Razorcake #59, #60, #61

(www.razorcake.org) As a dude of a certain age, and someone who always considers the eras of pre-and-post Green Day/Hot Topic/not-getting-beat-up-in-high-school-for-dressing-punk-rock, I will always see Maximumrocknroll as the legit “punk bible” and everything else as a pretender or  riff on it.  That said, I can honestly say I never waited anxiously for the next issue of MRR, but after part one of the Nervous Gender interview in Razorcake #58 I couldn’t wait to read this issue. It was pretty satisfying that the story of an L.A. 70s/early 80s punk band I’d heard of but knew little about turned out to be the tale of triumph/tragedy/absurdity involving a band made up of gays, Latinos, artfuck geniuses and at times L.A scenester-turned lesbian folk singer-turned Duke Kahanamoku statue restorer Phranc, and a German illegal alien toddler on drums. This story is crazy interesting, and even though part two didn’t match the pure absurdity of part one it had a lot more human emotion and beautiful narrative. This is an amazing thing to cover, and while I still don’t care about most of the new bands they feature, I can’t point out enough how much I appreciate the magazine really doing legwork to cover under-documented historic bands (Thee Undertakers article a few issues back was also awesome). This issue also has an interview with cult actress Mary Woronov. Though issue 60 breaks the streak of unbelievable, unknown 70s bands coverage, it does have a pretty detailed, clearly written, lengthy How To Put our Your Own records guide. And issue #61 has new Roctober contributor Ryan Leach using the most tenous of punk connections (his years working the non-music angles at Seattle's Rocket magazine) to get him to expound on the evils of media conglomeration. (note: I wanted to put a weblink up to a story or photo of Phranc doing the restoration work on the Waikiki beach statue of the father of modern surfing Duke Kahanamoku but it wasn’t online anywhere, but it really happened, I swear).