Part of the reason I hold onto so many of these goddamn fanzines is because I just know I’m gonna need ‘em someday. Case in point is this Larry Wallis piece in 2013’s Savage Damage Digest #3. I recently embarked upon a UK late 60s/early 70s hippie/hard rock scuzz mini-bender – Deviants, Pink Fairies, Groundhogs, all that – and man, was I glad to be able to dimly remember the Wallis piece in this one that I’d mostly skimmed over 11 years ago. You see, despite my longtime Talmudic “study” of the rocknroll form, I’m still constantly attending a school of my own making, expanding my horizons and whatnot, and/or revisiting stuff I’d passed on the first time because I wasn’t quite ready. Like The Byrds we talked about last time.
What am I gonna do for succor and encouragement, buy the nonexistent Pink Fairies book on Amazon? No, I’m going to head to the stacks and read editor Corey Linstrum’s long, ultra-nitpicking (in the best possible sense) overview of Pink Fairies guitarist Wallis’ entire musical career. Now I know. At least for the 45 minutes in which I retain the information I’ve just read, I can have a fuckin’ blowout conversation about Wallis with you or anybody. That’s why I “invest” in fanzines as I do, because it’s that important.
When I got this issue of Savage Damage Digest #3 in 2013, I was just grateful that a real print fanzine was still publishing. Seemed to be a grim period, besides my own, stalwarts like Ugly Things and a few others. I was drawn in my Linstrum’s massive Avengers/Greg Ingraham interview, which is bedecked with many well–placed photos and flyers, including many I’ve never seen before. Did I ever tell you guys that the first punk song I ever loved was the “The American In Me”? I was barely out of elementary school, heard it on the left of the dial, and it was world-changing. Today I sort of see them as a decidedly second-tier early-wave US punk band so my interest in their 70s shenanigans is perhaps lower than my interest in, say, first-hand recollections of The Electric Eels, which thankfully Linstrum has in a later issue. But yeah, the Ingraham interview is the sort of deep-dig dork-out that I very much admire, and should I ever need to gather source material for a big Avengers listening sesh and eventual discussion with you over a beer, I’ll absolutely know where to go.
One final thing I admire about Linstrum is that he clearly just heads where the spirit moves him. Like he’s got an entire fanzine out about the history of underground music in San Francisco’s East Bay, which I bought when it came out and’ll get to on this site at some point. He fills a page with a rocknroll crossword puzzle, with print so small I abandoned it both now and in 2013 when I first came across it – back when I could see everything just fine. Only moderate bum note is a perfunctory and sort of unprepared interview with Jeff McDonald of Redd Kross; time was an interview with the wacky McDonald brothers was a key reason to buy a fanzine, yet at this point Redd Kross were just awful and there was little use pretending otherwise. But there’s no accounting for taste, as they say!
Fanzine Hemorrhage 