Making his case for nationwide 55 mph pace limits in the summertime of 1988, Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced out a well-worn freeway security slogan: “The statistics present that pace kills.” A lot of his colleagues, nonetheless working within the lengthy shadow of the sixties counterculture, might have located that grave warning in congressional testimony about flower-children in Haight warning one another off amphetamines: “Pace Kills!” And if you happen to wandered into the best report retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you will have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, report opinions, and extra: “SPEED KILLS.”
For the uninitiated: a music fanzine was a sort of connective tissue. A neighborhood zine (pronounced “zeen”, like maga-zine) might inform you about current reveals in your space, or current an interview with musicians who lived or labored close by. Many revealed opinions for not too long ago launched music, with mailing addresses for unbiased labels and distributors. Every little thing wasn’t analog, clearly. Usenet teams mentioned music way back to the 1980’s, and by the late 1990’s an mp3 might journey properly sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to truly get music into your palms, and to listen to it at its full texture, you could possibly rigorously 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 case you preferred what you heard, and stored following that thread, large ecosystems of D.I.Y. music opened as much as you.
Whereas some music fanzines took a caustic strategy, many emerged out of irrepressible enthusiasm for his or her scene or their topic. The extra current, quick, you could possibly 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 sort of factor folks say about automotive tradition: deliver somebody with you to a race; deliver them to a automotive present you’re obsessed with; deliver them a memento at the least, to allow them to contact a chunk of it. Join it someway to the issues that they’re already excited by. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means sort and reduce and glue your personal zine for print, and and use it inform anybody who will pay attention: “I really like these things! These items will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Pace Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its explicit “stuff” clear when its first concern went to print in 1991. The hand-screened cowl reveals a cartoon skeleton in a dragster, and guarantees two interviews (Seaweed and Gasoline Huffer) plus “DRAG RACING! 60’S STYLE,” and “LOTSA REVIEWS!” to determine itself as a music zine.
The music opinions in Pace Kills #1 are customary fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Okay, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Evaluations for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Pace Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to straightforward indie label ad-buys (and, in a little bit Pace Kills twist, classic adverts for auto components.) 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 opinions could have their eyes already in movement, previous Harriet Data’ Wimp Issue 14 and Chicago locals Wreck, into the subsequent web page. And throughout the web page gutters from the final opinions, continued from web page 21, is an interview speaking about Ford and oil springs as a substitute. Flipping again to web page 21, we discover the promised function on drag racing.
The interview is with Larry Ammons, launched right here as “considered one of Cleveland’s native legends!” Rutherford prompts and follows alongside, as Ammons talks about avenue 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 stored within the interview. In making 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 Pace Kills for the music opinions, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s underneath a automotive hood apart from the advisable upkeep intervals, that is all alien. However the events concerned discuss it with complete 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? Properly, in containers all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on easy methods to exchange the rear principal seal on a crankshaft.
This was the connective tissue that Pace Kills supplied: you’re already right here to see what the curious, artistic, bizarre folks of the world can do after they get their palms on music; wait till you see what they will do with automobiles.
The obtained knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Absolutely, if you happen to like drag racing, you’re blasting “I Can’t Drive 55″ out of your automotive stereo, not reviewing information 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. Pace Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s objective: “To hunt out new life in a racing model largely ignored because the huge bucks of corporate-sponsored humorous automobiles and high fuelers eclipsed it within the early seventies.” HRFH organizer Scott Jezak concurs, and Dana quotes him as saying: “Humorous automobiles now are principally instruments to get down the monitor… I really like to observe them run, however drag racing in the present day lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Power and capital-F capital-C Humorous Automobile might not have been NASCAR or F1, however for these drag fans nearer to their passion’s margins, every part is relative. Is that this so completely 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 information after 1995; you continue to love to observe Humorous Automobiles run. However if you would like one thing tactile, one thing accessible, you need to get decrease to the bottom.
In that very same spirit of the Sizzling Rods From Hell, searching for out the seen hand of the opposite human, Pace Kills faithfully devotes evaluate house 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 opinions: Cheater Slicks, Fastbacks, Alcohol Funnycar, Voodoo Gearshift, Crain. However house is made for music that solely exists because the painstaking work of individuals with day jobs and tape recorders. Pace Kills usually options quick however glowing opinions for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Data. Shrimper, greatest often known 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 Pace Kills evaluate of a neighboring label’s cut up single calls for: “What the hell is happening in Claremont?” What, certainly, was happening simply north of the Pomona Raceway? Pace Kills gave up attempting to reply that on at the least one event. Sidestepping an precise evaluate of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK evaluate part rambled as a substitute in regards to the ‘68 Chevy Impala 4-door on their CD’s cowl.
All through its run, the employees of Pace Kills negotiated its two main sensations—pace and sound—this manner, one turning into the opposite. An interview with 1978 NHRA Champion Kenny Prepare dinner reveals mid-way that Prepare dinner’s brother Jon performs guitar with Louisville rock band Crain (pals of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Pace Kills despatched out Difficulty #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 unfastened midway via, and leaves music behind for a protracted dialogue in regards to the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In considered one of its strictly automotive options, Pace Kills opted for a unique sort 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 Pace Kills Historic Society!” in jest, but it surely will get fairly actually right down to nuts and bolts. You may virtually hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions in regards to the sorts of customized work they did for patrons, making their automobiles sooner: “We came upon 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 assessments. He talks about how he ended up in racing, and slides into lengthy full of life anecdotes, dutifully transcribed and giving a sense of fixed straightforward movement. His sense of the place issues had been on the automobiles and the way every half he altered would make issues sooner, who he labored with and the place he was, his tactile feeling, all comes via clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, cut up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth concern, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is authentic work, helpful work, and may’t be replicated or re-done. Norm Kraus handed away in 2021.
Final summer season 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 fascinating niches. The Tim Alborn/Harriet Data zine Incite! interviewed librarian-musicians in its twenty eighth concern, asking whether or not they most well-liked 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 Pace Kills got here to me amongst these different enthusiasms, a sort gesture from a buddy sending me analysis materials. Digging via the opinions, wandering again via the options, I bought the gist of Pace Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting via all the fabric available. However I stored coming again to the sixth concern, which had initially been mailed out with a Superchunk single. I hadn’t heard of Pace Kills, however I questioned if any of my Superchunk devotee pals had seen the identify, or had a replica.
The sixth concern of Pace Kills is simpler to search 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 vitality, all its element, will survive for a drag racing fanatic additional down the road to review and revel in, properly past the bounds it might need in any other case.
And on the extent of sheer enthusiasm: I actually hadn’t given drag racing or sizzling rodding a lot thought, earlier than digging into these. Now my ears perk up after I hear information in regards to the NHRA, or after I see previous problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Highway & Monitor. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the group who made Pace 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 advised me the one factor I wanted to know: they liked these things. These items might change yr life.
