paranoia fanzine – Fanzine Hemorrhage

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.

I don’t collect or gather too many hardcore punk fanzines, just the ones I bought “back then” like Ripper and/or stuff too ridiculously fun to ignore, like the We Got Power #4 we talked about here. Often these 1982-83 mags were written by teens, for teens, with all the mangled syntax, bungled graphics and party-or-go-home enthusiasms you’d expect of such efforts. This is most certainly the case with 1982’s Paranoia #4, from one of the USA’s exploding hardcore punk small-cities at the time, Reno NV! That’s right, the Skeeno HC scene totally lives and breathes right here.

Paranoia – you can read other issues here – appears to have been put out by Bessie Oakley and Jone Stebbins from the all-female band The Wrecks. Stebbins later went on to be in the band Imperial Teen and seems to be running a series of hair salons now. The Wrecks – well, you may know and love them from “Punk Is An Attitude” from Not So Quiet on the Western Front.

Their magazine is a hoot, kind of like We Got Power was, full of party photos, inside jokes, show reviews, gossip, skateboarding action shots and some serious consternation about the state of the scene. This issue’s cover, I’d imagine, is quite tongue in cheek, but in case you were confused, please note that Bessie or Jone has scrawled “Ha Ha!” underneath the headline. Whew! What’s great is that while I was recently calling San Jose something of a cowtown back at this time, Reno truly was, and so the fact that a whole cadre of breakneck slammin’ bands came up out of this place at the same time was somewhat remarkable. I mean Urban Assault were from South Lake Tahoe, as unlikely a place as anywhere to have anything like a HC scene, and Paranoia really pulls off the all-for-one, one-for-all ethos by spotlighting every single hardcore band from Nevada and even Rebel Truth from nearby Sacramento, CA. This issue’s also got a strong Canadian tinge, with a Subhumans interview and lots of D.O.A. chatter.

San Francisco was and remains the nearest truly big city, and certainly the only one at the time with a network of clubs to play in, Alas, according to Paranoia #4, “The Mabuhay Gardens of San Francisco is no longer booking hardcore bands, just gay new wave ones”. Well, darn it all to hell! Paranoia was, I’d imagine, the house organ of the Skeeno scene, and no, I don’t know why they called it Skeeno and maybe they didn’t either. A goofy time capsule for sure.