I’ve noticed in looking back at early punk fanzines that many of the youngsters writing for them had clearly been weaned on their daily paper’s gossip column, and therefore took this time-honored scandal-sheet form into their first writings. Quite a few fanzines loved to go with these “items” about who was dating whom; who was breaking up; who got drunk at a party; who got burned by a label and so on. Even the “scene reports” that clogged up MaximumRocknRoll eventually took some of this form.It’s even more fun, in 1977’s New Dezezes #2 (we talked about #1 here two days ago), to see just how either off-base and wrong, or prescient and predictive, so many of these “items” actually were. To wit:
“Rat Scabies left THE DAMNED because of a rumoured suicide attempt and the band has decided to break up!”
“The new CRIME drummer is McDonald’s employee HANK RANK – who has never played drums before”
“David Braun, keyboard player for The Screamers, has been sacked and is now starting his on (sic) record label – DANGER HOUSE (sic)”
“The Cramps drummer Miriam left & the band has since disbanded”
“Penelope Houston got a chunk of her arm bitten off at a trendy DEVO party”
“A new punk club called THE MASQUE has opened up in L.A.”
Great stuff in ‘77! Jean Caffeine’s New Dezezes #2 has a color cover this time around as well as double the amount of staples (top left and top right!), but still insisted on printing on one side of paper only for about two-thirds of the pages, somehow switching gears every now & again and going big on “both sides”. Sometimes the pages are in landscape mode, others in portrait, and often hand-written or banged out on a clunky typewriter, as one did in those days.
Given that Peter Urban was one of the prime movers on this magazine, and that he managed The Dils, it’s only right and natural that The Dils get a big feature in this one. The Dils were also a fantastic all-timer of a punk band, and their new 45 I Hate The Rich has just hit the stores. Yet the Paul Weller (The Jam) interview seems to take the tone & tenor of this thing down a bit. The Jam clearly toured the US earlier than I’d thought, and listen, The Jam were also one of my favorite bands in high school – more the “Going Underground” and “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” Jam, not the snotty, punk-ish sounding 1977 Jam. I still like that stuff, but I always thought Weller was a boob and a terrible interview, just a huge chip on his shoulder at all times and someone who was really, really bad at being the “common man” he so very much wanted to be. Springsteen is better at that act for sure!
Greg and Jimmy from The Avengers each get their own interviews in this one, and there are some cool photos of a new band called The Liars, who never recorded, but how about this – there’s terrific footage of them from 1978 right here on YouTube! (And while you’re at it, how about CRIME sounding like the Velvet Underground playing “Sweet Sister Ray”?). You know, the crowd from these days loved to whistle on about “the spirit of ‘77” long after those days were over, but all you need to do is watch those videos and the sheer joy of the crowds having a total ball – and then read a mag like New Dezezes #2 documenting it all in real time – and you’ll cut them some slack, when you’re not whining in your own head about missing it all because you were nine years old, like I always tend to do.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 