If Nothing Else the Sky

By Dave Roche
PO Box 221041
Chicago, IL 60622
sites.google.com/site/ifnothingelsethesky/home

Okay, so I have a confession. Before I stayed at Dave Roche's house during the ALA conference in Chicago I'd never read any of his zines. Sure, I knew who he was, I knew what On Subbing (his book about being a substitute teacher) looked like, I might even have read the back cover when my brother distroed it, but I'd never (knowingly) read anything he'd actually written.

But after meeting him, talking to him, and hearing him read excerpts from his zines I realized I really wanted to read his zines, and was excited to start his newest one, about his travels in SE Asia and Australia.

I really like travelling (I'm sleeping on my friend's floor in Kentucky right now!), and I spent a bunch of time living and travelling in Australia and SE Asia a few years ago, so I was excited to read about Dave's experiences. Though while there is definitely the appeal of "I've been there!" and "I slept at that place!", the true appeal of this zine is Dave's writing style: humourous, informative, and a little bit self-deprecating.

Dave worries that he might be getting too old for the punk rock sleeping on strangers' couches style of living and travelling. At what point does he stop being that cool zinester guy, and starts being that weird old guy with a beard? (Clearly the answer is "never!".) Dave also has to deal with realizing how incredibly privileged and rich (at least comparatively) he is in SE Asia, mandis and squat toilets, getting bitten by a penguin in Australia. Dave goes on tour with a punk band, stays with an anarchist robotics scientist, tries to explain why he isn't married yet, and has lots of other adventures. There's a lot of content here, and I can't describe every story, but there are a number of excerpts on his website and you should check them out!

 If Nothing Else the Sky is huge for a zine. It's almost a hundred pages (perfect bound), mostly text, and will take a while to read,  but thanks to Dave's DIY-punk ethics/terrible business sense, you can order it for just $5. If you liked Dave's earlier books, enjoy travel stories, or just like reading zines by funny/kinda weird people, it's definitely worth checking out.

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.

Shotgun Seamstress #3

shotgunseamstress@gmail.com
shotgunseamstress.blogspot.com

I've been hearing about Shotgun Seamstress for a few years, so I'm glad I finally managed to pick up an issue and give it a read.

Shotgun Seamstress is a zine about being black, queer, artistic, and punk. The zine uses interviews, comics, bios, and people's stories to discuss poverty, classism, racism, homophobia, and other related topics. This issue is all about money, and much of the content focuses on not having much/enough and why that's an issue in our society.

There are pieces on trainhopping, a photographer who didn't get any success until after he died, royalties in bands, and capitalism in general. My favourite piece was an interview done with Mick Collins (a member of the bands the Dirtbombs and the Gories). Collins is in his forties, and the piece discusses growing up in Detroit before hip hop, how that style of music has influenced black American culture, the co-opting of black culture by white people, how many blacks feel the need to conform, and why and how the black punk scene in Detroit was killed off.

I found this piece to be interesting historically, in part because I am interested in the way certain cultural aspects are co-opted by different groups, and the way sub cultures are created, grow, and shrink. The interview ends saying that they continued talking, and I wish that more of it had been printed!

Overall I found Shotgun Seamstress to be worth reading because it gave a different view on American society, beyond the one I am used to hearing (even from other punk zines). I may not have agreed with everything in here, but I guess it is important to see various view points on things and not just make assumptions.

The Fury No. 20

Mark Novotny
5413 6th Ave
Countryside, IL
60525, USA
One dollar

To some extent I feel kind of weird reading punk zines and writing reviews of them while listening to Bjork. It's like my headspace and the headspace of the person working on the zine are completely different. Can I appreciate hot, crowded punk house shows, and the search for '90s emo records at the same time? Sure, but it seems so much more...theoretical than maybe it should.

But The Fury is a zine that perhaps encourages readings such as this. There are pieces on language and words that discuss the works of Derrida and the Deconstructionists (amongst others), and Novoty wonders how much of our society and culture is based around the language we use. How language can be changed to change the way that people think.

