A Sort of Editorial

“Journey into the kaleidoscope of technology. Da Vinci is on the monitor. Dive into Supernovas. Nebulous and mysterious. Chrome fires with laser beams. Fireworks in a rainbow of colours. True and blue, but bred red! Across galaxies of space and eons of eternity – we’re sure getting cooler all the time!”

Welcome to Trash City. On behalf of the citizens of the urban sector. I’d like to show you around. Our itinerary is not for the faint of heart or the weak of soul — hang onto your heads, your stomachs, and any other parts of your body that you wish to…

Right, enough of the pseudo-intellectual hogwash. Hello. Unaccustomed as I am to writing for public consumption, it is up to me to write this damn bit to introduce you to the ‘zine, but not having done this sort of thing before, I’m at a loss for what to say, and have to resort to the two hunks of garbage above. What ARE you supposed to say to people you don’t really know, but who have handed out hard earned money for your ramblings? Aren’t you supposed to say something that will make them think it’s been all worthwhile? That’s the conventional way…

This is NOT a conventional ‘zine though. Inside you will find a lot of text, on a wide variety of subjects, some pictures, a few press clippings, and so on. The one thing that links them all is that I find them at least slightly interesting. Why am I inflicting them on you? Boredom mostly! I am currently tied down in a very boring job (in a stockbrokers — Yawn!) and I needed something to keep me amused. Since starting work, I could feel my individuality slowly ebbing away — this is my fight—back…

However, it’s not JUST me. It’s helped a few of my workmates avoid being mutated into yuppies, and I’d like to inoculate a few more people, so if YOU don’t care about Porsches, Filofaxes, CD players and would rather read the Weekly World News than the Times (if you’ve not heard of the former, don’t worry — you soon will have!), this is for you. Free your mind and your ass will follow!! Get in touch – write me a letter, an article, a story! You’ll be doing me a favour and yourself too [Pretentious, moi?].

[Hey, nearly 2/3rds of the way down the page – isn’t this editing lark easy?] A quick plea. We need contributions for next issue, or you’ll end up getting more of the same. There’s more about this later on, but I’d especially like a few contributions from the fairer sex – you may notice as we go on a certain ‘masculine’ bias in the articles. This is for no better reason than it is a bit difficult to produce anything else with an all—male editorial team!

A few thanks. Steve, Per, everyone at work (even the stockbrokers!), my parents, Doug (subscriber #1), the Holmes Bros, the Scala Cinema, the Virgin Megastore, God (for supporting Arsenal) and anyone else who helped.

Ho hum, ten lines to go. Time for some more of the pseudo-intellectual hogwash I think. See you on the other side for Aphrodite incarnate.
Jim McLennan, the Head Ed.

“All aboard! The journey to Trash City — the start of the third millennium – is about to begin! The countdown is on. The time-bombs are ticking away. Our quartz movements ignite. We’ll soon be going up and down & back and forth in the raddest scenes. Past the pulse beat of new life and new trends, avant—garde, Old Wave, No Wave in a fireworks display of desire”

Contents

TRASH CITY — Issue O
January 1989

‘Trash City’ is a ‘zine devoted to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, exploitation in entertainment, beauty, death, splatter movies, computer games, Inter-rail holidays, UFO’s, general weirdness and anything else the editors see fit to print. The style is best described as ‘conversational’ and ‘informal‘ — the emphasis is very much on the words, since our method of production makes photos, etc almost completely impossible…

It is only available from me, but is basically FREE, at least if things stay as they are at the moment; you only pay the postage (if you bought this from a shop, you’ll have had to pay for it — understandably, shop-keepers aren’t keen to stock things there’s no profit in!). If you want to receive any future issues, the best thing is to send us a few quid in cheques/p.o./cash (made payable to Jim McLennan where appropriate) along with your name and address — we’ll then send you them until your money runs out. We will probably have to start charging for it some time (not more than about 30p/issue , that’ll come off your sub as well.

SPECIAL OFFER — first few people to subscribe will receive a video tape. This will be of some god—awful film and quite possibly of dire quality; we can not accept any responsibility for your sanity. Just say ‘I want my video’ and ‘I am over 18’ when you apply and you stand a chance – the cost of the p&p will be taken off your subscription! Articles, artwork, etc. are also extremely welcome — see elsewhere for more about this.

  • Editor, publisher, general chief of staff :
    Jim McLennan,
    81 Cheyne Way,
    Cove,
    FARNBOROUGH
    Hants. GU14 QP7
  • Texts: Jim McLennan, Per Porter, Steve Welburn
  • Artwork : Frank C. Rhochs

CONTENTS
Not that you’ll find any page numbers of course, but it’ll give you an idea of the order of things…

1. Contents
2. A Sort of Editorial
3. Nastassja Kinski, Sex Goddess
7. A Small Encyclopaedia of Trash
10. Hellbound — Hellraiser 2
12. The Amazing Herschell G. Lewis
14. Black Medicine
16. Trash Pop
17. Controversy Corner
19. Trash Literature
21. The Incredibly Bad Film Show
23. It must be True…
26. C*ns*rsh*p
29. Classic Splatter
31. Nightmares in a Damaged Brain
33. Contributions
34. Future Schlock
—-

The views expressed in this ‘zine, are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher, and may well be an attempt to wind you up.

Cover

Well, we were going to have a nice picture of Miss Kinski and a pillow on the front cover, but then we thought, hell, this is just a freebie prototype, so we’re going to save it for a later issue. This is known as an ‘encouragement to subscribe‘. Of course it might not be much of an encouragement, depending on your sex, sexual preference and moral outlook – it is a nice picture, but then as I’m something of a fan of hers, I might be biased… The alternative was to have some sort of picture related to what you’ll find inside, but how do you link splatter movies, two headed women, censorship, lists, self-defence and Miss Kinski? So we decided not to have anything on the ~cover except for a few words — as you will find a lot more of these inside, it’d be handy if you get used to them now. Oh, while we’re here, the small print : some articles in this ‘zine may not be suitable for children or anyone of a nervous disposition (though you’ll get worse in the course of an average Saturday night’s TV). Enjoy…

Trash City 01

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