Jimmy Johnson – Fanzine Hemorrhage

Given just how intensely devoted I was to Forced Exposure from the blessed day in 1986 when I bought Forced Exposure #10 at Rockpile Records in Goleta, CA until they wrapped it all up in 1993, I’ve struggled over the years to procure one of the mag’s “hardcore era” issues and hold it in my trembling hands for any longer than a few minutes. These would be FE issues #1-5 from the early 80s, all of which appear to have been somewhat better-distributed than most punk fanzines, yet still really hard to come by, particularly on the US west coast, where I’m from. These issues had been disavowed, more or less, by editor Jimmy Johnson by the time he’d teamed up with Byron Coley and edged more fully into the deeper rock, psych, noise and experimental underground. Back issues of these five were long said in no uncertain terms to be “thankfully out of print”.

Yet I knew that even at age 19 or 20 or whatever he was, Jimmy had superlative taste in ballistic hardcore punk, and he was right at the center of it all in Boston circa 1981-82. That must have been an absolute blast. For me, and likely for you, there were only three truly top-tier regional centers for hardcore punk during these years: the upper Midwest/rust belt (Michigan/Ohio/Wisconsin), Washington DC, and Boston. LA doesn’t count – it was a teeming punk world unto itself, and most of the actual hardcore bands – at least as I define it – from Los Angeles were pretty awful in comparison with the aforementioned. Forced Exposure #3, right in the nerve center in Summer 1982, is a regional hardcore fanzine in the best sense, published by young people for other young people.

And we’re at hardcore’s apex, aren’t we? Right on page three we’ve got the Process of Elimination tour coming to town with The Necros, Meatmen, Negative Approach, McDonald’s (I hope they played “Miniature Golf”) and Boston’s own Gang Green. Another deeply-held hardcore punk opinion of mine: the crazed, mile-a-minute Gang Green tracks on This is Boston Not L.A. are as good, if not better, than contemporaneous releases by Minor Threat, Negative Approach and The Necros. Yeah, that good! Check this out.

The band were just children at this point, too – true Boston kids with the absolute best Boston slang. Their first answer to “How did you like your trip to DC?” is “Yeah it was wicked good”. They’re pissed about the production of their track on Unsafe at Any Speed; they’re all in high school, belittling the kids in their school who get drunk by going down to the “packy” to buy beer on Fridays. Does that regional slang still exist? Man, I was disappointed last time I was in Boston that everyone I encountered, even cabbies, talked in boring flat American monotones like I do (Though one cabbie told me all about “The Biden crime family” until I commanded him to stop talking). Also, it’s highly ironic that Gang Green were trying on a pseudo-straight edge persona in 1982, considering they’d eventually make their mark with the imbecilic “Alcohol” a few years later and have an album called Older…Budweiser.

Jimmy has huge excitement for SS Decontrol’s The Kids Will Have Their Say, and I get it. They’d be one of my favorite all-time hardcore bands if not for the vocals. I just can’t get past ‘em, but of course, I never saw them live. Have you seen this short documentary on them? By the time I was contemporaneous with them, they were “SSD” and giving the world lessons on How We Rock. Jimmy also interviews The Necros, and they talk about Black Flag being the Johnny Appleseeds of hardcore in Ohio. Barry Henssler says, “Black Flag just played here, and now the second wave of bands are coming around”. On the other hand, Jimmy’s not a fan of Black Flag’s TV Party 45: “I get the feeling that something is missing here”. You’re damn right, it was Dez Cadena on vocals, recently replaced by Henry Rollins. Other reviews here praise The Ex, The Birthday Party, Venom, Mission of Burma and SPK – pointing to the Forced Exposure we’d see a few issues later.

In other capsule reviews, Deep Wound’s demo has just come in and it’s a barn-burner (it really is). A Boston hardcore band called The C.O.’s are praised, and despite my deep marination in this HC world a bit after the fact, I’ve never heard of them. Some folks online seem to concur that they were blisteringly great during their brief time on the planet. “Ollie” writes in from across the Atlantic with a brief scene report on Finnish hardcore. Ian MacKaye gets taken to task a little for too much on-stage proselytizing at a recent Minor Threat show in Boston. I can only imagine. I got to see The Dead Kennedys near their end, and remember looking for the exits every time Jello started to talk….and talk…..and talk.

