User:Pstirl/sandbox/Puncture Magazine

Puncture was a San Francisco punk and alternative music magazine that published 47 issues from 1982 to 1997.

History

Puncture magazine was started in San Francisco by Katherine Spielmann and Patricia Stirling, and later relocated to Portland, Oregon. The early issues were small, homemade magazines that were printed out on a computer and pasted up in Katherine’s apartment. The layouts were then taken by bus to the office of Genstar, the financial district corporation where Katherine worked as a secretary -- she had key access and there was nobody there on weekends. They used Xerox machines to run off about a hundred copies, loaded them into a box and took a bus back to her apartment to collate and staple them. Later they used a commercial printer and produced glossy, full-sized magazines. By that time Steve Connell, from Rough Trade Records, had become a participant in the magazine’s production. Puncture was published two or three times a year and distributed across the US, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Puncture ceased publication so Katherine and Steve could focus on their publishing company, Verse Chorus Press, on which they released largely books about music. ‘Puncture: First 6 Issues’, a book chronicling the start of the magazine, was published in 2019 on Tract Home Press, a sister publishing company of Verse Chorus Press. An anthology of Puncture writing and photography was published by Verse Chorus Press in 2020. It's titled ‘Now is the Time to Invent’.

Content

During the early stages of Puncture's development into a publication it covered mostly the local punk music, book, and art scenes. It featured interviews, show and record reviews, and photographs of the San Francisco punk music scene, focusing on acts such as the Toiling Midgets, Flipper, the Dead Kennedys, Code of Honor, Crucifix, Negativeland, the Sleepers, the Black Athletes, Mark Pauline and the Survival Research Laboratory (SRL), and the Mutants. Punk and alternative musics throughout the country made their way to San Francisco clubs. The Fab Mab (Mabuhay Gardens), On Broadway, Sound of Music, Club Foot, Kabuki, Warfield, the Stone, Galleria, Club Foot, the Elite Club, Target Video, and the Deaf Club, among others, showcased great shows. Puncture covered shows by Pere Ubu, the Meat Puppets, Husker Du, the Minutemen, Savage Republic, Rank and File, the Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Suicidal Tendencies, MDC, and the Butthole Surfers. Record stores stocked more and more new independent music. Puncture developed a close relationship with Rough Trade Records and quickly expressed interest in international scenes. The Fall, Crass, Public Image Limited, the Mekons, the Birthday Party, Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Department, the Virgin Prunes, the Psychedelic Furs, Diamanda Galas, SDK, and much more was covered by Puncture. Puncture explored the roots of production -- studios and record labels like Crass, On-U Sound, Alternative Tentacles, Corpus Christi, Subterranean, Rough Trade, Flying Nun, Hot, Mute, and Virgin.

Contributors

Katherine Spielmann had been a copy editor at Penthouse magazine in NYC and journalist in England. She relocated to San Francisco in 1978, and married Steve Connell in 1989. They moved to Portland in 1989.and started Verse Chorus Press to publish books about music and fiction. Katherine died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. Patricia Stirling moved to San Francisco in 1980 from rural Oregon and San Jose, California, where she had been writing for Ripper magazine. She briefly attended the San Francisco Art Institute and worked as a cook. Katherine and Patty were the main writers. They were joined by writers from Bay Area punk zine Ego – Alan Korn, J Neo Marvin, and Maati Lyon -- KUSF deejay Alan Paxton, and Katherine’s daughter Paula Keyth (she sang for the band Black Humor and came up with the name Puncture for the magazine). As circulation and distribution grew, so did the writing staff. Some of the regular writers at Puncture also included Calvin Johnson, David Nichols, Fred Mills, John Chandler, Pete Moss. As was traditional in the punk scene, many writers were disguised by pseudonyms.