Watch Out! PUNK #23 Is Coming!
With a Long History of "Whatever Happened to PUNK Magazine?" After 1979
It’s happening! We will be printing a new issue of PUNK Magazine in time for the September 28 “Battle of the Bands” at Tompkins Square Park in New York City! (East 7th Street near Avenue A) This will be the first new issue since…. 2023!
It will be printed in the same format as PUNK #1: Reverse quarter fold, 24 pages, only on newsprint instead of offset paper. This issue is meant to be a “Temporary Thing” (as Lou Reed said in a great song).
Despite many efforts to revive PUNK Magazine over the years, I’ve been unable to get back on our feet. BUT! It looks like this one just might be successful. I still believe that the print medium is better than the internet: It lasts longer. It doesn’t keep track of who reads it, doesn’t spy on everything you do. And it’s so much fun to work with people to put together a magazine! Web stuff is too often a solo project…
Here’s a history of my failures:
1981: The D.O.A. Filmbook
The problems that put us out of business in 1979 stemmed mostly from these guys: The Sex Pistols. They were a great band, but their antics ruined the scene, and by the time Sid Vicious killed (or didn’t kill, whatever, we will never know) Nancy Spungen, we became untouchable with advertisers (but oddly very popular with hordes of teenagers, who went on to start the hardcore movement). Then Tom Forcade, High Times magazine’s founder, who was our financial support, committed suicide in late 1978. And our Publisher (at the time) Spacely got hooked on heroin, which led to him losing an eyeball… Total disaster everywhere. So, we went under ( thanks to efforts by the Jimmy Carter regime and the Deep Stage to do so, believe it or not if you like, but I experienced this shit!).
It was an excellent issue (which of course sells for ridiculous amounts of money nowadays), with exclusive color photos, good writing, slick paper stock… It was produced by Tom Norman (the investor in the D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage film), but didn’t sell well at the movie theaters he was able to book. Even though High Times magazine had a financial interest in the film, they never bothers to distribute this magazine anywhere because they were all so fucked up on cocaine and so harassed by the government that the company became dysfunctional. Around 10,000 magazines were printed with no advertising at all (beyond the film itself). Which didn’t help. After the film became a commercial flop, it took our hopes that if the film succeeded we might be able to keep going down the drain.
1996: PUNK: The Original
At the time, my day job was Publisher of High Times magazine. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I had a lot of influence. Once we started a book division, and solidified distro to bookstores, I figured it was a good way to test the waters and see if there still was a market for PUNK Magazine.
PUNK The Original book was not a great collection: only 128 pages, no color images, just a small reprint of some of our most popular content. But it had great distribution to bookstores and most of the 10,000 copies that were published were sold. Some of the higher-ups at High Times expressed an interest in re-launching the magazine but I didn’t trust them enough to go into business, so I kept my eye on my planned departure in 2001.
2001: PUNK #0
As soon as I could vamoose from High Times, I began work to re-launch PUNK Magazine, transferring all of the former company’s intellectual property to a new company: PUNK Magazine, Inc. I also set up a punkmagazine.com Website with my friend and supporter Chris Yonts. (I’m still working on trying to update it, but it’s been a challenge! Let me know if you know anyone who can help!)
We published the 25th Anniversary issue in January, 2001, highlighted by a live event at CBGB featuring The Dictators, Destroy All Monsters (starring Niagara), The Bullys, Thor, Harry Slash and the Slashtones, Alternative TV (Mark “Sniffin’ Glue” P’s band), Charm School, George Tabb’s Furious George, and Big Fat Combo. (Sorry if I left anyone out). The place was packed! I figured we had out comeback on track. It was a magical evening. Even Hilly loved it!
We also held an exhibition at the CBGB Art Gallery next door, exhibiting a lot of the magazine’s original artwork. But of course no one bought anything… It just amazes me that back issues of PUNK sell for so much, but no one buys artwork by PUNK artists such as Steve Taylor, Bruce Carleton, and I… More on this down the line.
I’m glad our photographers are doing great, so I’m happy for their success. I always respected the work by people like Roberta Bayley, Bob Gruen, Godlis, Tom Hearn and all the other photogs who appeared in PUNK.
I thought this issue had good, but not great content. We published some great photos by Roberta Bayley, but they should have reproduced better. Sorry, Roberta. I interviewed Jimmy G. of Murphy’s Law, but wasn’t able to create a great comic strip interview like I did with Lou Reed. Sorry, Jimmy!
