MAXIMUMROCKNROLL COVER DRAWING PUNK ROCK SOCIAL NETWORK SAN FRANCISCO 1988

I drew the cover of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL magazine twice. This one from August of 1988 is the better of the two. In terms of style I was definitely attempting to channel the hand of  R.Crumb for this drawing. In terms of content I was probably subconsciously formulating a ten-year life plan for myself (thankfully I managed to stay out of the trash barrel!). I did my fair share of drawing for MRR between 1985 and the time this cover came out. I also did a little bit of writing too, mostly record reviews, a couple interviews, and a few columns as I recall.

Looking at this cover and thumbing through the pages of the zine got me thinking about the role MRR specifically and fanzines in general, played in building and reinforcing the Punk/Hardcore network that grew to cover a good deal of the planet between the end of the 70’s and the arrival of the Internet in the 90’s. This is the same network that paved the way for the indie rock explosion and all the permutations that would follow.

Many people talk about about the history of Punk in terms of authenticity, often framing the topic as a state of perpetual decline from the originality and uncompromising brilliance of The Velvets and The Stooges to the consumerist, parent approved, Hot Topic, Punk-style era of Blink 182 and the Warped Tour.

When I first got into Hardcore in the early 80’s I remember some older people telling me Punk was dead, that it had died with Sid Vicious or whatever. They were of the opinion that the cool, creative, revolutionary “first wave” bands like the Talking Heads, Ramones, Television etc. had been replaced by mindless, suburban, generic Hardcore and that the interesting part was essentially over.

I had a different take on the thing then and I still do now. I might even venture to say that I think the most revolutionary phase of the Punk movement, the one that would have the most widely felt ramifications for the culture at large, was just beginning with the birth of the North American Hardcore scene. This might not have always been true artistically speaking, but it was true in practical and infrastructural terms because this was the era when the Punk “scene” evolved into the worldwide Punk/Hardcore network.

It is my contention that as enthusiastic participants in that scene my fellow compatriots and I had the privilege of test driving a Beta version of the technologically-facilitated, hyper-connected future that would arrive in the 90’s and change the world in the Oughts.

We Punks weren’t content to wait around for the technology to arrive before we built a user-generated, open source, social network. We built one for ourselves using the tools available to us at the time, things like photocopiers, landlines, word of mouth, locomotion, and the good old Postal Service. Today many of us take our socially networked lives for granted but back then it was a different story.

When I was a young spiky-haired Punk the world was the same size it is now but our experience of it was different. It felt much bigger because our experience of it was smaller. While this was true for grown-ups, it was especially true for kids. Most kids at my school didn’t have a clue what life was like for kids in other cities, let alone other countries. If they knew another kid in another part of the country it was because they visited their cousins in Cleveland every summer or something. Sure, there were the odd school-sanctioned pen pal projects you might participate in but for the most part your friends and your understanding of other kids’ experiences were gathered the old fashioned way: from your immediate surroundings.

It was different for the engaged Punk rocker. A single issue of a fanzine like Flipside, We Got Power!, Suburban Voice, Forced Exposure  and certainly and perhaps foremost of all MAXIMUMROCKNROLL could keep you busy for months. The pages of these zines would yield countless addresses of bands, record labels, of smaller zines, artists, people who put on shows, and also of kids just like you who had sent in letters talking about what it was like to be a Punk/Freak where they lived. The letters came from big cities like L.A. or New York but more often they came from from smaller ones like Lansing, Poughkeepsie, or Tallahassee. They weren’t only from America either, you were also just as likely to come across contact info for someone living in Sao Paulo, Melbourne, Tokyo or Rome.

All you had to do was write to one of these addresses and you’d almost always get something in return. Being the era it was, that something could take a few days or a even few months to arrive but when it did it was an envelope or box that usually contained a multi-page handwritten letter, often written on the backs of a show flyers from that city or region. The envelope might have xeroxed paper stickers inside it or plastered on it. If you ordered a record from a band or a label you could expect to get a handwritten note and some extra stuff in that package too.

It was very satisfying as a kid in middle school to have such broad and fruitful interactions with people from other places who shared my love of the music and culture. This gave me the feeling of inhabiting a world that was bigger, more interesting, and a little more wild than the world the other kids at my school lived in.

They couldn’t reasonably hope to meet, interview, or maybe even become friends with their favorite bands but I could. The thought certainly never crossed their minds that they could be having weekly interactions with people from all over the country and all over the world if they wanted to either. Looking back I can see that I felt like my world was wider and more connected because it was!

Maybe I’m missing something, but when I try to think of another place in the culture at that time where a similar organic network was being built I can’t come up with another equivalent example. If anyone thinks of one, let me know.

When I was 15 and I moved to another part of the country I didn’t have to wait to make new friends or find a place to fit in. As a matter of fact, the day I arrived with my mom and our stuff at our new rental house in San Diego there was a note taped to the front door that had been left by some Punk pen pals of mine saying they’d be back to pick me up in a few hours to take me to see Battalion of Saints and Social Distortion.

Amazing!

What’s even more amazing is that one of those guys who came to pick me up that night is my very best and oldest friend to this day: Martin Sprouse. A couple months ago Martin and I went to L.A. to visit the other guy that was in the car that night, our very good friend and all around great human being, Pat Weekend.

I wouldn’t blame someone for thinking I was full of sh-t if I were to tell them I met two of my oldest friends on a social network in 1983 but it’s true. It’s just that the name of that  social network wasn’t Facebook it was PUNK ROCK.

MAXIMUMROCKNROLL cover by me from my personal archives.