And so when reading the rest of the zine I became aware of the word choice that Novoty used. The zine may be typewritten, but I got the feeling that it had been through multiple drafts before this final version was put together. Novoty knows about the limitations of language, but is doing his best to convey his own feelings and thoughts to others in the best way possible/only way he knows how.

There are stories about drunk singers at punk shows who try to stab their band mates. About walking unfamiliar streets and sleeping on unfamiliar floors. About potential and obscurity. About presence and sentimentality. About nerves and melancholy. About the deaths of friends and what they'll never be. About how those deaths can change what you are and what you become.

I often say that I think too much about many things, and this zine didn't help, but at the same time I like thinking about many things, and I like reading about how others also wonder about word choice and perceived negativity. I thought about dead friends while reading this zine, and also people I haven't seen in years (and probably will never see again). I felt sadness over what could have been, and joy for what is and will be.

Rum Lad Issue 3

By Steve Larder

http://stevelarder.co.uk/

Just the other day I got an email from a 16 year old girl asking if punk was dead, and if I knew of any punk zines in the UK. One of the first to spring to mind (after thinking this email was one of the most adorable I'd even received) was Rum Lad, a zine of which I've enjoyed every issue I've read, and that I wish I'd read more issues. So I was excited when I recently found a copy of an older issue in the Anchor Archive Zine Library at the Roberts Street Social Centre.

While I would describe Rum Lad as a punk zine, it might not be what those words cause to immediately spring to mind. There are no record reviews, no band interviews, no political rants. Instead the main feature of Rum Lad are Steve's illustrations, which I really enjoy! Each page features one illustration and a bit of text jammed into it somewhere. The illustrations in this issue cover about six months in 2007, and it seems like Steve had a pretty busy year.

There are pictures from various towns and cities in England (including "the bleakest place I [Steve] I've ever been to"), Reykjavik in Iceland, Oslo in Norway, and Hoogeveen in the Netherlands. That makes me incredibly jealous, and a little sad that I live in Canada which is so big and unpopulated. 

There are also pictures of bedrooms and record players, statues and punk shows, ferris wheels and grave yards. I really like Steve's drawing style, though struggle to say what it is about it that I enjoy so much. There are aspects of photo realism to his art, but also an organic element as there are rarely (if ever) straight lines, even if you might expect to see them on a shelf or a street sign.

The lack of continuity between the different pieces of art will leave those looking for some sort of coherent narrative disappointed. We don't know why Steve went to Oslo (or any other place really), and rarely know what he's really thinking when he goes to these places. But I find that I don't care, as the tiny snippets that are revealed help give some context, and with Steve's art that's enough for me.

Plus I found these amazing videos by DJ Scotch Egg and White Mice because of this zine. Hurray!

Advanced Brains: Hardcore Punks Against Dead Guys The Role-Playing Game

By Jesse Harrington
brainszine@yahoo.com

We approach the building. It looks empty, though was that a light on inside? We'd heard this was a good place to put on shows, but I'd never been to one before.

We try the doors. Locked. I remember hearing something about a key hidden somewhere so we check the alley around back, but there doesn't seem to be anything there. We search more of the grounds and eventually find the hidden key holder.

It's also locked.

The lock on this one is a combination lock. We try a couple of variations, hoping to figure out what the right combination will be, but with no luck. Then I remember a friend! We give her a call and she tells us the combination. We're in!

We stumble around inside, before managing to get the lights on. Hey! This would be a good place to hold shows. We start setting up for playing music and scrounge up some cables and manage to hook up the ancient equipment we find. Success!

And then more people showed up and we were able to actually start playing Advanced Brains, a game where we broke into an abandoned building in order to put on a punk show.

This is a homebrew RPG that is pretty extensive in the rules it includes, and I have no idea how well it would work if you'd never played something like this before. I had to keep checking back and forth through the book to find out what the players should do when a security guard starting chasing them, or how being drunk would affect their combat against zombies.

However, everyone that played had a blast, and playing an RPG in which you go dumpster diving, shoplift alcohol, crash vans into zombies, and play punk shows (poorly) was really fun. After we finished the adventure included in the book, we started going through the rest of it and trying out various things we hadn't had a chance to do (dine and dash! smashing more things!).