However, this PUNK magazine sold great! We moved around 8,000 copies (Tower Records took 2,000 copies and sold 100%!). But after crunching the numbers and putting together a business plan for potential investors and planning a meeting to go forward… On September 11, 2001… Well… You know.
Winter 2007: PUNK Magazine #19: The Bullys
This is one of my favorite issues: The Bullys are one of my favorite punk rock bands of all time. Before the 9/11 disaster, I planned to publish a cover story with Johnny Heff and The Bullys. But… You know.
As a result, this issue was a tribute to Johnny Heff, whose day job was a NYC firefighter. I’ll never forget when the band was in the middle of a set at Trigger’s The Continental club: It was packed! Johnny leapt off the stage at one point, interrupting their performance and ran to the entrance… A bunch of firefighters showed up for the show and the club was worried that they were being closed down (due to NYC occupancy rules), but as it turned out it was just some of Johnny’s fireman friends, there to see the show! How cool that a punk rocker could handle the Fire Department, right? It was the only time I witnessed a show interrupted like that.
Johnny Heff was one of the most amazing characters I’ve ever met: A very talented musician who had rock star potential. When he died on 9/11 it was devastating. That whole event was a mind-fuck. I think we New Yorkers are all still trying to recover and process what happened, and it’s interesting to me that so many people do not believe the “official reports.” (I certainly do not rust the government about anything.)
Worst of all, the magazine was suffering from bad newsstand distro: Tower Records, our best and biggest distributor, went out of business right before we published this issue. Ironically, their book division (which carried the magazine in 2001) was profitable, but streaming music was killing CD sales, and vinyl records weren’t a thing yet. So things soon got even worse for a relaunch…
Summer 2007: PUNK Magazine #20: Sid And Nancy
Thanks to Eileen Polk’s story and photos about Sid and Nancy in New York City, I thought this was a really good issue. And Danny Fields’ photos of everyone from Iggy at Max’s, Patti Smith with Bob Dylan, Ramones (of course) and so many people added a lot to it. I thought my interview with Ron Asheton was pretty good. Wayne Ranelli (who first recommended The Bullys to me), did a great interview with Jayne County. (Sadly, he died within hours of sending it—I am afraid the “happy stress” of doing it and appearing in the magazine was too much, since he was suffering from AIDS… Wayne was a wonderful guy, I wish he could have survived, he would have been a great addition to our team back in the day.
We were trying to maintain a regular schedule and raise more investment capital by showing good sales and advertising revenue, etc. to potential investors, but the writing was on the wall for publishing: It was a dying industry. And we couldn’t figure out how to “make money” on the “World Wide Web” (as it used to be called). Internet commerce wasn’t a big thing yet. But I soldiered on!
Fall 2007: PUNK Magazine #20: The CBGB Tribute
We “crossed the finish line” with this issue: A History of CBGB, which was about to close down forever. We traced the history of the club from its early days as “Hilly’s On The Bowery” before it became “CBGB,” and through to the club’s closing. It was definitely the end of an era. This marks the last time I was able to publish an issue of PUNK on my own.
It sold really well where ever it was displayed (like all the 2007 issues, it sold out quickly on newsstands), but sadly even though copies sold out quickly, newsstands weren’t re-ordering after a magazine sold out (due to our crappy distributor who charged outrageous fees while failing to deliver sales). So I figure a lot of unsold copies end up in a landfill. Please don’t ask me about the problems with the magazine distribution system bak the or I Might get knee-capped!
Sadly, like with the 1970s issues, I now only have a few copies left! Crazy, isn’t it?
2012: The Best of PUNK Magazine (Harper Books It! imprint)
Even though sales were spotty, those 2007 issues grabbed enough attention and sold well enough that I thought a “Best Of PUNK Magazine” book could help spur a relaunch of PUNK. (Sorry to talk so much about money, but I hope some of my experiences can be a lesson to other zine editors, self-publishing cartoonists, and aspiring creators to understand what we are up against in the Real World: Your work has to sell if you want to be an independent content creator. Even when you can establish a successful brand, things can go wrong.
I worked on a proposal for a literary agent shortly after the 2007 issues who was interested in shopping a “Best Of” book, but when the “global economic meltdown” took place in 2008? Fuhgeddaboutit. No publishers were taking chances.
