Kicks #4 (New York City)

One of the benefits of Tower Records moving to Nashville during the '80s was the ill-fated chain's liberal newstand policy. Although the "zine revolution" was already a few years old, the ready availability of zines – like most cultural advances on the "Music City" – took a catalyst like Tower to bring the phenomena home.

Kicks was one of the zines that I first picked up from Tower. Published by Billy Miller and Mirriam Linna, who was an early member of the Cramps and the Zantees, Kicks celebrated the roots of rock music. This undated fourth issue, from sometime during 1985, features stories on roots-rock idol Wanda Jackson, hillbilly rocker Hasil Adkins, the Fort Worth Music Scene and more. The zine was published a magazine-sized 8.5"x11" with a hurried punkture graphic style that crowded a lot of text and photos (some random clip art) into multiple columns. The writing was top-notch, especially Linna and Miller's work, and this issue also includes articles by Greg Prevost and Nick Tosches. The subject matter, while narrowly focused, was nevertheless interesting to anybody with a love of music.

Linna and Miller would later launch the well-respected indie label Norton Records as an outlet for the kind of music that, while respected during the '80s, was still pretty hard to find (even at Tower). These days...forget about it! The pair were also the biggest boosters of Hasil Adkins' career, releasing albums by the West Virginia madman and making his work available to a wider audience.

(Click on thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #4
• 1985, no month given
• B&W, 76-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Wanda Jackson
Ronnie Self
Hasil Adkins
The Tempests
Trixie Norton
Freddie Blassie
Link Wray
--> also album reviews, reader mail, book & zine reviews, lots of smaller articles