Tag: Fanzines

Who Put The Bomp! #14

~ Jay Hinman ~ 2 Comments

Who Put The Bomp was an ur-fanzine, one of the earlier and absolute best examples of a rocknroll fanatic following his obsessions and documenting every jot and titter from his heroes. Greg Shaw is deservedly lauded for parting from the mainstream in his writing when it was warranted; for going deep into topics that no one else would touch (like this issue’s instrumental surf records coverage) and for bringing on a king’s table of rock writers over the years to write for the mag – including Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and “Metal” Mike Saunders.

I’ve had all six of the late 70s punk-infused issues, from when it was just called Bomp! magazine, for quite some time. I’m only now coming around to trying to cobble together issues of the pre-1976 Who Put The Bomp! fanzine, of which there are 15 issues. The first one of those I got was the “British Invasion Issue”, #10-11, and it’s so massive and meaty and full of tiny type that I’ve barely cracked the code on the thing. All-in, it’s longer than most books about music you’re likely to read. All the issues before that one are too scarce and expensive for Fanzine Hemorrhage’s pocketbook, but if there’s a will there’s a way, and there’s totally a will. 

So I’m concentrating on those issues between that British Invasion one and and the punk-era stuff, and recently found a lovely copy of Who Put The Bomp! #14 from Fall 1975, the one with these hodads on the cover. Like I said, the key to the issue is the instrumental surf music discography and backstory. It’s an incredible resource even now, 48 years later. I’m sure there’s probably some small-press record collector book that’d tell me a bunch of the same info I can get here, but there might not be. I happen to love this stuff and it grows on me even more as I age into the typical age bracket of the “1961 surf instrumental 45 record collector”. After glomming onto this thing I’ve been spending a bunch of time with the Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals box set, as well as with my Lost Legends of Surf Guitar comps. OK, grandpa!

I learned all about Tony Hilder, who produced Fresno’s Revels (who did “Church Key”) and was a prime mover in the early 60s California Central Valley instrumental surf scene, which I was surprised as you were to find out was a thing. Hilder then put out a series of “right-wing records” about the John Birch society and Barry Goldwater, which I’m sure are total fucking godhead. Alas, the piece says “The defeat of Barry Goldwater and the demise of surf music marked the end of Tony Hilder’s active involvement in the music industry. He is now employed as a salesman of freeze-dried food products in Southern California, writing reactionary declarations in his spare time”. 

Other highlights: a complete discography and story about Dutch rock (The Outsiders, Q65, Shocking Blue etc.) and another oddly compelling discography of Beatles novelties and parodies – none of it by the Beatles, but stuff like The Twiliters’ “My Beatle Haircut”. I mean, the folks that put this stuff together, need I say, did not have the internet, or Goldmine, or anything similar. Just their own crate-digging and obsessive compiling, at a time when a used, non-picture sleeve 45 in a record store could be picked up for a nickel, dime or quarter.

And Roky Erickson is back! He’s just been released from a Texas state psychiatric hospital after being inside for five years – and he’s got a new band, Roky Erickson & Bleib Alien. He’s come to Los Angeles to play his brand-new songs, “Two-Headed Dog”, “Starry Eyes”, “Don’t Slander Me” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer”. Can you believe it? Greg Turner is on the scene, and gets Erickson to do a fairly coherent interview. This is then followed up with a full International Artists discography, because of course it is. 

The new wave is almost here. Shaw notes in his end-of-issue column that “Big news around Hollywood is The Runaways, a group of 3 high school girls (14, 16, 18) who play like The Sweet and sing great teenage anthems, most of them written by Kerry Krome, a 13-year-old girl prodigy. They also do The Troggs’ classic “Come Now”. Remember, you read it here first.” In 1975, that was probably the case. She was actually Kari Krome, real name Carrie Mitchell, and boy does she now have a sordid and likely indisputable story to tell.

