A few weeks back I received a Facebook message from Jeff at UHF Records in Royal Oak. He said he came into a collection of photos, papers, and other ephemera that I might be interested in for the archive.

Sure enough, he was right!

Jeff has bought a box of materials that belong to the former photo editor for Street Life – the magazine that was an offshoot of White Noise and Spooee!. As I discussed in the Orbit book, Street Life was a short-lived publication that according to former staffers, never had the support it needed to maintain a regular publication schedule. The magazine started around 1980 with random issues found as late as 1983. How many issues? I’m still not sure. If anyone knows, let me know.

Sadly, the flood had destroyed so much of this photographer’s materials. But Jeff was able to salvage a copy paper box full of letters, drafts of stories, a few issues of Spooee! and Street Life as well as contact sheets with attached negatives for many local bands of the Bookie’s era included Cinecyde, Destroy All Monsters, The Reruns, The Mutants, The Pigs, The 27, The Algebra Mothers, The Romantics, and national acts like The Ramones and Wazmo Nariz.

Due to the amount of material, I will not be able to process it all at this time but here’s what Jeff and I am working on doing. We discussed getting the materials into the hands of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. The Bentley currently houses all the work I have been doing on this site, the collections of Paul Zimmerman/Jerry Vile’s magazines (White Noise, Fun, and Orbit), and other materials related to the Bookie’s punk rock era. If that all comes together, we expect Jeff’s materials will become part of the larger collection of Detroit rock history housed at the Bentley.

If you haven’t checked out what they have, take a look and please considering giving a tax-deductible gift to the archive to help them with their efforts of saving history.

As for the website, I found a few photos I felt I needed to add due to their historical value from the box of Jeff’s materials. I have added photos of the radio protests coordinated with the help of Gary Reichel of Cinecyde. The protests on WABX and WWWW were due to the fact that both of these rock stations were not open to “new music” (aka punk rock or new wave) as well as local bands seeking to get their records on the air. You can see the protest photos here: http://detroitpunkarchive.com/media/radio-protests/

I have also added a great photo of Lili Karwowski and her son, Art Lyzak of The Mutants behind the bar of her namesake legendary Hamtramck club. You can find that on the Lili’s venue page.

Hope 2023 is treating you well!

CHEERS – Rob St. Mary

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2 thoughts on “UPDATE: MARCH 2nd, 2023

  1. As it turns out Jeff is my grand daughter’s boyfriend’s father. A nice guy and is super knowledgeable about almost everything related to music and the historical artifacts associated with the music scene and especially anything Detroit related. His store UHF Records is amazing. I encourage anyone to check it out. Yes, this is a shameless plug:)

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