Basements and Living Rooms #1

Edited by Shannon Connor

So you know what I'm really bad at? Updating this blog when I'm in school. Have I seriously only written five reviews so far this year? That's crazy, and I am letting down all of the people who keep sending me zines to review (there are so many...). But now class is over for a bit, and let's fucking hope I can update this site more frequently.

You know what else I'm not very good at? Going to see live music. This zine is all about DIY shows that people (mostly in the punk community) put on in their houses, and I realize I can't remember the last time I went to a house show. For whatever reason I'm not as into music as some of my friends. Sure I like it, but I'm fine listening to it at home a lot of the time. Maybe that's because I like music made on computers a lot. (I told a friend recently that if someone described an album or song as sounding like a computer slowly dying I'd really want to listen to it, so clearly my taste in music is pretty questionable.)

So I don't go to house shows very much, and I also don't go to anything shows very much. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any live music since I moved to Vancouver, and I think half the time I see live music it might be because I'm at a lindy hop event and there's a jazz band playing. And for that I'm going for the dancing, not the music. (Oh wait, there were some live performers at some of the electro-swing shows I went to, but apparently they were incredibly forgettable. There're probably others I've forgotten...)

But four paragraphs into this I realize that (in addition to clearly liking writing zine reviews because I can't shut up, why do I avoid it so much?) I'm jealous of the people that go to house shows with their friends and go on tour and generally have a good time doing that sort of thing. I have friends who go to house shows, and who put on house shows, and I've lived in houses where they happen. Yet, I think that frequently I've felt kind of uncomfortable at them. Possibly because for a long time (and still today to some extent) I felt uncomfortable and awkward in social situations were there were a lot of people I didn't know and a lot of noise and I wasn't that into the music and and and.

I miss living in punk houses. Or at least houses where I had lots of roommates and we hung out and talked and played games and watched movies and did stuff. This two bedroom basement apartment with a guy (who is fine) that I never see (because we're mostly on different schedules) is not the same. But Vancouver and I have not exactly been best buds when it comes to me finding places to live, and I have to find a new roommate for next month anyway since the other guy is moving out, and I have no idea where this paragraph is going.

I think that maybe the zine residencies that I helped host at the Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax are similar to some of the experiences that people write about in here. Meeting new people who are only there temporarily, and getting really excited about the act of someone creating something cool. I kind of wish it was possible for people to go on writing or art tours in the same way bands go on tour.

The content of Basements and Living Rooms is photos, comics, and articles from various people about shows they've organized, hosted, played, or attended. They cover good shows and bad shows, and similarly some of the content is good and some of it is bad. Up above I credit Shannon as editor, but there's not really any editing going on here. I understand why you might do that, but it also kind of drives me crazy a little when a piece is super filled with spelling mistakes. Yet overall I liked reading this, even if it led to this terribly long (and just generally terrible) review.

Teacups and Typewriters October 2012

By Amber Dearest and Stefanie
www.fight-boredom.com

At the Roberts Street Social Centre* we run a zine residency every summer. We invite zinesters and artists to come and stay in our shed for two weeks, experience Halifax, and make awesome things. You should apply for next year! One of the residents this summer was Amber Dearest, who completed the first issue of her zine The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes while here.

But back in Montreal, before she came to do her residency, Amber decided to run her own zine residency inspired by ours. It was different as people went to her actual house and slept on the sofa bed in her living room, but it's still awesome to see more of these kind of things being created.

This zine is the newsletter for the Tulip Farm, the house where Amber and her roommate Stefanie (and the cat Sebastian) live. It tells about how they met, has a map of the apartment and descriptions of each room, some stuff about the residency program, letters from two residents who stayed there and made zines, and info about how you can come and hang out there and speak (bad, but improving) French with them.

It's cute and sweet, and reminds me of the newsletter I made for a house I lived in (in 2005! I wonder if I still have Blatch Breaking News somewhere), and how I sat in Amber's kitchen at "a chrome table with a turquoise top that [Amber] found at a flea market when [she] was thirteen years old, and have since moved with [her] to twelve different apartments" and played Bannagrams and The Best Game Ever, and ate cereal, and drank tea.

*I've just realized that by the time this review goes live I'll have left Halifax, my home of almost two years, and the Roberts Street Social Centre, where I spent a lot of time volunteering and having fun, and which was the reason I moved to this city in the first place. And, oh, that makes me feel sad, oh! I will miss you RSSC!

The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes #1

By Amber Dearest
 www.fight-boredom.com

(I'm in Montreal right now, so clearly it's a good time to review a zine by  Montreal resident. Though, admittedly, she did make this zine in Halifax.)

The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes is the new zine by Amber Dearest, who was the creator of the long running Culture Slut zine. Amber came to the Roberts Street Social Centre earlier this year and stayed in our shed for two weeks working on this zine and other projects.

A lot of perzines deal with depression and other mental health issues. These can be tough things to read about, and tougher still when you know the person who wrote them (should I have noticed? Was there anything I could have done?). In this zine Amber says that she never knows if she should tell people who ask how she really feels, and I think it's interesting how she won't tell her friends about her feelings, but she will write them down so that strangers can read them. Many other people (including me) have done the same thing, and it's kind of strange to think about why this happens.

Amber also writes about dealing with sobriety, writing letters, gentrification, punk femme aesthetics, and more.

This isn't my favourite zine by Amber; I feel that it's too slight to be a satisfying read after some of the other issues I've read. This is despite the fact that I know that this issue is shorter because it was made under a tight deadline as part of the residency program, and that reading more about her depression would have made me feel worse. Still, I look forward to reading the next issue when it's finished!

Harbour Water Fest 3

By Shannon

Every year the Roberts Street Social Centre runs a residency program. Artists and writers come to stay in our shed for a couple of weeks and make zines, art, or whatever they want really. It's a pretty awesome program and you should definitely apply next year!

Shannon was the first resident this year, and this is the zine they made during their stay. It's mostly about Harbour Water Fest, a local punk music festival put on in people's basements and living rooms. Shannon writes about her experiences in Halifax in general, and the shows she went to specifically, and she also got other people to write about their own memories of the event. Apparently there was a shadow puppet play!

Shannon also interviewed the lead organizer of the event, members of bands that played, and other people who went to shows. The interviews are pretty interesting to read,  and cover everything from small town living, to transphobia, to  trying to create more positive, inclusive, and safe spaces for others.

The final part of this zine are the many photographs that various people took at the shows in Harbour Water Fest, and most (or all?) of the posters people made to advertise the various events. I really like DIY posters, so seeing them all collected here was pretty neat.