[VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS]. No Mag[azine] issues 3-14 [of 14 published]. Los Angeles: Bruce Kalberg / Bruce Kalberg and Frank Gagani, 1979-1985.



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'IT WAS REAL SENSATIONALISTIC, AND WE MADE IT LOOK REAL, IT WASN'T'


[VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS].
No Mag[azine] issues 3-14 [of 14 published].
Los Angeles: Bruce Kalberg / Bruce Kalberg and Frank Gagani, 1979-1985.

12 vols. Tabloid, pp.33, [3]; [44]; [36]; [36]; [36]; [44]; [52]; [40]; [44]; [44]; [52]; [68]. Newsprint, illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs, illustrations, and local adverts, partially printed in colour. Issue 3 with silkscreened cover, the rest in illustrated saddle-stapled wrappers; paper toned, occasional nicks and small creases and chipping. Flexi-disc bound in to issues [5] and [6] as issued. A well preserved set.

First editions. Bruce Kalberg started No Magazine in 1978 with Michael Gira, a friend and fellow student at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Enthused by Slash and Search & Destroy, their initial intention was to try to invert as many of the clichés expected by readers of a magazine as they could. Gira left after the first few issues and moved to New York City in 1979 where he later formed noise-rock band Swans. This, coupled with the demise of Slash, led to the focus of No Mag[azine] becoming increasingly music oriented, though it continued to mix in artwork, fashion, LA culture, and gross imagery.

Bands featured include: Mau Mau's, Flipper, Black Flag, Chris Desjardins, X, the Go-Go's, Fear, Circle Jerks, the Germs, Minutemen, Adolescents, Phranc Talk, Social Distortion, T.S.O.L, The Johanna Went Band, Henry Rollins, Saccharine Trust, the Vandals, and Perry Farell. Contributing artists and photographers included Fred Tomaselli and Raymond Pettibon, Jules Bates, Dave Arnoff, Frank Gargani, Gary Leonard, and Kalberg himself. Pettibon (credited Pettibone) contributed several full-page drawings to different issues, including one of of Charles Manson for the cover of issue [7].

In a 1987 interview with Ruben Blue, publisher of Scratch and LA Rocks, Kalberg describes No Mag as like Slash but worse, 'we copied this Mexican kind of like crime report magazine, we put all this violence in there but it wasn't there. We made it up... It was real sensationalistic, and we made it look real, it wasn't' (LA Rocks October 2-15, 1987 p.24).

The present copies were previously in the collection of Ewa Wojciak, Kalberg's girlfriend at the time, who had worked on the magazine with him.

Scarce, OCLC locates four records: A complete set in the Smitsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; an incomplete set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art LIbrary, New York; 4 issues in the University of California, Los Angeles; 3 issues in the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

 

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