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Editor:
Eric
Barth - Dave James
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I
can only speak about my experience working on Negative
Print, since I was not the founder.
NP was started by Dave James and Eric Barth, who
along with Eric's brother had a rehearsing band
called Suburban Decay.
Around 1984 they had a party at Eric's parents in
Strongsville, where Spike in Vain, Outerwear, and
Suburban Decay played. (SiV and Outerwear both appear
on the New Hope compilation). This is when they
asked me if I would write for the zine, which was
at issue 6 at the time. It was a chance for me to
start photographing bands for which I had no real
rationale; at least I could say I was doing it for
a zine.
This was around the time of the Lakefront and the
Pop Shop as the main venues for underground music.
("Underground music" was a good broad title at the
time, because there was a lot of experimentation
going on in the Cle scene. It wasn't limited to
punk music). I eventually filled three large photo
albums in this time period; the last issue of NP
was around August of 1986 I think. I remember it
came out the night Black Flag played the Cleveland
Public Theater because there were trampled copies
on the floor after the show.
NP was printed and assembled at the Kinko's adjacent
to Cleveland State, and without the benefactorship
of both Susan Sweeney and Carol Spiros, who worked
there, NP would not have made it as far as it did.
(I suppose most zines have their stories of how
they got printed for less than full retail price!)
I have pictures of Eric and Dave gluing the markup
together; they would type everything on a typewriter,
cut out some artwork from wherever, and bring it
down to Kinko's in manilla folders and paste my
photos into the issue itself (which almost always
came out solid black. Photocopiers then were very
poor at turning color photos into black and white).
I recall interviewing a lot of bands for NP: Pink
Holes, Husker Du, 45 Grave, Jello Biafra (though
I don't recall if that was ever printed), Gun Club,
and a ton of local bands.
What came to be a longstanding criticism of NP was
that Dave and Eric almost never went to local shows,
whereas I was a total junkie and went to every show
I could. Some people in the scene, in particular
Steve Daycek and Nora Jones, who booked the Lakefront,
couldn't understand how Dave and Eric could write
editorial criticisms of a music scene which they
did not participate in. I suppose it was fair criticism,
but in defense Dave did play in Death of Samantha,
and NP was the main force in putting out the compilation
"They Pelted Us with Rocks and Garbage," on the
St. Valentine's Records label. This was NP's lasting
contribution I suppose. WCSB had some involvement
in the LP as well, and I think someone else put
in extra money but I don't know anything more since
I wasn't involved with the planning. Actually the
comp was originally going to be a flexidisc insert
but I think Chris Andrews encouraged them to think
bigger and put out an LP.
I don't remember anymore the exact time of death
of NP. After the last issue they must have just
decided it was time to call it quits. I think both
Dave and Eric had finished high school; Eric went
to Ohio State, and maybe that's the point where
NP stopped publishing. I haven't seen either of
them in years; Eric played in Gaunt later on, a
Columbus band whose singer recently and tragically
passed away. (Steve
Wainstead) |
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