These Zigzags from late 70s UK can be pretty illuminating on the 1979 state of the underground rock fandom and just how fast and furious and sideways new, exciting bands were hitting editor Kris Needs and the team. These folks had completely modified their approach to music once punk hit. It started as a straight rock magazine in 1969 – check out this 1976 Jefferson Starship cover, ugh! – and one year later, just about all of that was whooshed aside in favor of punk, pre-punk like The Stooges, any/all punk offshoots and – being that this was England and the punks loved reggae – some reggae as well.
By July 1979, when this issue hit the local newsagent, it was clear that the magazine and its readers had started to codify their representative favorites. Zigzag #95 is totally packed with Siouxsie and the Banshees mania. Their reader’s poll has Siouxsie winning “Sexiest person”, “Best Dressed” and “Female Singer”, and the band taking #1 for “Best Single” (“Staircase”, easily one of their worst 45s) and the #2 slot for album (The Scream, their first), best group and best live group – all second to The Clash, I might add. It’s a recurring theme in 1979 fanzines in both the UK and the US, I have found – The Clash lord over all, even though it seems to me as though no one actually really loved Give ‘Em Enough Rope at the time.
Zigzag’s just had their tenth anniversary party, actually, and there’s a multi-page spread talking about how great it was. No, they didn’t invite Steve Hillage nor Be-Bop Deluxe nor Dr. Feelgood nor Marc Bolan, though the latter couldn’t make it anyway since he’d died two years earlier. But Siouxsie was there. Wayne County was totally there. The Clash and PiL were there. Were you there? Drop us a line if you were.
Kris Needs does a “stop the press” review about how blown away he is by Public Image Ltd.’s “Death Disco” single (“frightening, monstrous dancing musik”), in fact. And I can say with a high degree of subjectivity and assurance 44 years later that it was the best thing PiL did and would ever do. The other new UK item the team at Zigzag are totally hopped up about are the Psychedelic Furs. Just as Kickboy Face in the United States and Slash would soon be calling the earliest incarnation of the band a “Velvet Underground / Roxy Music hybrid”, so too are those same influences thrown around by this magazine, along with Syd Barrett and Bolan himself. Well, now who wouldn’t be excited about that in 1979?
The thing is, I’ve always kinda liked the early Psychedelic Furs myself. They were a staple of KFJC, my college radio learning module, when I was coming of age in my San Jose, CA bedroom. The big hits on KFJC were “Sister Europe”, “Dumb Waiters” and “Pretty in Pink”, if I recall. This was at least two years before the latter song became the theme to a very popular teen movie, and catapulted the band to minor stardom. So reading these early Slash and Zigzag real-time appraisals of the band made me go back and listen to those first two albums, the self-titled one and Talk Talk Talk, and you know what? I get it. I completely get the excitement, and it sort of rekindled a respect for the band that I’d partially lost, so much so that my most recent Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio podcast plays a trio of songs to try to convince others that the FURS are h-o-t-t stuff.
Zigzag #95 shows further good taste and refinement by interviewing The Cramps, and furthering their desire to not be a cult band (Lux: “I consider us a totally commercial band. It’s just a matter of bending people our way.”), along with Switzerland’s Kleenex. Singer Regula Sing has just left the band, and the band are pissed about it. I think this was the catalyst for them turning into LiLiPut, right? Oh, and I think I may have been someone who once furthered something I don’t think is true any longer; Regula Sing did not go on to form The Mo-Dettes under the name Ramona Carlier, even though there are plenty of websites that say she did. I don’t believe the two of them look enough nor sound enough alike, and I’m gonna call bullshit on the whole thing right now, OK?
Destroy All Monsters and The Prats interviews, too! Good magazine, real good one, and I’m going to try and keep scooping more of them up where I can.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 