Making his case for nationwide 55 mph velocity limits in the summertime of 1988, Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced out a well-worn freeway security slogan: “The statistics present that velocity kills.” Lots 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 in the event you wandered into the precise file retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you’ll have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, file 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 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 impartial labels and distributors. Every 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 properly sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to truly get music into your arms, and to listen to it at its full texture, you can rigorously copy an indie label’s mailing handle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of dollars 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, fast, you can make it for the reader, the extra they might seize onto and perceive why you’re keen on this factor a lot which you could’t maintain it again. That is the type of factor folks say about automotive tradition: convey somebody with you to a race; convey them to a automotive present you’re keen about; 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 concerned with. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means sort and lower and glue your personal zine for print, and and use it inform anybody who will pay attention: “I really like these items! These things will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Pace Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its specific “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 Gasoline 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, Ok, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Evaluations for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Pace Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to plain indie label ad-buys (and, in a bit of Pace Kills twist, classic adverts 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 could 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 an alternative. Flipping again to web page 21, we discover the promised characteristic 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 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 putting 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 automotive hood apart from the really helpful upkeep intervals, that is all alien. However the events concerned speak about 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 Gasoline Huffer? Properly, in containers all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on exchange the rear most 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 arms on music; wait till you see what they’ll do with automobiles.
The acquired knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Absolutely, in the event you 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 Varieties 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 objective: “To hunt out new life in a racing type largely ignored because the large 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 observe… I really like to observe them run, however drag racing right this moment 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 fanatics nearer to their pastime’s margins, all the pieces 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 information after 1995; you continue to love to observe Humorous Vehicles run. However if you need 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 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 critiques: 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 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, relies 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 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 no less than one event. Sidestepping an precise evaluate of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK evaluate part rambled as an alternative 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—velocity and sound—this fashion, 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 (buddies of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Pace Kills despatched out Subject #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 way of, and leaves music behind for an extended dialogue concerning 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 distinct 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’ll be able to nearly hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions concerning the sorts of customized work they did for purchasers, making their automobiles sooner: “We discovered 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 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 sooner, 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 problem, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is authentic work, priceless work, and might’t be replicated or re-done. Norm Kraus handed away in 2021.
Final summer time 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 methods. 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 pal 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 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 questioned if any of my Superchunk devotee buddies 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, properly 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 once I hear information concerning the NHRA, or once I see outdated problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Street & Observe. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the staff 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 instructed me the one factor I wanted to know: they liked these items. These things may change yr life.
