages as a publication of
any sort of worth. Very little text here other'n some brief mention
of a Devo fan club and a local somethingorother who had just passed
on, but otherwise I just don't get the idea that clip art collages
and pix lifted from the newspaper are really worth the time and
bother even if your thoughts are clean and your heart is pure. Aw
shucks, it's just a nice and I assume freebee tossout so why don't I
just leave the thing alone...I mean, it ain't
hurtin' anyone!
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The inside repro job ain't the best but back then ya hadda work with
whatever you had at your disposal (the reason why the type in my
early issues went from tiny to even tinier given how the copiers at
my disposal only had three settings), but editorette Beverly
Paterson sure was lucky to wrangle interviews with Paul Revere, Sky
Saxon and two of the Standells! I hope this bit of duty in the
service of humanity counts in her favor when she's up for the Nobel
Prize. Sheesh, if they gave on to Barak Obama they'll give one to
anybody!
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And finally well...it ain't a fanzine but I paid for it and I
gotta stick it in this blog someplace.
LID was an early '00's glossy magazine that, from what I
could tell, came off like a mostly picture mag with some dialogue
that was aimed at the New Yawk chi-chi crowd who like to show off
just how down with the ethnics they are while dining at some of the
most expensive places imaginable.
***
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***
***
Given the title you know where these
guys' loyalties lie, what with the stories on the by-now infamous
Eyes and Syn along with the always neeto to read old ads which
remind me of what life and attitude used to be like before the
hippies hadda come in and lovey dove everything up. News and reviews
regarding the revival groups of the day pop up and although this
scene, just like every other teenbo craze out there didn't last too
long and looked somewhat foolish within a few years there's a whole load of positive vibrations regarding them days just
oozing from the pages. And I should talk about hippies given what I
have just written (I mean..."positive vibrations??????")!
***
If there's one word that should be forever banished from the English
(or any other) language it's "nostalgia". Hokay, I think that
"iconic" and "gender" should also be forever omitted from being
uttered by those in on the latest in cool cat vocabularies as well,
but for today let's talk that first word I brought up which only
reminds me of all of those television shows and movies from the
seventies that were being made about the earlier portion of the
century to the point of nausea. Not that there's anything
particularly wrong with that, but people back then seemed to be
nostalgic for all the wrong reasons! Take the obsession with things
"fifties" which was hotcha stuff from the very late sixties and even
well into the eighties...now there was plenty great about the
fifties but these things sure weren't being played up in any of
those moom pitchers or tee-vee shows that I was viewing way back
when.
Take the music of them days f'rexistence...loads of rheumy-eyed
memories of some of the soppier moments in fifties music were always
being trotted out in these various productions as examples of the
best that era had to offer. You couldn't escape hearing songs like
"The Great Pretender" and "Little Darling" whenever you'd eyeball
some fifties-oriented program or moom pitcher feature way back when, but where in
blazes was the real hard and earth-moving sounds of the day like
"Green Mosquito", "Red River Rock" or "Tall Cool One"??? Like Greg
Shaw somewhat said, a love of fifties rock 'n roll (or in my case
television, comics, mooms) was
NOT nostalgia but just an appreciation of good, hard-hitting
media that just happened to bop more'n a few young 'uns right
between the ol' psyche. And with recording artists like Helen Reddy
and Barry White cluttering up the charts really, who could blame 'em?
I liked the Bley interview where she discusses plenty of the
JCOA/Watt Records efforts, and the article on the psychedelic era of
the Pretty Things' career was actually well written even if not much
if anything new is sheds on the subject. It also is good to know
that Arthur Lee was still remembered in the waning days of 1975 but
sheesh, Traffic were always a boring bunch to listen to and I can
give not a whit about anything Andy Frazer might have had for
breakfast let alone had to say. While I'm on a rampage perhaps I should mention to you that anyone who would even
THINK of
giving space to the likes of David Crosby and Graham Gnash ought to
check into the re-education camp of his/her/its choice. Otherwise I
gotta say this is a pretty nice although not engrossing fanzine
attempt and hey, it could have been worse as we all very well know
given some of the offal that has crossed my eyes these past few years, if not longer.
***
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Sad
to say, but there certainly is a lack of that
CREEM (classic early-to-mid-seventies
CREEM that is) styled crazed coverage here, the kind I
strive for in my own scribbles (usually missing the target by
miles but YOU just try it!). We sure coulda used more of that "gonzo" writing back when
fanzines like this 'un were up and about in the dank 80s, 90s, 00s,
10s, but all we got for our troubles was Parke Puterbaugh. Eh, why
should I complain since 3:AM's a great li'l homemade rag that
does succeed with what it delivers and like, why quibble considering
the plethora of downright turdburger reads that have been produced
o'er the past few decades awlready!
***
***
I believe I've owned this issue of INSIDE OUT ("volume
1") ever since it hit the stands or wherever they sold fanzines back
in those days and like well, I'm too lazy to check into my box of
long-gone out of print rags to find out. If not well...here's a mag
that looks more like a high school literary magazine than something
devoted to the better portion of sixties rock 'n roll and yeah, the
material mentioned in these pages is older than Methuselah and has been through the wringer more'n just a few times. Despite
all that INSIDE OUT will get'cha all remembering just
how fun and exciting it was reading about them groups that we could
only dream about hearing (by the late-seventies the flea market
stands with the passionate sixties-vintage albums had been all
cleaned out), but reading about 'em while keeping a good lookout was
a fine way to pass the time.
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Paul Revere sounds gracious enough considering the at-times curt
words he had for his former singer and bonafide teen idol Mark
Lindsay, and Tony Valentino and Larry Tamblyn from the Standells
kinda remind me of a coupla old fogies on the front porch talking
about The War Between The States even at this early stage in the game (1987). Of course
Sky Saxon is his old sunlight self talking about the animals and how
others swiped his ideas for fun and maybe even profit. If you've
been listening to these guys ever since you can remember, these chit
chats almost come off as if they were being told to you by a
personal friend you've known all these years, and if admitting this
makes me out to be a sentimental old fanabla I do try to keep
that under my hat even though said hat seems to slide off in windier
than usual weather.
Not only is INSIDE OUT a fine representation of what the
creme de la sixties was all about, but just how fun it is
remembering about it all a good twentysome years later when we sure
could have used a lot less MTV and a lot more high energy in our
lives.
***
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Well, that's the impression I get of it and well, I had the idea
that this Andy Warhol retro ish would've been something that would have definitely benefitted my entire nervous system. It does have some rare snaps and tries somewhat to capture that hotcha 60s/70s
Warhol attitude and feel, but actually I got the same irritating
upper class snob feeling from this that I got from those
late-eighties ART FORUM magazines that were crying
Chicken Little over Jesse Helms threatening to off a whole load of
artistes' gravy train grants as if these people actually had to be
supported rather than go out and make themselves a living doing something more attuned to their talents like digging ditches.
Sheesh, I liked it back when art was stuff like Chris Burden and
guys who could paint lifelike enough pictures of nice looking nude women, but anymore I could care less 'bout these effete snobs
making all of these socially aware creations that have the
meaningful lifespan of a flea. The strangest thing about it all is
that even Warhol didn't approve of all those socially conscious
better-than-thous who were cluttering up the art world in the
eighties, and if the guy's been posthumously canceled for his opines
I have yet to hear about it!
Well, at least the pages weren't perfumed.
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