rr - MRR was an excellent resource both nationall & internationally at different periods. From the beginning it was the first national zine to link local scenes with scene reports. Flipside had scene reports but London & NYC. I tried to write a scene report of Nor Cal for them and they rejected it saying they dont care about Nor Cal. Fine. But MRR cared about Ohio, Idaho, Indiana, Virginia, etc. Tim, Jeff, Jello, Ruth et al also actively sought out bands nationwide to interview & review. All you have to do is look at the early issues to see that. Sure the early issues arent as good as the early mid international ones but that is because the zine was in its infancy. I had penpals across the US because of MRR scene reports & ads in the back and got many a record from mail order thanks to MRR. As it grew as a zine it became international and did the same thing it did nationally, it brought in voices from other regions. It also became more political and alienated many that were signer-ons on the early less political issues (Tesco, John Crawford, etc). It had the unfortunate roll of spreading gilman influence pop punk to the masses inthe late 80s but during the 90s it was the clearing house for the garage punk revival, though no one except denkinger seems to understand that.
One more thing in regards to MRR: it was the first American punk zine to get effective national distribution. while other zines, most notably flipside, did find their was cross country MRR pretty much lead the way. this was because of ruth schwatrz's connections with Tower records and a guy named Doug Biggert who headed up their magazine division. Before the first issue came out MRR had lined up national distribution through Tower and their distro arm, Bayside, which put MRR in hundreds of Towers and mom & pop stores. In this sense MRR pioneered zine distribution.
Please note all of what I am refering to in regards to MRR has nothing to do with politics. Politically I think they had an influence but more in the sense of puching and encouraging DIY economics than any one issue. Certainly that is where the influence was felt strongest. Also never mentioned is that MRR provided seed money for a lot of projects: Gilman, Blacklist mail order, Epicenter, which would have been impossible without MRR funding. Add to that that at the end of the year, at least during Tim's days' whatever profit the zine made would get sent back to advertisers and given to people doing labels and zines as a sort of grant. This was always on the hush hush because Tim didnt want to draw attention it. One last thing about MRR. It wasnt until the mid to late 80s that MRR was dominated by Tim. Before that it was Jello, Jeff Bale, Ruth Scwartz, Ray Farrell, Tim and a couple other people. Jello dropped out first. But even into the early 90s Bale had a signficant influence (as did Martin Sprouse). In any case, however perceived MRR's poltics were never only one voice, at least not until Jackie Pritchard got a hold of it (and was run out).
sgg - as far as 60s garage punk being suburb and, yes, it was but it was also urban. this is more of an arguement over city/urban planning & land use than anything else. suburbs then werent the autonomous areas that they were post vietnam, when suburbs surplanted cities as centers of population. during the 60s burbs were still in their infancy and often just blocks away from the urban core, not what we think of as burbs now. so perhaps i should amend it to "primarily suburburn" or "dominently suburban".
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