BH ZINE COLLECTION OUT NOW!

Woah, it looks like I forgot to update this website for two years, giving the illusion that this project has been DEAD. Not only has it not been dead, with about ten zines and mixtapes made and distributed since, but all of that has been collected into the form of a 300 page book -- which is now for sale to you! 

More about the book below, but this collects all the original print essays, podcast scripts, rambling zines and some unpublished notes and reviews from the BARELY HUMAN project. The first edition is almost sold out, but I'll re-print soon, and will endeavour to grow the fuck up and keep this in print going forward. Get a copy here or email max@barelyhuman.info to arrange wholesale... I'm also looking for people to print and distribute overseas to save customers on postage, so hit me up if you're down to clown. 

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Barely Human: Dispatches From An Underground Music Anti-History (2015-2024)

BARELY HUMAN is an underground music anti-history that has taken many forms since 2015: a series of print essays, a podcast series, typewritten zines and bootleg mixtapes. This book collects all the works written over this ten year period, reassembled, re-edited and rearranged to draw a pseudo-lineage from dirty blues, subversive folk, sixties counterculture and proto-punk, through to the punk and post-punk movements, and finally, to the splintered subcultures of the contemporary DIY underground.

The people in this book printed their cease and desist notices and label rejection letters, mocked their label heads or even sued them, were misinterpreted and misunderstood, were tracked by the FBI and CIA, got caught up in conspiracy theories, invented genres of music, sold out, dropped out, bought in, and were left with not much more than a cult fandom made up of the only people who would ever understand them.

In the cast of characters that makes up BARELY HUMAN, the forebears of the great DIY underground tradition come together to help situate our own efforts as underground contributors today, to as always: where to from here?

Featuring discussions of:

Cult fandom, LUCILLE BOGAN, R.L. BURNSIDE, "outsider" music, THE SHAGGS, ROKY ERICKSON & THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS, THE FUGS, RANDY NEWMAN, DAVID ALLAN COE, SIS CUNNINGHAM, KAREN DALTON, folk and country, proto-punk, ELECTRIC EELS, DEATH, X-RAY SPEX, BLACK RANDY & THE METROSQUAD, CRASS, GG ALLIN, post-punk, TELEVISION PERSONALITIES, THE RAINCOATS, CCCP: FEDELI ALLA LINEA, FRANK SIDEBOTTOM, STICK MEN WITH RAY GUNS, BUTTHOLE SURFERS, NEGATIVLAND, RON HOUSE, LOS CRUDOS, the '90s garage revival, CHEATER SLICKS, satire and obscenity, COUNTRY TEASERS, DEAD MOON, WIPERS, philistinism (NO TREND, FLIPPER, URINALS, CRUCIFUCKS), THE FALL, DEAD KENNEDYS, anarchocommunism (THE DICKS, THE STALIN, KINA, ZOUNDS), retrofuturism, TOTAL CONTROL, DICK DIVER, 'dolewave', CONSTANT MONGREL, HARAM, LOW LIFE, and much more in-between.

Self-published by BARELY HUMAN in a limited numbered first edition of 150.

300 pages
Paperback, 21 x 14.8cm
Published September 2024
ISBN 9781763621466