Termbo #1

Remember when the Terminal Boredom guys did a print zine? Aside from three collections of internet reprints, I had thought that Termbo #1 in 2013 was the only one they did, but even as I’m writing this, I just found out that there was another three years later that I never saw. Then they were done. Now their message board’s totally kaput as well. I can’t say I really did anything over there, maybe a post or two, but a lot of their online action was concurrent with a lot of my online action, and I had much respect for the community of frothing, opinionated-as-hell garage punk misanthropes they built, as well as for the gentlemen who built it, primarily Rich Kroneiss and a few other hearty, regular contributors.

If you had to try and pinpoint their aesthetic, this fanzine’s cover provides many clues. A messed-up looking “beach wrestler”; a muscular heavy metal arm with a knife; and a band called “White Load”. (Forget the “poetry”; you certainly will once you read it). Today’s Total Punk record label is an almost perfect manifestation of the world that Terminal Boredom helped to incubate and further along. Termbo #1 states its mission pretty clearly from the off: “…a collection of articles and interviews, most of which were written for this print edition in particular and some older material that never made it to the Termbo site for whatever reason.”

Of those articles, there is one that stands out very clearly for me. Russ Murphy digs deep into the Black Flag debacle that had gone on that year, the one where Greg Ginn brought Ron Reyes back into the fold for a “Black Flag” record and tour, pretty much just to spite the shenanigans Keith Morris was pulling with his own bands Off! and Flag. I’m not totally sure of the chronology of all this stuff, because I really tried my hardest to not pay attention to any of it, but when this record cover came out it was truly a “drop everything” moment. Murphy illuminates the contours of the controversy and attempts a journey into Ginn’s head to understand what possessed him to do any of this, and as a card-carrying Black Flag freak, tries really hard to enjoy the record (“Careful listening shows that there is more going on here than a casual listen will reveal”). He comes to the conclusion that in order to actually listen to and get something out of this record, the listener will really have to “put some effort” into it. I can imagine – but no thanks! Great piece.

Also enjoyed the film reviews by Jordy Shearer, which range from “Cabin Boy” to “Frances Ha” to Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and back again to “Phantasm”. There’s also a long piece about exploitation films – I think it’s by Kroneiss, but it’s uncredited – and the hallowed video stores and VHS tapes of his misspent youth. There’s an interview with the aforementioned White Load and a photo in which one of the guys has a fuckin’ sword. Totally killer. And another with the FNU Ronnies, who were a pretty wild experimental punk band I think I may need to listen to again.

If you want to know where all the “message board punks” went after the death of Terminal Boredom – or if you do know – this thread’s where you need to head next after subscribing to future Fanzine Hemorrhage posts in the upper right-hand corner of our desktop site.