Steve Kiviat Interviewed by John Davis December 21, 2017 College Park, MD
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Steve Kiviat Interviewed by John Davis December 21, 2017 College Park, MD. 0:00:00 to 1:12:30 ________________________________________________________________________ 0:00:00 Davis: Today is December 21st, 2017. My name is John Davis. I’m the performing arts metadata archivist at the University of Maryland. I’m speaking with Steve Kiviat, who was co-editor and ultimately editor of Thrillseeker. We're going to talk about Thrillseeker and fanzines and D.C. punk. So, I suppose starting at the beginning, do you just want to tell me what got you into punk rock in the first place, and then sort of how you worked your way into the D.C. punk scene, and what got you involved here? Kiviat: Sure. I guess just my rapid growing interest in music, then in high school, in the ‘70s, and sort of going from suddenly becoming, I don’t know, a Beatles fanatic, to then as well starting to go look at the Village Voice at the local Bowie, Maryland public library. And then reading certain other things in, I don’t know, Creem magazine or seeing other things here and there, and going into our Bruce Springsteen phase. And then also discovering, that existed then at the time, which was WGTB radio, that—where it is now C-SPAN Radio. And before that, at some point, UDC later took it over. But the Georgetown University hosted this—had an FM station there—90.1, I guess, FM. So they had all kinds of programming. Sometimes just there were prog rock and ambient music. And just all these things were sort of eye-opening to me. And they had a few shows that were starting to play punk. And another show. Then Steve Lorber’s show that played like a mixture of sort of garage and some punk and things. And so that was sort of the beginning, and then we would sometimes actually then drive out here to College Park, even, and go to the Record & Tape Exchange, I believe it was, and look for records there. Starting to then get interested in seeing bands and seeing local bands. Seeing Razz and eventually Razz and then the Slickee Boys. And soon sort of hearing about the Georgetown punk bands and things. So then enter University of Maryland in Fall ’79, and got involved with the radio station there. And then at the time, the people that were running the FM station there were trying to mostly use it as a sort of training ground for people who wanted to be like commercial, DC101-type DJs. 0:03:12 A handful of us then just ended up at first just getting slots on like their carrier current dining hall station. And then eventually, a number of us got involved with the FM station, and probably then by my sophomore year, soon, I think we kind of took over that FM station. And some of the people that had wanted to use it as a just sort of training ground sort of lost out to us. And while there was still organized news and sports programs, I don’t know, we had a ceremonial like ripping up of the program cards that they used to have, that required you to play certain songs every hour and things. And so the radio station then became this additional sort of mind- opening thing, in addition to reading New York Rocker at the time, and Trouser Press, and the publications then. And looking here I guess at—then the University of Maryland Library carrying—I think it carried Melody Maker, but not New Music Express. Those were the two big British papers at the time. Or maybe they even carried them both. It’s hard to remember. But sometimes going and looking at that, when we're supposed to be studying or whatever. [laugh] And then going to see shows. And then there were the—soon seeing local fanzines. Mike Heath’s Vintage Violence and Xyra Harper’s Capitol Crisis, I think, were two things that we were really interested in. And I think though then by ’82, those were kind of like folded or dead or quiet at some point or something. Then we're starting to go to shows, and I missed—though I know Tony Lombardi and my brother went to one of those big really early Wilson Center 14-bands shows with S.O.A. and everybody. And I know I had missed that one, but went to some other subsequent one. We sort of were coming right on the end of the Madam’s Organ era that I think I remember going to some little like closing sort of event or something there. 0:06:01 So Tony and I then—I don’t know, somehow we decided that we wanted to—I think I had also—I’m trying to think whether it was at the same time—I was sending some contributions to an Olympia, Washington sort of zine thing called OP that each letter—each issue had like a theme letter. 2 Calvin Johnson from Beat Happening had family in this area, had ties. And so we therefore had met Calvin, and I think he maybe came by the radio—and we were starting to have some bands come by the Maryland station. So we decided, “Hey, why not like do our own—let’s do a zine.” And so, yeah. So Tony and I sort of had the idea, and we soon started just reaching out to some of the people mostly close to us that we knew, sort of based out of going to Maryland or working at the radio station. But we were, when we could, going into D.C. And I don’t know if I’m rambling here but... Davis: No. That’s why you're here. [laugh] Kiviat: So our first issue therefore came out in September of ’82, but I guess right before then, that summer, two people who had DJ’d at the radio station and who had gotten involved then with the zine— Elliot Klayman and Sue German—had both sort of gone out to Los Angeles that summer. And I guess because we had the idea of let’s put this together, they ended up I think doing some interviews out there, and seeing L.A. bands and stuff. So that our first issue then, we suddenly had Black Flag and then Dead Kennedys and X and Flesh Eaters and... Davis: Fear. Kiviat: And Fear. Davis: It has this pretty strong West Coast bent to that first issue. Kiviat: Right. And so that was in part because they had just been out there. But we then consciously put—and we knew—because occasionally Tom Lyle and Mitch Parker from Government Issue both would fill in on the radio station. And then Marc Alberstadt was going here and then we knew Marc’s older brother. And then we were fans of Government Issue. 0:09:00 So they had just done then a tour and had also—we then end up running—I don’t know, I love the picture we then were able to put I think in that first issue, of John on a cable car in San Francisco in his loud psychedelic whatever clothing. Yeah. So then in putting together the first issue, and then in part as well inspired by that trip to L.A.—somehow I saw or someone saw like an L.A. Weekly article about—and Jeffrey Lee Pierce of The Gun Club was talking about them playing somewhere, and he sort of was like, “Yeah, our friends or whoever were there, and then there were a bunch of thrill seekers there as well.” In this sort of like sneering sort of way, at least is how we read it. 3 And we, to be honest, we sort of felt in a way that we were those kind of like not cool enough kids, because we weren’t—we were going to University of Maryland. We weren’t high school age or whatever, and hanging out in Georgetown with some of that original—that core group of hardcore Dischord folks. And we weren’t living—then it seemed like there was most other—a bigger group—people that were in Bethesda. And while some of them we met coming to University of Maryland—and Sharon Cheslow then was coming to Maryland and stuff—I mean, Tony and I and my brother was involved—we were therefore out in Bowie and not sort of part of either—or not going to HB Woodlawn in Arlington, that were sort of the kind of core areas or whatever. So, in some ways therefore, that’s what we sort of interpreted— therefore decided like, OK, we’re these sort of—we're not Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s cool whatever buddies from the Masque club or whatever. We're the thrill seekers from wherever. Davis: The outsiders amongst the outsiders. Kiviat: Right. Among the outsiders. Yeah, yeah. Davis: And so at the University of Maryland at that time, you mentioned Sharon Cheslow. Kiviat: Right. Davis: And who were some of the other people that were active with you in terms of going to shows or introducing you to music? Kiviat: Yeah. Now Sharon, because she had worked at Yesterday and Today, and had lived out there, we sort of met her here, and when she was on the radio station. She kind of consciously more than we did was able to sort of like go off—go back into the city and do things and stuff like that.