The 10 Greatest Punk Zines of the Eighties
When you think of American music from the 1980s, you probably think of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Aerosmith, and the advent of MTV. What’s often left out of the story is the DIY punk movement that emerged organically in cities across the country in the early years of the decade. Fueled by suburban alienation and stoked by anger at the Reagan administration, this movement took its cue from early punk bands like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones — then took things one step further.
As historian Kevin Mattson recounts in his bracing new book We’re Not Here To Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, a punk counterculture took root almost simultaneously in dozens of American cities, launching bands like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and the Minutemen that reacted to President Reagan’s militarism and its soundtrack of corporate rock music. But the movement went beyond music. The punk culture had its own irreverent visual aesthetic, created by artists like Raymond Pettibon and Matt Groening, and its own underground media in the form of scrappy homemade zines that helped spread the punk gospel from coast to coast.
Some of the zines only lasted a matter of years before running out of money, while others ran for decades. At least one, MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL, is still in circulation (with a more vast online presence). While they lasted, these zines served as venues for creative expression and radical new voices, providing a much-needed alternative to mainstream FM radio and increasingly conservative outlets like Rolling Stone. Below are eleven of the most influential zines from this era of cultural and political ferment. Although they survive today mainly in private collections and library archives, they played a catalytic role in the punk rock explosion that changed American culture forever.
Life in Hell (1977–2012)
Matt Groening, who later created The Simpsons, got his start drawing the existentialist-minded comic strip Life in Hell, which he sold in zine form out of the Los Angeles record shop where he worked. He parlayed the strip’s success into a job editing, writing, and drawing for L.A. Reader, an underground magazine that documented the city’s punk scene (as did the L.A. Weekly).
MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL (1982-present)
Tim Yohannan, better known as Tim Yo, founded this iconic zine in Oakland in 1982 to complement his punk radio show of the same name. Modeled after earlier publications like Search and Destroy and Damage, MRR’s far-flung contributors documented the punk scenes springing up across the country. MRR quickly became one of the leading underground zines, growing from a circulation of 1,000 in 1982 to 10,000 in 1984.
Ego (1982–1983)
Edited by art curator and club owner Peter Belsito, this San Francisco-based zine published some of the leading artists and writers associated with the DIY punk movement such as Marian Kester, who contributed essays on Dadaism, feminism, and semiotics. The zine shut down in 1983 after failing to attract enough advertising.
Dry Heave (1984)
Punk took root in hundreds of cities across America, including Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the local zine Dry Heave celebrated punk as a “non-materialistic type of music, which places the least emphasis on rock star attitudes and capitalistic practices that go along with it.”
BravEar (1981–1984; started up again later in the decade)
Published in Hayward, California and edited by Michael Miro, this radical zine argued, citing psychoanalytic theorist Wilhelm Reich, that American society was afflicted with a death wish. This was evident, one writer observed, “in the insane global allocation of its resources, its money, labor, and scientific research to the construction of weapons for the purpose of global annihilation and self-destruction.”
Warning (1983–1985)
Published out of Anchorage, Alaska by Bill Bored (the pen name of Frank Harlan), this pioneering zine showed the geographical reach of the DIY punk movement. It helped coalesce a local scene consisting of bands like the Angry Nuns, the Urban Tribe, Ten Ten, and Skate Death. Punk, Bored explained, “stubbornly resists cooptation and commercialization. It cannot be sold as a bland and inoffensive commodity.”
Noise (1981-?)
Published by Bob Moore, a high school student in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, Noise decried popular New Wave bands like the B-52’s, Devo, and Blondie as “products of commercialization” in favor of punk acts like Black Flag, Agent Orange, TSOL, and the Circle Jerks. By Moore’s count, there were about 220 punk bands of this type across the country.
Ripper (1980–1983)
Like so much about punk music, Ripper originated in the American suburbs — in this case, a suburb of San Jose, California. Edited by high school dropout Tim Tanooka, the zine became an outspoken anti-war voice, decrying President Reagan’s reinstatement of the Selective Service Act and calling the draft a form of “slavery.”
The Attack (1982–1984)
Based in Seattle, one of the nation’s punk hotspots, this zine was founded by the band members of local punk group Mr. Epp and the Calculations. The editors, led by Mark Arm, used their platform to attack both mainstream pop music and President Reagan, drawing a connection between the popularity of Michael Jackson’s “overproduced elevator music” and Reagan’s militarism. Jackson was “worthless in every way shape and form,” the editors wrote. “America, who loves this man, deserves Reagan as President.”
Truly Needy (1983–1985)
Edited by Barbara Rice, this zine reported on its local scene in Washington, D.C. and beyond. Its band interviews were some of the most in-depth and intelligent, and it sought out other venues beyond the music — including a show where artists took over an abandoned building in downtown D.C. and showed artwork which highlighted the perils of Reaganism.
