SUPERDOPE #3 – THE GORIES ISSUE

This 1992 issue of my self-published music fanzine is the first in the 8-issue series I can legitimately say that I’m more or less proud of. SUPERDOPE #3 came out about six months after I’d “threatened to quit” publishing (oooh!) for reasons I don’t really remember. I even went so far as to send back promo records on my own dime to certain labels I respected who’d sent me freebies, because I was embarrassed to keep them if I wasn’t going to, you know, review them. I remember meeting Mac from Merge Records the next year in Chapel Hill, and he was just bemusedly shaking his head that I’d bothered to do that. Rest assured, I gave up those ethical qualms later on. So after making a big to-do about being “too tired” to publish or whatever, I just said aw fuggedaboutit and put out this tiny, digest-sized, 16-page minizine.

SUPERDOPE #3 captures a bit of the (un)popular rise of the great garage punk bands of the 1990s, with the piece de resistance being this interview with THE GORIES. Though I had no idea at the time, the band would soon break up, and gave few other interviews during their career. I simply mailed them a list of dopey questions and let them record their answers on a cassette tape; as it turns out, it was my favorite interview I “did” outside of the DON HOWLAND one that made it into issue #6. That I never got to see the band play live always stuck in my craw, a situation that’ll be rectified when they hit my town on their reunion tour later this summer.

 A few other thoughts on this issue:

• I wrote and editied this one completely solo, though, having just recently seen “Beyond The Valley of the Dolls” for the first time, I uncleverly appropriated the name “Lance Rock” for several items. This doesn’t wear as well in 2010, I concede.
• My list of over-the-counter stimulants in my “Top 10” was nothing but bluster. It stemmed from an incident that year where I’d taken two (very much legal!) Ephedrine - the ingredient in No-Doz - pills to keep myself awake at a Thinking Fellers Union show, mixed it with a couple of pints of beer, and proceeded to suffer through one of the weirdest, malarial, hallucinatory nights of pseudo-sleep I’d ever had. Not sure I ever used one again – but it sure was fun pretendin’.
• It is indeed true that the first CD I ever bought was MONSTER MAGNET’s horrific “Spine of God” – I proudly waived my “no bad reviews” policy especially for that one.
• The faux back issues of “SCRUT HUNT” magazine are in-jokes embedded within in-jokes, some of which I don’t even understand myself anymore. “Scrut” was a term of endearment that my freshman-year college roommate gave to particularly attractive females. Thus a night on the town could very well turn into a “scrut hunt”. (That night also could, and most often did, end in failure). Anyway, in case it’s not obvious, this magazine never actually existed.
• The “Late Reviews” consist of clipped reviews from other magazines like Maximum RocknRoll and Your Flesh, married to records that weren’t actually being reviewed (and in the case of “Ska Derr & The Rejectones” and “Cognitive Drought”, bands that didn’t ever form). I thought the Barbara Manning one was pretty funny; I’m pretty sure it was for the first LIQUOR BALL LP.

I’ve got five more issues to scan and post for you, and rest assured, before I shuffle off this mortal coil I shall do so.

Download SUPERDOPE #3 here.

Download SUPERDOPE #2 here.

Download SUPERDOPE #1 here.