In the spring of 1993 I spent two months traveling North America as the road manager, driver & merch seller for the band Claw Hammer, who were friends of mine from Los Angeles. As someone with zero musical talent – and lord knows I tried to pretend otherwise – I was utterly beside myself that I’d actually be able to go on tour, traveling from city to city, haulin’ in and haulin’ out, just like the underground musicians whose lives I was appropriating by having thrown in my cultural lot with them as a college radio DJ, record buying-obsessive and fanzine publisher.
I was so excited by 60 days spent crammed in an Econoline touring the US of A and a little bit of Canada that I quit my job as a customer service rep at Monster Cable, though my sabbatical ended up being short enough that I was able to reclaim my place on the corporate ladder upon returning. The band themselves were on something of an upswing, having recently come off a supporting tour with Mudhoney and with a new record out on the lucre-loaded Epitaph Records, run by Brett from Bad Religion. So I was decidedly a fifth wheel to the 4 band members – the guy who settled up at the end of the night with the club booker; the guy who pulled the van into Des Moines; the guy who taped the t-shirts and CDs to the wall behind the merch table; the guy who had to call Peter Davis at Creature Booking to make sure the show in Baton Rouge or Wichita or Montreal was still on.
It was all about the Claw Hammer guys and who came to see them – I remember in particular a show in Tulsa with six paying customers, three of whom were members of the Flaming Lips. Occasionally and very rarely, however, there were people I’d meet on the road who actually came to the club with the intention of seeing me. Yeah, some were friends from college, but sometimes (like once or twice) there was actually someone who knew about my music fanzine Superdope and wanted to talk sub-underground musical baseball with me. That’s how I met the Bad Vibe guys.
It was at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago in May 1993. If I’m not mistaken, “Ween” were the headliner, and a Canadian pop band called Sloan, who had a massive tour bus parked outside, played as well. David Salvia and Jim Sonnenberg from mid-state Illinois had recently put out a garage punk fanzine called Bad Vibe #1, and I had a copy & it’s very likely we’d exchanged “letters” about it – in fact it’s almost certainly how they knew I’d be at this show in their state.
Well these two wide-eyed, cornfed Midwesterners saddled up to the merch table and introduced themselves, and we had a fine time talking about the ins & outs of the scene, about the rigors of publishing and distribution and whatnot. Claw Hammer? Pffffft. When they started playing, these guys couldn’t care less and anchored themselves to the table, in the club’s now-empty lobby. I felt so important! It was me – I was the one who was on tour, and these were my two fans! I tried to play all the hits for them: the times I saw Pussy Galore; the time I hung out with Rob Vasquez; that one time the Cheater Slicks stayed at my house, and everything else I could muster. By the end of the night, like Springsteen, Little Steven and “The Big Man”, I’d truly sweated it out and left it all on stage….I mean on the merch table. We then said our goodbyes and never spoke again.
A few months later Bad Vibe #2 came out, the issue we’re talking about today. Salvia and Sonnenberg one-upped my awful interview (Superdope #5) with Rob Vasquez and The Night Kings with an even worse interview with Vasquez, who cops to being baked 24/7 and really can’t seem to muster enthusiasm for much of anything, including the phone conversation he’s taking part in. They also included a great record with the mag – the Night Kings’ Brainwashed EP. Then they even went and put in posters of the Blues Explosion and Royal Trux. I could never afford color anything, nor could I include a record (not even a flexi) – so I said then to myself and I say now: well done, lads.
It strikes me re-reading Bad Vibe #2 thirty years later that there were young men who really, really had a thing for The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck; I believe the Bad Vibe team may have counted themselves among them. (Alas, she unfortunately passed away just this past year). Their magazine strikes me now as youthfully dumb, as mine was, while also having a strong handle of the slightly more “popular” side of garage punk – Vasquez very much not included there – and digging into some of the deeper wells at the same time. It’s a fun read, and you can actually still buy a fresh copy here, thirty years on.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 