Search & Destroy: The Complete Archive - Softcover

Vale, V.; Chen, Cecily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1965874266 ISBN 13: 9781965874264

Publisher: Inpatient Press, 2026

Synopsis

From 1977 to 1979, Search & Destroy chronicled the birth of San Francisco's punk scene with an intensity and vision that transformed music journalism. Now, for the first time, every issue of this seminal publication has been collected and meticulously restored in one definitive volume.

Launched with a $100 loan from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Search & Destroy was more than a zine—it was the nerve center of West Coast punk culture. Editor V. Vale and his rotating cast of contributors didn't just document the scene; they embodied its DIY spirit, creating a new form of guerrilla journalism that was as raw and uncompromising as the music itself.

Search & Destroy: The Complete Archive captures the texture and tension of a scene in flux through stark photography, radical design, and sharp interviews with legends such as William S. Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle, the Dead Kennedys, Suicide, and Negative Trend. This collected edition also features retrospective writing on the legacy of Search & Destroy, its influence on design and culture, and V. Vale's work as a publisher, researcher, and archivist.

About this title

About the Author

V. Vale is an American editor, writer, interviewer, musician and SF Bay legend. He is the publisher and primary contributor to books and magazines published by his company, RE/Search Publications.

Cecily Chen is a writer and translator from Beijing, China. She is currently completing her PhD in English at the University of Chicago, where she writes about the "minor archive" of Asian American experimentalism, Marxist aesthetics, and gender and sexuality. You can find her writing at The Poetry Project, Entropy, and the tiny. She also edits poetry for Chicago Review.

Mitch Anzuoni is the founding editor and executive janitor of Inpatient Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Inpatient Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1965874266
• ISBN 13: 9781965874264
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256