Raw Power #5

It’s been a little quiet around the Fanzine Hemorrhage blog for a few weeks, I’d reckon. This probably has something to do with me trying to modulate my reaction to just how badly I hate the internet in late 2025. I wrote a short essay about it called Opting Out Of The Rot Economy that you’re welcome to read, and perhaps take inspiration from. But there’s nothing in there that necessitates throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quit publishing entirely. This is the baby; social media is the bathwater, and that I’ve thrown out – so these posts won’t be promoted anywhere. They’ll just show up in your inbox if you’re subscribed – which you can do on the desktop version of this site rather easily if you haven’t already. If you’re not, they won’t, and someone will have to tell you about them, perhaps by calling you up on your telephone or by knocking on your door to spread the news.

The guys who put out Raw Power #5 in Spring 1978 effectively had just those means for getting the word out, aside from dropping them into LA-area stores and getting blurbs in other folks’ fanzines. These was effective methods in 1978, given the growing number of underground American fanzines taking off in the punk era and the fact that record stores were literally everywhere, and the cooler ones even carried fanzines. But if you’re putting Ted Nugent – the fucking Nuge – on your cover, you’re not really aiming to have Kickboy Face of Slash’s endorsement, or perhaps it’s even still too early to care. After all, these guys say that Raw Power is “For REAL ROCK ‘n’ ROLLERS ONLY”. If it’s loud and has guitars, it’s fair game.

The editor was a young man named “Quick Draw”. His real handle was Scott Stephens. He’s excited about “the new bands” in his opening editorial, but a little upset as well: “The only qualm I have at this time is the way the kids are branching off into little clicks. A lot of new wavers are down on bands like The Stones and The Beatles. It’s becoming very fashionable to hate the 60s”. I’ll say! “It’ll be funny to me in 10 years when I hear the new generation putting down the 70’s. And believe me, it’s gonna happen. Things that are cool now won’t be cool in 1985”. I don’t know about that. I like the use of “clicks” instead of “cliques”, which I say is forgivable, because it’s one of those words you’d hear spoken way more than you’d see written back then. But I don’t remember much ragging on punk or the new wave or power pop in 1985 – despite my belief that that was kind of a lean year for rock music, it was a year when punks were turning metal en masse, and everyone still hated the same things about the 70s that most of us hate to this day (though I’ll admit the recent reverence for prog did take me by surprise). 

Of course, I love quoting ancient editorials both here and elsewhere. There’s another by “Mike Livewire” stating “This year has certainly been one of the best for rock and roll that I can remember. Sterile FM ‘rock” and discoshit suffered some setbacks at the hands of the Rockers in 1977”. He even R.I.P.’s Peter Laughner later in the column! 

Al Flipside writes in from Whittier and has a little tete-a-tete with Quick Draw about the modern relevance of Iggy Pop. There’s a nice Mott The Hoople history, a quick interview with Debby from Blondie – whom the editor addresses as “Blondie” on the phone and asks her (of course) about being a “sex symbol”, the term we used back then for someone of well-above-average attractiveness. I’m not sure the last time I heard it used, but it’s been a while. There’s an interview with Tommy Shaw from Styx – what? Howard Aronin has a pretty bleak comedy column reviewing phony records by real bands, through I almost cracked a faint smile at the idea of Kissongs by Kiss, a la Yessongs. 

I did crack a true faint smile at this rant from Kim Fowley at the start of his interview with Raw Power #5: “I am the king of punk rock. I am the Adolf Hitler of stink rock. I am the rock n’ roll dog man. I don’t care what Slash magazine, I don’t care what Greg Shaw, I don’t care what Rock Intellectuals say. Fuck you all. Why? Because I am teenage. I am cobra. I am garganchua. I am an asshole, but I can say that and you can’t. The only reason I’m in business is because of the money I make and the dirty girls I meet, and eventually the amount of power I will have”. He hates The Dils, but thinks “The Weirdos and Screamers are interesting because they want to be interesting”. Wait, all you have to do is want it? Why didn’t someone tell me all these years?

I tried to get excited about the Ted Nugent interview, in which Ted tries really hard to be an unhinged wild man, but at the end of the day, he wasn’t one-tenth as much fun of a pompous narcissistic asshole as David Lee Roth was in his interviews, and Ted’s music was far worse as well. There’s a brief feature on AC/DC (“AC/DC: Austrailia’s Amazing Punks”, spelled as I typed it) and an interview with Angus Young. The reviews section is, like I said, all about white guys who play loud guitars, no matter the genre: Rush and Sammy Hagar and The Ramones and Metallic K.O. and New York Dolls reissues and Nazareth and Ultravox and The Babys. In their Weirdos Destroy All Music review, they say “I wish the Weirdos would record some of their other songs, especially “I Dig Your Hole – I’m The Mole’”. What now? Who knows this song?? Not me. I’d like to hear your bootleg of it. 

Finally, there’s a brief column tracking the improvement of The Germs – “they’re not the world’s worst band anymore….but they still aren’t great”. And hey, here’s something I didn’t know before today: there’s an incredible archive of Raw Power issues online, as well as all sorts of information about an upcoming book project; a forthcoming seventh issue; backstories on the contributors and much much more. Go get lost in it, right now!