maniax

there's an interview with Fresno's the maniax in the next issue of mrr...

the maniax were the pre-think tank band... they had a song on mrr's "not so quiet on the western front comp" and then morphed in to think tank without releasing anything else. they played one show..at San Francisco's "The Mab" w/ Cap. Punishment and some other Fresno bands. They also were invited to tour Germany w/ Black Flag and Flipper but couldn't because they were in Junior High school!

They just released a 20+ song "lost tapes" anthology that has some pretty killer material on it... you can check it out here

or find them on myspace here

you can also check out think tank here

here's a preview/excerpt from the interview... (should be on newstands in the next couple weeks... it's in the issue after the punks in film issue)

MRR: What was “Blitz fanzine?”

Gregg: Blitz was a little Xeroxed ‘zine created by Gary Shuster (guitarist in the original Think Tank line-up) and me in the early ‘80s. It was less focused on the punk music scene than featuring essays on politics and culture and art/media collages, reviews, etc. We soon got distribution through Rough Trade and somehow the ‘zine went around the world even though we were literally making copies of it at Gary’s Dad’s hospital copy machine. You know, we actually met the Clash up close & personal because of Blitz: back in 1984 during the “Cut the Crap” tour when Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon were still touring as the Clash (without Mick Jones), they came to Fresno and played the Warner Palace downtown. Needless to say, we were surprised and amazed that while we were waiting in line to get in, Clash road manager Kosmo Vinyl came up to us and asked us, “Hey, aren’t you the guys who put out Blitz? Joe is a big fan, and he wants to meet you…” To this day, I still don’t know how they recognized us, but they took us backstage and suddenly we were hanging out having a beer with Joe, while Paul was grooving with his boombox blasting dub. We couldn’t believe that Joe Strummer liked our little ‘zine, much less wanted to meet us. Actually, one of our Maniax songs, “Wanna Be English,” is an ode to wanting to be “just like Joe.” Too bad he’s gone now. RIP Joe.