Motorbooty #5 (Ann Arbor MI)

Motorbooty is one of those zines that a lot of people know but few people have actually read. Much like similar zines such as Hitch or Chunklet, Motorbooty evinces a certain sarcastic attitude. Unlike those other zines, Motorbooty swaggered along with a Motor City vibe. Published out of Ann Arbor, Detroit's politically radical sister city (home of the White Panther Party in the '60s), the zine offered up an interesting combination of music and culture.

Motorbooty issue #5 features some great interviews in its section on the "Secret History Of Detroit Rock," including members of the MC5, Ron Asheton of the Stooges and poster artist Gary Grimshaw. This issue also includes interviews with free jazz giant Sonny Sharrock and gritty Southern novelist Harry Crews, articles on the Stooges Wax Museum and Ted Nugent as well as a number of full-page cartoons, including one by Peter Bagge, many of the others done in a '60s-influenced underground comix style. Altogether a very good issue of Motorbooty, a lot of fun to read and a welcome addition to the TMQ Zine Archive.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #5
• Winter 1990
• B&W, 72-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
MC5 interviews
Gary Grimshaw interview
Ron Asheton/The Stooges interview
Ted Nugent
The Stooges Wax Museum
Peter Bagge cartoon

Blitz #31 (Detroit)

Blitz! music zine rolled on through 1979 with its usual coverage of overlooked rockers, past and present, issue #31 including a lengthy piece on cult faves Question Mark and the Mysterians. This issue also includes an interview with Miki Zone of the Fast and the Miki Zone Zoo, a piece on American blooze-rockers Canned Heat and a long piece on Detroit's own favorite sons, the Mutants. Singles reviews include wax from the Crap Detectors, Kenny and the Kasuals, the Gizmos, the Electric Prunes and Wazmo Nariz. LP reviews include rockabilly wonder Robert Gordon, the Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, the Jam and Bram Tchaikovsky. My copy of this issue was cut wrong, resulting in some strange page placement but, luckily, no lost content.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #31
• May-June 1979
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES
Question Mark & the Mysterians
Canned Heat
The Miki Zone Zoo
The Mutants
--> also album reviews, reader mail and local music news

Blitz #30 (Detroit)

Issue number 30 of Blitz! offers a nice balance of local Detroit rock coverage and coverage of classic early R&R bands like Danny & the Juniors and Paul Revere & the Raiders. This issue also includes articles on out-of-towners like Boston's Moving Parts and Cleveland's Human Switchboard. It was around this time that I met Blitz! publisher Mike McDowell somewhere around town (maybe at one of the many weekend record collector's conventions?) and talked to him about writing for the zine.

I never got my chance to contribute to Blitz! but that didn't dampen my enthusiasm for the magazine. This issue included features on two of my favorite local bands, punkers Flirt (as I remember, mainstays at the New Miami club in the Cass corridor) and Nikki Corvette & the Convertibles (who should have been big stars in the vein of Katrina & the Waves, the Go-Gos or the Bangles). The reviews section is flush with reviews of Motor City rock, including 45s from Destroy All Monsters, the Ivories and Master Cylinder, and Elvis Costello's This Year's Model takes the top LP spot in the Blitz Awards For 1978 listing.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #30
• March-April 1979
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES
Phil Volk of Paul Revere & the Raiders
Flirt
Nikki Corvette & the Convertibles
The Nightcrawlers
Moving Parts
The Human Switchboard
Danny & the Juniors
--> also album reviews, reader mail, local music news, reviews of "classic songs"

Blitz #29 (Detroit)

With issue number 29 of Detroit music zine Blitz!, publisher Mike McDowell includes two excellent articles, the first being "The History Of Hamtramck Rock," covering local bands the Mutants, the Reruns and the Romantics. Hamtramck is a city-within-a-city located near the center of Detroit. Home to a large GM plant, Hamtramck was a mostly-Polish community with some of the best restaurants that you'll ever eat in. A microcosm of the high-octane Motor City rock scene, the little city had a long musical legacy of its own to brag about.

The other cover article worth noting is McDowell's piece on Radar Records, including a label discography. At the time, aside from the odd article in Creem magazine, only Ira Robbins' Trouser Press was really covering what was going on in England. McDowell's article included Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Ray Campi and his Rockabilly Rebels, the Good Rats, Nick Lowe, the Soft Boys and other artists that were still a good year or five away from becoming well-known in the United States. Other articles in this issue include a piece on cult band Kenny & the Kasuals, the Neon Philharmonic and the Belmonts as well as the usual well-written and diverse album and 45 reviews.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #29
• November-December 1978
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES
"The History Of Hamtramck Rock"
Kenny & the Kasuals
The Belmonts
The Neon Philharmonic
"Dangerous" Diane Spodarek
"The Radar Records Story"
--> also album reviews, reader mail, local music news, reviews of "classic songs"

Blitz #28 (Detroit)

With issue number 28 of Blitz! publisher Mike McDowell tacked an additional 4-pages into the zine and changed the publication's tagline to "The Rock & Roll Magazine For Thinking People." McDowell's description of Blitz! wasn't mere hyperbole...this is a good music zine! This issue included a cool Residents front cover ("The Residents stock up for a wild weekend!") and a funny ad from local Detroit rockers the Mutants on the rear.

Between the covers you'd find articles on the Residents, interviews with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees and Freddie Cannon, and coverage of local bands the Plugs and the Ivories. Album reviews included such diverse fare as Devo, Johnny Cash, Dave Edmunds, Kenny and the Kasuals and Deep Purple; singles reviews included groovy tunes by local rockers like Nikki Corvette, the Last, the Reruns and Flirt (one of my personal faves) as well as French punks Metal Urbain, the Red Krayola and Motorhead. John Clayton covers the Boomtown Rats, Graham Parker and the Sex Pistols in his excellent "Mersey Beat" column.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #28
• September-October 1978
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES
The Residents
Freddy Cannon
Michael Nesmith of the Monkees
The Ivories
The Plugs
Neil Norman
--> also album reviews, reader mail, local music news, reviews of "classic songs"

Blitz #27 (Detroit)

Back in the late-70s, the "zine revolution" had yet to explode. Sure, there was an abundance of mimeographed science fiction "fanzines" that made the rounds at conventions and by mail, but the concept of the all-purpose photocopied zine had yet to really take off in the creative imagination.

Punk began the popularization of zine publishing, as a number of small-press publications began to pop up on the coasts. Greg Shaw's Mojo Navigator was probably one of the first while Punk in NYC and Search & Destroy in LA tacked down the coastal music scenes. In Detroit, the zine of choice was Blitz! Published by Mike McDowell with a heavy debt owed to Shaw's Bomp!, the pages of Blitz! were filled with a wonderland of local punx, classic pop-rock coverage and the odd outcast. The writing was good, the local coverage was all-inclusive and the lay-out was clean, kind of in the style of Ira Robbins' Trouser Press.

Issue #27 of Blitz! wasn't the first that I had picked up, but it was the first that I found in a big box o' stuff that I hauled up to WNY from Tennessee. Looking through this issue, I was delighted to find long-lost articles on Detroit rockers like the Reruns, Cinecyde and the Zooks. A cover story on soul legends Sam & Dave made for great reading and a series on the Monkees included an interview with David Jones in this issue. More in the spirit of the aforementioned Bomp! or Trouser Press than, say, Mike Stax's Ugly Things, Blitz! is an obscure but quality small press pub.

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VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #27
• July 1978
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES
Sam & Dave
David Jones of the Monkees
The Reruns
The Zooks
Cinecyde
Brad Long
--> also album reviews, reader mail, local music news, reviews of classic songs