Roky Erickson – Fanzine Hemorrhage

I was a major Wipeout! partisan when this thing was around, and even still, I’m not sure many fanzines have aged as gracefully thirty-plus years on as this one has. Even when Eric Friedl was finding pedantic fault in some 45 or live show, it was the man’s overall and all-encompassing joie de vivre vis-a-vis wild, sub-underground rock n roll music – and Friedl’s ability to transmit it and get you REALLY excited to come aboard – that stands out. This was a guy deeply into culturally mining multiple corners of the musical underground. You can just feel the endorphins rushing as he turns over another rock and immediately pounds his impressions into his TRS-80 or whatever. It’s hard even now to not want to make his 1992 bag your bag today, even if it’s harsh and unlistenable Japanese noise. I’m reading through his reviews just today, and genuinely wondering if I totally missed the boat on Zeni Geva and The Gerogerigegege.

Not that everyone agreed with this assessment at the time! In 1992’s Wipeout #6, Friedl reprints a review from the Denver Independent Observer’s 6/18/92 issue and an article called “New Alternative Music Magazines”: “…and of all the Bangs/Meltzer/Coley-inspired zines, WIPEOUT is by far the worst…Friedl reviews in (an) ‘irreverent’ borrowed style that merely succeed at being irrelevant, insulting and inane…has nothing to say to true followers of British and American alternative music…”. Let me state for the record that for true followers of alternative music, depending upon how defined, this may be true. There’s another letter from a guy in a Columbus, OH band called Shitfits, complaining about not being reviewed in Wipeout: “Skaters are into ska and hardcore too”. Also not untrue. But Friedl wasn’t. Glen Galloway also has a partial letter printed in which he writes about my fanzine: “Superdope reigns and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise”. Wait, what did he imply??

The linchpin piece in this one, I suppose, is the giant overview and complete discography to date of The Mummies, a band that for better or for worse helped define the “budget rock” template and aesthetic for so many bands that followed. It talks about their “final gig” on New Year’s Eve 1991 – this is a band that’s still playing multiple shows per year to this day. I like that Friedl looks askance at the band’s involvement with local San Mateo hair farmers/stoners Three Stoned Men and Wig Torture: “What is it with these ‘just say fuck hippiedom’ kinda guys’ involvement with stoner rock? Could they be closet long-hairs? Or is the San Mateo scene so small that these are the only other bands worth their time?”. I think I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

As sort of a tag-along, there’s a Supercharger overview and interview (best SF Bay Area garage band of the era by a mile, though they were thought of in some quarters as a Mummies “little brother band” at first). Clearly it’s a mail interview, as every time guitarist Darin Rafaelli makes a smart-ass remark, he’s immediately corrected by bassist Greg Lowry, who clearly filled out his portion next. Friedl gives a bunch of ink to an act called the Country Rockers, a Memphis band whose entire trajectory and decline I completely missed. Other sections include a mighty Roky Erickson overview and discography; a thing on Mexican rock and roll, a little bit of a non-judgmental tiptoe into “techno”, and loads of zine reviews.

As I’ve discussed before, Wipeout! was one of a tiny handful of fanzines that gave tons of slavish attention to obscure Japanese weirdness, along with Bananafish and Show-Kai. Wipeout! treats many things from the land of the rising sun as worthy of attention, from blistering and atonal noise to garage rock to pop. He even reviews Pink Lady. I still remember the brief 1980 TV show Pink Lady and Jeff, which you can watch here. My mom was an ESL teacher to Japanese exchange students, who’d come to San Jose and stay in our home. We went through a major “Japan” phase ourselves at 1085 Normington Way, and this unfortunately even included watching each episode of Pink Lady and Jeff when it came on.

And like any fanzine worth its salt, Wipeout! #6 is just larded up with a ton of reviews, except it’s not lard at all, and maybe unlike the following issue, most of them are totally coherent and well-reasoned, if in a “first-draft, fuck it” style. This is where you really feel the full weight of Friedl’s fetching, wide-ranging and entirely self-curated music mania. He loves The Brainbombs’ first two 45s: “these singles completely busted my wig wide open”. He gives critical and deserved hosannas to the Feel Lucky, Punk?!! compilation. He loves the Jesus Lizard; well, we were all young once…! There’s a big Sun City Girls section. You could curate a tremendous 1992 record collection from these picks, and I’m certain that this fanzine helped my own collection along a bit.

