I did not buy Punk Magazine #2 in 1973, because I was, as it turns out, five years old. Rather, I came to it as an idiot “fanzine collector” quite recently. So recently in fact, that it first crossed the threshold of my house in 2026. First, let’s establish that this had nothing to do with the Legs McNeil/John Holmstrom Punk magazine of a few years later, which I’d call among the most overrated fanzines of all time if I’d thought it was much “rated” in the first place. Easily. Nearly unreadable. No, this Punk was sired and stewarded by Billy Altman out of Buffalo, NY during the “rock desert” year of ‘73, which probably wasn’t all as bad a year as folks once made it out to be.
Anyway, it’s kind of a treat and a real collection of early rock-write all-stars, from Lester Bangs to Richard Meltzer to Mike Saunders to Scott Fischer to Joe Fernbacher to Altman himself. They’ve all just recently come back from the debauched “National Rock Writers Convention” in Memphis, and its existence is tossed around occasionally here without many details shared. On one hand, these fellas seem to be writing solely for each other to garner laffs, and are having a hell of a fun time doing so. This makes it quite fun to read. I’d have absolutely loved most of this in my twenties, which is when I first read Meltzer, Nick Tosches and Lester Bangs and thought their rock-adjacent fuck-you writing was just the coolest.
Thirty years on and much of it has the distinct whiff of its times – which in so many ways are far superior to our times, sure, but again, it’s also a bit of a “revenge of the dorks” circle jerk that maybe you need to be 22-25 years of age and just figuring it all out to be truly blown away by. And it’s a good thing Congress didn’t get a hold of this one at the time, as it’s a little obscene, perhaps. But quite funny, if you’re willing to be entertained!
Punk Magazine #2 is a rock broadsheet, more or less, but most of the writers prefer to wander off the reservation, and are rarely “telling the truth” in their actual rock writing, either, which is few and far between in any case. For instance, there are 3 pieces about baseball, just as many as there are about music – including one by Terry Bromberg about my San Francisco Giants. These baseball pieces all seem written by the same person, even though they’re not. These guys each have an erudite, nyuk-nyuk sensibility that’s about wringing as much hilarity as possible out of a sport that’s ostensibly not all that funny. Wilber Wood is a fatty, Tito Fuentes dresses like a pimp and the ladies love him. Smokey Burgess is so unhealthy he can only pinch-hit, and so on.
This was the state of one strain of humor in 1973 – a little gonzo, a little offensive, and very over the top. Philip Roth, bless him, wrote my two least favorite of his 31 books in this style and during this general timeframe – The Great American Novel (about baseball!) and Our Gang (about Nixon). Smart wiseasses were ascendant in part of the culture for a very, very short interregnum.
As for fabrication in the rock writing portions, Altman’s Vanilla Fudge piece purports to be a love letter to the band and is anything but. Mike Saunders lies his way through a piece on Blue Cheer, the outlines of which are still true, and there’s also a true (I think) discography at the end. Nice “Gump Worsley” reference in the piece, too – hockey fans thank you. Fernbacher’s thing on Wild Man Fischer is probably the best of this trio of “rock” articles, and, given the subject matter, doesn’t need to resort to prevarication in order to entertain.
Lester Bangs’ piece about why “alcohol is just the best” is among his weakest things of his I’ve ever read, despite how hard he seems to be trying to be an outta control wildman on the typewriter. And – it’s almost gauche to say this – it was probably written whilst under the influence of his selfsame topic! There’s also a whole piece by Meltzer on the many times he traveled across the USA to get laid in 1972, with each session rendered graphically and in detail. It certainly brings to mind a piece by him I once loved and have not forgotten entitled “I Never Ate Rebecca Rosen”.
The zine is riddled with typos, and it’s probably all part of the Punk ethos that those are not corrected nor whited out, even when they were noticed. I’m good with that. It bums me out a bit that this feels both like such a time capsule and a lost era, and that I’m not frothing about it the way I would have had I read it first in, say, 1991. And jeez, the two copies of this online are selling for $1,200 and $1,500 respectively, so how did I come to get mine on eBay for less than 1/20th of that? (Was that the most inane collector douchebag humblebrag you’ve ever read? You’re welcome!).
Fanzine Hemorrhage 