A few years later, my collaborator Bridget Hurd (who worked with me on those 2007 PUNK Magazine issues) urged me to give it another try, so she whipped the book proposal into shape, and before long two book publishers were interested. Both of them offered a sizable advance for producing the book. Harper Books won, and we put the book together with the highest reproduction value possible. (Many thanks to Kevin Hein, who did all the art direction and production for the book, and did the cover for PUNK #23!)
The result was a “coffee table art book” with around 350 pages of material with lots of color and great graphics and the history of the magazine. I am so glad we were able to produce “The Legend of Nick Detroit” and “Mutant Monster Beach Party,” the two graphic novel/photo comics that sold like crap back in the day (but became our most popular content!). The book had a very reasonable cover (around $30 US) and sold well. But we couldn’t do a digital edition since the graphics were so. lavish, and we never got offers to publish an overseas edition because so much material was hand-lettered, and would require a huge budget to translate and re-letter everything.
So… PUNK Magazine became dormant again. The book sold OK, but the production and editorial costs ate up the advance needed to produce it, so the book never really returned a profit. But you know what? I don’t care about that. The book is amazing, and to me creating good work is much more important than money-making. (Although it’s nice to do both, of course!)
2023: Iggy Pop: Every Loser
This one is a head-scratcher…
When record producer Andrew Watt mentioned to Roberta Bayley in the summer of 2022 (after purchasing some of her great art prints of her photos from PUNK Magazine) that he was thinking about putting together some kind of publication to promote Iggy Pop’s next album (Every Loser), she mentioned that I could do something good. He contacted me soon after, and I loved his crazy, creative energy. (Over the years, I have learned that these are the kind of people who make things happen: I put Andrew Watt in the same category as other crazy people I worked with (and benefitted greatly from): Tom Forcade and Steven Hager at High Times magazine, Chris (Blondie) Stein, the Ramones, Johnny Heff of The Bullys from CBGB and now Chris Flash (who publishes The Shadow newspaper and is producing the Tompkins Square event on September 28). (This guy is amazing: He helps set up free concerts in the parks, feeds the homeless, published The Shadow (a radical, alternative newspaper with viewpoints that everyone should read)
Back to working with Andrew Watt and the record company: The original idea was to include a new issue in the old-style PUNK zines: It was supposed to be like a typical issue of PUNK from the 1970s. It would be packaged with CDs and vinyl. This would give PUNK Magazine wide exposure to Iggy fans and benefit everyone. There were even serious discussions about reprinting PUNK #4 (for obvious reasons: it featured an Iggy interview and the famous centerfold poster of Debbie Harry!). That could have been a good thing, IMO. But no.
Even wore, the record company wasn’t able to deliver stuff on time for the deadline, so they made a decision to create a “super-deluxe” edition, sold with CDs to try to boost sales for the now-failing CD format. The vinyl sales when the PUNK zine was included in a package of stuff sold out quickly: within a few weeks.. The PUNK Magazine issues, packaged only with a CD are still on sale. Their plan obviously didn’t work. They should have listened to Andrew Watt!
A rumor someone told me was that the record company sabotaged the project to fuck with Andrew. Since I believe in conspiracy theories? This makes too much sense to me. If the conspiracy theory is wrong? Then there is serious incompetence at record companies since Every Loser is, to me, Iggy’s best solo album. Hey! How many people reading this newsletter have checked it out? I’d like to know. Please comment on my post about this. I need to know…
I still don’t understand why someone at the record company didn’t just say: “Let’s just sell Iggy’s new recording with a reprint of PUNK #4!” This would have “moved product” for them. They could have sold a lot of Iggy CDs: Produce a reprint of PUNK #4, packaged with Iggy’s new release, for a few bucks more than a CD would cost. This was Andrew Watt’s vision, when we first talked about everything.
But from what I experienced from working with huge, corporate conglomerate record companies like WEA (who are unfortunately running what’s left of the once-great and prosperous record industry), they do not know that they are doing anymore. “Streaming” has become the only way they want to market music anymore because it’s the best way to rip off musicians. And visual artists. It’s a scandal how musicians are getting ripped off in today’s “music market.”
So here we are: A new issue of PUNK Magazine is on the way. This issue is devoted to the upcoming September 28 event at Tompkins event. I’m not expecting to get rich, just want to promote a few bands I like. Which was my intent back in 1975, when I discovered the CBGB scene.
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