Slash Magazine Complete Run 1977–1981

The rarely complete archive of the most consequential punk publication the West Coast produced.

Comprising Volume 1, Numbers 1–12; Volume 2, Numbers 1–11; Volume 3, Numbers 1–5; the unnumbered First Anniversary Issue; both September 1981 issues, including the elusive final issue inserted as a bonus into the September 1981 edition of NY Rocker; and an original Slash window-shop decal from the magazine's own archives.

Approximately three-quarters of this run came directly from the Slash archives, never circulated; the remaining quarter assembled piece by piece over years. From its first issue in 1977 — printed on newsprint, with Dave Vanian of The Damned on the cover — Slash gave American punk what Sniffin' Glue gave Britain: a voice, a vocabulary and a permanent record. Founded by Steve Samiof and Melanie Nissen, and published out of a Los Angeles loft that shared a building with the future Slash Records, the magazine ran to twenty-nine issues. Samiof's design and Nissen's photography set a standard the imitators never reached. Claude "Kickboy Face" Bessy's editorial was famously uncompromising — happy to slate the bands its own advertisers were promoting. Jeffrey Lee Pierce wrote here before The Gun Club existed; Gary Panter drew his Jimbo strip here before RAW; Ed Colver, David Arnoff, Frank Gargani and Ann Summa documented every name that mattered, in real time.