Royal Trux – Fanzine Hemorrhage

Terrific 1994 glorification of various countercultures here by Brett Sokol in Boo Boo #1, complete with a weed-smokin’ radical on the cover and a glorious pastiche of 60s-90s anti-mainstream vibes. Royal Trux were perhaps the perfect “bridge” band of this ilk from one generation to the next, and I loved Sokol’s opening disclaimer before his interview with them: “Royal Trux take the attitude toward interviewers that most people have towards their landlord: why would you want to give them more than you had to?”. Turns out that they’re actually quite game to answer his questions; I’ve noticed through the years that if you really wanted to get Neil Hagerty talking, start asking him about Zappa, or Jefferson Airplane, or Creedence. Sokol figures this out pretty early on in the interview and it just flows from there.

Boo Boo #1 is exceptionally Cleveland-heavy, which is where the fanzine emanated from. So there’s a cool interview with Scott Pickering, talking about Ragged Bags, Spike in Vain and more, along with tangential scans and reprints, such as a recent Anastasia Pantsios review of the Cleveland portions of Clinton Heylin’s From The Velvets to the Voidoids book (oh man was I excited when that book hit the shelves in 1993). Also a deep dive into the discography and aesthetic of Fuzzhead, a project/band I’ve only really recently connected with, thirty years later, and am still trying to figure out. Then there’s just out-of-context advertisements for stuff like Terminal Records, clipped from another fanzine fourteen years earlier – although I know when I first saw this in 1994 I was ready to spring for that Cleveland Confidential 45 at $3 before realizing what Sokol was up to.

About 50% of the way in, it’s almost like Sokol ran out of steam, or perhaps he did what he really wanted to do anyway, which is to bask in the glories of the freak underground of 15-25 years prior. The mag re-xeroxes hippie-fied excerpts from the “Bring The War Home” early late 60s/70s would-be revolution, with reprints of pieces from Ramparts; Fugs ads; a ton of Zappa ads and reviews; Weather Underground articles; CLE magazine scene reports and more. You just need to roll with it, and once you do it’s actually pretty great to see the “big picture” as it existed in Sokol’s brain at the time. It’s a winning concept and it’s kept my Boo Boo #1 tucked safely in a poly sleeve and in a sealed box for safekeeping for nearly the last thirty years.

Sokol later went on to write for the NY Times and elsewhere, and now runs a Miami publishing house called Letter16 Press primarily focused on photography; I gladly bought their Charles Hashim book a year or two ago, and it’s really something. If I’m not mistaken, he was also behind White Heap Records, who put out a Vile Cherubs CD and then called it a day, just as this fanzine did after this single issue.

I’ve long had a hankering to own a copy of Thurston Moore’s multi-issue 80s fanzine Killer, but I’ve never seen the thing and don’t know anyone who has one (do you?). Sometimes I’ve gotten it confused with a 90s fanzine called Sonic Death, which is maybe a little more easy to come by but still often quite “dear” if you’re looking to trade money for one. I did it anyway. It’s a publication of the Sonic Youth Fan Club – there was, in fact, such a thing (!). And it’s 100% written by Thurston, Lee, Kim and Steve. How about that?

Sonic Death #5 finds us in 1994. I was sort of following Sonic Youth at that point but I’d mostly tuned out; suffice to say I was not in the fan club. This was not due to any anti-SY stance on my part; I still maintain the September 28th, 1987 show of theirs at Borsodi’s Coffee House in Isla Vista, CA was one of the capital-G Great Nights of My Life. And maybe my second-favorite time I saw them of the 7-8 times I did was a year after this fanzine, a blowout performance on the Washing Machine tour in San Francisco, with The Amps and Bikini Kill opening. Tremendous band, but I was spoiled for choice in those years and when it came down to, say, High Rise, Dadamah and the Cheater Slicks vs. “Kool Thing”, I had my lines drawn when it came to my record-buying dollar, and was highly resistant to just about anything on a major label, including my previous independent favorites who’d grabbed at the brass ring.

This issue totally sucked me in with one of my favorite photos ever of the eternally perplexing Royal Trux from 1987; you can see Jennifer’s eyes, for one. There’s another one here. No other Royal Trux content graces Sonic Death #5 – a great fanzine move! Lee Renaldo writes a chatty and excited introduction and catches up the club w/ recent doings on the last day of 1993, talking about recent shows playing with Neil Young, Metallica, The Black Crowes and Faith No More, among many others. “I had to wonder at one point how we’d managed to get our foot in this door!”. Indeed.

Here’s what I love about these folks; this dumbfounded wide-eyed marveling gives immediate way to an interview with The Ex, followed by Thurston Moore going bananas with a few dozen reviews of far-underground 45s and LPs spanning from Keiji Haino to The Frumpies to Skinned Teen to The Shadow Ring to Merzbow to the Screamin’ Mee-Mees. The distance from MTV to PSF was really bridged by this band, and this band only. There’s a bunch of banter about the next album, xeroxed fan letters (including those screaming “sell out!”), and something pretty cool – “print-outs” of missives from the online Sonic Life mailing list, all from 1993. I don’t believe I really understood that there was something called an internet and that I could be on it until at least a year later, despite being 25 years old at that point; it was my late-fortysomething Mom who gave me the lowdown on chat rooms and America Online and all that, if you can believe it. I’ve written here about just how amazing it was to get “email” at work, which I and my favorite co-workers immediately used for pranks only. There was a Sonic Life listserv, and I didn’t even know about it.

Sonic Death #5 is a sloppy and chaotic fanzine through and through, in the very best sense of both words. I’d have to think it introduced quite a few Fan Club members to an aesthetic and a revelatory “mode of seeing” that they’d never cottoned to before. Lucky for all of us, each issue of this fanzine is available to read right here and right now as a PDF, thanks to Sonic Youth themselves. Download them before they go away like that amazing Contextual Dissemination site did!