The consensus seemed to be that it would be fun to just play the game without any plot ("Let's go dumpster diving!"), and see where it grew from there, instead of following a premade story. I can certainly see the appeal of that, and the number of actual RPG campaigns that have been sidetracked by any number of things is countless.

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.

Gadgie #25

By Marv
PO Box 93
Boston
Lincolnshire
PE21 7YB
England

Ah, Gadgie zine. The perfect reading material for people that love page after page of tiny text with no paragraph breaks.

I'm being a little harsh, as some of the content here is quite good, but turning the page and seeing two solid columns of tiny text with no breaks is kind of daunting to start reading. I think the reading experience would definitely be improved by Marv starting to use the return key a bit more frequently.

Gadgie is a punk music zine, and like many zines in that sub-genre it includes numerous reviews of cds, records, and shows, interviews with people in the punk scene, rants, and general news about the punk scene in and around the town where the creator lives (in this case Boston, UK). It's probably far more interesting if you listen to a lot of punk music, and always want to find new bands that you'd never hear on the radio or see on TV, but that's not really me.

Of course, there is other content in here that is pretty good even if you have no interest in punk music or culture. Marv writes huge stream-of-consciousness pieces about traveling, his youth, and other things. They're filled with constant asides and distractions, and are a lot like listening to someone talk.

The best piece in here is, much to my surprise, a music review. But unlike short music reviews of a particular album, this one is a huge piece of Marv's attempt to listen to his entire record collection in alphabetical order. You see, after discussing with a friend their huge record collections, Marv realized he didn't really listen to most of it that often, so he began a quest to listen to all of it, discovering lost gems, and wondering why he even owned other albums.

For whatever reason, people seem to be into the idea of other people completing (or attempting to complete) marathons of popular culture. There's an entire book trilogy about two guys who spent a year watching every existing episode of Doctor Who in order, and I have a weird desire to read them even though I don't like Doctor Who that much.

Marv's account of his attempt to listen to all of his records is filled with asides and stories about how he bought the record in question, anecdotes about the band, and other random things. And thus in the two pages that this piece takes up Marv manages to get through the letter 'A'. However it did feature my favourite part of the issue:

"On a similar theme, the folks at work were reminiscing in the staff room about their youth, as people of a certain age are liable to (ahem) and someone started fondly recalling how you used to buy records! Someone piped up that the first record they bought was an Adam And The Ants single. I kept it quiet that the last record I bought was an Adam And The Ants single (20pence worth of car booty)!"

The last record I got (in 2009) was also an Adam and the Ants record. Stand and Deliver!

Busking issue 1

By Celeste
www.etsy.com/shop/ofcourseyoucan
notfitforsociety.tumblr.com

I think busking is pretty neat, and to some extent I envy people who have the skills and personality to successfully perform in front of other people (and make a living from it! I don't think I'd make much money busking by offering to edit things)

Celeste has been playing accordion for several years, and makes her living from it. Of course "her living" is far different from what most people would consider: she eats from dumpsters, doesn't own any new clothing, and doesn't really buy anything. Of course she's perfectly happy doing this, as not having a regular 9-5 job means that she can spend her days doing what she loves: playing accordion, volunteering, making art, and other fun things. She actually pities people who have deadening office jobs, and as someone who has one of those jobs I kind of envy her life.

This zine is filled with stories and anecdotes from Celeste's times busking across Canada. Some are told in comics, while others use text. She also has an FAQ of questions people ask her while she's busking like "Are you on drugs?" and "Are you actually rich?". The whole zine is told in an upbeat and appealing way that makes me wish that I was friends with Celeste and got to hang out with her.

I recommend this zine, and am excited to learn that she's almost finished her second issue. Check out her tumblr for some of the comics that will be in issue 2!

Bring on the Dancing Horses

By Shaun
PO Box 1282
Fullerton, CA
92836, USA

Bring on the Dancing Horses is another zine by the author of There is a Danger, which I reviewed last month. It covers much of the same material as that zine (bicycle trips, exploring, abandoned buildings), but is much longer, and perhaps because of this is able to have more of a narrative in places.

