Punk Rock #1

I was so charmed by my purchase of punksploitation mag Punk Rock #2 earlier in the year (wrote about it here) that I found it highly important to track down the first issue from December 1977 as well. And you know what? This one surprisingly doesn’t have quite the over-the-top “-sploitation” quotient of its descendant, reading instead like a frothy, punk-centric issue of Rock Scene from around the same time. 

There are loads of photos and 66 pages of features, mostly centered on NY but really with a transatlantic ear to the ground. Sex Pistols, Blondie, Stranglers, Devo, Dead Boys, Iggy Pop, Deaf School (“a pick to click”) and Television interviews, photo spreads, treatises or all three. But where the rubber meets the proverbial road for me in this one is in the really well-done piece on DMZ, whom you kinda forget sometimes were blowing minds across Boston starting in 1976. What a fantastic band those first two years. Marie Cosentino’s feature is an interview with JJ Rassler of the band, and Robert Post’s photos show what a wild, unhinged powerhouse they must have been on a Friday night at The Rat. There’s also a “Hot Pix from The Rat” section, as it turns out, with crazed Post-taken pictures of new wavers The Cars, Nervous Eaters, Third Rail, Willie “Loco” Alexander and total heshers Thundertrain!

Rassler, in the DMZ interview, wants to dodge virtually all of the questions about punk and whether they’re a part of it, a stance that’s almost uniform across the interviews with Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith and others. Everyone’s excited that something new is happening, and everyone insists that they alone stand somewhat removed from it all. We’re so early in the game at this point that punk rock vs. new wave questions haven’t cropped up yet. Iggy Pop so successfully dodges these sorts of questions that his interview is almost like a piece of dada, a weird back-and-forth with interviewer Hannah G. Spitzer, who’s clearly making her questions up on the spot and is having loads of fun trying to bait Iggy to say something controversial. 

Donna Santisi gets a full “punk rock from L.A.” photo spread in the back, and she was a hell of a photographer. Terrific snap of Chip Kinman wearing a hammer & sickle shirt that’s captioned “This is the lead guitarist from Dil”. There are Screamers, Shock, Weirdos, The Pop and Backstage Pass pics as well. Inject it in my veins. 

I’m all-in on the punksploitation mags like this and New Wave Rock. Stay with us as I attempt to find the final Punk Rock #3 at a price I can afford, when we shall thenceforth discuss it in these quarters.