Whenever it was that I found my used, stained issue of Attack #8 in a record store, I know I dragged it to the counter mostly assuming it was a relatively generic, slapdash cut-n-paste April ‘83 hardcore punk fanzine that had caught my fleeting attention for some reason or another. Seattle, maybe. I do dig Seattle. It was only upon bringing it home did I realize I had something pretty fantastic here – a young Jo Smitty was the editor and guy behind it (!). You may know him as a member of Mr. Epp and The Calculations (vocalist on most tracks), or as Jeff Smith, the guy behind Feminist Baseball fanzine in the 90s. And it features multiple contributions from Mark Arm, whom you may know from…..you know who Mark Arm is.

It was a true treat to get duly reacquainted with this one after so many years away from it while it was sequestered securely away in a garage box. Attack #8 really hammers home what an open-minded fella teenage Jo Smitty was. He’ll talk your ear off about Whitehouse, The Fall, Grandmaster Flash, dozens of hardcore slammeisters and even English punk. ‘83 Smitty loves The Poison Girls and Crass. He and his contributors make the Seattle music scene sound way more exciting and cohesive than popular histories of the pre-grunge era have led me to believe. Wasn’t this supposed to be the city that time forgot, the place few touring bands set foot in because it was “too far” from California or whatever? Not at all the impression given here – these boys are slamming their asses off to Black Flag, DOA, Dead Kennedys and all the Northwest heroes, from Poison Idea to The Fartz – and P.I.L.. Iggy Pop. Savage Republic, TSOL and The Ramones as well. 

Smitty also reviews a bunch of films; his contributor Talya Christian hates Urgh: A Music War, and singles out The Cramps as being particularly lame, putting them in her “boring to sickening” list (??). This was a particularly fertile moment in American punk rock history – the amazing “Quincy punk” episode had just aired, and it was a whopper. Much-discussed in high school alterna-circles at the time. Smitty understands the stakes here and devotes an entire article to it. Me, I did not see this one in real time when it aired, but I was delighted to have caught the slightly less-heralded CHiPs punk episode on its debut! I’d be willing to fund a Blu-Ray with these two on it, along with some Wally George episodes, maybe.

Now, Mark Arm, he loves himself some hardcore – totally blown away by Minor Threat, maybe not too impressed with Negative Approach, and he probably loves Flipper most of all. He contributes an excellent savaging of TSOL’s Beneath The Shadows album. In case it hasn’t been clear on this blog to date, I thought, and have always thought, that TSOL were utterly atrocious from day one. I’ll try not to mention them again, but when we talk about early 80s fanzines they always seem to have been around. Rebel Truth from Sacramento are interviewed, and so is Whitehouse! 

Just a gem of a bedroom fanzine from top to bottom. You can ogle all of the covers of Attack fanzine here if you’d like.