No Mag #13

It wasn’t quite the case across the entire breadth of independent music, yet all told 1984 was a pretty rotten year for sub-underground rocknroll music in Los Angeles, California – that is, if you’re reading the thirteenth issue of NoMag, the one with Nancy from “Animal Dance” on the cover. Unless you were laser-focused on the SST bands in a way that NoMag decidedly wasn’t – Double Nickels on The Dime, Meat Puppets II and Zen Arcade all came out this year – you’d be forgiven for thinking that the previous world-beating LA music scene had completely and rapidly devolved to godawful cowpunk, retread goth or sell-out pseudo-roots music.

It’s kind of a bummer to have to see it, but as went the overt trends in LA, so went NoMag – underlining that not all NoMags were created equal. What a letdown. Thumbing through it, it’s clear that editor Bruce Kalberg has become more attracted to the trappings and fringes of alternative culture than to the music that defined it. Everyone is either a goofball cow punk, has a hideous angular new wave haircut or is dressed in highly choreographed “LA sleaze” wear. There’s a group called the Hollywood Hillbillies celebrated here who I am absolutely delighted to have never made the acquaintance of.  

When I arrived at KCSB in 1985 as a college radio DJ it was these records – the bands interviewed in this issue – that were clogging our library: The D.I.’s; the “no original members” TSOL; Tupelo Chain Sex, The Fiends, Kommunity FK, Detox and so forth. They were usually on labels like Enigma and Restless, quasi-major labels that rose out of hardcore to pump up this sort of clotheshorse rock, or speed metal, or novelty punk. I do somewhat enjoy Tex & The Horseheads – they define the spirit of ‘84 LA for me for better or worse than pretty much anyone else – but SST barely exists here outside of a paid inside front cover ad; no one’s fashionable enough. 

There’s an interview with the Cambridge Apostles with Alice Bag and two of the Atta brothers from The Middle Class. They sound from their own description of themselves like a dance band, and Alice spends most of the interview herself dancing away from questions about The Bags. A great deal of the activity documented in NoMag #13 feels to me like some real goings through of the motions, the washed-up flotsam of a recently capsized music scene and a lot of musicians desperately searching for the road to cash in. John Doe is interviewed about X and his relationship with his record company, Elektra, and he’s all smiles. You’ll have to read his More Fun In The New World anthology book to see what thirty years of hindsight brought to him – but let’s just say it doesn’t quite jibe with the sunny disposition presented here. 

That was my favorite of the two Doe books because – well, it’s right there in the sub-heading of the book, “The Unmaking and Legacy of LA Punk”. Everything I’ve just spend three paragraphs moaning about it is confirmed by the folks who participated in it, and the unmaking is happening right here in real time within the pages of NoMag #13.