I bought my first-ever copy of SLASH magazine last week – it’s the one I posted a few scans from already, and the one you see pictured here, from early 1980.

I thought the magazine was going to be compiled in a book one day by some enterprising young moneymaker – lord knows they’d get a few buyers. Erudite, opinionated and on the scene of Los Angeles punk rock ‘77-’80 as it was happening, it’s a huge cut above most other fanzines of its day or any other. I got to read my punker cousin’s copies a couple of decades ago, and figured I’d wait for that book to finally get made, just like the two books of SEARCH & DESTROY fanzines were – which was the (inferior) San Francisco counterpart to SLASH.

Eventually I started bidding for copies of Slash on eBay, without winning, and eventually found other routes to procuring this copy – with five more on the way soon. If I can get over my nervousness about creasing, spindling, folding and mutilating the magazine, look forward to more scans from these magazines here in the near future.