And in this issue’s final interview, The F.U.’s sound like fun fellas. They definitely want to make it clear they did not form because of SS Decontrol – “that’s all anybody asks” – and they’re supremely bummed they couldn’t have been Boston’s first hardcore band. I’m old enough to remember MRR having some real problems with their later album My America, which only made me want to check out the Boston bands who were purportedly making a “right wing turn” in 1983. Most of them were turning pretty putrid in a hurry, regardless of politics – this one might be the worst of them all – so Forced Exposure #3 captures the proverbial lighting in a bottle, and let me tell ya, is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

In 1987, Damp editor Kevin Kraynick openly worried in the pages of this issue that he’d be lumped in with fanzine editors “who are the kind of guys who always got picked last for kickball games in gym class”. I mean, sure, but if the shoe fits….right? So in meager compensation, there’s some aggro finger-pointing and posturing in places where there oughtn’t be any – “whatta dick”; “you bet your globular ass”; that sort of thing. Certainly, Damp grew up a ton in subsequent issues – including #3 that we discussed here – but was still taking some young man’s cues from Conflict without quite having the chops to approximate its humorous vitriol.

That said, I bought Damp #2 then and I’d have happily owned it now for 37 years had it not been “disappeared” in the Great Starving Students Lost Fanzine Box. Only recently was I able to procure a copy again, perhaps even my own original for all I know. Slight concerns aside, it was an unalloyed pleasure to read cover to cover last night. There is an interview with New England locals Expando Brain, one of my very favorite super-far-underground rock bands of the mid/late 80s. Kraynick also pulls together a well-researched Snakefinger interview that’ll always be my primary source material should I ever need to do any serious Snakefinger research, such as to write a paper. There are also interviews with acts that only a young man might pretend to like – Big Dipper and Zoogz Rift – but then there’s also the only piece I’ve ever seen on The Longshoreman, a long-running San Francisco band featuring Judy and Carol from Pink Section and the Inflatable Boy Clams. Kraynick was clearly looking a bit afield from the alterna front-runners of the day, your Soul Asylums and Big Blacks and whatnot.

Sometimes the vituperation is pretty funny in his reviews, too, as in this fine intro to a Dash Rip Rock review: “Front cover shows the band burning guitars in the fireplace and let’s hope those are the only ones they’ve got”. As it turns out, even Kraynick knows that the miniscule 4-point font for record reviews that he’s using is utterly comic, and christens the whole section “The World’s Tiniest Record Reviews”. This was the era of Squirrel Bait, Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur and Halo of Flies worship, a consensus that emerged in the East Coast fanzines I read all the way across the country in Santa Barbara, and my taste was molded accordingly. For some reason David Ciaffardini is a great target of derision, which I kind of understand if you were comparing his Sound Choice magazine with, say, Forced Exposure, but he was an exceptionally friendly dude whom I knew personally, a true mensch from the word go, and someone whom I recently re-established contact with after 35 years.

The snarky sub-underground fanzines all had to have their “out crowd” for sure, and there was a consensus pile-on against the same targets, the supposed “guys who always got picked last for kickball games in gym class”. Clowns like Tesco Vee and Lydia Lunch got a free pass for some reason, probably for the same reason confident extroverts always have and always do. If you can convincingly act the part, it doesn’t matter how brainless your material actually is; if you cower and show weakness in any social circle, particularly one in which young men are attempting to preen and show off for each other’s benefit, you get bullshit like over-the-top Mike McGonigal hatred and Baboon Dooley. I wasn’t totally immune myself when I started in this racket a few years later.

Then again, maybe we all just wanted to be Byron Coley. He’s interviewed here, the second part of a 2-parter, the first of which I’ve never read because I’ve never seen Damp #1. I remember reading this interview back then, and he praised the Lazy Cowgirls – who were my absolute favorite band – and it was a big, big deal to me, the voice of God anointing my own musical taste as being first-rate. And he also made fun of SWA, who were absolutely my friends’ & my favorite musical whipping post around this time. These “photos” of “Jimmy & Byron” from Forced Exposure definitely generated some chatter at the time as well, as it was hard to know what these guys looked like in an era before The Face Book and before I was able to Ask Jeeves. It took me at least a few years to realize 100% that these weren’t the guys.

Finally, Damp #2 closes up with a guy named Wandz, who has his own page of “Hip Cat Jazz Reviews”. He even writes as if he knows what he’s talking about. A nice icing to a pretty packed fanzine.