Ragnarok #6

In my lifetime there have been no hometowners like Cleveland hometowners – which is to say that underground fanzine guys from Cleveland have traditionally covered their oft-maligned city and its punching-way-above-their-weight bands with the fervor and boosterism of highly-compensated Chamber of Commerce execs. “That’s okay with me”. Cleveland was a rock town for decades with a per-capita scene batting average high above the norm, I’m talking from ‘75 onward into the 1990s, even into June 1991 perhaps, which is when the digest-sized Ragnarok #6 came out. 

Make that “Steve Wainstead’s Ragnarok”, as it says on the cover, in a feat of awesome doofus branding that just makes me laugh. Wainstead is indeed a hometowner, and outside of some visiting touring bands, Ragnorok #6 is C-Town all the way. If I didn’t know a little bit about Puff Tube and the Soul Vandals and whatnot – probably from Seven – Scat Records Quarterly and the 1990s version of CLE – I’d have no idea what he’s talking about. And again, that’s fine. His aesthetic is type, cut, paste, repeat – with vintage illustrations and graphics helping to tart up the overall environment. Any punk- or noise-adjacent show in Cleveland from the preceding month that he and his crew attended gets reviewed, with one megawatt event in particular (Puff Tube/Soul Vandals on 5/9/91, where were you??) getting six different reviews, including one from Cleveland royalty, Charlotte Pressler! 

Steel Pole Bath Tub are the out-of-towners treated with respect. They were from my town, San Francisco, and around this time I was pretty well fed up with them, as they seemed to be the opening band for every other mid-sized show I went to that year. If it wasn’t them, it was The Melvins. At least one larger show I attended it was Steel Pole Bath Tub and The Melvins opening. I cared for neither, and I was always the guy who believes it when they’d say “Doors 7 / Show 8”, and then I’d show up at 9pm and walk in as Steel Pole Bath Tub were starting their first song. However, in their Ragnarok #6 interview, all three gentlemen are intelligent, funny and quite road-weary, with a good sense of their place in the whole cosmic joke. Now I feel just awful having tried to dodge them all those years. Boner Records 4-ever.

There’s another interview, this time with locals The Vivians, whom I’d never heard. Check out the entire campus at Case Western having a motherfucking rocknroll riot during one of their sets here. The Pressler stuff near the end is cool to read, though it spins out into the pointy-headed academic meandering that I’m sure made some sense to her at the time. In all, good local fanzine and you’d have bought one for three quarters yourself after a big night of excess at Peabody’s Down Under.