Part of what I remember the best about doing a fanzine in the early 1990s was how rapidly it put me in contact with all sorts of weirdos running labels, in bands and doing their own fanzines. It was a bit of a whirlwind for an introvert. I took advertisements in Superdope, the mag I was doing from 1991-98, in order to help fund the thing. That helped me “meet” folks like David Hopkins from Public Bath Records, a Madison, WI-based label that was carving out a totally niche play as a US-based imprint that only put out deeply underground music from Japan, and from nowhere else. The Japan Bashing series of comp 45s in particular was quite enjoyable, though that whole Japanese underground, though ubiquitous in the sorts of fanzines I was inhaling in 1990-92, ended up being quite ephemeral in the broader sense of having staying power in hearts and minds lasting beyond that brief era.

Show-Kai #1 from 1991 was Hopkins’ solo, one-and-done fanzine, with a Public Bath stamp on the cover and a written approach wholly dedicated to exposing the deepest crevices of Japanese outsider noise, no wave, punk and psychedelic rock. Clearly, Hopkins was a guy who had just come off living in Japan and who’d drunk deeply from underground well whilst there, making friends with Eye Yamatsuka and many other musical misfits along the way. As celebrated as these Japanese freaks were around this time, I personally found it hard to get truly excited about many of them, including The Boredoms. It was only when I heard the first Tokyo Flashback, reviewed here, and especially when Larry Hardy told me about and then played me High Rise II a year later, that I latched on to any of it, and even then just the PSF stuff and maybe Ruins a little bit, whom I once saw in San Francisco at a club called “Morty’s”.  

In fact, until reading this I’d forgotten I’d seen the all-female Sekiri (“Dysentery”) in SF around this time, and I couldn’t have cared less about Shonen Knife, the 5-6-7-8s and what have you. But lord, this fanzine brings back to memory so, so many bands from the late 80s and early 90s, from KK Null to UFO or Die to Omoide Hatoba to Masonna to the legendary Hanatarashi, featuring the aforementioned Eye Yamatsuka. Eye was in a great many bands around this time. The Japanese underground was truly a microculture with some absolutely rabid adherents around the world, and reading Show-Kai #1 you get the sense that we barely scratched the surface getting this music to the people then, and that it has nearly vanished from the historical record now – at least in Western media. 

Hopkins reviews a new Boredoms tape called Boretronix 3 that’s just come out: “I guess your chances of ever hearing this are pretty slim, and that’s really too bad. This is one of those cassette things that Eye releases whenever they need a little pocket money. He makes a hundred, walks around to about five record stores and goes home with the cash. Side one is clearly not The Boredoms. It sounds like Eye screwing around with Boredoms tapes and other found/sampled stuff”. Hopkins clearly didn’t anticipate the internet, and the fact that you can now listen to this on your cellular telephone right here.

Show-Kai #1 has a highly admirable who-gives-a-fuck layout style, decorated as it is in the margins with xeroxed Japanese baseball cards, kanji script and photos of toys. Like the Damp #3 fanzine from roughly the same era, the primitive font used here is the one I like to generously call “DOS command line”. Eye Yamatsuka contributes a bonkers nonsense comic where you’re supposed to arrange the panels to make sense to you. Yet you’d never accuse Show-Kai #1 of being bereft of content, no sir – there’s a History of no wave in the Kansai region of Japan, where Osaka is located, from 1984-89. Aunt Sally and Ultrabide are the names I know from this time; you may be more familiar with the many other players mentioned. There are also interviews with modern acts: Chu from Dub Squad, Omiya Ichi from Daihakase, Yamamoto Seiichi from UFO or Die, and with the bands Goonzees, The Folk Tales, and Soap-jo Henshi. All your favorites! 

This is rounded out nicely with a July 1990 Boredoms interview, in which they insult each other, talk about their legendary show opening for Pussy Galore in Osaka (which I’ve seen referenced elsewhere, maybe in the new Thurston Moore book?), and in which there are multiple pictures of them all bowling together. 

And, as I just found out, you can secure a digital download of Show-Kai #1 here, as long as you have￥100 in your Paypal account. That’s somewhere between fifty cents and $273 in real ‘Merican money, I’m not entirely sure.