Punk Rock #2 (February 1978)

Incredible: a true, no-doubt-about-it, cash-in-on-the-trend punk rock exploitation magazine. I was intrigued enough by the looks of this one to order it from Ryan Richardson’s Ryebread Rodeo fanzine emporium, and despite the falling-apart cover and the general contents therein, I’m glad I did. To the best of my knowledge, only three issues of this made it out there; this is the first one and this is the third and final. (Just poking around the internet I also came up with this 1978 issue of another punksploitation mag, Punk Rock Stars. “Kiss: Did They Start It All?” I’ve often wondered!). 

I really can’t be certain how serious the birdbrain writers at Punk Rock #2 were taking themselves or their punk magazine assignment from corporate parent Stories, Layouts & Press Inc. Most of the writing affects a silly, “dangerous” sort of phony aura that sounds like broke, young bespeckled journalists who’ve just come off of covering The Allman Brothers and Kansas for other mags, and who’ve maybe just been forced to read the 1977 Time magazine article on punk and taken their cues accordingly. Or they’re sort of hanging on to their former, more comfortable rocknroll worlds, as in Gloria Robinson’s opening gossip column, which starts off with items on Blondie, the Sex Pistols, The Runaways and Lou Reed before drifting wistfully to unironically talk instead about The Beach Boys, Elton John, Greg & Cher Allman and the Grateful Dead.

Photos of The Dead Boys permeate this thing. If there was one group who went all-in on throwing themselves in front of cameras and beclowning themselves as wild “punks”, it was them. It’s fun to see some of the features trying to decide what’s punk and what isn’t. This was the era, if you’ll recall, that Mink DeVille routinely showed up in punk features (including here), mostly because the band played often at CBGBs and Willy DeVille had an angular haircut and punkish mien. Punk Rock #2 has features on The Dictators (one of the few well-written pieces, this one by Michael P. Liben) and a wild-looking group of Detroit hair farmers with the MC5’s Dennis Thompson in the band called Sirius Trixon and the Motor City Bad Boys. 

Darcy Diamond travels to Los Angeles to go The Jam’s press conference, and to briefly write about and misspell the name of The Weirdos (here called “The Wierdos”; you’ll also see a great deal of confusion within Punk Rock #2 about there vs. their vs. they’re). “My punk friends in The Germs and The Bags implored me to catch The Weirdos set.”. And really, the less said about the “How to be a Punk” guide in the middle of this thing, the better. I get the sense from a doofus editorial up front that Punk Rock magazine was ginning itself up for an on-the-ground media war with John Holmstrom’s equally awful Punk magazine, which clearly never took place once the former checked out in April 1978.