Slash, Vol. 1 No. 8 (February 1978)

At some point I’m going to have achieved the unthinkable, and will have amassed a complete run of Slash magazine, all 29 issues plus the NY Rocker “supplement” from 1981. I don’t have that many goals in life – I mean, I wanna see all the National Parks, and I’d like to see the SF Giants win another World Series with me in the crowd, and maybe my kid’ll have his own kids – so this is by far my dumbest bucket list goal. I’m three away. Bracing myself for the anticlimax.

Slash, Vol. 1, No. 8 is a very recent acquisition – thank you JJ from Germany. It is, of course, phenomenal – a stellar early example of what was almost certainly the best punk fanzine of all time. Central to many folks’ conception of and love for Slash was the ritualistic opening editorial from Claude Bessy, aka Kickboy Face. This one from February 1978 is called “Warning: Crazed Punks Ahead”. It’s dripping with sarcasm and some level of vitriol, but also with love and warmth for the pure, the true, and the open-minded. Even in early 1978, Kickboy was warning the hordes and asking them to please allow punk to evolve and breathe and not reach a dead end – this request coming right with the Pistols just having broken up and The Masque having just closed. About the former, he says: “It does not matter”. Regarding the latter: “It does matter. As soon as we know what has to be done, we will do it”.

There are many interesting, unconfirmed threads in the “Local Shit” column. There’s a warning of a Dils and Avengers combination band getting together to play a gig in San Francisco as Police and Thieves. Did this actually happen? “X’s single is still awaited on Dangerhouse. Main track will probably be “Blue Spark”. (It wasn’t). “Speaking of Dangerhouse…they are already negotiating with Arizona band The Consumers”. (They didn’t). 

Of-their-time gems crop up on virtually every page in any given Slash. A key theme in this issue is the encroachment of “power pop”, and a little thrashing of Greg Shaw (Bomp!)’s character for already wishing to sand down the rough edges of punk with lightweight, skinny-tie melodic pop music – though Kickboy nicely defends Shaw’s honor as well. There is a terrific letter to the editors about this power pop threat from “El-Tot Sira”, hopefully someone who went on to paid writing elsewhere. This person could even have been a Slash staffer for all I know. It sounds a little like Falling James. Too early, probably. 

I suppose the centerpiece of this thing are the two long bits on the Sex Pistols’ southern US shows in Dallas and Tulsa; Kickboy then gets in a long piece about their San Francisco farewell show, which just about every LA punk you can name traveled up north for. There is some excellent bagging on The Nuns and on The Dictators: “How many times do the creeps have to be told that The Dictators are about as relevant as Blue Oyster Cult? When will they stop reading those press releases and listen to the fucking music?? I’m not even a hardcore punk but I can tell the pseudo leftovers from the desperate kids, and the Dictators…”. Dot dot dot. 

One cool curio here is a big full-page ad for the benefit shows being held for the recently-closed Masque at the Elks Lodge on February 24th and 25th. I know what you’re thinking – the shows that ended in a riot, with punks getting clubbed left & right by the pigs! No!! These were successful benefit shows. In 1979, at the same venue, it didn’t go quite as well.

Finally, a few other interesting tidbits – an interview with an LA punk band called The Wildcats, whom I’d never heard of. The Xray Spex interview catches Poly Styrene when she’s young and nervous, a mere 19 years old in December 1977 and sounding every bit of it. There’s a rave review for Skrewdriver’s All Skrewed Up. Kickboy does an entire reggae column called “Dread Greats!” under the nom de plume of Chatty Chatty Mouth, and gets into Tapper Zukie, The Upsetters’ Super Ape, Yabby U and the Prophets and more. Don’t forget, his original foray into publishing was with a reggae fanzine called Angeleno Dread, and what I wouldn’t kill to see a copy of one of those, even a PDF. And he gets in a nice rave for The Avengers and a little LA/SF dig: “Next time The Avengers drop by, let’s kidnap them until they agree to live down here. All this commuting back and forth is a waste of energy. Or maybe we should trade them for something San Francisco might want”. I know – we’ll take the Masque and all the bands that play there – how about that?