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.” Lots 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: “Velocity Kills!” And if you happen to wandered into the best report retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you could have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, report evaluations, and extra: “SPEED KILLS.”
For the uninitiated: a music fanzine was a sort of connective tissue. A neighborhood zine (pronounced “zeen”, like maga-zine) might let you know about current reveals in your space, or current an interview with musicians who lived or labored close by. Many printed evaluations for lately launched music, with mailing addresses for unbiased 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 might journey nicely sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to really get music into your arms, and to listen to it at its full texture, you would rigorously copy an indie label’s mailing tackle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of bucks into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. Should you preferred what you heard, and saved following that thread, large 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, rapid, you would 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 sort of factor folks say about automobile tradition: deliver somebody with you to a race; deliver them to a automobile present you’re keen about; deliver them a memento at the least, to allow them to contact a bit of it. Join it someway to the issues that they’re already concerned with. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means sort and minimize and glue your individual zine for print, and and use it inform anybody who will hear: “I like these things! These items will change yr life!”
Chicago music fanzine Velocity Kills, edited by Scott Rutherford, made its specific “stuff” clear when its first challenge 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 evaluations in Velocity Kills #1 are normal fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Ok, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Opinions for Nirvana, Pavement, Smog, and Superchunk run throughout Velocity Kills’ newsprint pages, subsequent to plain indie label ad-buys (and, in a bit of Velocity Kills twist, classic advertisements for auto elements.) It’s not all tonal, structured stuff: two Trance Syndicate releases are advisable 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 examine the evaluations 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 evaluations, 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 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 concerning the vehicles he drove within the sixties, he rattles off names and specs. What’s placing is the element saved within the interview. In making 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 Velocity Kills for the music evaluations, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s below a automobile hood moreover the advisable 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 Gasoline Huffer? Nicely, in bins all through their Q&A, you’ll discover fast, readable, mildly sarcastic directions on how one can substitute the rear fundamental seal on a crankshaft.
This was the connective tissue that Velocity Kills supplied: you’re already right here to see what the curious, inventive, bizarre folks of the world can do once they get their arms on music; wait till you see what they’ll do with vehicles.
The acquired knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Absolutely, if you happen to 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 challenge #6’s function on Sizzling Rods From Hell. Velocity Kills correspondent Wealthy Dana describes the group’s objective: “To hunt out new life in a racing model principally ignored for the reason that massive bucks of corporate-sponsored humorous vehicles and prime fuelers eclipsed it within the early seventies.” HRFH organizer Scott Jezak concurs, and Dana quotes him as saying: “Humorous vehicles now are principally instruments to get down the monitor… I like to observe them run, however drag racing at this time 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 fans nearer to their passion’s margins, the whole lot 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 data after 1995; you continue to love to observe Humorous Vehicles run. However if you’d 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, looking for out the seen hand of the opposite human, Velocity 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 evaluations: 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. Velocity Kills usually options brief however glowing evaluations for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Data. Shrimper, finest often called the primary dwelling of prolific rockers the Mountain Goats, is predicated in Claremont, CA; ten miles from the previous NHRA headquarters, and thirty from Riverside Worldwide Raceway. A Velocity Kills evaluate of a neighboring label’s break up single calls for: “What the hell is happening in Claremont?” What, certainly, was happening simply north of the Pomona Raceway? Velocity Kills gave up attempting 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 Velocity Kills negotiated its two major sensations—pace and sound—this manner, 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 (associates of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Velocity 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 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 one in every of its strictly automotive options, Velocity Kills opted for a unique sort 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 Velocity 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 patrons, making their vehicles sooner: “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 checks. 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 had been on the vehicles 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 means of clear and sharp. The “Mr. Norm” interview runs lengthy, break up in half and pushed to the again of the sixth challenge, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is unique work, beneficial 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 Data zine Incite! interviewed librarian-musicians in its twenty eighth challenge, 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 Velocity 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 evaluations, wandering again by means of the options, I received the gist of Velocity Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting by means of all the fabric available. However I saved coming again to the sixth challenge, which had initially been mailed out with a Superchunk single. I hadn’t heard of Velocity Kills, however I puzzled if any of my Superchunk devotee associates had seen the identify, or had a duplicate.
The sixth challenge of Velocity 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 challenge #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 vitality, all its element, will survive for a drag racing fanatic additional down the road to check and luxuriate in, nicely 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 previous problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Highway & Observe. Scott Rutherford and the remainder of the workforce who made Velocity 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 advised me the one factor I wanted to know: they liked these things. These items might change yr life.