Specifically there's a lot written about a giant squat Shaun stayed in while in New York City, the people he met while he lived there, the adventures they had, and how they were eventually evicted. As a person who enjoys abandoned buildings, urban exploration, dumpster diving, and adventures, this stuff really appealed to me, and Shaun's accounts of hiding in dark rooms filled with junk while the police walked by, or sleeping in a cleaned out elevator control room successfully managed to paint pictures in my mind.

I read Shaun's zine at a very specific time when it may have had more of an impact on me than even a week ago. I have a full-time job I find to be (while somewhat worthwhile) incredibly boring. My plan was to work until August, visit some friends and family, and then start a new chapter of my life in another city in September. I have recently discovered that this new chapter will not be what I had planned, but will instead be something currently entirely mysterious to me. While some find this liberating, I've spent the last seven years of my life feeling fairly rudderless, and had hoped to have a goal slightly longer than "pay this month's rent". While I can work my boring job if I have something to look forward to, I now wonder why I should even bother with my job, and whether I should, like Shaun, give up on the capitalist society we exist in, and become more outside it than I already am, rejecting societal norms, and existing as a scavenger. This was only cemented by the sudden onset of spring, and days with 20 degree weather (to all the Americans that read this remember that I live in Canada, so this is actually warm).

PostScript: Included with Shaun's zines I received a letter that described what his zines were about. One small piece really stood out to me. It was about how part of this zine was about "a girl (always a girl...)", and really, that's kind of true. For a certain type of person, there is always a girl. One that you find, one that you leave behind, one that you remember.

Excerpt (I don't usually do these, but thought I should for this zine):

I woke up early and set off into the building, flashlight in hand and a feeling of vertigo from the sheer size of the labyrinthian halls, the multiple wings and adjoined church left eerily empty and bathed in dust and stained-glass light, and so much detritus from its past lives as a community center. On the third floor was the main room, lined by open windows whose glass had been removed, now letting light, noise and breeze flow lushly throughout the room. Most other windows in the building were boarded up, allowing in only a small sliver of light through the triangular wedges cut from the bottom of each plywood sheet. This made nearly every room dark, menacingly silent, and possessed of so many odd and curious details of which one could mine a litany of scenarios and theoretical explanations for.

On the lower floors were the large performance theater and basketball court. Chairs were scattered about the floor, a painted set remained standing on the stage, and a tall laddered-platform on wheels sat in the middle of the room. It was hard to know if these all were left in carless [sic] abandonment or if they were the remains of some squatter-party, as Bowery Manor at once appeared both the elegiac remnants of a once-bustling community space forced out by the city of New York and a boundless playground for those who stumbled upon the shell, determined to breathe life back into it. Unfortunately, the building being closed off meant that it was illegal to be anywhere on the property, and anyone coming or going or inside Bowery Manor had to be ware of any police of HPD presence around the building. Thus, besides the metal door installed by the kids and secured with chains and padlocks, the first floor also had a large metal beam wedged between the stairs and the rollgate, the only accessible entrance to anyone who did not want to squeeze through the sledgehammered hole beneath the tarp or climb through a second story window.

Debris lined the floor nearly everywhere you looked - phone books, paper, clothes, boxes full of completely useless objects, nearly any imaginable functionless item could probably be found somewhere on the floors or shelves or in the drawers or in any of the other nooks and crevices in the building. In some rooms, you were not stepping on any floor at all but on the slippery and unstable mountains of old magazines, computer equipment, kitchen tools, CD cases. The swimming pool in the basement was filled to an even six inches below the brim, not with water but with junk.

Gadgie 24

By Marv
PO Box 93
Boston
Lincolnshire
PE21 7YB
England

Gadgie is another of those big, thick (over 30 pages) punk zines that covers music, zines, complaints, and whatever else is running through the creator's mind.

Gadgie's been coming out for ages, and its creator Marv is now in his late 30s, married, and even has a child. Old punks don't die, they just (pro)create the next generation.

In this issue Marv talks about the punk scene in Boston, England (both current and its origins), going to Loch Ness for a holiday with his partner and kid, misheard lyrics, a pretty epic account of every injury he's ever acquired while playing soccer/football, and loads of other stuff.

