Razorcake’s 20 years of punk, compassion, and perfect oatmeal
Publisher Todd Taylor celebrates two decades of his seminal music zine
Every punk has an origin story—some moment from youth that sowed the seeds of disillusionment. Unfortunately, Razorcake zine co-founder and publisher Todd Taylor’s is more tragic than most.
“When I was young, I was in a terrible accident. A friend who was driving was killed, and I basically got ejected out of a car. I ended up getting over 300 stitches in my head. We were coming back from a Boy Scout camp where I was counselor-in-training, and the guy who was driving was a counselor. And my parents were saying, ‘He wasn’t supposed to be driving. The Boy Scouts were supposed to provide transportation back. We want to have some sort of dialogue to see if we can get some compensation for all our medical bills, because this isn't part of the contract.’ And the Boy Scouts basically told my parents to go fuck themselves.”
The Boy Scout’s dismissal of responsibility shook Taylor, who’d been raised on the ideals that the Scouts espoused like honor, responsibility and accountability. So punk music became an outlet where Taylor could focus his anger.
“The first time I heard punk, I really, really liked it because it was angry, and it spoke to me in a very direct way,” Taylor says. “I still suffer from chronic pain from that accident.
In January, Taylor’s seminal punk zine Razorcake celebrated its 20th anniversary, and it’s still succeeding on the independent, anti-corporate ideals on which it was built. In an industry hardly known for integrity, Razorcake has thrived without corporate or major label ad money, nor has it become a digital content-churning trend-chaser, which can’t be said about most independent publications.
A large part of Razorcake’s success can be attributed to Taylor's lifelong adherence to punk. It also should be said that he's the maker of some of the [Agent Cooper voice] best damn oatmeal I’ve ever had.
“I've spent years and years perfecting that oatmeal,” Taylor says when I bring it up.
It was a few years ago when I had this revelatory oatmeal. After a literary reading for Black Candies—a horror anthology I published—Taylor let me crash at his house, along with contributor (but otherwise a nobody) Jim Ruland, and co-editor Julia Dixon Evans. I fell asleep on a mattress in Razorcake’s back office, surrounded by stacks of CDs from bands I’d never heard of before. It had been raining that night, but the office was incredibly warm, and I just remember thinking it was the coziest I’ve been in some time.
Then in the morning, Taylor fed us his oatmeal.
And it’s not like I’m an obsessive oatmeal freak (and I’ve definitely not been thinking about it every day for the past three years [nervous laughter]) but Taylor’s oatmeal-perfection seems emblematic of the work he’s put into Razorcake: persistent refinement with a nourishing outcome.
During its run, Razorcake has been an indelible resource for outsider art. Its pages are flush with longform essays, record reviews, and interviews with transgressive musicians, activists, intellectuals and artists. It’s the type of thing I’d read in high school—staying up late, flipping through the newsprint while the cool kids partied.
And although I didn’t have Razorcake back then (in SLC, we had SLUG, which rules), I have no doubt that reading it these days is not much different than when it started. As I slip into the unflattering phase of punk rock middle age, Razorcake is a tether to my high school years of feeling quietly angry and anti everything.
Before starting Razorcake, Taylorspent a few traumatic years editing another famous LA punk zine, Flipside, where his day-to-day was spent dealing with surly writers, bullying advertisers and an awful owner.
“It was a nightmare. I still have a little bit of PTSD,” Taylor says. “Just terrible fucking people.”
Taylor’s stint at Flipside came to a screeching halt when the paper went bankrupt after a legal battle with everyone’s favorite Scientologist, Beck, whose first album Stereopathetic Soulmanure was pressed by the magazine’s record label, Flipside Records.
“We were looking at a pretty big deficit, because on paper, we sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of Beck's first record, but we never got paid for it,” Taylor says. “We had to sue the distributor. And then Beck’s lawyers are suing us for stuff that we never got money for. So Al [Flipside’s owner] took it very poorly, and changed the locks on me. Then I kind of had to figure out what to do with my life pretty quickly.”
Enlisting the help of writer Sean Carswell, Taylor made a conscious decision to build Razorcake on the qualities he admired from Flipside, while jettisoning the more toxic elements.
“Flipside had a tiered policy, in that it would deal with major labels. So they pay more and they would still be included in advertising,” Taylor says. “I just didn't like dealing with the major labels on a financial level, because they try to bully you into doing full interviews with bands.”
