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, may have located that grave warning in congressional testimony about flower-children in Haight warning one another off amphetamines: “Pace Kills!” And should you wandered into the precise document retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you will have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, document 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 lately 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 may journey effectively sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to truly get music into your fingers, and to listen to it at its full texture, you might fastidiously copy an indie label’s mailing deal with out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of dollars into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. In the event 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, fast, you might make it for the reader, the extra they might seize onto and perceive why you’re keen on this factor a lot that you would be able to’t maintain it again. That is the type of factor folks say about automobile tradition: carry somebody with you to a race; carry them to a automobile present you’re enthusiastic about; carry them a memento not less than, to allow them to contact a bit of it. Join it one way or the other to the issues that they’re already fascinated with. 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 things will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Pace Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its explicit “stuff” clear when its first subject went to print in 1991. The hand-screened cowl exhibits a cartoon skeleton in a dragster, and guarantees two interviews (Seaweed and Fuel Huffer) plus “DRAG RACING! 60’S STYLE,” and “LOTSA REVIEWS!” to establish itself as a music zine.
The music critiques in Pace Kills #1 are commonplace fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Okay, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Critiques for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Pace Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to straightforward indie label ad-buys (and, in a bit of Pace Kills twist, classic advertisements for auto components.) It’s not all tonal, structured stuff: two Trance Syndicate releases are really helpful 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 Information’ 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 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 “one in every 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 placing is the element stored within the interview. In making ready it for print, Rutherford left the small print 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 critiques, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s below a automobile hood moreover the really helpful 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 cope with Fuel Huffer? Effectively, in bins all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on methods to change 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, inventive, bizarre folks of the world can do once they get their fingers 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. Certainly, should you like drag racing, you’re blasting “I Can’t Drive 55″ out of your automobile stereo, not reviewing data from the label that put out Double Nickels On The Dime. These are decades-old Sorts of Man locked in ideological fight. However there’s a helpful body for this in subject #6’s function on Scorching Rods From Hell. Pace Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s function: “To hunt out new life in a racing fashion largely ignored for the reason that massive 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 monitor… I really like to observe them run, however drag racing at this time lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Power and capital-F capital-C Humorous Automobile could not have been NASCAR or F1, however for these drag lovers nearer to their passion’s margins, every little thing 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 Vehicles 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 Scorching Rods From Hell, searching for out the seen hand of the opposite human, Pace 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. Pace Kills usually options brief however glowing critiques for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Information. Shrimper, greatest often called the primary dwelling of prolific rockers the Mountain Goats, relies in Claremont, CA; ten miles from the outdated NHRA headquarters, and thirty from Riverside Worldwide Raceway. A Pace Kills assessment 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 not less than one event. Sidestepping an precise assessment of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK assessment 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 fashion, 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 (pals of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Pace Kills despatched out Situation #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 Information’ personal Laura Ballance, and Steve Albini. An interview with musician Eric Lunde will get free midway by way of, and leaves music behind for an extended dialogue in regards to the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In one in every of its strictly automotive options, Pace Kills opted for a special 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 “dropped at you by the Pace Kills Historic Society!” in jest, but it surely will get fairly actually all the way down to nuts and bolts. You possibly can 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 straightforward 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 way of clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, cut up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth subject, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is authentic work, helpful work, and might’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 Information zine Incite! interviewed librarian-musicians in its twenty eighth subject, asking whether or not they most well-liked Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress programs. 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 by way of the critiques, wandering again by way of the options, I bought the gist of Pace Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting by way of all the fabric readily available. However I stored coming again to the sixth subject, 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 title, or had a replica.
The sixth subject of Pace Kills is less complicated to search out than the early points. Due to the Superchunk single, an merchandise with cheap demand and worth for collectors, copies of subject #6 usually tend to have been purchased, bagged, saved, listed, together with the 7″. There’s a really actual chance 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 review and luxuriate in, effectively past the bounds it may 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 outdated problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Highway & Monitor. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the workforce who made Pace Kills poured their effort, their time, and their love for their very own area of interest of automobile tradition into the zine, and that reached me nonetheless in 2024. It introduced me alongside, and it informed me the one factor I wanted to know: they cherished these things. These things may change yr life.
