The Formative Years – Flipside Fanzine
In the late 1980s / early 1990s, they were two American punk rock fanzines that served as global sources of information and de facto bibles of the scene with their consistent presence covering the ever-changing underground communities: Maximumrocknroll and what was originally incepted in 1977 as Los Angeles Flipside.
With the common denominator of both outlets was the fact that they had a cast of highly opinionated contributors, Maximumrocknroll adhered to its fanzine aesthetic throughout its existence, while Flipside morphed from a black-and-white photocopied fanzine released in an edition of 1,000 copies to a widely available professionally published veritable magazine with glossy web offset printed covers, eventually growing big enough to warrant being printed in both the US and Germany to be distributed locally across two continents.
Inspired by one of the first independent labels on the West Coast, i.e. Dangerhouse Records, Flipside Records started alongside the fanzine and left an indelible mark with not only its 7” releases but especially the fantastic 12” compilations, with the three volumes featuring a wide variety of both established and up and coming punk bands accompanied by a newspaper style booklet with photos and lyrics.
Over ten volumes, the video arm of Flipside started out releasing live footage along with interviews of bands Big Boys, Social Distortion, Final Conflict, Corrosion of Conformity, The Dicks, Adolescents, et cetera, which offered for many European scenesters the first occasion to actually experience some of the current trailblazing bands in their natural habitat.
Summa summarum, Flipside was one of highly desirable zines at a time where information was hard to come by and updated one on punk scenes in all the cities of the US. I never not read it cover to cover, took notes and by snail mailing the bands and labels I found out about, became part of the of the scene myself.
For anyone not familiar with Flipside, I recommend the recently Ten Year Anniversary Paperback, which compiles scans of issues one to fifty.
