Brian Berger – Fanzine Hemorrhage

Over the course of Fanzine Hemorrhage’s reign of error, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of dissecting several 80s and 90s fanzines by one Brian Berger: Crush #3, Grace and Dignity #1 and Constant Wonder #1. Last time I even sirened a call that I sent across the internet for Berger to get in touch for a real old-school “Fanzine Hemorrhage grilling”, but our bait was left bobbing on the water. The common themes of any given Berger fanzine were a very learned abrasiveness; a high intellectual quotient that didn’t show itself off too much; complete & total independent music immersion; and a bit of horndoggery that did little to advance the seriousness of his cause. Thanks to one BH, I now have Fall 1988’s Bite Down #1, which I believe may be the very first of all the Brian Berger fanzines.

At this point, he’s a student at the University of Michigan, and therefore publishing Bite Down from Ann Arbor. Of course, Ann Arbor, especially its clubs, TOTALLY SUCKS. I love how college students from big cities, such as my own beloved progeny vis-a-vis Tucson, Arizona, often have the perspective of living and cavorting in exactly two places in their lives, and therefore if the second falls short of the first for, say, nightlife, the whole place just SUCKS. Berger places his zine’s opening editorial and statement of purpose on the inside back cover, the last place you’d think to look, and professes his love for rock and roll while also sheepishly admitting he’s a mere 19 years old. Well jeez, I was 20 myself at this exact time, and his obsessive interests very much mirrored mine: what various mythic fanzine types were up to (especially Forced Exposure and Conflict); Sonic Youth; the Gibson Bros; and the releases that were pouring out monthly by the dozens on Touch & Go, Homestead and SST.

Most/all of the reviews I wrote for Sound Choice at the same age are just as guileless and uninformed as Berger’s, so any mirth-making here is refractory and probably aimed at myself, okay? But it’s funny! The Mekons’ 7-7-88 show at Maxwell’s was “the best show I’ve ever seen”. It may well have been! I say the same thing about the 9-28-87 Sonic Youth show at Borsodi’s Coffeehouse in Isla Vista, CA, which took place when I myself was 19. “While a goodly amount of praise has been heaped upon the combo known as B.A.L.L., IT AIN’T BEEN ENOUGH!”. Really? B.A.L.L.? Richard Meltzer’s L.A. is the Capital of Kansas: an all-caps “MASTERPIECE”. (Maybe I should read that one).

He cares even more about Shimmy-Disc records, a label whose program I struggled to get with at the time, but Berger is full-bore. B.A.L.L.’s new one is their “second straight masterpiece”; King Missile are “hilarious”; and even that Carney Hild Kramer record is a “masterwork” (there are nineteen copies of this LP currently selling at $3.48 on Discogs, not to conjoin art and capitalism, nor try to make any statements about price as a cue for quality). He also swipes the Forced Exposure “C/U meter” for his own 45 reviews, which was shorthand for “Could/Use x amount of copies”. So with a C/U of 1, you’d keep your lone copy; C/U of 500 meant, in theory, you needed to go find 500 copies. Tad, who is called “the friggin’ messiah” for his Daisy/Ritual Device single, gets a “C/U Entire Pressing”. Fuck, so that’s why I can’t find the goddamn Tad single – Berger got them all.

Only one more bit of funnin’, and then I’m done. (For the record, I enjoyed reading Bite Down #1 cover to cover today). His interview with Thurston Moore of, yes, Sonic Youth, is really good, mostly because Moore was and is always game to talk shop with a fellow record/music obsessive. It makes me laugh because the questions are so the sorts of questions I would ask bands not just in the 80s, when I’d meet them in person, but even through the 90s, as if they didn’t have anything else to talk about. “How’s the tour?”. “So you guys are playing with Laughing Hyenas”. “What’s the deal with this one record I collected from you” etc. Questions that were just as one-dimensional as I was at that age. I also learned that Thurston Moore’s tour diary in Forced Exposure was enlivened by some somewhat mean-spirited edits by Jimmy Johnson, which, I guess if it happened to me, I’d never submit anything to anyone ever again.

I do think Berger made a quantum-sized developmental leap from Bite Down #1 to Constant Wonder #1 in four years, and some of those rougher edges were never sanded down – mostly to the good in his case. They certainly made for more readable and more memorable fanzines, and I reckon the guy’s still a person of interest from this era, even if I’m the only one still interested.

Re-reading Brian Berger’s Constant Wonder #1 for the first time in 30 years has given rise to a few thoughts, let’s say. And before I illuminate said thoughts, I’ll re-introduce this guy to the best of my abilities. I had bought his various early 90s fanzines such as Crush and Grace and Dignity at various west coast Tower Records at the time, and found them confounding, but chin-strokingly interesting at the very least, and musical taste-expanding at their very best. Berger was into records, big time. He knew his shit, and wanted to make sure you knew he knew his shit. I previously wrote about two of his mags here and here.

He also was very much in the business of manufacturing a complex persona for himself. It was an “erudite horndog” sort of vibe; and that of a purposefully off-putting guy who’d publish whatever crawled into his head that might further emphasize your recognition of his erudition and confrontational manner. These might be little one-act plays; mock paeans to himself; lengthy in-jokes about indie rock bands; lyrical dissections mixed up with deep nods to whatever author he was reading in grad school in Iowa City, and so forth. It can be totally fucking maddening.

That said, when he’s actually writing about music as music, especially here in Constant Wonder #1 (there was never a second issue), he can be entirely convincing. I know for a fact that this 1992 issue spurred me on to greater investigation of both the Ass Ponys, whom I really dug, and the American Music Club, who I’m honestly still waiting to find even a shred of connection with. Berger wasn’t the only one with an AMC fetish for sure; Gerard Cosloy, who laid down the initial fanzine template for Berger to follow in a dozen different ways, was also a major fan and booster.

But I trust – and trusted – Cosloy’s taste far more than Berger’s. When the latter savages a band he’s seen live, like The Walkabouts or Die Kreuzen, you’re never really sure if it’s the band’s sartorial sense or their music that’s really rubbing him the wrong way. He truly does enjoy talking about their clothes, sense of style and physical attractiveness perhaps more readily than one might expect from such a smart fella, and jeez, the lengthy quiz about personal drug use to the main guy in Paul K. and the Weathermen (a former smack addict) is an absolutely cringe-inducing bit of heroin chic.

Aside from all that, seriously, this zine is pretty right-on. I’m all for someone holding a band’s album up to the light and turning it inside-out for paragraph upon paragraph, even if that band is an indie pop thing like The Bats, De Artsen or Straightjacket Fits. And for all the mean-n-nasty savaging that goes on here – listen, someone needed to talk about “The Nation of Ulysses” as probably the worst virus to hit the bins in 1992, and I’m glad Berger did the dirty work. Utterly embarrassing and a stain on the scene. And like me, he l-o-v-e-d Urge Overkill’s Jesus Urge Superstar in the late 80s, but has many ingenious ways to pick them and their own manufactured personas apart for their immense musical treachery in 1992.

As I wrote before, this Berger guy was a “person of interest” in certain quarters around this time, and it’s clear he relished the part. Since he’s undoubtedly about 54-57 years old right about now, and as far as I know, completely vanished from the scene he was so fond of making mirth and courting disfavor in, I’d honestly kind of enjoy to get the guy’s take on how he views his contributions 30+ years ago. Did he morph into an even greater asshole? Is he now a wizened sage who used his extensive education for reflection and greater magnanimity? Brian Berger, if you’re out there, let’s you and me do an email interview for the Fanzine Hemorrhage website and find out, how about?