Conflict #35

This is as far back as I can personally go in shedding any informed light on Gerard Cosloy’s Conflict fanzine, an all-time high-water read that I’ve previously tackled in this space in order to share my valued and valuable thoughts for you on issues #36, #37 and #42. I have carressed even earlier editions of this from when he was a Boston-area teen, but not since that stack of Conflicts I borrowed as a teen myself, and that I tore through with extreme prejudice during Spring Break ‘86. At this point, Conflict #35 from March/April 1984, Cosloy’s wildly-swinging snark and bite was beginning to shed its training wheels, and his intent to take both faux and real umbrage and to provoke lesser lights of the scene is very much intact. Names are named and publicly shamed, usually for undue posturing, for sell-out moves, or merely for having inferior musical taste. I loved every moment of it, and I can’t believe I haven’t heard more (or any?) stories of Cosloy getting into the proverbial fisticuffs with DJs, musicians, zine editors and various scene dullards more often.

I mean, it’s all so giddy and dumb that it’s still funny to this day: “…Another one of last issue’s heroes, Brett Milano, has been spotted wearing a bicycle helmet while walking down the street…”, taken from a three-dot gossip column that was embedded in many of the issues called LIES**LIES**LIES**LIES. Milano, Billy Ruane and Mike Gitter. Man, if it weren’t for Conflict and Forced Exposure, I wouldn’t have ever known who these lustily mocked people were, and what their horrific scene crimes might have been. I guess Cosloy had a college radio show at this point, though he’s all too quick to mention to a letter-writer that this is not how he’s getting his records to review.

Speaking of, Billy Bragg is talked of as “England’s answer to the Violent Femmes” – ouch. The Scientists are called “Australia’s next world-beaters”. He digs The Misfits’ Earth A.D., which I also very much enjoy, as well as the March Violets’ “Snake Dance”, also surprisingly excellent. Even at the height of my back-turning on throbbing, danceable post-punk, I do remember Conflict championing the best of this stuff, such as Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, thereby keeping me tenuously connected to the few good strands that carried on into the mid/late 80s. When Cosloy confronts the Jandek Six and Six LP, he’s left to stutter in abject confusion, “Who or what is Jandek? Man or escapee?….In a less tolerant period in history, this man would be hung (or shot, or gassed, or butchered)”. Patrick Amory gets in a bunch of reviews here as well, mostly hardcore, yet he doesn’t like the Deep Wound 45 – WTF? – and concludes his piece with an admonition: “…avoid all New Jersey pop…”. 

The 1983 poll results give credence to a deeply-held belief of mine to never poll your readers. The best bands, as voted by the readers of Conflict, happen to be R.E.M, X, The Neats, Suicidal Tendencies and the Violent Femmes. The best Boston bands are The Proletariat, The Neats, Del Fuegos, F.U.s and The Lyres. Worst record of ‘83: Big Country’s “In a Big Country”. Now that definitely tracks. In a similar vein, Cosloy calls The Alarm’s Declaration “the issue’s worst record”. I once saw a different band in Upland CA, probably around 1987 or so, opening for either Soul Asylum or Dinosaur Jr., who were so awful that they’d somehow styled themselves into pretty much an Alarm tribute band – “a shot rings out on the street of Brixton” etc. My jaw hung open for 45 minutes in admiration of their absolute audacity. I forgot their name immediately. 

In addition to a film section – something I really don’t remember from my other issues of Conflict – there’s an extensive amount of live show reviews. Gerard Cosloy has undoubtedly attended an absurd amount of live rock music events in his lifetime, even merely judging by the hundreds I’ve seen him review, let alone the ones he didn’t. I’ve never lived in the same city as the guy and I’ve even seen him present at 4-5 different live events across the breadth of the USA. He talks about seeing Chris D. positioned front and center at a Neats show on 1/5/84, which helps explain to me why and how Chris’ Stone By Stone came to cover a Neats song on their I Pass For Human album in 1989. 

And after all this, the Violent Femmes themselves are sort of half-heartedly interviewed in the back after a show somewhere, with Cosloy’s heart clearly not in it. I recently got asked by my wife’s friend’s husband to accompany him to a Violent Femmes reunion show, ostensibly because he was vaguely aware that I was a fan of “alternative music” or some such. I did the dishonorable thing in turning it down by telling him through his wife that I thoroughly disliked said band, rather than going with a wash-my-hair or busy-that-night excuse – thereby alienating a truly nice guy who wanted to do me a solid with a free ticket and chance to drink a couple of beers together. Cosloy and his highly formative fanzine brethren of 1983-86 taught me to tell the unvarnished truth, consequences be damned, exceptionally well, and I haven’t forgotten it.