When I first reignited this page via its Instagram incarnation last year, I had no idea that I'd wind up covering so many old fanzines, but once that idea took hold (mainly because it seemed to be the content that clicked the most w/ people), I knew that at some point I'd be covering this very issue of Your Flesh magazine from 1993. I know I have spoken before of "all-time favourite" issues of musical periodicals in reference to Flipside, Popwatch, Forced Exposure and such, and I will gladly throw this one onto the pile.
At the risk of sounding like a Boomeresque Gen-X monstrosity, for myself this was truly a golden age of underground music (one amongst others), releases - both full-length albums and many a 7" single - flying out thick and fast at a rate of knots in the grunge (or post-grunge, if you must) era as an adjunct to its more successful cousins who had broached the mainstream consciousness. And 'adjunct' is clearly the wrong term here: these releases were necessary.
YF had become a slick-dick operation by this stage, boasting 146 pages of content with a bevy of contributors, including Bruce Adams, Mike Trouchon, Johan Kugelberg, Howard Wuelfing, my old pal Chris Stigliano and many more. The recently-deceased David Livingstone of the God Bullies was the editor, Peter Davis being the publisher. Johan "The Records Are In The Mail, Promise!" Kugelberg actually contributes quite a bit in this issue, with articles on The Orb (an atypical pleasant surprise for an ostensibly ROCK-based publication at the time), Raymond Scott and a major interview with Daniel Clowes. It's hard to make fun of his contributions here, as much as I might like to, because they're very good indeed.
DC music vet and publicity agent to the stars Howard Wuelfing writes a piece on the then-recently released Mondo Bizarro album by the Ramones, which is interesting to read in hindsight. The band had become such a long-standing never-ending touring beast by then, perhaps out of favour with many (I'll admit that I didn't care about what they were doing then), but Wuelfing had to ultimately concede that the Ramones were the fucking Ramones and that's the argument (the album itself gets a very positive review by David Livingstone).
OK, a few other things to note...
The usual gaggle of major-label failures, has-been, never-weres and marketplace dustbins are featured throughout in ads which I'm sure helped pay for the thing, with some hot new releases from Fudge, Gruntruck and the truly unforgettable Junk Monkeys. On a more positive note, I was reminded that the UK's Th' Faith Healers, an early signing on the Too Pure label, which managed to ink a distro deal w/ Elektra in the US at the time, get a full-page ad. I quite liked them at the time, and like them even more now, though their status as the Great White Hope of English music never came to be, despite the great reviews (their records were great, though far too rough and uncommercial for a wider audience), and their albums may be relegated to the same bin housing Gruntruck's second-best recording, though I know which one I'd reach for first.
Bruce Adams interviews and profiles Keiji Haino (speaking of another hype of the era); weirdo-rock of the Sun City Girls/Three Day Stubble variety is given due coverage with, well, the Sun City Girls and Three Day Stubble (and I was quite a fan of both, though I haven't really listened to either for a long time); Dylan Carlson's Earth bring their heavy on, yet to reach their current 'legend' status and probably misunderstood by most in '93; veteran industrial idiot, Monte Cazazza, has a lengthy interview (which is actually quite good); and Chris Kieser has a tour diary for her travels throughout Australia in the early '90s ('91/'92, I think?) where she meets up with Slub, Hard-Ons, Cosmic Psychos folks, visits Missing Link, Au-go-go, Collector's Corner (all now gone!), sees just about every Aussie underground band under the sun and enjoys herself. I recall this was kind of a big deal at the time, the piece being published in a widely-read American publication, that is, as it gave some coverage of Oz underground sounds which many local yokels were struggling to be heard or known beyond these shores. I'm not saying that any had an immediate sales bump due to its publication, but it's a highlight of the issue and a good time capsule of what was happening Down Undah in the early '90s.
There is, it must be noted, also a piece by Jim Goad on the wonders and glories of '70s glam-rock, or glitter-rock as you fucking Americans call it. But all due credit to Goad for at least calling it glam-rock, which, considering 80% of it came from the UK where they called it glam-rock, is what it should be known as. Anyway! Goad is a rough head who needs his own entry here one day, or at least some sort of three-decades-later summation of what Answer Me! was, because I should be covering the good, the bad and the ugly here, but I'll save that for another time. I have many problems with Jim Goad and what he's said and done, though I have no beef with his article here, because it's funny and informative, and goes to show that when he's not trying to prove to the world what a tough-guy asshole he is 24/7, he certainly can pen a good sentence.
I've written enough on this. It's a dense issue, so there's much to be said. Many records were reviewed because many were being released. Many of these records were terrible, and many were very good indeed. It was the worst of times, it was the best... Look, this is a really good one, an issue I read a thousand times 30-odd years ago, and worthy of a revisit because much of the content has stood the test of time. The end.
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