Not long after I wrote about Wipeout! #7 here, a terrific podcast interview with Friedl came out on Armen Svadjian’s RockWrit and it’s a great place to understand where the man’s head was at at the time. You’ll learn that Wipeout! actually “started with Issue #4, because I thought no one actually cared about a first issue. If anyone has copies of the extremely rare #1-#3 issues, let me know, because I didn’t write ‘em”.

Who Put The Bomp was an ur-fanzine, one of the earlier and absolute best examples of a rocknroll fanatic following his obsessions and documenting every jot and titter from his heroes. Greg Shaw is deservedly lauded for parting from the mainstream in his writing when it was warranted; for going deep into topics that no one else would touch (like this issue’s instrumental surf records coverage) and for bringing on a king’s table of rock writers over the years to write for the mag – including Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and “Metal” Mike Saunders.

I’ve had all six of the late 70s punk-infused issues, from when it was just called Bomp! magazine, for quite some time. I’m only now coming around to trying to cobble together issues of the pre-1976 Who Put The Bomp! fanzine, of which there are 15 issues. The first one of those I got was the “British Invasion Issue”, #10-11, and it’s so massive and meaty and full of tiny type that I’ve barely cracked the code on the thing. All-in, it’s longer than most books about music you’re likely to read. All the issues before that one are too scarce and expensive for Fanzine Hemorrhage’s pocketbook, but if there’s a will there’s a way, and there’s totally a will.

So I’m concentrating on those issues between that British Invasion one and and the punk-era stuff, and recently found a lovely copy of Who Put The Bomp! #14 from Fall 1975, the one with these hodads on the cover. Like I said, the key to the issue is the instrumental surf music discography and backstory. It’s an incredible resource even now, 48 years later. I’m sure there’s probably some small-press record collector book that’d tell me a bunch of the same info I can get here, but there might not be. I happen to love this stuff and it grows on me even more as I age into the typical age bracket of the “1961 surf instrumental 45 record collector”. After glomming onto this thing I’ve been spending a bunch of time with the Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals box set, as well as with my Lost Legends of Surf Guitar comps. OK, grandpa!

I learned all about Tony Hilder, who produced Fresno’s Revels (who did “Church Key”) and was a prime mover in the early 60s California Central Valley instrumental surf scene, which I was surprised as you were to find out was a thing. Hilder then put out a series of “right-wing records” about the John Birch society and Barry Goldwater, which I’m sure are total fucking godhead. Alas, the piece says “The defeat of Barry Goldwater and the demise of surf music marked the end of Tony Hilder’s active involvement in the music industry. He is now employed as a salesman of freeze-dried food products in Southern California, writing reactionary declarations in his spare time”.

Other highlights: a complete discography and story about Dutch rock (The Outsiders, Q65, Shocking Blue etc.) and another oddly compelling discography of Beatles novelties and parodies – none of it by the Beatles, but stuff like The Twiliters’ “My Beatle Haircut”. I mean, the folks that put this stuff together, need I say, did not have the internet, or Goldmine, or anything similar. Just their own crate-digging and obsessive compiling, at a time when a used, non-picture sleeve 45 in a record store could be picked up for a nickel, dime or quarter.

And Roky Erickson is back! He’s just been released from a Texas state psychiatric hospital after being inside for five years – and he’s got a new band, Roky Erickson & Bleib Alien. He’s come to Los Angeles to play his brand-new songs, “Two-Headed Dog”, “Starry Eyes”, “Don’t Slander Me” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer”. Can you believe it? Greg Turner is on the scene, and gets Erickson to do a fairly coherent interview. This is then followed up with a full International Artists discography, because of course it is.

The new wave is almost here. Shaw notes in his end-of-issue column that “Big news around Hollywood is The Runaways, a group of 3 high school girls (14, 16, 18) who play like The Sweet and sing great teenage anthems, most of them written by Kerry Krome, a 13-year-old girl prodigy. They also do The Troggs’ classic “Come Now”. Remember, you read it here first.” In 1975, that was probably the case. She was actually Kari Krome, real name Carrie Mitchell, and boy does she now have a sordid and likely indisputable story to tell.

Who Put The Bomp #14 is one of those fanzines you wanna hold onto for dear life, not merely because of its centrality to a certain all-encompassing rock & roll mindset in ‘75, but as a resource to be frequently mined. I probably gave Shaw short shrift in my twenties for being what his contributors Greg Turner and Mike Saunders would call “a power pop turd”, but hey, I’ve even come around a little on some 70s power pop. Let me see if I can find a few of those other issues and I promise to meet ya here to talk about them.