For those just joining the SUPERDOPE saga – a set of 90s rocknroll fanzines I’ve been posting on Dynamite Hemorrhage the past week – Superdope was a music fanzine that I personally published from 1991-1998. 7 of the 8 issues came out in a three-year period, ’91-’94, with one last one completing the set in 1998. I wasn’t trying to build any sort of empire, further a writing career or even make money, and as life would have it, none of these happened in any case. Yet it was a pretty consuming part of my life during that time. I got especially serious with this issue and its follow-up later in 1993. Both were well-distributed, and if any of the issues still make their way around the fanzine-trading sphere anymore, it’s these.

A few notes on SUPERDOPE #5, which was written during the Fall and early winter of 1992, and came out at the very start of 1993:

• First, apologies for the scan coming out a little “dirty”-looking in spots. Everything’s perfectly readable, but in order to get a successful scan on my home-based all-in-one printer thing, I need to physically press down each page with the palm of my hand as it’s scanning. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I’m a little too lazy to go scan it again. I suppose it adds to the “raw vibe”, right? I guess your physical fanzine might have aged far worse.
• I don’t believe there were too many interviews with THE NIGHT KINGS and the THOMAS JEFFERSON SLAVE APARTMENTS in their day. This was back when I was still doing interviews by mail. Mail! I’d send a list of questions and a blank cassette to the bands, and they’d usually record their answers after a practice. They’d then put the blank cassette in the mail, and I’d transcribe the whole thing. Most would usually send along some flyers and photos as well, and that’s what usually ended up in the magazine. There were no (accessible) scanners, nothing digital at all – I’d copy them at Kinko’s and then carefully send them back to the bands. Part of the narcissism involved in the struggle making a ‘zine back then was the payoff in finally seeing your finished product, the one cobbled with scissors and glue and sheets of white paper surreptitiously printed at work. I’d get in the car and start immediately driving it over to friends’ houses and to San Francisco record stores to be sold while the ink was still smudging.
• FLY ASHTRAY were a NYC band I’d gotten really into from their first two 45s. They didn’t want to send me any real photos of themselves (faces made for radio?), so they instead sent along a bunch of strange, clipped art and photos that I passed off as legitimate pictures of the band. I got more than one comment about the “band photo” that shows 4 stupefied zombies, two of whom are African-American, as being “surprising” since the readers didn’t quite expect the band to “look like that”.
• I had some very strong contributors this issue – Tom Lax, who was running Siltbreeze Records in full swing at that time (he got a great back cover ad for free for his efforts); Doug Pearson, the designated “hippie rock” record reviewer (reissues of 70s private-press records were really big at the time and Doug had them all); Glen Galloway, who besides fronting the band TRUMAN’S WATER had his own excellent fanzine “Zero Gravity”, and Grady Runyan, who submitted this weird and not altogether flattering piece on what was then my #2 favorite band in the universe, the THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282, which I published “under my breath”, as it were. Then there were two excellent photographers – Nicole Penegor and Sherri Scott (my roommate) – who contributed a ton of original photographs that I very much wish I could have represented better than with cheapo 10-cent photocopies from Kinko’s.
• Finally, I find way more to cringe about in this issue than even in the earlier ones. I was getting cocky, with a fanzine that (a few dozen) people actually liked, and started writing a little over my head. I was just 25 years old, but should have known far better than to start cracking so many BANANAFISH-like dumbass in-jokes that I don’t even understand to this day. My credo at the time appeared to be, “If this line will make my friend Brett (or Doug, or Steve, or Grady, or Mitch, or whomever) laugh, then I’ll put it in there”. Other fanzines seemed to employ this trick, and perhaps at the time I thought it helped cultivate an air of mystery – like something I might want to get in on – but there are things in this one that would have made me just put the thing down and call the editor an insufferable bore. But it was a blast at the time, and perhaps you’ll like it better than I do.

I believe SUPERDOPE returned to form later that year with Issue #6, and I’ll probably post that tomorrow or later this week. You can download this one – it’s a big PDF – right here.

Download SUPERDOPE #5