Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I Miss the Old Days

Underground and Alternative Magazines from the ’70s and ’80s

4 comments:

Don Coffin said...

Mostly a little after my time, and sorta too much NYC-centric. I did, however, subscribe to Creem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creem), even had a one-or-two sentence letter-to-the editor published in it following Phil Ochs' suicide. Also to The Realist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realist) for a couple of years in the 1970s. The college newspaper I worked on subscribed for a year (I think) to the Liberation News Service (Ray Mungo's home base...Ray wrote a classic memoir of those days, Famous Long Ago--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_News_Service for LNS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Mungo for Ray; FLA is still in print http://www.amazon.com/Famous-Long-Ago-Liberation-Service/dp/1558499474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437592904&sr=8-1&keywords=famous+long+ago&pebp=1437592912883&perid=065MW7KK3JHXBHBS3NY8--I still have two copies of the original paperback, prized possessions both).

mybillcrider said...

I used to pick up The Realist now and then when I was in Austin. That and the L.A. Free Press were about it for me.

Todd Mason said...

Never got the local alteno papers, Bill?

Some of these were better than others. COLORS always struck me as pretty shallow, and I agreed with CREEM co-founder Dave Marsh that PUNK was pretty much NIHILISM YAY! and that's pretty boring from jump. I preferred the more sercon punkzines like MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL and at least less monotonous ones like PROFANE EXISTENCE and FLIPSIDE by the time my ex was passing along such materials to me en masse.

And, of course I dug THE REALIST, as I've blogged and didn't quite write up for Earl Kemp's cult magazine book.

I used to write for some of these in the '80s and '90s. Not the NYC ones so much.

mybillcrider said...

I forgot to mention The Rag, the Austin alternative in the '60s.