Tag: Richard Robinson

Rock Scene (January 1975)

~ Jay Hinman ~ Leave a comment

We’ve already established in a previous post here that Rock Scene was by no means a fanzine of the sort we’re typically going on about here. A more rigid editor might require us to strike any discussion of it from the site. But since I’m the editor, here we are: Rock Scene Volume 3, Number 1 from January 1975, with Roxy Music on the cover, no less. Big in Cleveland.

The magazine’s editor Richard Robinson – who looks a tad like Gary Numan in his photo – says in his intro thing that, vis-a-vis rock and roll at the dawn of 1975, “There’s a lot happening, but it’s just repeats, no matter how good it is. You’ll find hints of what’s new in Rock Scene; unfortunately it’s just hints. The truth is that it’s up to you to get these new rock scenes underway”. How frustrating, right? I can totally feel the malaise in the three-dot gossip column about Yes, Focus, Burton Cummings and Chicago – although “Our spies report that they’ve seen Lou Reed sporting white hair” and that “overseas fans will soon have a chance to hear the King Biscuit Flower Hour as overseas syndication is in the works”. I totally remember this show, and hadn’t thought of it in a great while. It was a late-night FM rock staple with live concerts from American AOR/FM staples. The people took what they could get in the late 70s.

And yet – I don’t think they actually had it all that bad, really. I have gathered a few issues of Rock Scene in my time – which was decidedly not its time – and have found it to be both information- and visual-packed. Candid photos, usually from parties, were among its specialties. Some of these are quite baffling: there’s a picture of Sha-Na-Na’s Bowzer with Keith Moon; a photo of a roller derby competition with the caption “Roller Derby: something new on the rock scene”; and a photograph of a sculpture of Black Oak Arkansas’ Jim Dandy riding a horse naked whilst holding a tambourine. Apparently the band tried to get the British Museum to take the sculpture, and were rejected. Weird.

After a Suzi Quatro interview, there’s a goofy photo spread called “Suzi Q. Judges a Dance Contest”, with this nauseating accompanying text: “The big day finally came when Suzi Quatro and Co. arrived in Hollywood! Waiting breathlessly for her at the airport with his lookalike hairdo, Suzi Q. t-shirt and posters for her to autograph was none other than Rodney Bingenheimer! (sic). After many welcoming kisses, roses, and more than a few tears of joy – Rodney whisked Miss Teenage Daydream off to his disco on the Sunset Strip – to judge a dance contest (cute?) and meet some Hollywood, er, scenemakers”. Get off the air, Rodney!!

The “Ask Doc Rock” column has a question about 8-track bootleg tapes (wow), and another question about how to see the skull on the cover of the Velvet Underground’s White Light White Heat. This is followed by a “Roxy Run-Down” with a piece on each band member, and Lance Loud’s column “Tid Bits from the Diamond Doggiebag”, about Bowie, Bryan Ferry and David Johanson and Jimmy Page all partying at Club 82 – but not together – along with various gossip on Van Dyke Parks, Jobriath and Sparks. 

Other photo spreads are of David Johanson and Cyrinda Foxe at home, in a typical ultra-tiny NYC apartment for two; and some great snaps of McKenzie Phillips partying her ass off with Mick Jagger. There’s lots of Bowie; rock stars’ cars; “Eno Cruises the Big Apple”; and photos from the nascent stirrings of the New York rock underground. I love the really early photo of Patti Smith playing live (her debut 45 Hey Joe/Piss Factory has just dropped), along with photos of the Harlots of 42nd Street and Teenage Lust. I mean, I can go on and on here to continue painting the picture: there’s a “Dear Wayne (County)” advice column; an insufferable Kim Fowley column in which he pretends to interview himself; a piece on Brownsville Station by Lenny Kaye; and Rock Scene’s London report from Linda Merinoff, with some super syrupy gossip about Nico being exceptionally difficult and surly and badmouthing everyone she plays with except Brian Eno.

These mags are usually no more than $15 a pop online if you’re discriminating in who you buy from, and worth every cent for the innumerable reasons mentioned herewith.

Rock Scene (March 1976)

~ Jay Hinman ~ 1 Comment

You know and I know that Rock Scene wasn’t a fanzine, and that it probably has no place on this blog. Yet they were so well-situated at the nexus of the pre-punk void, before 1976 and all it represented, that it’s one of the absolute best places to get a handle on how tastes, fashions, criticism and fandom itself were evolving in the mid-1970s. I mean here we are in March 1976. There’s no mention of the Sex Pistols, who’d played 13 gigs to that point, but everyone here will hear them in about in a few weeks and go bananas – the shot in the arm editors Richard and Lisa Robinson were looking for in their post-Dolls landscape, despite all that’s already going on right in their hometown of New York City. Rock Scene would embrace punk in a big way, without leaving the remnants of glitter, glam and hard rock behind, at least in what I think was their 1976-78 heyday.

Rock Scene was very much a NYC mag. They called themselves “The alternative to the alternatives!”. While that may be going a bit far in the era of Back Door Man, Who Put The Bomp, Chatterbox and countless others that I don’t own and wish I did, I actually enjoy it even more than Creem and certainly more than Circus. This is despite not having a ton of written content and much “criticism”, as it were. This March 1976 issue is a big drunken party on the streets and in the clubs, full of photos and photo essays with only a modicum of commentary to support it all. I figure as long as they were paying photographers like Bob Gruen, Leee Childers and Raymond le Fourchette well for their snaps – because they’re fantastic – it’s actually pretty fun to read an inversion of the text-over-visuals form that’s pretty standard in any fanzine or magazine dabbling in underground rock. 

Besides, it is a fanzine when the editors are given so much leeway to cover whatever the hell they want, and then insert themselves into the visual narrative as often as possible. Richard and LIsa Robinson take an exceptionally onanistic approach to their duties by printing as many photos of themselves with rock stars, record execs and scenesters as they can fit. There are 5 with Lenny Kaye and either one or both of them in this issue alone. Because it’s early 1976, there is a bunch on the CBGB scene, with Heartbreakers and Television pics I’ve absolutely never seen. Cyrinda Foxe gets herself into many a photo, as well she should, and Lance Loud is out and about as well. 

There are other photo spreads on Cherry Vanilla, Roxy Music, The Marbles, Patti Smith Group (with Ivan Kral giving Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett a run for their money in the set-teenage-girls’-hearts-aflame dept.), Elton John, David Bowie and Jim Dandy (!). There’s an early photo spread of Blondie’s Debbie Harry with a totally different, almost Midwest Christian wife look that I kinda like. (She doesn’t have a real name in this magazine – she’s “Blondie”). There’s also a “new bands” section trying to drum up excitement for Killer Kane, a Raspberries spinoff called Windfall and a bunch of hairy New Jersey bands. There’s even a Sable Starr (LA groupie) action shot to give the west coast a little love.  

There is some actual writing, though! I appreciated an entire column about comics – Marvel, DC and comix – treating it all very seriously and simpatico with rock and roll. There’s some BS about Kiss at a high school – I can’t read anything about Kiss – but there’s also a great letter to the editor from one “Peggy O’Neil” about how great Kiss are. Could it really be this Peggy O’Neil?? Donald Lyons writes about the film scene in 1976 and finds it “lousy”, this the year of Taxi Driver, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Mikey and Nicky, Network and Marathon Man, which was hot on the heels of an even better 1975. Don’t get me started.