Issue 38:
In A Gouda Fajita, Baby
An interview with Sammy Hagar:
Sammy?
Yeah, man, how’s it goin’?
Great. So, first question… why do you suck? Hello?… Hello…?
the editors, Garbage Pail
One of the greatest things, maybe the greatest thing, about rock ‘n’ roll, and punk rock in particular, is that it permits the individual to completely reinvent himself, to extract himself from the mundane confines of his previous existence and become whoever or whatever he wants, whoever he feels he really is beneath society’s skin. In the same manner that a British working class zero with no money and poor dental hygiene named John Lydon was able to transform himself into Johnny Rotten, England’s enfant terrible, expediter of the apocalypse, little Jimmy Osterberg from a trailer park in Nowhere, USA became Iggy Pop, the embodiment of the bacchanalian devil perched on all our shoulders, the id of every fucked-up lonely misfit that post-war America had spit into the world. Except Iggy made this transformation when the only safety pin to be found on Rotten was on his (in fairness, soiled) diapers.
Chris Adams, The World’s Forgotten Boy Remembered: In Praise of Iggy Pop
For a… treat, check out the cover of Vampirella Lives #1; that’s the girl that travels around the country to comic conventions, so geek boys and trekkies can hike up their blood-pressure by having a photo taken with her. A Polaroid, small enough to to be held by only one hand.
Ryk McIntyre, Graffic Traffic
Rock crit laureate R. Meltzer was moved enough by (Saccharine Trust) to type somethin’ along the lines of “Jim and Jimi in one band” for the liner notes to their last record,Worldbroken. Personally, I think he oversimplified things, but it made good copy I’m sure, and it’s much less confusing than writing “Sonny Sharrock and a guy who sounds like a cross between John the Baptist (or Charles Manson) and the village idiot in one band.”
Jon Sarre, Sarre-Chasm: Night of the Living Old People
This is the Heartdrops is a great driving CD. Wish I had a car. I can’t think of any more good things to say, and these guys are from New York and could conceivably find me and kick my ass for saying bad things. They look tough on the album cover, too (unlike you suckers from the Strike, who wrote back to the magazine and cursed me – I could kick all your asses, even the girl).
Austin Nash, the Heartdrops
“If anyone finds out I got this in the Edgemont High School library, Ms. Lawton is gonna fry,” I thought. I furtively lettered the words “freedom rock” over a college-ruled portrait of the bookkeeper herself, while calming heart palpitations over the first stirring newsprint ever to blacken my astringent-slick fingers. The closest things to this I’d encountered were mad, hallucinogenic rants supplied as “don’t let this happen to you” examples in my shockingly candid health class hardcover. The text read like a poorly translated libretto for my teenage life, which was of late boiling off into striations of the bizarre. It was this publication that first rended my young brains into a psychic omelette, yielding such creative endeavors as “Ingmar Bergman Collides with Quentin Tarantino: An Evisceration of the Existential.” This was my first encounter with The Village Voice.
Jamie Kiffel, The New York Hangover
Summer movies are beyond good and evil. They are about making an IMPACT, pure and simple… Current IMPACT is merely the final amalgamation of what was nearly perfected by long-dead German composer Wagner, who saw his operas as psychodramatic (not his word) vessels in which the culture could pour out their collective needs and at the same time, be united through their emotional participation. Thankfully, special effects and camera angles have replaced the singing. To the junkie, all this means is, Sun now burn me! Humidity now drown me! I need Muscle Tit Death! I need Fantastic Freak Out! Impact! Impact!
Adam Haynes, Hitting the I-Spot: Summer Movies
I’m sure that there are a lot of good things that can be said about leather pants, Jack Daniels, and driving rusty old Chevys down the backstreets of Memphis at 80mph. However, using them as icons to glamorize some sorta rock ‘n’ roll death wish is not only old-hat – it’s pretty fucking embarrassing. These days, being a rock ‘n’ roll casualty is no longer cause for martyrdom, it’s merely unoriginal. When Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland’s drug problems make the news, it’s obvious – ODing is officially uncool.
Chris Adams, Primal Scream
My favorite moment was when (Lou Reed) looked at the gorgeous picture of the then-stunning Nico. “Aw, what can I say about this?” he said, pausing just long enough to prime us for some sentimental, regret-tinged anecdote, then deflated the moment with a perfectly-timed, straight-faced rejoinder: “That’s what she looked like.” I stood at the periphery, biding my time, shifted my weight a little impatiently – and dropped my fucking tape recorder on the floor. My tape shot across the hall and my batteries followed as if to distance themselves from this nervous jerk who’s spending his day playing journalist. Mortified, I bent down to retrieve the rebelling tools of my would-be trade, devising the best, most expedient route to the nearest technical institute so I can start my own gun repair shop in under eighteen months and leave this childish writing lark to those with better educations and tighter grips, when a familiar voice piped up. “Hey, are you okay?”
I looked up and again locked eyes with Lou. …I was floored. (Granted, as I was still doubled over, I hadn’t far to go.)
William Ham, Lou Reed at the Photographic Resource Center
Here, for the brave of heart and the jade of soul, you will find the tale of a man who lives a life every bit as outrageous and horrifying as the perverse nightmares he smears onto celluloid, a film bio that makes John Waters’Shock Value look like The Julie Andrews Story. Devotees of the slimy underbelly of popular (ha!) culture will recognize many of the characters that pass through these dank portals – Lydia Lunch, Lung Leg, Richard Kern (who Zedd refers to, not entirely affectionately I suspect, as Nazi Dick) – with an additional cast of what seems like thousands of freaks, malcontents, and drug-rattled crazies.
William Ham, Nick Zedd
These stories, literary snippets, have become possessions of mine because they are all inside me, crisp, orange sparks of hope in a big darkness. I remember them and have been sustained by them when no other story, not even one recalled from my own life, could. They are there, not just nine-tenths of the time, but ten-tenths of the time, in ten-tenths of the ways literature can be possessed. And that’s all that matters. Any other concept of ownership is mere consumerism.
Dave Liljengren, Psychopharmacology, Audiobooks and the Possession of Literature
“Stop fuckin’ calling me that,” his shorter, colorfully-weaselly sidekick complained. “If I’m gonna be named after a color, I want a fuckin’ primary or at least a fuckin’ secondary color, not this faggy-
“Come on, you know that shadowy, mysterious guy with the conspicuous limp that gave us this job insisted on naming us himself. Just be thankful you didn’t get tagged Mr. Burnt Sienna like me. And besides, I believe he’s already talked to you about those long strings of hyphenated words you’ve been using.”
William Ham, The Culture Bunker: Two Thumbs Up Some Very Uncomfortable Places
