TRASH: The Last...um, Lost Fanzine?

TRASH was a fanzine Ken Highland started in 1974 after he graduated from high school and officially killed off Rock On!, his two-year-old zine that he had co-edited with Alan Baase. After slowly evolving into a fairly clean laid-out printed-at-high-school thing, the last issue of Rock On! suddenly changed to a sloppy fuck-all format, with much of the content simply xeroxed page for page from the original manuscripts or letters, without any attempt at layout. The style was adapted when Ken started TRASH in the summer of '74. Except the content became more crude and less centered on record reviews. TRASH always had a few reviews, but they usually felt like leftovers, favors to friends, or attempts to flatter female writers for sexual purposes. The real meat of the zine was crude (mostly sexual) essays, fiction, gossip, slander, and embarrassing letters printed without permission. At least one anonymous sexual confession from TRASH would be pretty much unprintable (and possibly illegal) in 2009. Ken called it a "punkzine," and at the time he meant it! He did five issues in Brockport, New York, and Bloomington, Indiana, all of them "printed" by Solomon Gruberger in Brooklyn, New York, on a crappy xerox machine where he worked. In 1976, after we recorded the first Gizmos EP and Ken headed off to the Marines, Ken handed over the  TRASH name and accumulated material to me, with the understanding that I would assemble a final issue that would be published by Bob Richert of Gulcher. A year later, I had put together a mammoth issue that included all sorts of leftovers from various related projects, Gizmos-related material, and whatever floated in. Bob Richert agreed to put the thing out, and eventually sent out flyers sometime in '78 (yes, another year went by!). A few people did send in their dollars, but eventually received Gulcher Records credit for their trouble (don't blame me!). Yeah, it just never happened. Around 1984/85, I decided to do a zine called Out Of Focus. It would include a few prime items from the never-published TRASH ("3 Ways to Get Pregnant" by Richard Meltzer and an abortive-but-amusing 1976 Patti Smith interview) . . . and I even typeset a bunch of stuff at the porn place where I worked . . . and well, I didn't have any money. Another aborted zine project! I think I made some vague rumblings again in the early 90s about doing something with the material, but now I can't remember--I was dropping "too much" acid and didn't really care about 1970s fanzine projects (good for me!). Well, here it is 2009--and here ya finally got an online version of TRASH as-it-now-exists! The finished zine from 1977/78 that Bob Richert never printed has been dis-assembled as the years rolled by. People asked for photos back, content was recycled, big globs of rubber cement destroyed some pages, etc. It doesn't exist! But here's what's left plus some "related" stuff. I'm not gonna go into great detail about the contents here, but it should be mostly obvious what's original 70s stuff, muddy typeset pages from the 80s, and newly assembled stuff for the web. Just dig it for what it is. Or don't. As always: FTW!

TRASH TRASH TRASH I was thinking about reprinting some of the original stuff from Trash, but the best stuff is either unprintable or embarrassing to somebody. So, here ya go--at least the covers of the five issues that Ken Highland put out in the 1970S.	TRASH #1 (scanned from an original copy of the zine w/ so-so xerox quality). Illustration by Ken Highland.
TRASH #2 (scaned from the original art). Illustration by Chris Nugent.	TRASH #3 (scaned from the original art). Illustration by Chris Nugent.
TRASH #4 (scanned from an original copy of the zine w/ horrible xerox quality). Illustration by Eddie Flowers.	TRASH #5 (scanned from an original copy of the zine w/ pretty bad xerox quality). Illustration by Eddie Flowers.

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TRASH #6

Trash intro - "The Last Lost Fanzine" (here!)

Trash 1 - Roni Hoffman pic of R. Meltzer kissing "Betty" (The Rubber Face)

Trash 2 - original 1978 Table of Contents (for "historical" purposes only)

Trash 3 - "3 Ways to Get Pregnant" by R. Meltzer

Trash 3a - Meltzer's original manuscript for "3 Ways to Get Pregnant"

Trash 4 - "You Keep A-Knockin' But You Can't Cum In" by Krazee Ken Highland

Trash 5 - "Carrying That Weight With The Trashmen" by "Dave Marshcus (as told to Metal Mike Saunders)"

Trash 6 - 1977 letter from Bruce Cole of The Screamin' Mee-Mees

Trash 7 - Patti Smith interview 1976

Trash 8 - "Private Lives of the Critix" by Mitch Kapor

Trash  9 - letters from Lester Bangs

Trash 10 - 1978 Gulcher-circulated flyer for the never-published Trash #6