Cut and Paste – The American Hardcore Fanzine, Patrick Kitzel
Tribal Publishing/Unterwelt, 4396 Palmer Rd, Manlius NY 13104, Usa, www.tribalbooks.myshopify.com
While reading this and looking at the visual collection of over 400 (!) American fanzines featured here, I had to think of the thousands of zines from the early years that we donated – but that is another story. Apart from all those covers shown, it begins with a foreword by Tony Rettman and a intro by Patrick Kitzel. Then there is written story’s from selected fanzine creators: Al Quint – Suburban Voice, Hudley – Flipside, Kent McClard – Heartattack, Tim McMahon – Common Cause, Martin Sprouse – Leading Edge & Maximumrocknroll, Fred Hammer – It’s Alive, Chris Daily – Smorgasbord, Bessie Oakley – Paranoia, Brett Beach – Hardware, Wendy Eager – Guillotine, – just to name a few and many come with decade old photos of the editors.
A lot of fanzines are featured here, no matter if it did a few issues over the years or hundreds over the many years. You find simple stapled few pagers as well as full grown magazines. The texts mostly have certain contents that reappear: Kinkos, sharpies, rubber cement, halftone pictures stapling, copy machines (at late nights) which is only natural, since that is how fanzines where made back then, no computers and no software, by everyone. Probably hard to imagine for people nowadays, which is no surprise and happens in history again and again. Also the distribution was the same in a lot of places, if there was record stores they sold them, otherwise it was sold at gigs by the fanzine maker and thru the mail and a few bigger zines used record distributors. Most fanzine people agree that Maximumrocknroll was the internet for the punks worldwide back in the day. Of course a book like this can never be „complete“ but, that is not the point, I personnally do miss Lookout – and a few more, but hey, there is others missing too. Anyway, if you like printed fanzines and don’t mind that here it seems the focus is more on hardcore than punk – this is a great trip down the memory lane. Obviously I enjoyed recognizing zines I remember more than all those that I never saw in my life – but that was great too. Since it is only American fanzines most the bands featured are also American, which is no surprise, not very many European bands toured the USA in the 80ies…. But one can analyze all this and more, checking out this book. Lovingly put together with a lot of passion and knowledge, you can browse thru the book again and again and always will finds new bits and pieces about a time long gone. This book works best for people who have been around then, but just because you where born later is no reason not to check this out. In the end there is a index with all the fanzines shown and on which page – pretty cool. Right after it is a facsimile article from the New York Post (1989) that shows the publisher of Factsheet Five – Mike Gunderloy – at the See Hear fanzine store in New York City, that was a great store and F5 was insane. One thing is disturbing thou, unfortunately the printers ink really smells and not very good. But maybe even that was done on purpose, who knows…. 336 pages, Hardcover (22,5 x 28,5 cm), 38,95 $ (dolf)
Isbn 979-8-9868736-3-3
[Trust Nr. 231 April 2025]
