Conflict #36

I’ve discussed Conflict #37 and Conflict #42 on this site previously; the former was (obviously) the issue of Gerard Cosloy’s fanzine that followed the one we’re discussing today, yet it took 18 months after Conflict #36 to actually see publication, by which point Cosloy had taken the entire year of 1985 off from publishing a fanzine, and had moved from Boston to New York City. So this one, Conflict #36 from August/September 1984 was the last of the Boston issues, and was definitely included in that whopping batch of Conflicts and Matters that Jackie Ockene let me borrow over spring break 1986, and which I count as a “germinal” event in my overall musical appreciation development, such that it was. 

Conflict #36 begins with something truly incongruous and unusual: what appears to be a heartfelt apology to folks like Mike Gitter and Billy Ruane and Al Quint whom he’d spent much mirth and merrimaking mocking in previous issues, the ones Jackie let me borrow. Mostly these folks were Boston-area publishers who wrote about punk & hardcore, and wrote about it poorly, as I gathered. Whatever happened in issue #35, I don’t know, but there are multiple letters printed in this one calling Cosloy out for being an asshole/jerk/too critical etc. It either had finally hit home, or this young man was being incredibly facetious in his apology; in any case, I have most issues of Conflict after this one, and sensitive and magnanimous they are most certainly not. So it didn’t hold for long – not even past page one in this one, to be honest.

What’s different about this issue from the ones that followed, aside from centering on Boston scene jibber-jabber and mock controversies rather than NYC, is its general girth. There are an obscene amount of reviews in here, everything under the 1984 sun that lived at the underground crossroads of hardcore, goth, college rock and nascent pigfuck. That could be X or R.E.M, Siouxsie and the Banshees or New Order, or Fang and the Sluglords and Flipper and Gang Green. Or Circle X or Sonic Youth or Live Skull. Interesting times, my friends. 

Patrick Amory, whom we last visited in these pages when we talked about his Too Fun Too Huge #2 fanzine, gets his own jumbo section to wax about records and live shows he’s seen around Boston. He puts out a contrasting (to Gerard’s) view of live 1984 Meat Puppets, calling them “heavy metal” and not worthy of the insane underground hype then-circulating around the Meat Puppets II record (one of my all-timers, for what it’s worth). Frankly, once I’d see them live for the first time two years later, that’s what they were – a shitty 70s rock band. Since I missed their berzerk, blitzoid hardcore days, I kinda feel like I missed their live genius entirely, because after I saw them in 1986, they were even worse!

Now Amory also reviews SSD’s How We Rock, which he rightly calls the worst album title of all time, yet he still thinks the whole thing is “powerful”, “supertight” and “awesome”. I wonder if he still listens to it. (Cosloy also reviews it, also digs it). I would have loved to see SS Decontrol live in 1981-82, but I personally believe “Springa” was hands-down one of the five worst vocalists in hardcore punk history. I really, really hope Al Barile, Choke and the Boston Crew don’t read this. Speaking of Boston ‘core, Forced Exposure’s Jimmy Johnson is a kid that has his say in Conflict #36, and gets a big section of reviews that mirror the interests of his own mag at the time – also HC, but also bizarro UK goth and noise. Cosloy’s excited about a ton of stuff in this one, with special lionizations of the latest records from Saccharine Trust and Big Black.

That’s it – no interviews, just dozens upon dozens of short reviews, laced liberally with scene reports, gossip and invective. That’s precisely what I needed when I read this in 1986, and Conflict from that point forward became one of the only two 100% totally essential fanzines for me in the late 80s, right alongside Forced Exposure.