NEW ARRIVALS
[VALE, V. (Editor)] Search & Destroy (Issues No. 1-11, Complete Run)
[VALE, V. (Editor)] Search & Destroy (Issues No. 1-11, Complete Run)
San Francisco: Search & Destroy, 1977-1979, 1988. All first printings except issue No. 10 (Burroughs Cover). Tabloid format. Folio. 11 total issues (complete run). Issue No. 10 is a reprint from 1988, as stated on front cover. All others are original issues. Each issue is illustrated throughout with b&w photographs. All issues are folded (as originally released). There is some very light age toning to these but they look as if they have hardly been opened or read. The set is in exceptional condition.
Search & Destroy was a seminal punk rock publication, founded in 1977 in San Francisco by V. Vale (also known as Vale Hamanaka). Published at City Lights Bookstore with initial funding from beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the zine ran for eleven issues between 1977 and 1979.
Named after the The Stooges song, the publication served as a crucial anthropological survey of the emerging San Francisco punk scene, documenting venues like the Mabuhay Gardens and bands such as Crime, The Nuns, and The Weirdos. It featured interviews with major underground figures including Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Devo, and William S. Burroughs, blending punk aesthetics with influences from Dadaism and Surrealism.
After the zine's run ended, Vale launched RE/Search Publications in 1980, which expanded into documenting broader countercultural trends like body modification and industrial music. The complete run of Search & Destroy has since been reprinted in collected volumes, preserving its legacy as a foundational text of West Coast punk culture.