Soulfish Stew Of Years Ago

When I started this blog a little over a year ago I wrote about where the name Soulfish Stew came from. It seems that the name stretches farther back than I thought. I can't trace the actual genesis of the name, but it was going to be the name for a fanzine that never materialized around 1990. I discovered that I was using the name even before then as a column title for another fanzine that never got off the ground. The year was 1988 and the aborted fanzine was to have been called Free Scientist (An Exercise In Futility). I found the cover and contents page in a box of junk. The contents would have included:

Cruise Nazis - presumbably a piece about the Murfreesboro police force's antagonization of teenage cruisers. There was one particular cop who really had it in for us. I find it interesting how we were using the nazi epithet years before our politicians started using it as a catch all insult. Like the politicians of today, we were over exagerrating to the point of stupidity.

Subdivisions - I've still got this piece somewhere in my files. It was written by my good friend Chris who was dismayed at the encroaching suburban dwellings that were popping up like mushrooms down Manchester Highway. I wonder what he would think about this subject now. I'd ask him, but he's over in Kuwait right now where I hope he stays safe.

Soulfish Stew (Records Reviewed) - Where the seed for this blog was planted, pre-dating by two years its appearance as a fanzine title. The records to be reviewed were Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions..., Cruel Blue, and something by Dwight Yoakam. How's that for eclecticism. The Dwight Yoakam album would have to been reviewed by DD Blank since I didn''t have any Dwight albums. Cruel Blue were a local Murfreesboro band; one of the best to ever grace stages. They were a trio and they played punked up rock with very good lyrics.

Tennessee Walts - this would have to be a review of show by the Tennessee Walts. I don't know a thing about these guys other than they were lots of fun featuring a guitar player who could spin the guitar around his back as good as Warner Hodges. They just appeared in the summer of 1988, played a bunch of shows and disappeared.

Top 5's - Top 5's of something or other. This probably would be a take off on something I used to do in 8th grade. I would go roller skating either on Friday or Saturday night of each week. After I would get home I would type up my five favorite songs of the week, my five favorite TV shows, and most important my five favorite girls of the week.

Collage - would be an actual collage.

More Bitching And Whining News - just random griping...much like this blog.

Poem and Frog - would have been one of my lousy poems and a Frog story. Frog was just some hapless character I had invented that always had something bad and usually deadly happen to him in every story.

He Was A Punk - I don't have a clue what this was to about. Maybe it was to be a story about Darby Crash. I had a fascination with The Germs around that time. It might also have been some fictional story. I used to write lots of one page stories about punk rockers beating up jocks. It was all very SLC Punk long before that film got made.

The Free Scientist never made it beyond the planning stages. I was pretty bad about starting stuff and not finishing it then. I'd fix that a few years later when I launched Anti*Society which was a pretty successful little free fanzine. Now there's the bloggy goodness of Soulfish Stew which is full of ingredients from the past.