Maximum Rock'n'Roll (The Magazine)

Otherwise, as far as review quality goes.. eh. And I'm *not* saying that from a "what? they don't even use a THESAURUS, and they used CURSE words" standpoint.. I'm just sayin' reviews like "man, this tape just shreds" wouldn't tell me anything about the music.. i've bought a few things in the late 80s from raging MRnR reviews, and a few of the times they struck gold (Born Against), but many times.. *thumbs down* Astrology has a better chance of predicting good releases than MRnR did.

I won't get into the rather stubborn fundementalist 'tudes that the Timyoheads exhibited... and don't get me started on Jello getting beaten up. That review, alone, that Sonic Youth reprinted in the inner sleeve of the "Master Dik" 12" (from Ben Weasel, who just started his then promising young band Screeching Weasel at the time) was gutbusting, and pretty much says it all.

I used to enjoy the Chris Dodge reviews and the columns by Mikel Board, Larry Livermore and the Katie Chick that worked at a massage parlor who had young punk boys up in arms when she said penis size does, ya know, actually matter and stuff to girls.

Classic.

Can anybody remember what the first mid-90s emo record that MRR wouldn't review and lead to HeartattaCk starting was? Was it the Indian Summer 7"?

I liked a few hardcore bands way back when, and I had a couple of issues. (I'd periodically skim reviews on the newsstand for a few years after that, mostly because there was something sort of heroically goofy about such a cloistered world.) 91% of anyone reading this will be surprised they hung around (and will probably wonder why, too). This should be commemorated, though.

http://www.spin.com/2019/01/maximum-rocknroll-ends-print-publication/

Wow, end of an era

yup, my thoughts exactly. I have issues from 1984 up until the early 90s.

and I don't wonder why they "hung around", true punx are lifers

are there still punks?

this is a huge deal to me, even though I -- like most people who were reading this mag in the 80s and 90s -- hadn't picked up an issue in a long time.

will try to write something longer about it this week.

Now trying to think of “no true punks” scenarios a la “ no true scotsmen”

Someone should build a wall to separate the true punks from the pretend punks.

not funny, but thanks for the revive. this magazine really meant a lot to a lot of us, try to respect that.

Obviously I thought it was noteworthy enough to post about, but honestly, "true punx" in 2018? That strikes me as absurd. Husker Du and various other smart people were ridiculing that idea 35 years ago. And I don't think it's at all strange--or, um, disrespectful--to express surprise that the magazine continued to publish through 2000s and beyond.

lol fuck off

It is with a heavy heart that I would like to pass on the news that Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll, after three final issues, will no longer be publishing a print edition. Those of us who have followed and believed in the magazine since its inception in 1982 are left to ponder a future where there’s no one left to write about the next Jodie Foster’s Army reissue.

you were clearly too old for this stuff to begin with, but that's no excuse for being unaware of how this movement has metastasized into the world as we know it today.

like, I'm pretty sure the kids putting on house shows in my town don't give a shit what you think

I literally burst into tears when I saw the announcement but I also felt like after the explosion of the internet really got a good head of steam going, MRR felt like something from a different time. like, it's hard to overstate just how central mail-order was to that whole world. gigantic. the specific scene battles / ideological stances that defined MRR to a large extent were, imo, not as big a deal as the ads, the scene reports, the proto-personal-blog columns by Jen Angel and Rev. Norb and other names since forgotten, not columns that were great or life-changing but just bore witness to lives lived in which music from outside most people's immediate frame of reference occupied a central position, a common tongue, a shared frame of reference in a time when that wasn't a given. The internet changed the game on the ground for these questions; social media, especially. something like MRR could no longer be the if not *precious* currency it was then not the *rare* currency, you know? whereas for many of us -- for me -- it was, at one time, a place where you could learn about things that might be very important to you indeed.

the announcement shines light on how a thing which was once greatly needed by many of us no longer plays that role. Margaret you mourn for, etc. it's a moment for remembering.

(xxpost) You're right, I'm pretty sure they don't. I bet they don't even know they had such a big part in metastasizing into being the world as we know it today.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the guy who tried to ban jokes from the politics thread?

