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 Gorsky
Press, the punk-minded publisher behind Razorcake magazine and
Rich Mackin’s corporate-prank books, celebrates their star attraction
with an all-Todd Taylor retrospective. “Born to Rock” (named,
for one thing, after the tattoo Taylor’s got stretched across his
belly) is a collection of Todd’s greatest hits, reprinted from Flipside
and Razorcake magazines, as well as a selection of new essays written
specifically for the book.
At times, Taylor is a crackling rock writer, and certainly one of the best
punk interviewers going (Lord knows, it’s an unenviable task), but he has
always struck me as a ‘behind the scenes’ kinda cat, certainly not a flashy,
rampaging ego-star like many rock journo-types (like me, f’r instance), so,
much more than the already-read-‘em interview reprints, the really
interesting part o’ “Born to Rock” is the extended intro segment,
wherein Taylor describes his struggle and ascent from scruffy suburban punk
kid to, uh, grown urban punk with his own magazine.
Probably more than his Razorcake tenure, Taylor is widely known as bein’
Todd-from-Flipside. Flipside magazine was the LA-based bible of punk
rock for many years, since the late 70’s til just a few years ago, and it is
interesting to read how he rose from eager-beaver mailroom dude there to
editor-in-chief Al Flipside’s main man. Even more interesting is
Flipside’s eventual shitslide into financial oblivion, and Al’s creeping
paranoia as his ship sank. Todd suddenly found himself literally shut out of
the operation, and the whole sordid story is a compelling microcosm of
low-level corporate freakout. Luckily for punk rock, Todd rebounded from the
shake-up by starting Razorcake magazine, which resembles Flipside in many
ways, and even employs some of FS’s writers. It’s a rollicking journey
through zine-dom, with a few side-steps for college (Taylor’s got a Master’s
degree!) and car crashes (he’s got a split-open head!).
That’s just the first 30 pages, tho. The rest of the book is a Todd Taylor
‘best of’, collecting interviews and essays from Flipside and Razorcake. The
interviews are mostly with punk bands – Dillinger 4, NOFX,
Pennywise, Smogtown, Kid Dynamite, among others- as well
as punk-in-other-way types, like hard-boiled crime-fiction writer Andrew
Vachss and controversial splatterporn cartoonist/serial killer suspect
Mike Diana. Regardless of the subject, however, Taylor’s interviews
are consistently witty, informative, and entertaining. There is an essay
towards the back of the book where Todd explains his interviewing technique
(basically, he does a lotta research), but I’m still in awe of the cat’s
flair for leading conversation into really ODD places. Sex gets
brought up a lot, and since we are talking mostly about pasty punk rockers,
‘sex’ means lotsa jerking off, in shoes and other strange places. L Ron
Hubbard, disco, childhood pets, bad beer, bad punk rock, bad politics-
it all gets covered in these breezy, flowing, anything-goes Q&A’s, and it’s
all pretty fun to read.
Of course, the question remains, do you really wanna dive into sometimes
hopelessly obscure conversations with punk bands that only a handful
(assuming a few thousand is a handful in the global scheme) of people even
like? Well, like I said, these interviews are less about the folks being
queried as they are about the process of communication, the rapid-fire give
and take of creative people brain-storming and free associating, and that’s
fun even in you HATE indie-punk (which I do, pretty much), so I
figure ya really can’t lose with this one. Unless, of course, you’ve been
reading Razorcake all this time, in which case yr paying $14 bucks for a big
‘ol Razorcake, only without the bunny drummer, which seems kinda steep. But
that’s obviously a minor contingence. Mostly, it’s a blast, and Taylor comes
away looking like a humble, talented and witty fella, which I’m sure he is,
even if he does like some seriously awful punk rock bands.
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