Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine ’79–’83

By Tesco Vee and David Stimson Touch and Go fanzine was the brainchild of Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson and was launched in Lansing, Michigan, in 1979. Major fanatics of the new punk happenings in the late ’70s, Vee and Stimson set out to chronicle, lambaste, ridicule, and heap praise on all they arbitrarily loved or hated in the music communities in the US and abroad. In laughably minuscule press runs by today’s standards, Touch and Go was made by guys within the Midwest scene strictly for the edification of scenesters and pals in other cities like D.C., Philly, Boston, L.A., S.F., Chicago, et al. Inspired by magazines such as Slash and Search and Destroy and writers like Claude Bessy and Chris Desjardines, Vee and Stimson pumped out seventeen naughty, irreverent issues together, and TV did another five solo. Magazines like Forced Exposure and Your Flesh, among others, soon fired up Xerox machines themselves, and the rest is history. So is the legendary independent record label launched from this zine, and so are the bands covered inside: Black Flag, Minor Threat, the Misfits, Negative Approach, the Fix, the Avengers, the Necros, Discharge, Iron Cross, Youth Brigade, Faith, Die Kreuzen, Crucifix, Battalion of Saints, Poison Idea—and all the other punks worth their weight in glorious black and white. There will never be another book like this about hardcore, written in the moment by ground correspondents and active participants during the incubation and invasion period. They wrote the zine, booked the shows, started the bands, and launched Touch and Go Records, a cornerstone of independent record labels for decades. Includes essays by Tesco Vee, Dave Stimson, Steve Miller, Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Peter Davis, Henry Owings, Byron Coley, Corey Rusk, John Brannon, and Ian MacKaye, along with early gig flyers, inspirational artwork, eyewitness action photos and candid vintage interviews, plus hundreds of reviews of historical DIY punk, new wave, ska, industrial, no wave, and hardcore records and live shows. Edited by Steve Miller Published by Bazillion Points Fourth printing, 2022 548 pages, b&w offset, 8.5 × 11 inches ISBN: 978-0-97-961638-9