Silver City Magazine Volume 2 June 2002-April 2003 Free or trade For more information, follow this link

Further down, a crooked table of contents lists interviews with Dirtbombs bassist and producer of everything out of Detroit these days Jim Diamond, plus great-bands-that-I-thought-no-one-else-had-heard-of including The Spittoons, Some Action and MOTO. There's a long interview with Detroit R&B pioneer Gino Washington, whose early work was recently reissued on Norton. It is marred only slightly by poor phone connections, though the editors helpfully circle particularly doubtful transcriptions and possible misspellings. There is a companion feature on Cliff Rosin, who played drums with Washington and now makes a living building clay models of cars. The people at Silver City obviously have as much trouble as we do (Uhh, not all of us -- Ed.) getting original art for features, but they solve the problem with brio, inserting stick drawings (love the one of Rosin on the drums!) as illustrations and scrawling whatever comes to mind into the margins ("Check out the Blue Sparks").

The issue's best interview, hands down, is with Roberta Bayley, a rock photographer whose book Punk was recently published by Kunst Editions and AENIGMA. She's caught here talking about selling sex toys to Marianne Faithfull, hanging out with Richard Hell and Iggy Pop and REM playing a covers show in their pajamas at the Peppermint Lounge. She is my new hero, completely cool with the fact that she went to the Monterey Pop Festival at 16 and now, however many years later, is still relevant enough for a Silver City interview.

Then it's on to the more current interviews. Diamond's Q&A is short and not much fun, but it's an email interview, so what do you expect? The Spittoons piece is much better. There are no real shocking revelations or interesting tangents, but you get the sense of a band that has its loose and goofy side, but works pretty hard for not much encouragement. There's a photo of the bathroom at Hanks, where the band is playing, to illustrate, and more stick figures, and it all seems pretty funny in a third-grade kind of way. The Some Action interview brings more in this vein -- another great, hard-working band that doesn't seem to have much interesting to say. I was really excited about the MOTO interview, because I had one of their songs on a tape and loved it, and knew nothing else about them. Unfortunately, after the interview, I still know pretty much nada.

It may not be Silver City's fault that the interviews fall flat. Some do. It's a fact of life. Still, the intro to the Spittoons piece ends with the observation that: "Listen I know, Vol. 1 of Silver City was boring as far as the presentation and writing, but I tried to spare you all this crappy 'zine' commentary bullshit and just give you the goods." Maybe, in leaving out the bullshit, Silver City went too far and left out some of the goods, too.

At its best, Silver City is like a self-released debut from one of the raw rawk bands it covers -- all-but-unproduced, rough, unmannered and busting out with enthusiasm. It's a field guide to a certain segment of the garage underground, and if you like this sort of music, you could probably buy any band mentioned in the issue and be happy. Personally, I'll take excellent taste over slickness any day. In fact, I might just take it all the way to the record store and stock up on the rest of the bands that Silver City is so hyped about.

-- Jennifer Kelly