Vulcher #4

Though we’ve barely met, I’ve been somewhat connected with Eddie Flowers, the founder and editor of Vulcher fanzine, for going on 35 years now. I spent huge portions of the years 1985-89 routinely driving two hours from Santa Barbara to see live shows in Los Angeles, during that grim era when LA music was still mostly ruled by jean jacket cowboys and bullet belt bullshit. My patron saints in those years were the Lazy Cowgirls, and I loved everything and anything in their orbit. That very much included Eddie Flowers’ band Crawlspace, who started life as a high-energy, MC5-adjacent compliment to the Cowgirls – as you can hear on the 1988 Gimme The Keys!! Trigon Records comp that featured Crawlspace, Claw Hammer and many of the other bands I/we then considered part & parcel of the Cowgirls’ hallowed, hard-driving cadre. 

I remember “chatting” with Ed and the Lazy Cowgirls’ Keith Telligman in Isla Vista, CA – the student ghetto adjacent to UC-Santa Barbara – during an all-day Trigon Records fest at AnisQ’oyo’ Park while the two of the them were totally tripping their brains out on LSD. A short conversation! Later, Flowers would self-publish a tiny ‘zine in the late 1990s called Slippy Town Times, and he’d routinely send them all my way, and sadly, I lost every one of them in the great fanzine disaster of 1999. The previous year, I’d published the eighth and final issue of my own 90s fanzine called Superdope, and I’ll never forget how Flowers responded to my “Forty-Five 45s That Moved Heaven and Earth” piece with an absolutely frothing electronic mail pointing out ALL the amazing 45s I’d missed in my personal list of the greatest 45s of all time. 

Frankly, if I’d never met the guy, I’d still know he was one of the good guys by his general tone, tenor and track record. Now you also might know him as the fella from all-timer 1970s Indiana punk band The Gizmos, and you’d be right about that. But we’re here today to talk about his Vulcher fanzine, and specifically Vulcher #4 from Summer 2018, which I chose randomly from the five issues that were published during the back half of the last decade, up through 2019. It boasts an incredible roll call of contributors and friends, including Byron Coley, Todd Novak, Alexa Pantalone, Eric Friedl, Bruce Cole, Tim Hinely and a couple dozen others. Vulcher was akin during its brief run to a free-form Ugly Things mixed with the haphazard contributions in Bull Tongue Review, with no real concern for whether music covered therein is from the 50s, 60s, 70s or 2018.

Flowers and his crew are excellent at staying current with the spaced-out, free youth making music around the planet. He’s super supportive of young bands he meets along with way such as Rays, who were probably my favorite band around this time. I also like that he does the thing that I tried to always do in my mags, which is throw a random record review into any available spare space, rather than actually try to adjust layout and photos to make it all look professional. Too hard. I truly know the feeling. 

Vulture #4 includes some real ringers. There’s a great Richard Lloyd (Television) interview by Kelsey Simpson, a woman who is a major contributor here and in other issues, probably because she’s actually Vulcher’s co-editor. Rich Coffee – once himself a Gizmo with Flowers –  interviews Michael Rummens of The Sloths, and later The Hollywood Stars. You know “Makin’ Love” by The Sloths, right? Right?? Jay Dobis writes an open letter to Sean L. Maloney, who wrote the 33⅓ edition on The Modern Lovers (a top ten gem for me). It’s chock full of “wrong!!!” corrections, the sort of totally obsessed navel-gazing esoterica that I live for.  

I really dig the Screamin’ Mee-Mees photos and essay by Flowers. Eddie understands their genius as too few others did. There’s also a Flowers thing on strange CD label Eastern Prawn, one of whose bands were Celebrity Handshake, a band who at their best are absolutely fucked rocknroll of the highest caliber, and who fit neatly into the man’s improvisational, ultra-raw, drug-friendly worldview quite well. Finally, and perhaps a little strangely, Chris Sienko contributes a long history of Crawlspace circa 1985-97, including a picture taken from LA’s Anti-Club where I saw them play in their early days. Hey, who cropped me out of the photo? 

I can’t find any issues of Vulcher for sale online at the current moment, which is a true shame because, I mean, these just came out five minutes ago in the relative timeline that this website covers. Flowers is still just in his late sixties, so if he’s got the gumption to get another printed endeavor off the ground, there’s still time and I’d be all over it.