(xpost) That's how pay tribute to something that meant something to you--write something interesting and thoughtful about it.

i found MRR of my era non-discerning to the point of being useless as a consumer guide (termbo way more useful in that regard, not to mention better writing); basically everything gets a good review. lots of fun interviews of punk bands with a knack for jocular humour tho

yo clemenza I'm definitely paying appropriate tribute by telling you to fuck off, you clearly don't get punk rock at all, and never will. I'm not obligated to quantify the magazine's meaning to me in a way that you find palatable.

flopson's probably right about the mag's use as a record guide, I remember the "everything gets a good review" thing being an issue even in the old days. and jclc of course nails what made it so important even into the post-Nirvana 90s, before Napster basically. and there were a fair number of viable spinoffs mentioned in the thread I linked - Profane Existence, Slug & Lettuce, etc. that kept going wlel into the 2000s. when I saw Shellas a few months back Steve Albini made a joke about "punk rock used to be about fucking and drinking and fighting, now it's about homemade herbal remedies", but it's funny because it's true.

also, I think this announcement says a lot more about the state of print media than it does about the state of punk rock.

should be "Shellac" there of course

I feel like their statement is worth posting here in full:

It is with heavy hearts that we are announcing the end of Maximum Rocknroll as a monthly print fanzine. There will be three more issues of the fanzine in its current format; later in 2019 we will begin publishing record reviews online alongside our weekly radio show. Readers can look forward to more online content, updates regarding the archive project initiated in 2016, and other yet-to-be-announced MRR projects, as well as new ways for punks around the world to get involved. We will be having a public meeting at 2:00pm on Sunday, January 20 at the MRR compound to discuss the future — please write m✧✧@maximumrocknr✧✧✧.c✧✧ for details.

Maximum Rocknroll began as a radio show in 1977. For the founders of Maximum Rocknroll, the driving impulse behind the radio show was simple: an unabashed, uncompromising love of punk rock. In 1982, buoyed by burgeoning DIY punk and hardcore scenes all over the world, the founders of the show — Tim Yohannan & the gang — launched Maximum Rocknroll as a print fanzine. That first issue drew a line in the sand between the so-called punks who mimicked society’s worst attributes — the “apolitical, anti-historical, and anti-intellectual,” the ignorant, racist, and violent — and MRR’s principled dedication to promoting a true alternative to the doldrums of the mainstream. That dedication included anti-corporate ideals, avowedly leftist politics, and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands and scenes from every inhabited continent of the globe. Over the next several decades, what started as a do-it-yourself labor of love among a handful of friends and fellow travelers has extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. Today, forty-two years after that first radio show, there have been well over 1600 episodes of MRR radio and 400 issues of Maximum Rocknroll fanzine — not to mention some show spaces, record stores, and distros started along the way — all capturing the mood and sound of international DIY punk rock: wild, ebullient, irreverent, and oppositional.

Needless to say, the landscape of the punk underground has shifted over the years, as has the world of print media. Many of the names and faces behind Maximum Rocknroll have changed too. Yet with every such shift, MRR has continued to remind readers that punk rock isn’t any one person, one band, or even one fanzine. It is an idea, an ethos, a fuck you to the status quo, a belief that a different kind of world and a different kind of sound is ours for the making.

These changes do not mean that Maximum Rocknroll is coming to an end. We are still the place to turn if you care about Swedish girl bands or Brazilian thrash or Italian anarchist publications or Filipino teenagers making anti-state pogo punk, if you are interested in media made by punks for punks, if you still believe in the power and potential of autonomously produced and underground culture. We certainly still do, and look forward to the surprises, challenges, and joys that this next chapter will bring. Long live Maximum Rocknroll.

You very clearly got the part of punk-rock that could be self-righteous, ponderous, whiny, numbingly earnest, and really, really slow--the My War part. The humorous part, the “TV Party” part, seems to have bypassed you.

