Matter #8

Matter was positioned right at the nerve center of underground and slightly just-above-underground America during its mid-1980s run. It was a fanzine that was well-designed enough to be a “magazine” and with enough cachet to land bigger interviews w/ the likes of The Smiths, while positioning them next to what they likely really wanted to cover, which was true favorites like The Go-Betweens and Chicago locals such as End Result and Sports of Kings. And let it be said that this wasn’t some mouth-breathing boy’s club. The masthead touts Editor Elizabeth Phillip, managing editor Irene Innes and business manager Irene Igawa – a female trifecta that, let me assure you, was tokenistically uncommon in this realm in 1984. This is the world of Our Band Could Be Your Life, except directed and guided by women, and with Steve Albini taking a starring role. 

Matter #8 is the first issue with a new cover design – you can see all the covers here – and it came out in April/May 1984. Right there on the first page, BAM, first letter, there’s some correspondence from Steve Lafrenier with some concerns about one of the mag’s chief writers, one Steve Albini. Complaints of this sort came to color a great many of the letters-to-the-editors in Matter over the years. Lafranier says: “What is Steve Albini talking about? After reading two issues of Matter’s gleeful publication of this guy’s opinions, it gets pretty obvious that he doesn’t really have any. Exactly like the atrophied, tail-end of a dead ‘scene’ he unceasingly promotes, his writing exemplifies the kind of hypocrisy he claims to be in the business of subverting. Gad, what reactionary duck shit”, before then going and calling Albini and the editors on the carpet with some examples. 

Albini responds not with a sneering load of snark, but with “You miss most of the points I’ve ever made, but you hit paydirt on one issue. Several people have brought to my attention how much overt fag baiting I’ve been doing. Having re-read much of what I’ve written, I have to agree. That’s not why I do this, and I don’t want it to appear that way. It takes letters like yours to make people like me rethink old habits”. Progress! The scene policed itself when it had to. Andy Schwartz of NY Rocker also writes in to complain about the 4-issue subscription price (for $6!) while praising Steve Albini’s “black and white” thinking to the hilt. And Dave Sprague of Sense of Purpose writes with his own boatload of praise for Matter, then asks if he can write for the mag.

As mentioned, coverage and interviews were straddling varying shades of musical taste and genres that were often not entirely complementary, and that’s why this is a fanzine that likely had a pretty wide appeal to those in Chicago and elsewhere who found it. For local stuff, there’s news of a demo from a new band called Urge Overkill; Naked Raygun’s Flammable Solid and Big Black’s Bulldozer are discussed as well, along with lesser lights like the Bonemen of Barumba. Beyond Chicago, there are interviews with Otto’s Chemical Lounge, The Bluebells, Slickee Boys, and The Specimen. The latter get stuck talking about how one writer dubbed their syntho-goth fishnet & lace posing as “positive punk”, somehow, and how they’re now having to live it down in every interview. 

Blake Gumprecht doesn’t exactly paint The Go-Betweens as wild rocknroll outlaws, saying rather that “They’re not a cult band, nor have they ever had that hit single, and I’m not sure they ever will. They don’t dress remarkably, act funny or weird, or even talk a heckuva lot. Nice. Normal. Unassuming. Simple. Modest. Quiet. Those are the words people use to describe The Go-Betweens.” They’ve just been dropped from Rough Trade, and are at something of a crossroads, trying to figure out if they should move permanently to New York or not. Matter are so into the band – as I know many of you are/were and I sometimes am – that Michael Lev gets to write a second article/interview with the band in this same issue.

There’s breaking news on Kendra Smith’s new band Clay Allison – to be known as Opal a year or two later. They say, “Smith writes that the band is getting increasingly cool: ‘Led Zeppelin meets Love meets Syd Barrett’. Her partner David Roback, formerly with Rain Parade, says that Clay Allison is to Rain Parade what Big Star is to the Box Tops. An album is forthcoming on the band’s own Serpent label”. Neither the Led Zeppelin nor that forthcoming album were true – here’s what the (fantastic) 45 actually sounded like. 

Furthermore! There’s a piece on the burgeoning Athens GA scene – OhOK, Love Tractor, Buzz of Delight et al. This world was a big deal and ever-present on many hipsters’ lips at the time. There’s a Trouble Funk complete discography along with a big multi-paragraph pile of praise, probably the single best and certainly the most completist thing written about them I’ve seen. Anyone out there go to this show? And Albini writes up “The Moron’s Guide to Making a Record”, which is funny because he did something similar and/or identical in Matter #10, which I wrote about here. I’m too lazy to go grab that one out of the boxes; I wonder if it was a reprint to help further the cause? Like I said, the scene looked after itself. 

Finally, Matter would do this thing in their record reviews where 3-5 reviewers would get a short paragraph or two, and everyone would assign a letter grade. It was always good fun to see just how much of an outlier Albini might be. Black Flag’s My War gets a C from Albini – “This is it? We had to wait over two years for this? I don’t know what’s running through Greg Ginn’s head, but if he thinks noodling around in King Crimson territory while Henry grunts and huffs is some bold new direction, we’d be better off if Black Flag had another few years of court-imposed silence”. I couldn’t have said it better myself. He gives it a C. Glen Sarvady says “Side two is possibly the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and that includes groups I expect to be awful”. He also gives it a C. For these comments alone, I give Matter #8 an A, but I would even without ‘em.