Queer Punk, International Hardcore, and Subculture Across Underground Bay Area Magazine: Short, Fast + Loud, 2003-14

Queer Punk Fast + Loud Short

Periodical

Short, Fast + Loud punk periodical archive, 2003 to 2014, documenting the communities that formed around hardcore, powerviolence, grindcore, thrash, and related underground music through interviews, personal columns, comics, performance photography, and writing on sexuality, identity, friendship, and participation in local and international scenes. Chris Dodge of Spazz and Slap A Ham Records founded the publication around 2000 before passing it to Six Weeks Records around 2005, and its contributors wrote as participants within the culture they documented. The seven issues preserve a forum in which queer punk, musicians of color, women, international bands, and geographically dispersed local scenes appear within the same editorial network. Material visible here ranges from a “queer as fuck” column and an extended Sarat Milet interview to Japanese, Finnish, and American hardcore coverage, with bands including Slight Slappers, Valse Triste, Pure Hell, Nunslaughter, Urban Waste, and Infest. The result is a record of punk community produced from within the scene, including participants whose experiences of race, gender, sexuality, and geography complicated any singular definition of hardcore identity.

Short, Fast + Loud. Slap A Ham Records and Six Weeks Records, 2003 to 2014. San Francisco Bay Area, California. Archive of seven illustrated punk and hardcore periodicals, nos. 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, and 28, printed predominantly in black and white with live music photography, original illustration and comics, interviews, columns, advertisements, and extensive reviews.

[1] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 10. Summer 2003. Cover photograph shows a vocalist performing at close range, with the publication’s “Short, Fast + Loud!” banner along the margin.
[2] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 12. Winter 2004. Cover and interior artwork employ hand drawn punk and comix imagery, including a musician surrounded by names and slogans written directly onto the instrument and clothing.
[3] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 13. Black and white performance cover centered on a drummer behind a large bass drum, continuing the periodical’s emphasis on musicians and audiences at close range.
[4] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 15. Cover features live performance photography; interior material includes a long “SARAT MILET” interview in which Milet discusses discovering punk, Finland, political and cultural divisions within punk, touring, friendships, and the development of his own participation in the scene. A facing comic uses the publication’s self referential “SFL KIDS” characters to satirize consumption and status within hardcore.
[5] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 17. Illustrated throughout and retaining the accompanying Teen Beat Compilation CD. The survival of the disc with the issue preserves one of the publication’s efforts to place the music itself beside the interviews, columns, artwork, and community writing through which readers encountered the scene.
[6] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 18. Fall 2007. Cover identifies Slight Slappers, Valse Triste, Nunslaughter, and Pure Hell, bringing Japanese hardcore, Finnish punk, American extreme metal, and the history of Black punk into one issue. Interior writing includes the column headed “queer as fuck,” in which its author discusses being queer within punk and hardcore, relationships, community, and participation in the scene.
[7] Short, Fast + Loud. No. 28. 2014. Published by Six Weeks Records. The issue includes an interview with Johnny Waste of early New York hardcore band Urban Waste and the second part of an interview with Infest, alongside columns and extensive reviews of LPs, CDs, cassettes, and demos. Contemporary distribution material identifies no. 28 specifically with Urban Waste and Infest and situates its readership across Northern California, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York, and New Jersey.

The publication belongs to a punk tradition in which the distinction between audience and producer remained deliberately porous: musicians wrote columns, fans made zines, contributors documented their own scenes, and interviews could move from music into sexuality, race, friendship, travel, alienation, and the practical experience of belonging to an underground community. Short, Fast + Loud extended that tradition into the 2000s while maintaining an international field of reference. By its tenth anniversary, its associated festival at Berkeley’s 924 Gilman brought participants from multiple scenes together, while anniversary material included bands from the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. The present issues show that network at the level of individual voices. The “queer as fuck” column explicitly places queer identity inside hardcore discourse; Pure Hell brings the history of Black musicians in American punk into an issue otherwise crossing Japanese, Finnish, and American scenes; Sarat Milet’s interview treats friendships and personal experience as part of punk history; and later coverage of Urban Waste and Infest connects contemporary readers to earlier generations of underground hardcore. Live photographs repeatedly eliminate the physical distance between performers and audiences, reproducing the crowded rooms, floor level performances, and close contact through which much of this culture operated. Light handling and edge wear with occasional minor rubbing and creasing; issues remain intact, and no. 17 retains its accompanying CD. Overall very good condition. A thirteen year sampling of Short, Fast + Loud as a community forum where queer identity, Black punk history, international hardcore, personal testimony, music, and scene memory circulated among participants in the underground.

Item #23832

Price: $550.00