Punk Faction, BHP ’91 to ’95, is a 280-page book collecting together the articles, interviews and reviews from the punk music and alternative lifestyle fanzine.
It contains interviews with Goober Patrol, Angus Bagpipe, Pseudo Hippies, Green Day, Hard-Ons, Ramones, SNFU, Quicksand, All, MTX, Sugar, Alloy, Samiam, Compulsion, Down By Law, Rancid, Shelter, Jawbreaker, Pennywise, Civ, Riverdales, as well as Daniel Clowes and Steven Jesse Bernstein. It also contains tour and scene reports, and articles on everything from censorship to prejudice, hunt saboteurs to third world debt, vegetarianism and the environment, as well as hundreds of live and record reviews.
Now collected into one book, with an introduction from the editor/author and a foreword by Frank Turner.
David Gamage says in his introduction that some of the things he wrote back when he was doing this zine that some parts were a little naive on his being so young, but it is a snapshot of what was going on in his area and in his heart and mind back then. The book is a collection of the complete zines from this time period, warts and all, and in the case of the first few issues… a lot of warts. The first few issues while interesting, suffer from being hard to read because of the poor fonts, bad printing from the time period, small size and the confusing and jumbled layout. As time moves forward, things start to improve and it becomes a lot clearer and easier to read everything. Even though it seems like a complaint, it is cool to see the zines in all their glory. The writing is pretty good, lots of info in the articles, interesting and humourous interviews and cool reviews of shows and music. Some of the political articles sound preachy, but that’s how most of them still sound today. While not agreeing with everything written in these zines, it’s easy to skip over the things that I don’t care about, just like reading the originals and focus on the more interesting, at least to me, stuff. I can see the hard work that was put into these when they were originally done, and for that, I salute you and all the effort put into them.
A great snapshot of bands that have gotten bigger, gone away, or just forgotten, and a scene that didn’t get a lot of press in the larger zines of the time. Of course, it’s always sad to see zines go away, but at least this one will not be forgotten with this fantastic collection that everyone interested in punk and hardcore should get.
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Altered Frequencies 