I’m pretty sure I know where I got my idea that the San Francisco underground music scene was so mediocre-to-downright-awful around 1985-86. It was from the San Francisco fanzines like BravEar, Wiring Dept and Puncture that championed it. I bought those mags, sure, but I also turned my 18-year-old nose up at them, even at the time. This was my first year of college, and my first year away from the SF Bay Area, and therefore everything that was going on in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and even LA was just so much more visceral, exciting and new to me than the SF peace punk/political protest communal hippie-tinged shtick that just bored and at times angered me no end. Especially that year, as punk morphed into speed metal or “cowpunk” or even lamer versions of post-hardcore punk. Steve Albini and my other new heroes that year said San Francisco music was the absolute worst, and I could present very little evidence to counter with.
It was MRR and all my record shopping excursions to peace-punkified Berkeley that probably left me so bereft. That and the explosion of Camper Van Beethoven mania my senior year of high school on college radio and the local music press. As it turned out, I came to eventually enjoy that band’s second record II & III and certainly my issues of Wiring Dept. fanzine down the line. Puncture, not so much, although in reading through Puncture #10 from Fall 1985, it’s still a terrific curio and a strong attempt at making lemonade from lemons. Exhibit A is Mia from Frightwig on the cover here, and several tributes to the band inside. I dug Frightwig; saw them live twice, including once at the world-famous Mabuhay Gardens. In ‘85 they’d have been one of my favorite SF bands; a year later, they actually were.
There’s a piece in here about the goings-on at an Agnostic Front / Fuck-Ups show that was held at the Sound of Music instead of the Mab, because Ness Aquino of the Mab was warned that 200 skinheads were going to show up and cause havoc, as skinheads are wont to do. This was considered an “anti-Maximum Rocknroll” show (hear hear!) because that mag was critical of skinheads, right-leaning politics and so forth, which is understandable, but I’d have liked to have supported an anti-MRR event in any case, just for fun. Shame about the bands.
J. Neo Marvin has a piece in here reviewing four Velvet Underground records – one sometimes forgets just how tough these were to easily find in the bins in the 80s – as well as the new Victor Bokris book on the band, Loaded. This was when a big wave of new Velvets fandom was just starting to crest, with myself included in said wave. In fact, the first songs by the band I ever enjoyed were “Foggy Notion” and “Temptation Inside Your Heart” that very year, because of the recent archival/unreleased LP, although once I heard “I’m Waiting For The Man” and “Sweet Jane” later that year, I was like, hey, I know these songs.
There’s an uneventful Blixa Bargeld interview and a fun pooh-poohing of a Diamanda Galas show at the I-Beam. In the reviews section, there’s loads of love for the Meat Puppets’ new Up on the Sun and for Camper Van Beethoven’s Telephone Free Landslide Victory, of course. Other new favorites included the Butthole Surfers Psychic…Powerless…Another Man’s Sac and locals Glorious Din and their Leading Stolen Horses. The Knitters’ Poor Little Critter on the Road gets compared to “Hee-Haw”, which sounds about right. I honestly don’t think I could bring myself to listen to that record for even a minute in 2024. By the way, if I’m ever sick in bed for an extended period of time, I might just binge-watch a couple seasons of Hee-Haw. I watched so, so, so much television in the 1970s, whatever was on our six channels, that I put in some quality time with this outstanding American television program. If you’ve never seen it, check this out or this one. I’ll take that over The Knitters any goddamn day.
Puncture #10 wraps up with book reviews of the new Less Than Zero as well as a takedown of the punk photo book Loud 3D: “the vast majority of the pictures are performance shots of big-name hardcore bands that would do any photographer from the San Francisco Chronicle proud”… “many of the shots are too dark, out of focus, or lacking sufficient depth. All these factors are important for photography of any kind”. Tell it! Henry Rollins’Two Thirteen Sixty One book is also taken down for having two pieces printed twice in the same book and for its many typos. “Surely Henry Rollins could give us strong street writing if he tried harder”. Try harder, Rollins! I think he had other priorities; around this time is when I saw Rollins write something about his workouts: “When I go into the gym, it’s like I’m going into WAR.” So much to make fun of from 1985, so little time.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 