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.” 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 if you happen to wandered into the appropriate file retailer in Chicago within the early 90’s, you might have seen a music fanzine promising drag racing, file opinions, 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 exhibits in your space, or current an interview with musicians who lived or labored close by. Many revealed opinions for lately 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 might journey properly sufficient on 56 kb/s for Napster to scare the RIAA. However to truly get music into your fingers, and to listen to it at its full texture, you possibly can fastidiously copy an indie label’s mailing tackle out of a fanzine, stuff a couple of bucks into an envelope, and wait by the mailbox. When 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 strategy, many emerged out of irrepressible enthusiasm for his or her scene or their topic. The extra current, rapid, you possibly can make it for the reader, the extra they might seize onto and perceive why you like 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: convey somebody with you to a race; convey them to a automobile present you’re enthusiastic about; convey them a memento at the very least, to allow them to contact a chunk of it. Join it in some way to the issues that they’re already concerned about. Make your enthusiasm tangible. Within the case of the fanzine, which means kind and lower and glue your personal 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 exhibits a cartoon skeleton in a dragster, and guarantees two interviews (Seaweed and Gasoline Huffer) plus “DRAG RACING! 60’S STYLE,” and “LOTSA REVIEWS!” to determine itself as a music zine.
The music opinions in Pace Kills #1 are customary fare, pulling from the catalogs of Sub Pop, Merge, Okay, SST, and Drag Metropolis, amongst others. Critiques 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 components.) 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 examine the opinions could have their eyes already in movement, previous Harriet Data’ Wimp Issue 14 and Chicago locals Wreck, into the subsequent web page. And throughout the web page gutters from the final opinions, 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 “certainly one 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 in regards to the vehicles he drove within the sixties, he rattles off names and specs. What’s putting is the element saved 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 selecting up Pace Kills for the music opinions, who’s by no means thought twice about what’s below a automobile hood moreover the really useful 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 how you can change the rear foremost seal on a crankshaft.
This was the connective tissue that Pace Kills offered: you’re already right here to see what the curious, inventive, bizarre folks of the world can do once they get their fingers on music; wait till you see what they will do with vehicles.
The obtained knowledge about subcultures is that this might by no means work. Certainly, 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 Varieties 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 goal: “To hunt out new life in a racing model principally missed because the huge 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 mainly instruments to get down the monitor… I like to look at them run, however drag racing at present lacks character and individuality.”
In 1994, John Drive and capital-F capital-C Humorous Automobile might not have been NASCAR or F1, however for these drag lovers nearer to their interest’s margins, every little 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 data after 1995; you continue to love to look at Humorous Automobiles run. However if you would like one thing tactile, one thing accessible, you must get decrease to the bottom.
In that very same spirit of the Sizzling Rods From Hell, in search of out the seen hand of the opposite human, Pace Kills faithfully devotes overview 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 opinions: 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 opinions for Fridge, brothers Dennis and Allen Callaci of Shrimper Data. Shrimper, finest often known as the primary residence 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 overview 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 at the very least one event. Sidestepping an precise overview of the hypnotic, churning rock of Shrimper alumni Halo, the SK overview part rambled as an alternative in regards to the ‘68 Chevy Impala 4-door on their CD’s cowl.
All through its run, the employees 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 (buddies of the journal), and that Kenny fixes the band’s tour van. When Pace Kills despatched out Challenge #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 in regards to the aesthetics of collision, and the sacredness of Determine 8 crashes.
In certainly one of its strictly automotive options, Pace Kills opted for a distinct 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 Pace Kills Historic Society!” in jest, nevertheless it will get fairly actually all the way down to nuts and bolts. You’ll be able to virtually hear the enjoyment, studying Norm Kraus’s solutions in regards to the sorts of customized work they did for patrons, making their vehicles sooner: “We discovered that the 383 bearings labored higher than the Hemi bearings!” Requested about efficiency and weight, he goes on at size in regards to the ‘67 Dart, in regards to 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 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 concern, to carry all of those particulars. The interview is authentic work, beneficial work, and may’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 attention-grabbing niches. The Tim Alborn/Harriet Data 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 selecting 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 means of the opinions, wandering again by means of the options, I received the gist of Pace Kills and set it apart to maintain sifting by means of all the fabric readily available. However I saved 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 questioned if any of my Superchunk devotee buddies had seen the title, or had a duplicate.
The sixth concern of Pace Kills is less complicated to seek out than the early points. Due to the Superchunk single, an merchandise with affordable 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 chance 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 check and luxuriate in, properly past the bounds it may 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 once I hear information in regards to the NHRA, or once I see outdated problems with Automobile Craft by the vintage retailer rows of Highway & 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 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 cherished these items. These items might change yr life.
