Making his case for nationwide 55 mph velocity limits in the summertime of 1988, Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced out a well-worn freeway security slogan: “The statistics present that velocity kills.” Lots of his colleagues, nonetheless working within the lengthy shadow of the sixties counterculture, may have located that grave warning in congressional testimony about flower-children in Haight warning one another off amphetamines: “Velocity Kills!” And when you wandered into the appropriate report retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you could have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, report critiques, and extra: “SPEED KILLS.”
For the uninitiated: a music fanzine was a type of connective tissue. A neighborhood zine (pronounced “zeen”, like maga-zine) may let you know about latest exhibits in your space, or current an interview with musicians who lived or labored close by. Many printed critiques for just lately launched music, with mailing addresses for impartial labels and distributors. Every part wasn’t analog, clearly. Usenet teams mentioned music way back to the 1980’s, and by the late 1990’s an mp3 may journey nicely sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to really get music into your fingers, and to listen to it at its full texture, you might fastidiously copy an indie label’s mailing tackle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of bucks into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. In the event you favored what you heard, and saved following that thread, huge ecosystems of D.I.Y. music opened as much as you.
Whereas some music fanzines took a caustic method, many emerged out of irrepressible enthusiasm for his or her scene or their topic. The extra current, fast, you might make it for the reader, the extra they may seize onto and perceive why you like this factor a lot that you could’t maintain it again. That is the type of factor folks say about automotive tradition: convey somebody with you to a race; convey them to a automotive present you’re obsessed with; convey them a memento a minimum of, to allow them to contact a bit of it. Join it in some way to the issues that they’re already focused on. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means kind and reduce and glue your individual zine for print, and and use it inform anybody who will hear: “I really like these items! These things will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Velocity Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its explicit “stuff” clear when its first concern went to print in 1991. The hand-screened cowl exhibits a cartoon skeleton in a dragster, and guarantees two interviews (Seaweed and Gasoline Huffer) plus “DRAG RACING! 60’S STYLE,” and “LOTSA REVIEWS!” to establish itself as a music zine.
The music critiques in Velocity Kills #1 are customary fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Ok, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Opinions for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Velocity Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to plain indie label ad-buys (and, in just a little Velocity Kills twist, classic advertisements for auto elements.) It’s not all tonal, structured stuff: two Trance Syndicate releases are advisable within the “gtr. fuzz tape collage harm” of Ache Teenagers and the “unnervingly demonic” tape loops of Crust. However a curious reader skipping the remainder of the zine to examine the critiques may have their eyes already in movement, previous Harriet Data’ Wimp Issue 14 and Chicago locals Wreck, into the following web page. And throughout the web page gutters from the final critiques, continued from web page 21, is an interview speaking about Ford and oil springs as an alternative. Flipping again to web page 21, we discover the promised function on drag racing.
The interview is with Larry Ammons, launched right here as “one among Cleveland’s native legends!” Rutherford prompts and follows alongside, as Ammons talks about road racing in Cleveland, driving to Livonia to ask Ford engineers questions, and the Detroit Autorama. He tells anecdotes and talks in regards to the automobiles he drove within the sixties, he rattles off names and specs. What’s hanging is the element saved within the interview. In getting ready it for print, Rutherford left the main points in: as Ammons discusses the improvements he put into his Boss 429, he talks about journals, bearing floor, a mannequin of carburetor. For somebody selecting up Velocity Kills for the music critiques, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s beneath a automotive hood apart from the advisable upkeep intervals, that is all alien. However the events concerned discuss it with whole fluency, with out pausing to elucidate. The curious reader flips to the music interviews for one thing grounding. What’s the take care of Gasoline Huffer? Nicely, in bins all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on tips on how to exchange the rear most important seal on a crankshaft.
This was the connective tissue that Velocity Kills supplied: you’re already right here to see what the curious, inventive, bizarre folks of the world can do after they get their fingers on music; wait till you see what they’ll do with automobiles.
The obtained knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Certainly, when you like drag racing, you’re blasting “I Can’t Drive 55″ out of your automotive stereo, not reviewing data from the label that put out Double Nickels On The Dime. These are decades-old Kinds of Man locked in ideological fight. However there’s a helpful body for this in concern #6’s function on Sizzling Rods From Hell. Velocity Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s objective: “To hunt out new life in a racing fashion largely neglected for the reason that large bucks of corporate-sponsored humorous automobiles and prime fuelers eclipsed it within the early seventies.” HRFH organizer Scott Jezak concurs, and Dana quotes him as saying: “Humorous automobiles now are mainly instruments to get down the observe… I really like to observe them run, however drag racing at present lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Pressure and capital-F capital-C Humorous Automobile might not have been NASCAR or F1, however for these drag fanatics nearer to their interest’s margins, the whole lot is relative. Is that this so totally different from how D.I.Y. labels hand-dubbing cassettes checked out Sub Pop, even earlier than their Warner takeover? Sub Pop nonetheless oversaw nice data after 1995; you continue to love to observe Humorous Automobiles run. However if you’d like one thing tactile, one thing accessible, it’s a must to get decrease to the bottom.
