If there’s a better illustration of the metaphorical distance between the major, “in-touch” US underground music power centers (NY, LA, SF) and the proverbial cowtowns that surrounded them in 1980 than South Bay Ripper #2, I’m not sure where I’d find it. This San Jose fanzine – later to evolve into a true giant in its field, Ripper – really hits a nerve for me. I was in 7th grade in San Jose in 1980, and the sort of grasping, desperate drive to hear anything that was different, weird or challenging was all-consuming for me that year, but I barely knew where to find it.

These kids were older than I was for sure – 19-20 as opposed to, um, 12 – so they had IDs and freedom and perhaps the ability & wherewithal to get rides up to San Francisco for shows. But what South Bay Ripper #2 underscores here is both how utterly out of touch my then-city of 500,000 people was with the attitudes and tastes of San Francisco, a mere hour to the north, and how even a local AOR radio station playing The Pretenders or “Train in Vain” by The Clash was a big deal. I mean, in 7th grade I was personally obsessed with both The Pretenders and B-52s, both of whom penetrated my consciousness before college radio had, and I’d scour free papers like BAM for any glimpses of “the new wave”. There would be advertisements for strange-looking local bands like No Sisters, The Spies and The Jars – none of whom I’d ever heard – and I remember telling a kid at school, when he asked me what my favorite bands were, “Oh, No Sisters, The Spies, The Jars – you know”. 

Tim Tonooka, Violent Vamp and the rest of the South Bay Ripper crew weren’t all that far ahead of me in 1980, save for the fact that they’d actually seen all the limp power-pop and “energy rock” bands like SVT and Mr. Clean and the Nu-Models that fell under the all-encompassing moniker of “new wave” that year. (Let’s again note for the record that this fanzine changed radically and for the better in 1981). They too are grasping at whatever shreds of underground culture they can find – and it’s really, really hard to find in San Jose! One of the few blessings of our current era is that a kid in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or McGillicuddy, Iowa can tell you as much about the Electric Eels and Can and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks – and their modern equivalents – just as readily as a kid in Manhattan or LA can. In San Jose in 1980, it seems that word of The Clash, The Pretenders and Rockpile might have penetrated the city limits, but what was being written about in Slash, Damage, NY Rocker and so forth had barely made a dent. 

Maybe a few reasons for that, which this fanzine helps to shed light on. KFJC, which would soon go on to be one of the finest underground college radio stations of all time (and which would change my life a year or so after this), had only recently had control wrested from a mainstream-focused programming manager in 1979, and they had been dipping their toes into “the new wave” pretty gingerly. Two of the writers for this one, Kevin Animal and Diana Campa, were DJs I used to listen to regularly on that station. I’ll never forget my jaw hitting the floor when Diana played “Sex Beat” by the Gun Club, the first time I ever heard the band. South Bay Ripper #2 bemoans the lack of venues to play at – even some dopey “local wavoids” called Two Words aren’t allowed to play the annual “Tapestry in Talent” festival, a thing my mom used to go to every year to buy ceramic owls and potholders. 

Local commercial rock radio, like hard-rock KSJO, was trying out programs like Kerry Loewen’s “Modern Humans” on Sunday nights from 11pm-1am. Loewen is interviewed here, and he sounds like a proto-industry shill, the sort of person Howie Klein was always rightly or wrongly accused of being. Loewen says he’s not allowed to say the words “punk” or “new wave” on the air. “I like to call the music on the show Modern Music. That’s the term I coined and people may like or hate it”…..”I played 5 songs in an hour that were New Wave and they included like Madness, Iggy Pop, the Romantics and Bram Tchaikovsky; obviously semi-punk”.

Yet Kerry Loewen was a guru to the South Bay Ripper staff. And why not? I remember how in San Jose everything cool felt just out of reach for us. I’d see the badass skull logo for San Francisco’s KUSF and I wanted desperately to listen to the station. I’d read about bands from England playing on Berkeley’s KALX, and try and tune every radio in the house in an almost entirely futile attempt to try and pick it up. This fanzine doesn’t just tout Loewen; there’s also an interview with Peter Bloom, a young man who’d recently booked a 13-gig string of new wave shows at San Jose State’s Spartan Pub. They reminisce about bands like The Instamoids, Jo Allen & The Shapes and The Kingbees from LA who played during the legendary run. Jo Allen does a brief interview, and he is asked to describe his music. “It’s basic 80’s rock. I wouldn’t call it New Wave cuz that doesn’t mean anything anymore. I wish people would stop the confusion with New Wave so it would get another image other than spitting and safety pins”. 1980 is 1977 in San Jose, California, but thankfully hardcore will totally wipe the slate clean a year later.