This 1986 cut/paste/copy mini-zine is my sole issue of Trendy Rag, published just outside of Boston by a fella named Jim Hildreth. Jim appears caught between a love of hardcore and a need to make fun of it; between a love of nascent guitar noise/pigfuck and a need to sneer at the fanzines helping to shepherd it (Forced Exposure, Conflict, Chemical Imbalance); and between a desire to put out an opinionated fanzine and to shut the hell up – as alluded to in his intro.
I’m not sure how much further Hildreth went with this fanzine – are you? Nothing online – well, nothing except for this and this I guess – which I suppose is why I do this site in the first place. He kinda kicks the thing off with a recognition of the “limp” Boston scene of the late 1986 moment – “most all-ages shows revolve around metal-drunk band GANG GREEN or STRAWDOGS that XXX keeps presenting”. Ah ha, the all-ages modifier is our clue that Hildreth is a young man – well, that and the fact he’s still listening to 7 Seconds in 1986, or ever listened to them at all. There’s a mail interview with Big Stick that’s pretty much a both-ways goof, in which the duo each claim to be in their 70s and profess their love for many of the same metalcore bands Hildreth was bemoaning one page earlier.
Jarboe of The Swans also more or less dodges many of her interview questions, but I think it’s the first time I’ve read an interview with her (never a fan of her solo music nor of The Swans, there are only so many years in a life) and I like that she’s in keeping with whatever obtuse and abstracted persona I’d imagined for her. Steve Epstein and Jeremy Spencer guest-reprint their December 1985 radio interview with The Minutemen, conducted two weeks before D. Boon’s death. Hildreth mentions in his intro how much he hated Project: Mersh when it came out and therefore skipped the band when they came through town; this unfortunately mistaken opinion was one held by many at the time, and I’ve never understood it. Excellent record!
I was most excited to see a super-early Pussy Galore interview – maybe my favorite band of the late 80s. And it’s not with Spencer, it’s with Cristina (Martinez), and she’s not even in the band any longer: “I’ve been kicked out of the band and they’re trying to get a new guitar player this girl Rebecca Corbett who used to be in Missing Foundation”. She talks about how she’s about to start playing with the Honeymoon Killers; about how the phenomenal Pussy Gold 5000 record ended up on Buy Our Records (“they offered us money”); about her work as a phone sex operator (she encourages the interviewers to get out their Visas and Master Cards), and about how a super-secret surprise tape’s about to come out, and how we’re all going to love it but she can’t tell us what it is (it was Exile on Main Street). Mostly she’s just brash, young and annoying, which is entirely keeping with her 80s persona as well.
Most of Trendy Rag #9 is handwritten, including the entire “Recordings” review section. This is where I can see Hildreth bouncing around from late-hardcore mediocrities to stuff like Rat At Rat R and Ciccone Youth and a Slits live bootleg he’s just picked up. Best quote: “The Slits were an amazingly beautiful band and The Cocteau Twins just totally ripped them and many other Rough Trade bands like The Raincoats off”. Oh yeah??
Fanzine Hemorrhage 