In that very same spirit of the Sizzling Rods From Hell, looking for out the seen hand of the opposite human, Velocity Kills faithfully devotes assessment area to small labels. This isn’t to say that its top-fuel model ever lets up for lengthy. The attention catches on bands with automotive-themed names amongst critiques: Cheater Slicks, Fastbacks, Alcohol Funnycar, Voodoo Gearshift, Crain. However area is made for music that solely exists because the painstaking work of individuals with day jobs and tape recorders. Velocity Kills usually options brief however glowing critiques for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Data. Shrimper, greatest referred to as the primary residence of prolific rockers the Mountain Goats, is predicated in Claremont, CA; ten miles from the previous NHRA headquarters, and thirty from Riverside Worldwide Raceway. A Velocity Kills assessment of a neighboring label’s break up single calls for: “What the hell is occurring in Claremont?” What, certainly, was happening simply north of the Pomona Raceway? Velocity Kills gave up making an attempt to reply that on a minimum of one event. Sidestepping an precise assessment of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK assessment part rambled as an alternative in regards to the ‘68 Chevy Impala 4-door on their CD’s cowl.
All through its run, the workers of Velocity Kills negotiated its two major sensations—velocity and sound—this manner, one turning into the opposite. An interview with 1978 NHRA Champion Kenny Cook dinner reveals mid-way that Cook dinner’s brother Jon performs guitar with Louisville rock band Crain (associates of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Velocity Kills despatched out Concern #5’s “Fave Automobile Survey” questionnaire, it drew responses not solely from John Pearley Huffman (previously of Automobile Craft), however from mischief-maker Nardwuar, Merge Data’ personal Laura Ballance, and Steve Albini. An interview with musician Eric Lunde will get free midway by, and leaves music behind for an extended dialogue in regards to the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In one among its strictly automotive options, Velocity Kills opted for a distinct type of zine scene report throughout its run: interviewing Chicago’s personal Norm “Mr. Norm” Kraus, legend of Grand-Spaulding Dodge and drag racing innovator, at size. The interview is launched “delivered to you by the Velocity Kills Historic Society!” in jest, however it will get fairly actually all the way down to nuts and bolts. You may nearly hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions in regards to the sorts of customized work they did for patrons, making their automobiles quicker: “We discovered that the 383 bearings labored higher than the Hemi bearings!” Requested about efficiency and weight, he goes on at size in regards to the ‘67 Dart, in regards to the manifold being too near the steering coupling in early checks. He talks about how he ended up in racing, and slides into lengthy energetic anecdotes, dutifully transcribed and giving a sense of fixed simple movement. His sense of the place issues had been on the automobiles and the way every half he altered would make issues quicker, who he labored with and the place he was, his tactile feeling, all comes by clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, break up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth concern, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is unique work, beneficial work, and may’t be replicated or re-done. Norm Kraus handed away in 2021.
Final summer time I used to be mailed a heavy cardboard field. Inside was a stack of music fanzines, scattered points, all from roughly the identical early 90’s interval and with some attention-grabbing niches. The Tim Alborn/Harriet Data zine Incite! interviewed librarian-musicians in its twenty eighth concern, asking whether or not they most popular Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress methods. One other zine, Escargot (eds. Jeanne McKinney, Kathleen Billus, and Windy Chien) had detailed details about getting on-line in 1995, from selecting an ISP to netiquette to UNIX instructions. Points #5, #6, and #7 of Velocity Kills got here to me amongst these different enthusiasms, a sort gesture from a good friend sending me analysis materials. Digging by the critiques, wandering again by the options, I bought the gist of Velocity Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting by all the fabric available. However I saved coming again to the sixth concern, which had initially been mailed out with a Superchunk single. I hadn’t heard of Velocity Kills, however I puzzled if any of my Superchunk devotee associates had seen the title, or had a duplicate.
The sixth concern of Velocity Kills is less complicated to seek out than the early points. Due to the Superchunk single, an merchandise with affordable demand and worth for collectors, copies of concern #6 usually tend to have been purchased, bagged, saved, listed, together with the 7″. There’s a really actual risk that the interview with Norm Kraus, in all its nice power, all its element, will survive for a drag racing fanatic additional down the road to check and luxuriate in, nicely past the bounds it might need in any other case.
And on the extent of sheer enthusiasm: I personally hadn’t given drag racing or scorching rodding a lot thought, earlier than digging into these. Now my ears perk up once I hear information in regards to the NHRA, or once I see previous problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Highway & Observe. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the group who made Velocity Kills poured their effort, their time, and their love for their very own area of interest of automotive tradition into the zine, and that reached me nonetheless in 2024. It introduced me alongside, and it instructed me the one factor I wanted to know: they liked these items. These things may change yr life.