Who Put The Bomp #14 is one of those fanzines you wanna hold onto for dear life, not merely because of its centrality to a certain all-encompassing rock & roll mindset in ‘75, but as a resource to be frequently mined. I probably gave Shaw short shrift in my twenties for being what his contributors Greg Turner and Mike Saunders would call “a power pop turd”, but hey, I’ve even come around a little on some 70s power pop. Let me see if I can find a few of those other issues and I promise to meet ya here to talk about them.

Bad Vibe #2

~ Jay Hinman ~ Leave a comment

In the spring of 1993 I spent two months traveling North America as the road manager, driver & merch seller for the band Claw Hammer, who were friends of mine from Los Angeles. As someone with zero musical talent – and lord knows I tried to pretend otherwise – I was utterly beside myself that I’d actually be able to go on tour, traveling from city to city, haulin’ in and haulin’ out, just like the underground musicians whose lives I was appropriating by having thrown in my cultural lot with them as a college radio DJ, record buying-obsessive and fanzine publisher. 

I was so excited by 60 days spent crammed in an Econoline touring the US of A and a little bit of Canada that I quit my job as a customer service rep at Monster Cable, though my sabbatical ended up being short enough that I was able to reclaim my place on the corporate ladder upon returning. The band themselves were on something of an upswing, having recently come off a supporting tour with Mudhoney and with a new record out on the lucre-loaded Epitaph Records, run by Brett from Bad Religion. So I was decidedly a fifth wheel to the 4 band members – the guy who settled up at the end of the night with the club booker; the guy who pulled the van into Des Moines; the guy who taped the t-shirts and CDs to the wall behind the merch table; the guy who had to call Peter Davis at Creature Booking to make sure the show in Baton Rouge or Wichita or Montreal was still on.

It was all about the Claw Hammer guys and who came to see them – I remember in particular a show in Tulsa with six paying customers, three of whom were members of the Flaming Lips. Occasionally and very rarely, however, there were people I’d meet on the road who actually came to the club with the intention of seeing me. Yeah, some were friends from college, but sometimes (like once or twice) there was actually someone who knew about my music fanzine Superdope and wanted to talk sub-underground musical baseball with me. That’s how I met the Bad Vibe guys.

It was at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago in May 1993. If I’m not mistaken, “Ween” were the headliner, and a Canadian pop band called Sloan, who had a massive tour bus parked outside, played as well. David Salvia and Jim Sonnenberg from mid-state Illinois had recently put out a garage punk fanzine called Bad Vibe #1, and I had a copy & it’s very likely we’d exchanged “letters” about it – in fact it’s almost certainly how they knew I’d be at this show in their state. 

Well these two wide-eyed, cornfed Midwesterners saddled up to the merch table and introduced themselves, and we had a fine time talking about the ins & outs of the scene, about the rigors of publishing and distribution and whatnot. Claw Hammer? Pffffft. When they started playing, these guys couldn’t care less and anchored themselves to the table, in the club’s now-empty lobby. I felt so important! It was me – I was the one who was on tour, and these were my two fans! I tried to play all the hits for them: the times I saw Pussy Galore; the time I hung out with Rob Vasquez; that one time the Cheater Slicks stayed at my house, and everything else I could muster. By the end of the night, like Springsteen, Little Steven and “The Big Man”, I’d truly sweated it out and left it all on stage….I mean on the merch table. We then said our goodbyes and never spoke again.

A few months later Bad Vibe #2 came out, the issue we’re talking about today. Salvia and Sonnenberg one-upped my awful interview (Superdope #5) with Rob Vasquez and The Night Kings with an even worse interview with Vasquez, who cops to being baked 24/7 and really can’t seem to muster enthusiasm for much of anything, including the phone conversation he’s taking part in. They also included a great record with the mag – the Night Kings’ Brainwashed EP. Then they even went and put in posters of the Blues Explosion and Royal Trux. I could never afford color anything, nor could I include a record (not even a flexi) – so I said then to myself and I say now: well done, lads.

It strikes me re-reading Bad Vibe #2 thirty years later that there were young men who really, really had a thing for The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck; I believe the Bad Vibe team may have counted themselves among them. (Alas, she unfortunately passed away just this past year). Their magazine strikes me now as youthfully dumb, as mine was, while also having a strong handle of the slightly more “popular” side of garage punk – Vasquez very much not included there – and digging into some of the deeper wells at the same time. It’s a fun read, and you can actually still buy a fresh copy here, thirty years on.

