Crank #4

18 months ago was the first time I gave the once-over to an issue of Marc Masters’ excellent 1990s fanzine Crank, and I suppose I already provided my main introductions to its subtleties there. That one came out in 1991; three years later, we’ve got Marc publishing Crank #4 from Syracuse, NY.  Was Masters an Orangeman? So was my mom! Lou Reed, too. Why else would anyone live there, right? 

This issue came with a 45, a rather landmark single in my world to be honest, because it was the first time – the very first and quite frankly one of the only times – that a pure, no-doubt-about-it “noise” composition pierced my consciousness in a highly pleasing manner. It was, and remains, Alan Licht’s blistering “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – the first noise track to really zonk me. Maybe it’s an unlikely one, but there it is. Still sounds great to this day. The flip was by Bruce Russell’s project A Handful of Dust, and it didn’t pack quite the punch.

The interview with Alan Licht is the centerpiece of this issue. Licht, in high school, was listening to Beefheart, free jazz, The Fugs, Minutemen, Stooges etc. – now this is a guy I’d have wanted to have been hanging with, rather than the Night Ranger and Foreigner-loving morons who clogged the halls of Gunderson High in San Jose. I appreciated the part where he and Masters banter about how Licht’s college band Love Child enraptured the fanzine cognoscenti at the time with their early demos, your Byron Coleys and Chris Stiglianos and what have you, and then sort of fell off a cliff critically – at least with that crew – once they put out proper albums. Licht even compares Love Child’s “Church of Satan”, from their first album, to “Bitchen’ Camaro”. Harsh. I remember this too, the Forced Exposure mania for early Love Child because they had a track called “Crocus Says”, as in Crocus Behemoth from Rocket From The Tombs. Licht, man – this guy totally knew what he was doing, didn’t he? 

He also says what I was very much fretting about at the time: “Improv has become the thing that jaded punk rock record collectors are into” – except rather than playing actual improvisations as he was, I took this fact personally, almost, and dove deeper into garage punk and “KBD” knuckle-draggers instead, turning my back on the improv/noise underground almost entirely aside from whatever Siltbreeze was putting out. Licht, in 1994, also wanted to write a book on John Cassavetes. Perhaps he still shall.

There’s a shorter interview with Bruce Russell to complement the other side of the included 45, and then a meaty section with 7 different Sun City Girls reviews. And then into the reviews – what a great 1993-1994 roll call: Bassholes, 68 Comeback, Free Kitten, Harry Pussy, Palace Bros, Brainbombs, Blue Humans, Arthur Doyle, Fly Ashtray, Alastair Galbraith and many more. Marc is very excited about most everything reviewed, then as now not a guy ready to serve heads on platters. He even loved the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as much as I did that year – whoops!