Puncture: The First Six Issues

Of all the dynamite magazines to evaporate in the unforgiving current century—and please take a moment of silence for MAD—few had the secret charms of Puncture, a home-baked music magazine that published 47 issues between 1982 and 2000. Puncture chronicled the indie-rock of its day with a snob’s flare, forever tasteful and intelligent. It was the first publication to print features about Sleater-Kinney, Guided By Voices, and Broadcast; it excerpted Infinite Jest and interviewed Yoko Ono; it was a passionate champion of the Mekons, the Go-Betweens, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Throwing Muses.

Puncture Magazine ceased publication in 2000 as its editors, Katherine Spielmann and Steve Connell, turned their attention to their publishing house, Verse Chorus Press. (The fact that The Lowbrow Reader published its first issue the following year is no coincidence—Lowbrow’s editor worked at Puncture in its final years.) Spielmann died in 2016—yet the legacy of Puncture lives on. Next year, Verse Chorus will publish Now Is the Time to Invent, a book anthology featuring writing and photography from the magazine, tracing the growth of indie-rock in real time.

But first up, there is Puncture: The First 6 Issues, available now from Tract Home Publications. For before it was a (scrappy) magazine from Portland, Oregon, Puncture was a (scrappier) zine in San Francisco, covering Bay Area punk of the early ’80s. This book reprints every vibrant page of the first six issues, with a new introduction by Patty Stirling, who founded Puncture with Spielmann, plus a foreword by J. Neo Marvin, a favored byline throughout the magazine’s run. For years, these issues have been difficult to find—even in the Puncture office—and generally priced for big-pocketed collectors. Seize the opportunity to read every word today! Snap up Puncture: The First 6 Issues, at retailers big or small.