Music Magazine Mayhem
Photo by David Bailey (1981).
There’s not actually a lot of mayhem here and the publication Andy Warhol is reading isn’t really a music magazine. That being said, this archive explores a few select American music-related titles from the mid-1970s to the 1990s. Links to their respective archives are below.
As for the British Music Press archive — NME and Melody Maker are ready for your pleasure, so sit back with a cup of tea and a custard cream.
BAM MAGAZINE
Expect a fair amount of 1980s metal madness from a decadent time when unsigned hair bands with illegible typefaces played The Troubadour and Gazzarri's.
BAM magazine was founded in 1976 by Dennis Erokan, a former bass player for the band Green Catherine. The sextet formed around 1967 and mostly toured the East Coast. After a brief journalism course at De Anza College in Cupertino, the 24-year-old and his wife Lori produced the first issues from their home in the East Bay.
Originally published monthly, the magazine was distributed for free at record stores, colleges, nightclubs, stereo equipment stores, and anywhere else the pop/rock enthusiast would converge. Initially covering the Northern California music scene, BAM had expanded to most of California by 1981, when circulation was around 100,000.
Operating from a cramped two-story house on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, BAM quickly expanded and opened an office in Los Angeles in 1977. The following year, the magazine changed formats and was published bi-monthly. Part of BAM's early success was their straightforward approach and lack of sensationalism.
Rock journalists are a strange thing. They are the most pretentious kind of journalists. The story is rock and roll, but how many times can you write that story?
Rock musicians are not superhumans or great intellects, and they don't like being put on pedestals. They are musicians who make beautiful music. That's their job and we approach them on that level. That's what they're most comfortable talking about. Out of that, they'll often share some gossip.
Dennis Erokan, 1978
The Turkish-born Erokan was the driving force behind The Bammies - an annual benefit for the Bay Area Music Archives, of which he served as president. The San-Francisco-based archives housed a collection of vintage records, posters, and books. No less than Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak donated a computer to catalog the archives.
The first BAMMIE event was held at the Kabuki Theater and counted roughly 1000 people in attendance. As Erokan later noted, the event began "as a joke, a spoof of the Grammy Awards". The show later moved to the Warfield Theater and then found a home at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The events were broadcast by radio station KFOG. By 1998, the event was renamed the California Music Awards.
Erokan remained as publisher until 1994 when Earl Adkins took over. Brought on by financial problems, the magazine ceased publication in 1999 - circulation was about 55,000 - though it continued online.
LA ROCK REVIEW
ROCK CITY NEWS
Born out of the ashes of Scratch Magazine (1983 - 1985) which changed its name to LA Rocks. In the words of founder Ruben Blue (Ruben Lee Lopez),
Scratch started as a reaction against in-crowd snobbishness at the L.A. Weekly. I thought there was a whole bunch of other interesting people and bands doing great things but they were getting ignored in the Weekly’s La Di Da column because Craig Lee and his circle didn’t consider them cool enough.
NEW YORK ROCKER
Started in 1976 by Alan Betrock, New York Rocker covered the local punk scene and initially resembled more of a fanzine. Founding editor Alan Betrock was no stranger to this format, having created Jamz in 1972, which morphed into Rock Marketplace. Based out of Elmhurst, New York, the 32-page 'zine sold for 75 cents and was geared toward record collectors and nostalgia buffs.
The New York Rocker experienced a few hiccups during its lifetime, starting with Betrock's departure in 1978 (with Andy Schwartz taking the reins). Circulation at the time was 20,000 and issues came out every five or six weeks.
Although New York Rocker expanded its music scene coverage outside of the Big Apple and employed a notable cache of writers, it ceased publication in 1982. A year later, in an attempt to revive the publication, John Morthland was hired as associate editor, with Iman Lababedi taking over as publisher. Other changes included switching the format from tabloid to a proper four-color magazine.
It didn't work. The magazine lasted a short while and folded in 1984. Original publisher Alan Betrock remained busy, authoring acclaimed books on everything from girl groups of the 1960s to movie posters and scandal magazines. He launched his independent Shake Records label in 1980 with an EP devoted to Richard Hell. Other artists on the label included the Smithereens, the Cosmopolitans, and Marshall Crenshaw. The former publisher went on to produce music for Austin-based rockers Rank and File, as well as the dB's.
Betrock passed away in 2000.
Although these are not complete cover-to-cover scans, we've put together a respectable number of issues (with more to add as they're acquired) and omitted only a few pages. Still, perusing this collection will make you feel like you're throwing up outside C.B.G.B.'s in your finest patent leather pants at 3 in the morning.
Photo by Gary Green (1977).
