[lbo-talk] llHipHop.com interviews Bad Brains about

Jim Straub rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com
Sun Aug 5 18:40:23 PDT 2007



> left. And Maximum Rock & Roll, specifically under Tim
> Yohannon, was a big help, trashing right-wing bands,
> promoting vigorously left ones, all of which the
> mainstream media ignored anyway.

Tim Yohannon really doesn't get enough posthumous praise. I remember around the time I was first getting into the stuff there were a lot of controversies relating to conflicts between him and everyone else, but, in retrospect, he really was like a cultural revolution in us punk. The workaholic example he set, working loading crates all day, then on top of that working those sixty hour weeks doing all kinds of random shit on MRR, pushing politics and gutbucket rock aesthetic at every turn, being openly abrasive but also down to earth and straightforward... the only time I ever met him was when I went to some workshop about DIY publishing at gilman street in 1995, and he was the token old bastard in the room, pushing the question of having unionized printshops do big zines' printing onto the agenda. I remember thinking, 'whose comme uncle is that, why's he here?'. What a guy. He was also like the yellow pages of punk. A number of times, before the internet was widely used, I remember flailing about for the phone number of address of some distributor or label or infoshop, and failing to find it, I'd just call the maximum office. He'd inevitably pick up, you'd just ask for the number, and he'd read it off to you no matter what.

Folks say sometimes that he was a real dick, but, most folks who get shit done get regarded that way.



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