MRnR issues were always worth whatever you paid, as there would always be something of true weirdness in all those many pages that would be hilarious in one way or another. It took a good while to work through a whole issue, so there was a sheer quantity to the mag.

xp counterpoint: you seem to think that punk is a joke, your loss. that was only part of it.

it's ironic that this revive coincides with a bunch of folks I knew from the early 80's scene talking together on FB about the lasting positive effects that the scene had on them and their lives, but I guess lifelong bonds are "numbingly earnest" or whatever strawman you want to construct to refer to people who actually still give a shit. really not sure why you're being such a dick about this, I asked you nicely to respect our feelings here.

it's like you're offended by the very idea that people could get something lasting, positive and life-affirming out of this thing that you clearly thought was just a joke from the get-go

It took a good while to work through a whole issue, so there was a sheer quantity to the mag.

yes - I think this is actually a major factor in the nostalgia the demise of the print edition provokes in many of us - depending on where you lived or how connected you were, it used to be a lot harder just to get your hands on things that spoke to you, right? even if you found them, they might be a little pricey - RE/Search books, say. MRR was cheap and BIG -- like a good Sunday newspaper, there was even a chance that by the time you got the next issue, you'd still have things of interest to find in the last one. we don't really live in that kind of world now. YouTube alone means there's probably untold hours of things that would hold your attention until the end of time no matter what your areas of interest are. ditto podcasts, you just have to be willing to dig. FB pages, even (tons of punk stuff going on in that realm, unsurprisingly imo). But I remember when something as full of "you might also be into this -- who knows?" quarter-page ads as MRR was a genuine score, something that had the potential to open doors behind which whole new avenues of exploration might be present. This is the romance of scarcity & innocence -- we remember lean times fondly, sometimes, and the lifelines we found then glimmer brightly in memory. For me, while I make a point of elbowing myself in the ribs about the feeling just on principle -- would you go back to having less just for the amplified joys you felt when you got something you wanted, needed in such times? you wouldn't, probably; I wouldn't, I don't think -- it's still a very powerful ache. The water you get when you're thirsty tastes better, it's only natural.

What's more, there's a painful, death-looking irony in mourning punk things, because one of punk's targets is sentimentality, no? a dishonest target to be sure -- punk gets sentimental for the old days when everybody meant it VERY early on -- but the value is baked-in, the harsh dismissal of what turns out to be a feeling too deep to dismiss outright: that of attachment to things we loved when we were young, whatever their value actually turned out to be. The demise of MRR confirms what we knew already: that we're going to miss *gestures at the entire interior landscape of my skull* all this.

(clemenza, I sent you ilx webmail a few months back - would love to get in touch and don't know how to get hold of you. not about all this stuff mind but thought I'd mention it while I'm here. if there's a way of getting in touch with you via FB or something please lmk but I should say I think my ilx webmail leads to an account I don't have access to but I could be wrong about that. I figured this thread was a good place to say this since part of MRR was the bleedthrough of personal and aesthetic concerns; it was, at one point & in retrospect, pretty forward-looking in this regard.)

Sleeve: to maybe get a better handle on where I'm coming from, I'm going to suggest you scroll down to Husker Du and read this. Because honestly, you haven't a clue what you're talking about. (JCLC: will e-mail you via ILX.)

there's no such thing as true punk and you're not one

(not directed at anyone specific)

I only read it sporadically, although I did read pretty much every issue up to about 1986ish when someone digitised them as PDFs about 10 years ago (I think those have been taken down because I can't find the site anymore), but this is a real downer. Inevitable I suppose.

JCLC: You may have a problem with your ILX mail. You can get my e-mail address here.

MRR was never central for me in those days 85 to whenever but JCLC’s long and booming post still made me weep just now because if you just sub in Factsheet Five I totally fucking get it. These rags were desert rain for us, literally life sustaining at times - the importance of the daily arrival of the fucking mailman to me when I was 16 is not something I have the power to articulate.

I have found that my brain evolved within that condition of info scarcity to such an extent that I cannot maintain real sanity in the current model and am continually doing all kinds of weird gymnastics to artificially create that scarcity for myself.

