Husker Du – Fanzine Hemorrhage

When all the dust clears, when all the debates are finished, when all the fists stop flying – what will you say was the best San Francisco music fanzine of the second half of the 1980s? I feel like the contenders were probably BravEar, Wiring Dept and Puncture, right? Unless I’m forgetting someone. These three fanzines were the most adventurous in terms of traversing the wider underground and going deep where necessary, and yet all three suffered a bit for their overtly sleeve-wearing left wing politics, and for pandering a bit too heavily to quote-unquote college rock at times. But listen, I did myself at the time, no question. That’s why I still own copies of all these mags that I bought during 1984-87. I think it’s probably a pretty easy call at the end of the day: Wiring Dept, then BravEar, then Puncture.

Said the guy who’s here to talk about Puncture #9 from Spring 1985! We’re not talking about Forced Exposure or Conflict levels of quality, taste and information here – those east coast zines really set the standard during this period in my unforgiving eyes. I mostly like Puncture, though, and I believe the value-for-cost quotient you’ll get from this book of their first six issues is pretty high, at a mere $14.95 a pop. Patty Stirling was really the main driver behind this one, and of all of the fanzine’s first, I don’t know, 10 or 11 issues? Then it really did become a true alterna/indie/Lollapalooza abomination that I don’t think she had anything to do with. (Although looking at these covers, any fanzine with a “Remembering Flipper” article couldn’t have been too hideous).

In the rado update that kicks the thing off, it talks about how Ray Farrell is leaving the Bay Area and KPFA to go work at SST in LA. Weren’t we just talking about that guy? The interview with Test Dept is quite standoffish and a little pretentious, and yet I actually come away admiring these UK proto-industrial performance art freaks and maybe wanting to see if I might like them 40 years later. Sure, it’s fine. It brings KFJC’s Mark Darms and his Industrial Report radio show from those years screaming back to life for me, which is great. The thing in here on the Violent Femmes isn’t too annoying, either – you have to remember, that second album of theirs, the one where frontman Gordan Gano “found Jesus”, was not received well by the frat boys who partied their asses off to “Blister in the Sun” and “Add It Up”, but there’s some love for it here, along with Gano’s religious side project The Mercy Seat, which I guess I never heard, because I absolutely loathed the Violent Femmes.

Aaaaaaaah and there’s a review of Husker Du / Minutemen / Meat Puppets (no Saccharine Trust or Swa??) from The Stone in San Francisco, 3/1/1985. This was SST’s celebrated “The Tour”, and a show that took place here and at the Keystone Palo Alto the night before. It was my senior year of high school, and my friends weren’t really cottoning to the American underground the way I was, so I didn’t go despite really wanting to. San Jose State’s station KSJS was playing Double Nickels on the Dime and New Day Rising incessantly; Palo Alto was a mere 30 minute drive from my home in San Jose, and my parents were definitely in the “we don’t care what you do” phase of my youth. But go to a show by myself, at age 17? Absolutely not, out of sheer embarrassment and introversion. So I ended up never seeing The Minutemen, Husker Du nor Saccharine Trust. It is no consolation whatsoever that I did, in fact, see SWA live on stage several years later.

There are great pics of Sonic Youth from a 1/14/85 show at The I-Beam, and kudos to Patty Stirling for finding a way to compare them to both Hex Enduction Hour-era Fall and The Stooges. She also contributes a fantastically ludicrous meathead drawing of an ultra-buffed Henry Rollins to her Black Flag reviews. Other reviews abound of the Cocteau Twins, Billy Bragg, Aztec Camera, Rank and File, Einstruzende Neubauten, This Mortal Coil and all that SST stuff – this was 1984/85 to me at the time, and from my vantage point of Gunderson High School in San Jose and especially from my bedroom’s clock radio, it was “magic hour”. I couldn’t have been more excited about music, and I had so much still to learn. (I still do). I would renounce virtually all of it in the year to come, once I got to college, except for those SST bands and my newly-discovered Homestead and Touch & Go heroes, and all that blitzing hardcore I’d been too chicken and/or broke to actively buy circa 1982-83. Now I can go back and very much enjoy the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, as well as a few others whom I never strayed from, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees – still a Fanzine Hemorrhage favorite to this day. Listen!

