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 when you wandered into the suitable report retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you will have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, report critiques, and extra: “SPEED KILLS.”
For the uninitiated: a music fanzine was a form 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 printed critiques for not too long ago launched music, with mailing addresses for unbiased 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 might journey effectively sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to really get music into your palms, and to listen to it at its full texture, you could possibly fastidiously copy an indie label’s mailing handle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of bucks into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. In case 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, quick, you could possibly make it for the reader, the extra they may 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 form of factor folks say about automobile tradition: convey somebody with you to a race; convey them to a automobile present you’re captivated with; convey them a memento no less than, to allow them to contact a chunk of it. Join it in some way to the issues that they’re already desirous about. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means sort and reduce and glue your individual 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 problem went to print in 1991. The hand-screened cowl reveals 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 normal fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Okay, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Opinions for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Pace Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to plain indie label ad-buys (and, in slightly Pace Kills twist, classic advertisements for auto elements.) It’s not all tonal, structured stuff: two Trance Syndicate releases are really helpful within the “gtr. fuzz tape collage injury” of Ache Teenagers and the “unnervingly demonic” tape loops of Crust. However a curious reader skipping the remainder of the zine to test 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 a substitute. Flipping again to web page 21, we discover the promised characteristic on drag racing.
The interview is with Larry Ammons, launched right here as “certainly one of 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 concerning the automobiles he drove within the sixties, he rattles off names and specs. What’s placing 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 choosing up Pace Kills for the music critiques, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s below a automobile hood apart from the really helpful upkeep intervals, that is all alien. However the events concerned speak about 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 Fuel Huffer? Properly, in bins all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on the right way to substitute the rear important 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 after they get their palms on music; wait till you see what they will do with automobiles.
The acquired knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Absolutely, when you like drag racing, you’re blasting “I Can’t Drive 55″ out of your automobile 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 problem #6’s characteristic on Scorching Rods From Hell. Pace Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s function: “To hunt out new life in a racing type largely missed because the massive 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 mainly instruments to get down the monitor… I really like to look at them run, however drag racing right now lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Pressure 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 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 look at Humorous Automobiles run. However in order for you one thing tactile, one thing accessible, you must get decrease to the bottom.
In that very same spirit of the Scorching Rods From Hell, looking for out the seen hand of the opposite human, Pace Kills faithfully devotes evaluate 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 typically options quick however glowing critiques for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Data. Shrimper, finest referred to as the primary dwelling of prolific rockers the Mountain Goats, is predicated in Claremont, CA; ten miles from the outdated NHRA headquarters, and thirty from Riverside Worldwide Raceway. A Pace Kills evaluate of a neighboring label’s break up single calls for: “What the hell is happening in Claremont?” What, certainly, was occurring simply north of the Pomona Raceway? Pace Kills gave up attempting to reply that on no less than one event. Sidestepping an precise evaluate of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK evaluate part rambled as a substitute concerning the ‘68 Chevy Impala 4-door on their CD’s cowl.
All through its run, the employees of Pace Kills negotiated its two major sensations—pace 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 (mates 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 Data’ personal Laura Ballance, and Steve Albini. An interview with musician Eric Lunde will get unfastened midway by means of, and leaves music behind for a protracted dialogue concerning the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In certainly one of its strictly automotive options, Pace Kills opted for a unique form 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 may virtually hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions concerning the sorts of customized work they did for patrons, making their automobiles quicker: “We came upon that the 383 bearings labored higher than the Hemi bearings!” Requested about efficiency and weight, he goes on at size concerning the ‘67 Dart, concerning the manifold being too near the steering coupling in early assessments. He talks about how he ended up in racing, and slides into lengthy vigorous anecdotes, dutifully transcribed and giving a sense of fixed simple movement. His sense of the place issues have 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 means of clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, break up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth problem, 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 problem, asking whether or not they most well-liked Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress techniques. One other zine, Escargot (eds. Jeanne McKinney, Kathleen Billus, and Windy Chien) had detailed details about getting on-line in 1995, from choosing 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 good friend sending me analysis materials. Digging by means of the critiques, wandering again by means of the options, I acquired the gist of Pace Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting by means of all the fabric available. However I saved coming again to the sixth problem, which had initially been mailed out with a Superchunk single. I hadn’t heard of Pace Kills, however I puzzled if any of my Superchunk devotee mates had seen the title, or had a duplicate.
The sixth problem of Pace Kills is simpler to seek out than the early points. Due to the Superchunk single, an merchandise with cheap demand and worth for collectors, copies of problem #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 review and luxuriate in, effectively 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 sizzling rodding a lot thought, earlier than digging into these. Now my ears perk up after I hear information concerning the NHRA, or after I see outdated problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Street & 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 liked these things. These things might change yr life.
