Rag Mag 22

What's up ragmag? Creature here to make a brief announcement that Rag Mag is moving off of the substack platform by the next issue. Don't worry, nothing should change and you should still expect to see an issue every two weeks in your email inbox. Friend of Rag Mag (and birthday boy and drummer extraordinaire) Simon Whitepages shared an extremely fucked up article about substack and it's Nazi problem. https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/substack-extemist-nazi-problem-update

They already are doubling down on private equity funding and pushing unwanted social media like features and AI garbage at us, which already left a bad taste in my mouth, since we started this as a way to try to avoid that trash as much as possible and we joined here because it seemed an easy way to send out a zine. Fuck these fascists and their enablers. We may not be able to change anything by leaving the platform but I'm certainly not going to have any of our efforts help this shit. I'm writing this the weekend after pedophile in chief trump laid out the red carpet for Putin the war criminal while simultaneously trying to end DCs home rule and waging a war against homeless. Fuck ICE. Fuck Trump. Fuck every cowardly so called American defending this shit or sitting on their asses and not fighting back. And fuck substack.

After all that, we have another packed issue for you, the punks and the freaks. Debut of the hot new single by Devil Honey, Splinters by Leela Corman, and Creature’s Double Feature. See ya soon punk.

Whats up Rag Mag? Hope everyone is surviving out there in the insanity. Its Leo season as a lot of you know , so in honor of that I thought I'd release a single by my solo project "DEVIIL HONEY"

I wrote and recorded everything in my hot ass attic apartment. Not any tears , but a lot of sweat went into it. It was mixed by my fellow Electric Street Queen Marty " The Pool Boy " Carlson. Anywho , Hope you enjoy the track and thank you for reading Rag Mag!!! - Coco A-Go-Go

Splinters - Leela Corman

Creature and crew have been hiding out in a cabin in Maine for the past week, so not much punking around has been going on. What has been cool is seeing lots of resist and other protest signs all around small towns. Plus we saw a porcupine, the punkest of rodents because it's so cute you wanna give it a squeeze but you know you'll be poked with some spikes. Also, got some pictures of Creature in the wild. All photos by Creature.

Before we headed up to Maine, I had a pretty great Sunday at the flea market and caught the annual Simon/Coco birthday show at State Park in Cambridge, MA. The flea market continues to turn up cool finds and I was psyched to find some punk paper in the wild when I stumbled onto a super cheap copy of rolling stone featuring coverage of the Sex Pistols in Texas. So sick and the “new wave” coverage shows just how out of touch with punk rolling stone always was.

Coco and Simon’s birthday show started at 8 on a Sunday night and I showed up just in time to catch Lithophones first show, featuring a guy from 90s rip off records band the wongs and Joe tampoff on drums. Sounded a little more polished than the 90s garage punk of their youth, but carrying on the tradition. They ripped.

Next up was Whyte Lipstick who continue to impress. Fun catchy classic leather jacket punk from these ladies and ended with a cover of bite it you scum that had the crowd smiling, haha.

Adult Learners went on after and new bassist Dave got all the attention by continually changing shirts through the set until they all just put on his shirts. Cool, catchy garagey, power poppy punk and always fun to see them live. Since I was leaving for Maine the next day, I cut out right as the surfy Trabants went on but people seemed into it.

Records of the week was hard cuz I don't gotta record player in my car. Stuck with whatever was last put on my old mp3 player. Ended up blasting the first Life Stinks LP which was described by the label at the time as flipper meets the velvet underground and I can't think of a better description. The cover art for this is so good and the songs are blasting out the negative vibes. My My My.

Speaking of Life Stinks, Chad from that band is in a cool newer band called spiral dub that has a solid LP come out a couple years back. Love the track Punch Me in the Face and they made a cool animated music video for it too out of gross old 70s food magazine pics.

Other record of the week is the song Jess by Nudge Squidfish. Part of the Harrisburg, ohio scene that birthed Mike Rep and the Quotas, Nudge released several good records over the years and feeding tube records has released some compilations of his early stuff. This song was on a 7” compilation called the Harrisburg players volume 1 and was part of the ill fated Columbus discount records singles club that released some cool records even if I got ripped off on a couple never being delivered. Worth it for this song alone.

Soul song of the week is the Northern Soul hit hey girl don't bother me by the tams, named after the hats they all wore on stage. So goofy, but I love this song and this video of them later in their career in red leather outfits rules.