(This piece is taken from a written overview I did on Take It! fanzine (1981-82) in the most recent Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzine #10. You’re more than welcome to check out the full piece in the magazine if you’re so inclined).
This one doesn’t helpfully provide a date of publishing, yet judging from the extensive talk of the late 1980 deaths of both John Lennon and Darby Crash, I’d attempt to date this one around Spring ‘81. Therefore it follows on the heels of its predecessor quite faithfully. Aside from the US/UK music split, there is some film talk; a piece on a pornographic cake company and another on an artist named Jonathan Borofsky – he’d later go on to make the “Hammering Man” sculpture you now see in front of the Seattle Art Museum. There’s a non-rock photo section curated by Phil-n-Phlash, whom I know far better for his photos of Boston hardcore a year or two later, including the Boston Not LA cover, and whose photos continue in future issues. And there’s a Boston punk rock fashion show review.
But since you’re here for the music, let me tell you a bit about what Take It! was on about in early 1981. Well, there’s some gratuitous Fleshtones bashing, something that was de rigueur in fanzines at the time, but better still, the Byron Coley column and record reviews are among the best things I’ve read by the guy – the sort of johnny-on-the-spot reportage that I want to see collected in that Byron Coley compendium that no one’s put up the cash to assemble (yet).
Now at this time he did somehow believe that the debut Angry Samoans 12” EP was better than either of Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown or Jealous Again. OK then! I’ve been wrong before myself. He also investigates and then champions the Pebbles compilations that were just then starting to trickle out (guy was an early-and-often champion of 60s punk for sure). He says that Suburban Lawns’ “Janitor”…”has many lapses in generally acceptable diction and that’s okay too”. His column ends up comparing songs between Michael Hurley – whom I truly believe no one was talking about in 1981 – and Bound & Gagged.
Phil Milstein does a terrific piece on NRBQ; he was just as engaging a writer then as he is now. There’s an on-the-nose semi-takedown of Jim Carroll and his “Jim Carroll Band”. We also get a Buzzcocks interview and an unreadable piece of slash fiction about Bob Dylan, John Lydon and God. Finally, in Gregg Turner’s LA column, he scathingly pontificates about the recent death of Darby Crash, something he seems pretty happy about – proving himself to be the petty, self-involved creep I’ve long taken him to be. This jousting is then coupled with some praise for The Mentors, of all things, whilst simultaneously casting aspersions on the physical appearance of Mentors band members such as guitarist Sickie Wifebeater (“amazing gtrst tho”). Ah, to be young and exceptionally good-looking in Hollywood like Gregg Turner from the Angry Samoans!
Fanzine Hemorrhage 