Hey, a couple of things before we get started this time:

— I have a Fanzine Hemorrhage column in the new Record Time #4 fanzine. It looks like this’ll be a regular thing in one of the best print things on the planet right now, so I’m delighted to be a part of it. Order yours here. I was asked to review a couple of “power pop” fanzines. Hilarity ensues!

— I’ve also got a couple of pieces in the nearly-out Where The Wild Gigs Were, Volume 2 book put together by Tim Hinely and Eric Eggleston. Their first book was a real joy to read, and it sold out very quickly, so if this is interesting to you I’d recommend making the buy sooner rather than later. I talk about two long-gone clubs: Los Angeles’ Raji’s, and San Francisco’s 6th Street Rendezvous. Other, better writers talk about other clubs as well!

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I got June 1985’s Terminal! #19, my first and only issue of this Philadelphia tabloid, as part of a batch of fanzines proffered to me for the price of “please take these off my hands”. Now I know that, like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Portland and South Florida, Philly had its own large-format underground thing as well. Maybe I’d barely heard of it because, um, ….it’s not that good…..but at any rate, I think there are a few things to discuss here about it anyway.

Terminal! #19 is an “all things to all people” sort of paper with equal access to all points in the underground and lower-tier mainstream. You can be a good band, and you can also very much be a bad band, and you’ll get relatively uncritical coverage here. You can be a 1972 radio interview with Captain Beefheart transcribed for the first time, or you can be a “street rock” band called The Limits, who’ve ascended the scale of Philadelphia rock royalty to the point where they’re now opening for The Hooters. You can be Lemmy from Motorhead, shooting the shit about the band he just fired, or you can be American composer Robert Ashley, complaining about San Francisco’s provincial music scene. You can be Mykel Board or you can be “Shredder”, and still be allowed to write for this paper.

You can be other things, too. My introduction to cover star Laurie Anderson came from an issue of Sounds I read back in 1982, in which UK readers had just voted her “O Superman” the worst song of 1981. Say what you will about that song, but this woman ended up marrying and then staying with Lou Reed, so clearly had the patience, fortitude and self-negation of Mother Teresa and then some. She gets the centerspread in Terminal #19, and honestly I tried to pay attention while I was reading it, and yet next thing I knew it was 6am and my alarm was going off for work.

Because this is 1985, and Philadelphia’s an hour-ish from New York City, there’s a “New York Downtown” report that hits nicely. It reports on Mofungo, Rhys Chatham, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn and others; elsewhere in the mag Rat At Rat R are namedropped more than once. I loved those guys. See, hindsight shows us that there’s always a good time to be alive and listening to music, even 1985. You just need to be in New York is all. 

Back when I was a college radio DJ in the late 80s, the Philadelphia “horror punk” band The Serial Killers were placed on my show to do a live set. I’d never heard the band before. I got to yakking with singer and prime mover “Paul Bearer” and we got along pretty well; he liked alcoholic beverages, and as a matter of fact, so did I. I was really impressed with his deep, deep Philly accent – so deep in fact, that I often couldn’t understand what he was saying. We traded some live tapes after that, and even talked on the phone a time or two. He once told me “We got a new drama”. I was like, “A new drama? Come again now?”. “A new DRAMA”. “Um – okay. What’s that mean?”. “A DRAMA – someone who plays DRAMS!”. At KCSB he also stepped out to the drinking fountain to get some “wooder”. Fantastic. Far more fascinating than Terminal #19 for sure!