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 should you wandered into the correct file retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you will 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. An area zine (pronounced “zeen”, like maga-zine) may let you know about latest 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 part 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 really get music into your fingers, and to listen to it at its full texture, you possibly can rigorously copy an indie label’s mailing tackle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of dollars into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. In case you appreciated what you heard, and stored 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 possibly can make it for the reader, the extra they may seize onto and perceive why you like this factor a lot that you would be able to’t maintain it again. That is the type of factor individuals say about automotive tradition: deliver somebody with you to a race; deliver them to a automotive present you’re enthusiastic about; deliver them a memento at the least, to allow them to contact a chunk of it. Join it in some way to the issues that they’re already inquisitive 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 like these items! These items will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Pace Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its explicit “stuff” clear when its first concern 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 determine itself as a music zine.
The music critiques in Pace Kills #1 are customary fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Okay, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Evaluations for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Pace Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to straightforward indie label ad-buys (and, in somewhat Pace Kills twist, classic adverts for auto elements.) It’s not all tonal, structured stuff: two Trance Syndicate releases are really useful 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 could 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 an alternative. 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 all 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 concerning the automobiles he drove within the sixties, he rattles off names and specs. What’s hanging 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 choosing up Pace Kills for the music critiques, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s underneath a automotive hood in addition to the really useful upkeep intervals, that is all alien. However the events concerned discuss it with whole fluency, with out pausing to clarify. 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 exchange the rear most important seal on a crankshaft.
This was the connective tissue that Pace Kills offered: you’re already right here to see what the curious, artistic, bizarre individuals of the world can do after they get their fingers 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, should 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 Sorts of Man locked in ideological fight. However there’s a helpful body for this in concern #6’s function on Sizzling Rods From Hell. Pace Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s function: “To hunt out new life in a racing model 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 like to look at them run, however drag racing in the present day lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Power and capital-F capital-C Humorous Automobile might not have been NASCAR or F1, however for these drag lovers nearer to their pastime’s margins, every 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 information after 1995; you continue to love to look at Humorous Automobiles run. However if you would like one thing tactile, one thing accessible, it’s a must to get decrease to the bottom.
In that very same spirit of the Sizzling Rods From Hell, searching 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 usually options brief however glowing critiques for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Information. Shrimper, finest often called the primary dwelling of prolific rockers the Mountain Goats, relies in Claremont, CA; ten miles from the previous 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 making an attempt to reply that on at the least 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 workers of Pace Kills negotiated its two main 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 (mates of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Pace Kills despatched out Difficulty #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 via, and leaves music behind for an extended dialogue concerning the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In one in all 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 may nearly hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions concerning the sorts of customized work they did for purchasers, 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 concerning the ‘67 Dart, concerning the manifold being too near the steering coupling in early exams. He talks about how he ended up in racing, and slides into lengthy vigorous anecdotes, dutifully transcribed and giving a sense of fixed straightforward 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 via clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, break up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth concern, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is unique work, useful 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 attention-grabbing niches. The Tim Alborn/Harriet Information zine Incite! interviewed librarian-musicians in its twenty eighth concern, 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 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 via the critiques, wandering again via the options, I bought the gist of Pace Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting via all the fabric readily available. However I stored coming again to the sixth concern, 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 identify, or had a replica.
The sixth concern of Pace Kills is less complicated to seek out than the early points. Due to the Superchunk single, an merchandise with cheap demand and worth for collectors, copies of concern #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 revel in, effectively past the bounds it might need in any other case.
And on the extent of sheer enthusiasm: I actually 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 previous problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Street & Observe. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the group 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 informed me the one factor I wanted to know: they liked these items. These items may change yr life.
