Great Music Mags: ICE - The Class of 1992

Where were you in 1992?

I was 25 (the same age as my middle child now!) and back in school for a second attempt at earning a degree after getting married and having two kids over the previous five years. I crashed and burned as my test anxiety reached blackout levels and I felt like a complete and total loser for blowing the $750 tuition which we could have used elsewhere. I entered counseling for said anxiety and it helped stop the panic attacks which had started coming with increasing frequency. 1992 was also the last year we attended more than one concert in a single year as my claustrophobia trumped my intense enjoyment of the music, attending shows by Guns N Roses (twice!), Metallica (twice!), Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen and U2. My wife denies it but the math works out that we made our third baby after the second Metallica show which was also the second G'N'R show as both bands played Phoenix International Raceway, with Faith No More opening. Wife couldn't go to the show but she was up when I got home early the next morning - it took me and my buddy almost as long to get out of the dirty dusty unlit parking area as the entire concert lasted! It was my last year working in fast food and I was running up our credit cards buying import CD singles that cost as much as full length compact discs. Almost a year after that epic Metallica/G'N'R show, just after our third child, turned three months, I made the decision to quit my first job a second time and for two weeks in 1993 I was unemployed and scared. My monthly issues of ICE were still rolling in though. Where do you think I was getting all of my import CD single intel?

Here's the front page gallery for the twelve issues of ICE from 1992 (#58-69). Lots of big news about box sets, catalog issues and an end to the long box. The newsletter itself went through a few changes in 1992. The masthead changed after the January issue with the addition of a teaser line above the logo. At this point, beginning with the first issue of the year, each issue was 12 pages and they trumpeted that fact right on the front cover from February through April. Then in November, the color blue was added to the black, white and gray. The cover price remained at $2.95 throughout 1992 and beginning with the June issue a UPC barcode was added to the back page for point of purchase and inventory purposes.