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, TV and DS 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, T & G 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, TV and DS 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.
Go ahead and start a riot in your eyes!
“I was inspired by how fearless and together Touch and Go were. They were really wild and extremely funny.”—Henry Rollins
The complete series 1979–1983. Twenty-two issues in one loud, fast volume.
ISBN 978-0979616389
• Trade edition with deluxe durable flex binding 576 stiff full-sized pages
• 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
• Edited by Steve Miller (The Fix)
• Dimensions: 8.5″ x 11.5″ (220mm x 280mm); 3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg)
