Some More From My Old Fanzine

I guess it’s about time to give the back story of the Anti-Society since I’ve been posting some excerpts from issues. Anti-Society was begun in 1993 by me with encouragement from DD Blank. The title comes from the lyrics of a Suicidal Tendencies song “Two Sided Politics” – I’m not anti-society, society’s anti-me – which fit my mood well back them. I ended up making 5 issues in two years. Instead of standard issue numbers, each issue was given the number of a particular year so there was AS issue 1974, 1959, 1968, 1976, and 1991. There was significance to these years, it was no random selection, but I find it hard now to know why I chose some of them. I believe I chose 1974 because it was the year the Ramones formed. 1959 was chosen because I had a picture of Elvis Presley on the back cover. 1968 was chosen because it was the year that French students rioted – I was heavily into Situationism at the time of AS. I suppose I chose 1976 because of punk rock in England and in America it was the Bicentennial year. I know 1991 was picked because it was a palindrome. The fanzine grew out of some one-sheet pieces I was doing at the time called “anti-society diatribe”. To quote me: AS was a concept in my head, just a way to pass the time. I solicited for other writers and DD Blank, Andrew Conley, Chad Phillips, and John Hudson wrote some pieces, but most of each issue was written by me under various pseudonyms: Wally Thunders, Vincent Van Gogh Gogh, Johnny Cemetery were all just different variations of P. Wallace, just as Wally Bangs is today. I would do the entire layout for the zine first with all of the pictures mapped out. Then the articles would be made to fit the leftover space and these were typed in – I kind of wish I had never sold that electric typewriter, but I knew the world was changing. After all of the gluing, typing, and swearing were done I would make use of a copier somewhere – never paying for the paper of copies – and then go home and staple each issue together. I doubt there were ever over a hundred issues ran of any individual issue. Then I distribute them for free at Lucy’s Record Shop on Church Street in Nashville, TN.
AS was noticed nationally, yet the local Nashville media wouldn’t devote one sentence to my efforts even when they did pieces “spotlighting” local fanzines. Go figure. AS 1991 ended up being the last issue and it was for the most part terrible. I was starting to get promos for review, which was cool on one hand, and AS was looking like it might “blow up” to something involving more labor than love, and it was getting harder to find people willing to let me use their copiers. So I called it a day, not even thinking I would one day get to share bits and pieces with the world. Enjoy a couple more entries from Anti-Society.