I can’t say with 100% assurance that this early 1983 issue was the actual sixth installment of DC’s mostly excellent Truly Needy fanzine, because they’d do that annoying “Volume 2 Number 2” thing that was stolen from traditional magazines at the time (Slash did it too). Yet my research seems to indicate that there was in fact a Volume 1, Number 4 issue, but not a Number 5. This would then make this one Truly Needy #6 by all rights, and by the time of the next issue, Truly Needy #7, they were finally doing their numbering the proper fanzine way. 

Truly Needy, if you’re never seen the thing, was a true heavy hitter during its time. It was totally stuffed with deep underground documentation and dribblings, all from a Washington DC base that was seeing the culmination of years of slogging scene-building – captured beautifully in the excellent Punk The Capital documentary. As when reading its peers Matter or The Offense, you could get a strange sort of jarring high from reading about the many tendrils of punk and oddball culture still exploding across the country in ‘83, and even now I’m retroactively jealous of the experiences of living through a time I myself lived through. (Which is how many folks still feel about the mid/late-1960s today). So let’s maybe take a look at what was going on then.

There’s a great early letter here from “Ayu the Braless”, talking about his visit to San Francisco: “Either SF has been sending a fake image to the East Coast or it’s become another 80’s fatality from what I saw. For 3 weeks I searched for industrial death music and only found one group, the German Shepherds, who used noise. And they were very weak and monotonous compared to earlier groups like Factrix and T.G. The performance art I saw was pure excrement….Haight-Ashbury looks like Georgetown…the punk I saw was rock & roll slow, except for the Meat Puppets, and they got pelted with bottles and drinks for having long hair”. But it’s not all bad in San Francisco for Ayu: “The gay scene is great. With the male/female ratio in the street being 9 to 1 there were lots of handsome penii walking around….the bathhouses and sex clubs (only gay ones) are numerous and filled with toys and games…if you care about your penis more than art you can have a great time”. Sure. This is actually quite sad to read considering how that entire scene was unknowingly being hollowed from within at exactly that moment.

The Fall have come to DC, and there’s an initially confrontational interview with Mark E Smith that Truly Needy editor Barbara Rice eventually wrangles under control. When asked about American bands he likes, he pops off with “Fear, Flipper and Panther Burns”, and pines for how awesome it would be if Fear could come out and play Scotland and the north of England. Then Smith says “I always thought that West Coast American punk was the best anywhere”. I mean, he’s right of course – but I didn’t expect it from Mark E Smith (!). Maybe it was this show that did it?

Truly Needy #6 carries multiple threads through its 50-some-odd pages that are both local and global in nature. For local stuff, there’s an “Ask Barney” column about scene etiquette with what appears to be fake letters, along with interviews with DC bands Marginal Man, Egoslavia and The French Are From Hell, only the former of whom I’m familiar with. For global stuff, there’s a long Crass interview that I simply can’t bring myself to read, and that stops in the middle to be “continued next issue”. The Birthday Party are now living in London again after having left Berlin, so this would be “peak heroin season” for the band if I’ve got my dates correct. There’s a quick chat with Rowland Howard and he’s affable and informative. 

Each slice of subculture has its place here – there are columns on TV, comics and a huge fanzine roundup. There’s a Tapes column featuring gems from No Trend, Your Food, Razor Penguins and The Fartz, along with everything the ROIR label had ever put out to that point. My assumption is it all arrived in a big tumbling batch, and given that the Truly Needy ethos seemed to be to review every fucking thing that hit the office, they all get a place here.

In the live reviews section, Rice reviews the 2/25/83 Minor Threat / Government Issue show at Wilson Center, and has the epiphany that the rest of the country was pretty much having about DC around that time: “Finally, this show is ample proof that we don’t need an out-of-town act headlining the bill. For once we have some of the best music in the world”. And I love the review of a 3/12/83 show of Boat Of… at DC Space; they’re a band I’ve only heard about, a Tom Smith (To Live and Shave in LA, Peach of Democracy) project. “(They’ve) been playing to confused and unhappy audiences for the past year across the state of Georgia…At the DC Space show, Boat Of… founding and central member Tom Smith handled most of the chores himself, accompanying his tapes with turntable and vocals…One fellow kept walking up to the stage and saying things like ‘This isn’t music’ and ‘You’re not doing anything’….The show ended with Tom crooning over a wonderfully mutilated version of ‘Colour My World’.”

In the huge reviews section, there’s a multitude of hardcore & goth & imports, mostly dealt with by Rice. But wait, who’s this? Why, it’s Byron Coley getting space to opine on The Chesterfield Kings, The Monkees, The Box Tops and Kansas’ The Mortal Micronotz, whom he totally loves. Great to see him adding a touch of class here. Now me, I could give a shit about the ‘Kings, but I can understand his enthusiasm for championing “six-oh” sounds in that hardcore-drenched era, which he even refers to as a stance worth taking, in the guise of both musics being tough, raw and worthy. Fair enough! Much to ponder in this one and certainly one of America’s finer fanzines during that year.