Not Fade Away #4 showed its face in 1985, only a mere five years after the previous issue, the Not Fade Away #3 that I talked about here. It’s a pure and heartfelt celebration of raw Texas rock & roll sound, with nothing past 1970 talked about; it’s focused squarely on the sixties punk and blasted-out psychedelia that had the Lone Star State marking itself as the pinnacle location for both forms. Doug Hanners was the guy who made the fanzine happen, and he was a first-rate devotee of garage rock, yet was also clearly into documenting Texas’ hillbilly and rockabilly musics this time around as well.
Right off the bat there’s a Texas Archive Records ad on the inside front cover, promising that a new “Flashback series” is coming – I thought that would have to be the amazing Texas Flashbacks comps, but no, it’s a different set of records entirely. Hanners was involved. There’s a great early discussion about the band The Blue Things, and the feature talks at length about a 60s radio station with immense wattage called KOMA out of Oklahoma City. Its signal was so strong they’d announce live shows each night that were happening from Bismarck, ND to Plainview, TX – in case listeners in those areas needed something to do. I love that stuff. When I was growing up in San Jose, CA, I was able to pick up a Tijuana, Mexico AM station called “The Mighty 690”, with the 60s DJ “The Real Don Steele” still holding down the fort at night. That’s a long way from San Jose, folks, and was totally fascinated with these transmissions from another world. I was also able to pick up KFI from Los Angeles, and I can still sing their jingles, teasers and stingers to this day.
Not Fade Away #4 took a similar approach to that of Ugly Things in putting forth every known detail about a given short-lived 60s band, and interviewed any living members willing to talk. Rather unlike Ugly Things, however, Hanners and his crew opted for relative descriptive and discussion brevity in most cases. They have a couple of killer ones here for sure – The Sparkles, whom you may know for “No Friend of Mine” and “Hipsville 29 B.C.”, and The Stoics, who did the awesome “Hate”. The latter band also had bodyguards pulled from the Capinch motorcycle gang, and I learned that they ultimately had a falling out because “half the band wanted to go in a Kinks direction, and the other half in a Stones direction”. Let’s call the whole thing off!
Other interviews are with The Golden Dawn, who bond with Hanners during their interview over their mutual distaste for the first Red Krayola record. There are short pieces on The Remaining Few, The Sherwoods, The Lavender Hour, Sea-Ell Records, and a great longer piece with Weldon Rogers bantering with Hanners about West Texas music in the 1950s: radio stations, record labels, regional music, country, hillbillies, Ernest Tubb and more. After the three pages of reviews of Texas 45s and reissues – again, nothing post-sixties allowed, please! – I gazed upon a cool ad for Austin’s Mediaphile Performing Arts Books & Magazines, a store that could (probably) not exist now. They’re advertising “The Roky Erickson Story – over 200 xeroxed pages of newspaper articles, record reviews, interviews, posters etc. With discography”. Here’s what little I could dig up online about it. I’d buy that for a dollar! Even in 1985, they’re wanting $25 for it.
This issue concluded the run for Not Fade Away – four outstanding missives in ten years. Truly essential 60s punk scholarship here, and probably the germ that helped so many of us realize Texas’ unsung but outsized contributions to the greater culture during that decade.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 