I guess Puncture ended up capturing the time better than I thought. I mean, here’s this issue’s back cover, pictured. Flipper! I suspect this is where I stole a thing I did in my own Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzines of putting a band photo of someone not even talked about in the issue on the back cover, then letting readers guess who it is. Let’s go Wiring Dept/Puncture/BravEar, then. What say you? What high-quality Bay Area fanzines am I missing from this time?

The wizened elders amongst us may remember when Reno, Nevada was a primo hardcore punk rock hot spot that gave birth to slammers like 7 Seconds, Urban Assault and The Wrecks. In the 1981-83 hardcore heyday, tiny Reno was a stop on the touring grind for Black Flag, Husker Du, DOA, The Fix, Minor Threat and countless others. The scene’s “house organ”, if you will, was Paranoia, put out by Bess and Jone from The Wrecks. We celebrated their 4th issue from earlier in 1982 here; we shall be discussing their lively fifth issue, also from 1982, presently.

It starts off with a bang in the letters section, where one GG Allin writes in frothing mad (and cursing!) about a record review. Bessie & Jone try to one-up him with a delightfully snarky response. Grace Ann Sawyer writes in as a new resident in the Reno/Sparks area and says “I am starving for New Wave action of any type”. I certainly know the feeling, Grace Ann! Then it’s on to the news, where we learn that “Bryan Jones, the 15-year-old lead singer of Jerry’s Kids from Boston, Mass was forced to quit the band by his father”. There’s other news about Robo joining The Misfits, Void breaking up, and “Henry from Black Flag and Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat have thoughts of putting out a comedy record”. Had said thoughts been acted upon, this might have been the worst thing I’ve ever heard, save for Jello Biafra’s stand-up comedy records that unfortunately did come out.

Next we’re on to the interviews and detailed scene reports from Holland and the UK. There are talks with Chron-Gen, Husker Du, the Hugh Beaumont Experience and TSOL, who are vapid and dull-witted as always. Of course, I had to adjust my seating and get a glass of water to settle in with the Minor Threat interview. At this point, they’re all under 20, don’t like San Francisco punks and think Reno compares quite favorably. To each his or her own. Naturally, there are some detailed explanations about what “straight edge” both is and isn’t. Ian’s not against sex; “I think it’s a great great thing”. I also learned for the first time that Ian MacKaye once did codeine, and “it was boring”. This is what precisely what teen punks – and I – have come to Paranoia #5 for.

Born Innocent-era Red Kross have just changed their name, and are interviewed by Bess. She starts asking some gross-out questions (nose-picking, butts, and all manner of what have you), sadly causing my all-time punk rock heartthrob Tracy Lea to wander away from the interview that she’d previously been an active participant in. While they’re being interviewed here in Reno, the McDonald brothers ask Bess if she’s ever seen The Wrecks. She informs them that she’d recently been in The Wrecks, but that they’d just broken up. It’s as dumb of an interview as I’ve ever read, right up there with some of the We Got Power chats for pure intellectual firepower.

Minor Threat and Husker Du have just played Reno, separately; otherwise Bessie and Jone are driving to San Francisco and sometimes Sacramento for their gigs. Man, one time I drove to Reno and back from San Francisco in one day trying to elect Democrats in Nevada in 2016 (you may remember one of them, Hillary Rodham Clinton), and let me tell you, that is a hoof. Anything for the blessed ‘core. These women and all of their friends are just having a blast; as in the other issue I reviewed, there are multiple party pictures, cut-outs of people smiling, at gigs, making out etc. The reviews, such as they are, are also pretty fun. The Fartz’ World Full of Hate is summarized with the very helpful “If you like The Fartz, get this.” Who didn’t like The Fartz??

Finally I learned a bit about The Sluts from New Orleans. Barry Goubler, did you see this band? They love The Stooges, Bad Brains, Black Flag and Saccharine Trust, so I say what’s not to love about them. I guess Dee Slut from the band had a little notoriety himself, unbeknownst to me – read all about that here.