I’m old enough to remember when the English weekly music press (NME, Sounds and Melody Maker), in their eternal search for a trend to flog and new things to write about, latched on to the then-au courant independent crop of Americans wearing denim vests and playing jangly Byrdsian pop or vaguely psychedelic sounds, some of whom were better than others. Grasping for a label that might go beyond “Americana”, and that wasn’t the pejorative me and my friends were using (“college rock”), they somehow came up with “The New Sincerity”, which is honestly the single worst name for a musical genre save for when the English later started calling some dank strain of electronic dance music “garage”.

If ever there was a UK fanzine locked into “The New Sincerity” without actually using the term – thankfully – it’d be Bucketfull of Brains circa 1986. And that’s alright with me, more or less, because their remit was wide enough that, while it might surf through mediocrities and forgotten combos who were themselves riding an intense interest from major US labels at the time – this would have been Lone Justice, Del Fuegos and Long Ryders peak season – they also come off as intense record collectors and clubbers who are champing at the bit to champion a few truly great bands like Giant Sand or True West.

I mean, Bucketfull of Brains #18 is easily worth a few pound notes and then some for Nigel Cross’ “Sonoran Desert Spring: The Amazing Giant Sand Story (Howe Gelb interview, part 1)”. It digs deep into the band’s Tucson origins; an ill-fated move to New York City; the birth of the Band of Blacky Ranchette side project; how that first Giant Sandworms 45 was influenced by Talking Heads, and more. Gelb didn’t do a ton of interviews, as we mentioned recently, and so when you see one it’s worth digging into it you happen to dig the band as much as I do. Now I gotta go on eBay and buy #19 so I can read part two. 

Editor Jon Storey has a reverential piece on someone I’ve never heard of named Nick Haeffner, who’s treated like a legend/deity for his work with Clive Pig & The Hopeful Chinamen, the Tea Set and The Remayns. He’s compared with Ayers and Barrett and Robyn Hitchcock as a master of cuckoo English songwriter psych. I also need to get on the Haeffner tip! Storey’s also flipping out that the Flamin’ Groovies are playing live and releasing records again for the first time in four years, part of a perpetual rebirth that routinely set more than one fanzine editor’s loins aflame. Fairport Convention has just reformed as well, and there’s much excitement to be had and an indication that they’d been doing so on an annual basis, though I’m pretty sure that only started the year before.

The survey of current Texas bands drops us smack-dab into New Sincerity central, with mini-features on Zeitgeist, Doctor’s Mob, Texas Instruments and the True Believers, among others. Some of that stuff wasn’t half bad! I saw Texas Instruments live and enjoyed them, and I’d have paid at least $3 to have seen Zeitgeist, too. The best part of the piece, for a pigfuck fan like myself, was the lumping in of none other than Scratch Acid in this scene report. Just Keeping Eating has just come out; it was and absolutely remains my favorite thing the band put out, and one of the best back-half-of-the-80s records, bar none. Seeing them live a few months later in San Luis Obispo, CA was a life highlight, which I recounted here.

I’ll admit that back in ‘86 I’d get a little more excited about a fanzine that had a flexidisc tucked into it, and I might pay a small premium in order to acquire it, which left me with a batch of shitty flexis that I couldn’t get rid of a few years later. Such is the collector mentality. How many people do you think found out that Bucketfull of Brains #18 contained a flexi w/ an unreleased Watermelon Men song & an acoustic version of some Peter Case thing and were like, holy shit, drop everything? And the New Sincerity thing – man, that was over before it ever really started, wasn’t it? It was utterly swamped by the Scratch Acids and Pussy Galores of the world, and even quickly within the pages of this fanzine by the Australian next wave represented by the Died Pretty, Scientists, New Christs and so forth. We’ll get to all that another time.