Bull Tongue Review #1

~ Jay Hinman ~ 2 Comments

After Forced Exposure wrapped it up in 1993, I had to make do with reading Byron Coley’s music writing work wherever I could track it down, even if that meant having to wade through Jay Babcock’s early 2000s Arthur periodical in order to find his & Thurston Moore’s joint “Bull Tongue” column. Man, that whole Arthur schtick really stuck in my craw at the time, and I vented my spleen here and here about it, though somewhat tongue-in-cheek in the latter instance (this was also when I was probably the most “right wing” I’ve ever been in my life, which then positioned me as a libertarian-leaning moderate Democrat).  

Coley’s stuff was around if you looked for it – and I certainly did, as he was foremost in helping to shape my eventual musical environment, and was often a real laff to boot. Still is. A few years back, 2014 to be exact, he finally popped up with his own publication, Bull Tongue Review, “A Quarterly Journal of Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism”. They lasted five issues in total, with the conceit being that this magazine would be a significant extension of that Arthur column, the one where he and Moore got to prattle about favorite records, books and other pieces of sub-underground cultural ephemera. Coley even says so in the intro to Bull Tongue #1, at which point the two of them get right into it, reviewing Tim Warren’s latest Back From The Grave comps, Adele Bertei’s Peter Laughner book, a bunch of S-S Records, some wild jazz, and (gasp) even my own Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzine. These guys never really took ownership of their respective parts of each long column, which was kinda fun, though I think the “When I moved to NYC in late 76 at age 18 and was later in a band called The Coachmen” section was probably written by Thurston Moore.

If their lengthy column was, in fact, the whole fanzine – hey, that’d be a really, really great fanzine! But wait, there’s more. Bull Tongue Review was an invite-only compendium of short pieces by the people from the greater Byron Coley universe: folks from the FE days like Suzy Rust, Steve Albini, Chris D and Tom Givan; and other tentacles extending outward into the underground to ensnare folks like Richard Meltzer, Joe Carducci, Lisa Carver, Gary Panter, Andrea Feldman, Brian Turner, Marc Masters, Donna Lethal and many more. (By the way – Donna Lethal is a tremendous and tremendously wacked-out writer; when I first corresponded with her she was going out with Chris D., and she told me about her indie-press memoir Milk of Amnesia, which was absolutely fantastic. I’ve lost touch with her). And even Coley’s wife Lili Dwight gets a turn, and she contributes a fine piece about those OXO Liquiseal travel mugs. 

Each contributor gets 250-500 words or so to review something, to tell a story, write a poem or, in rare cases, to contribute some artwork. Most in Bull Tongue #1 review something, usually a record (!), and that’s all to the good – yet some of the other stuff’s even better, like when Alan Bishop relays a tale told to him by Human Hands’ David Wiley about the time he got a phone call in the early 80s to rush down to a friend’s house so he could drive the Sun Ra Arkestra to a Sizzler. Or when Chris D. reviews a bunch of modern neo-noir films. Or when Owen Maercks talks about what it was really like to hear The Ramones’ first album in 1975 for the first time – what a great piece. (It may not beat Steve Albini’s writing on the matter, though – I’ll never forget his description of him and his brother playing the first LP and laughing uproariously at it, yelling “this totally sucks!” at it, calling it the worst record ever, and then…at night…thinking about it incessantly and wondering if it was time for a life change). 

Ted Lee, who still runs Feeding Tube Records with Coley, contributes the miniature artwork for each section. It’s a little jarring to have a record be reviewed, accompanied by a weird drawing rather than the album cover, but it’s their deal, not mine, and why not anyway, right? They did it this way four more times and I snapped them up as soon as I could. I keep hoping in vain that another Bull Tongue will make a surprise appearance sometime soon. It’s a terrific concept, and it’ll work well as long as some Coley-adjacent crew are the ones contributing.