Seattle, Washington ended up being pretty well-represented at the mid/late 70s dawn of punk rock by not one but two stellar publications, both of which I’ve written about before – Chatterbox and Twisted. I vowed when I typed up some words about the latter that I’d do what it takes to procure the two copies I didn’t have of the latter, and somehow I was able to do just that. All it takes is a willing and friendly seller and a highly obsessive buyer willing to forgo some of life’s pleasures in order to buy some dopey fanzine from 1977.
Except Twisted #1’s not dopey – I mean, not really. Hitting the hot, hot streets of the jet city in July 1977, there’s excitement in the air and Seattle is all of a sudden on the fucking punk rock/alterna-music circuit, with Iggy Pop and Blondie not merely having just come to town to play together, but to party it up with our editors and with all sorts of new, nascent, barely formed punk bands as well. Their whole 4-day Northwest visit is documented blow-by-blow here, like the big deal that it most assuredly was for the participants. This was when Iggy had Bowie playing keyboards for him (!), and there’s a photo of him just sitting off to the side of the stage, nonchalantly doing his thing and trying not to be noticed. “With Iggy on stage it would be hard for anyone, even him, to be noticed.”
Each day, Iggy goes off to parties and jam sessions with the editors – he does not bring Bowie with him, though there’s a message left at the hotel for editor “Robert Roberts”: “David Bowie called – looking for Iggy”. Turned out Bowie was looking for the party but couldn’t find it. I think he got lost at the shpritzer honker splasher. He missed Iggy jamming with “Blondie’s band”; he missed Iggy hanging out with Seattle band The Feelings and commandeering their instruments; and he missed a trip to Herfy’s, the beloved Sacramento hamburger chain of my youth.
Somehow there’s a party as well in Ballard, and I’m going to guess new Seattle punk band The Knobs had something to do with it, as they are profiled in Twisted #1. This is the band that The Lewd grew out of, with lead singer J. “Satz” Beret. Hell yes. Weren’t we just talking about The Lewd? It says here that “…The Knobs never played an official show, because as SATZ says…”We had no songs.” However, The Knobs did play one intimate “performance” at a Fremont rehearsal space called The Funhole. This A-list evening was written up in a Seattle punk fanzine Twisted.” I know from having lived there that Ballard and Fremont are almost the same neighborhood, lightly separated as they are by “Phinney Ridge”. Going to guess this was the show. Anyone in the Fanzine Hemorrhage reading audience get loaded that night at The Funhole?
Other things are happening too, folks. Tomata and The Screamers have recently moved to LA but have kept their ties with the Twisted editors, which means there are a ton of a photos and a wild-eyed write-up of the band’s otherworldly synth-blast, including a snap from the legendary Slash magazine party where both entities became known to the LA underground. Tomata himself writes up a frothingly happy piece about The Damned’s visit to LA and all the partying they did together. I mean, this is all formative stuff. Any & all documents about 1977 punk in Los Angeles contains these events, and here we are on the ground with the people who either made it happen or were witnessing it.
In the record reviews, some nameless reviewer thinks The Saints’ I’m Stranded album is pretty awful, yet digs the new ones from The Tubes and U.F.O. Cool. And there’s a Danny Fields interview. Did you know that Fields was the editor of teenybopper mag 16 back then? Somehow this fact had eluded me. Twisted #1’s a short one, 25 pages, but for 60 cents and a chance to have your mind blown & musical taste rearranged, there’s some truly excellent value for money going on.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 