1980’s Punk Rock Fanzines—Like A Blog You Produced At Kinko’s

I’ve been reading the book American Hardcore–A Tribal History by Steven Blush. The excerpt below is about the 1980’s punk rock fanzine Flipside— –

“…Flipside, a fanzine out of Whittier, California, 20 miles east of LA. It first appeared in August ’77 as a 25-cent, 100 run xeroxed rag documenting LA punk. By 1980 its coverage expanded to include the entire country, with several thousand copies….It wasn’t a magazine in the traditional sense—rather a bunch of kids turned on by a scene cranked it our whenever possible. The rumblings…fit perfectly into its coverage of acts like Germs and Ramones. Flipside scribes with sames like Hud, Pooch and X-8 delivered chatty interviews crammed in small type accompanying poorly reproduced photos.”

Reading this brought back memories. In my hometown of the time, Cincinnati, there were a number of punk fanzines. ‘zines they were called. They did not last very long. But just as was Flipside, they were written, photographed, and produced by a bunch of kids. You’d work on it and then go to Kinko’s to make your copies.

I guess if we had been punk rockers today, many of us would have punk rock blogs.

Being a hardcore punk rocker was a fleeting thing. You had to be around at the right time—the early 1980’s— and in a place with a good scene. Still, I feel some sympathy for kids today who seem to spend so much time isolated behind a computer. It appears to be so inward looking.

You don’t have to be a punk rocker to be a happy young adult. I suppose many might say avoid being a punk rocker to be a happy young adult. But it was sure fun to be part of something and to find people who saw the world, to a degree at least, as I did.       

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