That first issue drew a line in the sand between the so-called punks who mimicked society’s worst attributes — the “apolitical, anti-historical, and anti-intellectual,” the ignorant, racist, and violent — and MRR’s principled dedication to promoting a true alternative to the doldrums of the mainstream. That dedication included anti-corporate ideals, avowedly leftist politics,

Green Day made a concept album about Bush-era politics!

I know, lol (I realized that as I typed it).

This is the romance of scarcity & innocence -- we remember lean times fondly, sometimes, and the lifelines we found then glimmer brightly in memory.

Absolutely brilliant summation! There's no question that, for those of us a certain age, this continues to run in the background even in these times of plenty. I can't help but look at my racks or listen to something and cast my mind back to when it was discovered, how much effort it took to actually find something - and then get into it!

I'm dreading the end of The Big Takeover, which was my zine of choice for many years.

Yeah, I've thought of Big Takeover with every bit of MRR mourning I've read.

thanks for your posts here, JCLC

great post

MRR wasn't huge for me, I lived in such a rural area I only saw a few but the few issues I did see really turned my head around

I guess in the end, I was saying this to strongo on Twitter but, it had its flaws but it's like Spot's production that people complain about a lot, all you can say at the end of the day is they were there, they did the work to document things that mattered when they mattered and everything was going so fast and no one had enough money and it couldn't have been easy

I only read it sporadically, although I did read pretty much every issue up to about 1986ish when someone digitised them as PDFs about 10 years ago (I think those have been taken down because I can't find the site anymore), but this is a real downer. Inevitable I suppose.

The Internet Archive has a bunch of them available, from the very first issue on. I actually spent a few hours last week downloading several of the earliest ones that I never could find. I never realized that (not-yet-Rockin') Jeff Bale and Jello Biafra had such big roles early on. When I was reading in the early 90s it was pretty much the Tim Yo show.

Oddly enough, while a lot of the records I bough on MRR's recommendation were underwhelming both then and now, their taste in film was more reliable. I first heard about A Chinese Ghost Story and Witchfinder General and Targets and even Reservoir Dogs through the movie section. One of their earliest and longest-lasting contributors was (is?) Steve Spinali, whose Usenet reviews of Hong Kong films were one of the building blocks of the HK Movie Database.

Favorite memories: the Rev. Norb column, though it peaked early, either with the infamous "phantom splooge" column, or the one where he reminisces about trying to sandpaper the zits off his face as a teenager. All of those hand-wringing Larry Livermore ones were enjoyable, and a welcome, sensitive corrective to the more abrasive columnists, like Ben Weasel, whose misogyny I overlooked or shrugged off at the time, but now is just appalling (especially in light of his later actions). The whole outcry when one of the few female columnists said yes, penis size does matter, was hilarious.

I'm still trying to find a copy of that Buck Naked Karate Girls band's cassette that used to be advertised.

Also, just have to agree that this is a beautiful, beautiful post. Sums up all my own contradictory feelings about past scarcity vs. present plenitude in terms of access to things:

would you go back to having less just for the amplified joys you felt when you got something you wanted, needed in such times? you wouldn't, probably; I wouldn't, I don't think -- it's still a very powerful ache. The water you get when you're thirsty tastes better, it's only natural.

Last, it seems very fitting that a discussion on the end of MRR quickly turned into contentious back-and-forth about what punk is or isn't. I can almost feel the newsprint on my fingers...

a discussion on the end of MRR quickly turned into contentious back-and-forth about what punk is or isn't

Up to a point--mine was more an argument about why anyone would want to have such a silly argument in 2019. "Margaret you mourn for, etc." (which I had to google, poetry not exactly my comfort zone...)--I think that sums up quite eloquently why someone might feel something for a magazine you haven't looked at in years (or the death of a TV star from your childhood, or whatever).

the Archives are heading to TN:

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/largest-punk-record-collection-leaving-bay-area-20331178.php

that's cool, thanks for posting

Kinda bummed they won't be staying in the Bay Area, but I'm not sure I would really want to browse through 60K albums anyway... at least the collection will all be looked after properly

yep, archivists ftw

Between this and the Henry Rollins archive, Nashville is becoming the repository for international punk history. Never woulda thought