“I also thought there were plenty of bands out there that weren't getting covered—who don't have publicists or managers—but are worth interviewing and exploring and having talks with. That's what I really wanted to do.”
Now, with the help of 150 volunteers and contributors including Jim Ruland (who’s been writing for Razorcake since its inception) and Worriers singer Lauren Denitzio (who also writes a very good Substack and you should subscribe), Razorcake has flourished into the nation’s only 501 (c) (3) nonprofit music magazine.
While the ideals and ethos were—and still are—impressive, let’s not forget that Razorcake is a punk zine, and a particularly rowdy one at that. For the first few years, it was completely operated from a second floor apartment, which saw its share of punk rowdiness.
“We had three bands stay over one night. I remember going to bed around four, and telling everybody to be as quiet as possible,” Taylor says. “And then waking up, going outside and there was the singer of the band Billy Reese Peters, shirtless, drinking a beer, high-fiving kids going to school.”
The magazine has given Taylor the opportunity to become close to some legendary icons, including Alice Bag (“She’s somebody who's truly inspiring because she's from the first wave, and she's still kicking ass”) and Ian MacKaye (ever heard of him??).
“He is super super funny,” Taylor says of MacKaye. “I got to visit him with my wife, Jennifer, and Jennifer said, ‘Well, why are there a couple of names written shakily on your door?” And he was like, ‘We were really bored, so we just shoved a marker in our butts and tried to spell our names.’” Taylor says, laughing. “That was in the ‘80s and they were still on the door.”
When asked if he’s learned anything over Razorcake’s run, Taylor brings it back to the basic elements of punk which—I believe—ultimately attracts everyone to the genre in the first place: inclusivity and compassion.
“I felt completely disconnected from my fsurroundings as a kid. I fortunately had a great, loving family, but I felt like an alien. And I still do. I think I'm a deeply weird guy that thinks of things in very non-traditional ways,” Taylor says. “And getting to articulate that through long-term conversations, opening doors with the magazine and keeping those doors open, and inviting people to tell their stories as much as possible—it’s made me more compassionate.”
Go get a subscription to Razorcake. Only $15 for a year to support good people. Be a punk, support punks.
THE WEEKLY GOODS
Listen to this
It’s been a long while since I’ve been as engrossed with a podcast as I have with American Coyote. The 10-part series tells the story of Elden Kidd, an ex-Mormon gringo who smuggled hundreds of people from Mexico into the U.S. during the ‘90s. Due to his massive physical size and the creative ways he fooled border officials, Kidd became the stuff of legend. While Kidd’s story is incredible, the podcast does a good job of not aggrandizing him (I feel like this could’ve easily turned into a Blind Side/white savior story [it’s not]). Plus, my former colleague and excellent U-T reporter Andrea Lopez-Villafaña narrates the whole thing, and she’s just a delight to listen to.
Read this
So I guess Consortium Holdings is just going to own all of North Park, now? A few months ago, the hip hospitality company bought North Park’s beloved music venue Bar Pink, and it looks now like they own The Lafayette Hotel. I mean, I think the consensus is like, “Look, Consortium. You do a lot of cool stuff, but listen: you need to chill the fuck out.” I know there’s not much Consortium can do to make The Lafayette any more hipster-elitist than it already is, but it might be cool if not every iconic San Diego landmark was owned by one company. I dunno. Just spitballin’ here.
Watch this
I forget if I’ve mentioned this before, but every Monday night, I join my good friends Ryen Schlegel and Clayton Scrivner on their Youtube show/podcast, Polyester Blend—a mix of comedy, music, and hyper-local Utah news. So, you know, very appealing to San Diegans! Anyway, over the past 29 weeks, Clayton and I have been going head-to-head in quizzes about Utah counties. To no one’s surprise, Clayton—who’s worked for Salt Lake City and, um, also lives in Utah—has been kicking my ass. But on Monday night, I won the whole enchilada with a stupid guess and some hail-Mary luck. You can watch it below (start at around 2:29:00 to see Schlegel’s amazing performance for my triumphant win). And feel free to tune in on Monday nights.
Celebrate this
Rush Limbaugh died today. They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but you can if it’s a guy who destroyed countless minds with his bigotted talk show and hateful rhetoric. Someone should melt down his Medal of Freedom and turn it into a POG slammer or something.
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Julia Dixon Evans edited this post. Thanks, Julia. Go follow her on Twitter.
On second thought, no like
Me too, especially for the pog slammer part!