Maximum RocknRoll no. 85 / June 1990

I've been sick the past few days, and I remain unwell, but have recently passed the time by re-reading this 33-year-old issue of MRR and dissecting it for you. I literally grabbed a big pile of old MRR issues and pulled one out at random. The one I chose I promised to actually read and then write about. Only an ill man would take on such a task.

At this stage, the publication was a monthly behemoth, growing bigger and bigger (both in readership and pages), and perhaps this is just me throwing my own personal context onto it, but it was an interesting time for punk rock, underground music and where things were about to head. One indication of this is the review of Fugazi's debut, Repeater, a token, positive one that acknowledged it as a fine album but also said that the hype around the band was so huge that a positive review in MRR might mean little in the grand scheme of things (didn't it pre-sell something insane like 100,000 copies? Or am I way off?). The other is the coverage given to reams of pre-Nevermind 'grunge' that was doing the rounds then, with grunge enthusiast and hot-rod fan Mike La Vella giving positive reviews to just about every band, both good and bad, you'd throw under the grunge umbrella. Anyway! The Didjits' Hornet Pinata LP was the hot-ticket item that month, as it was everywhere (and deservedly so). The '90s, man.... were you there?

When I say I read this, I mean, I really did: the letters, the columns, even some of the band interviews. The letters section remained the exercise in pure tedium one would expect in any given issue of the mag, and I won't get too high and mighty here, because some deft research will reveal a couple of published letters from yours truly in old issues of MRR (please don't look too hard). The columns... I thought my elderly cynicism would have me dismissing these offhand, especially given my reappraisals of some of the contributors in the past few decades, but Mykel Board's about life in Japan, where he was residing at the time, was fine, and Larry Livermore's sledging of Hank Rollins' then-homophobic antics makes for curious reading in 2023. Eugene Chadbourne writes about John Oswald's Plunderphonics, a contribution likely skipped by about 99% of the readership (but not I!).

I believe I made this point about 6 months ago when I was writing about MRR, and I guess I'll revisit it: for anyone rabidly into underground rock music in the '80s/'90s, it remained an essential read for its networking capabilities and sheer volume of information (ads/reviews/interviews), though its musical legacy - its tastemaking contributions - remain largely non-existent. It simply covered punk and hardcore in all its brilliant, terrible and mundane guises, and rarely distinguished or discriminated between any of them. Maybe it was Tim Yo's commie thinking that had it all laid out on an even playing field, and credit must be due for giving so many then-unknown bands some exposure, though the interviews/articles here on Rednecks In Pain (R.I.P.), 5 Minute Fashion, Brisbane's Blowhard(!!), Bad Karma, Mosh Potatoes and the like had me wondering how many pages of ink MRR spilled on regional bands who never really did much of anything. Good on 'em, I guess? And for every Mosh Potatoes, there's an Integrity, featured here in probably their first major piece of exposure (like 'em or not, their aggro brand of apocalyptic vegancore - or whatever! - certainly found an audience within a few years). Yohannon's interview with cover stars, Nomeansno, is certainly worth a read, as he rarely let any band get away with anything, big or small (not that NMN say anything controversial here, though Tim honestly tells them that he thought their earlier recordings sucked and that they've gotten better).

For comedy relief, there's an ad for Houston's reigning kings of NYHC-style posicore, United Youth Of The United States (U.Y.U.S.), a name so ludicrous I had to look them up (they're as inspiring as their name), and hey, I found it curious that Fugazi, The Offspring and Beat Happening all played a matinee show together at Gilman on Sunday the 20th of June, 1990. Also of note: an ad from "Australia's own" Massappeal trying to get a US license on their Jazz LP from 1989, which seemed a bit odd, as it was over a year old by then; East Bay Eric's page on collector-scum nonsense (multiply all those prices by at least 10 for 2023 metrics); and an ad for Christ On A Crutch's "Kill William Bennett!" 7". Why is the last tidbit at all interesting? Because my brother brought home a copy of the single upon his return from the US in early 1991, and it remains a fave slab of HC from the era, and their bass player, Nate Mendel, has been comfortably making dad-rock c/o the Foo Fighters the past few decades. Huh...

Yes, this was life on earth 33 years ago. I was 18 and full of hopes and dreams, before the weight of the world crushed my spirit, and MRR was delivering the monthly gospel. I enjoyed reading this much more than I thought I would, and it was an excellent reminder as to why these old fanzines are so important as time capsules into another era. Thing is, I tell my kids that and they laugh at me!