I like how Marv seems really enthusiastic about everything, and how being injured bothers him because it means he can't go and dance at punk shows. However, his nonstop style of writing was kind of exhausting, as you don't really have any idea when the longer pieces are going to end or what's going to happen next.

Marv has a really distinct style of writing, a sort of stream of consciousness "I did this, then I did this, then this happened" type of thing. If it appeals to you you'll probably be happy to read anything he writes, but if it doesn't then I'm not sure there's any topic he could get you to read about. I think I fall somewhere in the middle.

Lucid Frenzy Digest 2011

By Gavin Burrows
lucidfrenzy.blogspot.com

It's almost...ironic that I reviewed a zine about about mental health issues and then almost immediately didn't update for two days because of my own problems. Haha. Hilarious! (No wait, it's not.)

Um, so, this is a collection of pieces that Burrows has run on his blog, and despite liking what I read in the last issue of this zine, I've never actually gone to his blog to read anything. This is probably because Burrows' pieces are quite long and in-depth and take a while to digest and process. Thus I find it easier/better to read these things in paper form when I'm not being distracted by someone talking to me in another window or funny pictures of cats or something.

In this issue Burrows talks about zines, and reviews concerts, movies, and art shows. I enjoy Burrows' general writing style, which is most evidenced by the fact that I read all of his pieces about music I had almost no familiarity with. Music articles/interviews are probably the bits of zines I skip over with the most frequency, as I find that they generally require you to have knowledge of the artist to really get anything out of them. Here, however, Burrows has managed to weave information about the band/music, history of the genres, and descriptions of the bands that are considerably more informative than "band x meets artist y". So yeah, I enjoyed reading them even if I don't want to seek out what the bands actually sound like. That's what music writing should be like!

Though I must admit that the repeated references to Francis Bacon kind of flew over my head. I guess I should read more about him at some point.

Loserdom #21

loserdomzine@gmail.com
www.loserdomzine.com

One of my favourite things about reviewing things for this blog is that I read so many random things, and sometimes I am completely and utterly blown away by content I did not expect.

That is the case with Loserdom #21. I'd read some issues before, but nothing prepared me for the massive (over twenty pages!) history of the Dalkey punks that appeared in this issue.

Dalkey is a village suburb of Dublin in Ireland, and it doesn't seem like that exciting a place to live. Anto grew up there, and remembers being a little kid in the early '80s and being both scared and fascinated by the punks he saw hanging around town. Almost thirty years later he's tracked five of them down and interviewed them about what being a punk in that time was like, how they got involved with the scene, what music they listened to, how they dressed, where they hung out, how the group came to an end, and what they're up to now.

It is an incredibly epic piece of journalism, and feels more like the basis of someone's thesis in folklore, anthropology, sociology, or history than an article in a zine. It's a fascinating piece made all the more interesting because of the real emotions that the interviews conjure up in people. You can feel the joy and fun that these people had back when they were kids, and then, in the most brutal and unexpected part, there is a tragedy. I don't really want to spoil what happened, but it was a big enough thing that it was mentioned in newspapers at the time (which have been dug up, photocopied, and included here).

Even if that was the only thing in Loserdom #21 it would be worth picking up, but this is a massive zine and there's loads of other stuff too! Comics about riding bicycles, an interview with a woman who's been busking in Dublin since 1985, and more. Not all of it appealed to me, but that's always the case with anthologies, and I think this is definitely worth checking out.

Loserdom #20

loserdomzine@gmail.com
www.loserdomzine.com

As with most punk zines this issue of Loserdom is filled with reviews of 7 inch records and other zines, interviews with bands, and scene reports.

However! It is important to note that even if you have no interest in those things at all, this zine is still worth checking out for a number of articles and interviews on some pretty neat and interesting things.

The first of these is an illustrated piece about a food co-op and a discussion that they had concerning vegetables from Israel. To boycott or not to boycott was the question that concerned them, and while both sides of the argument are represented here the author makes no secret of what side of the argument they fall on. The author talks to a number of other food co-op members and asks them about the idea of a boycott and why they thought it, at least initially, failed. It's interesting to look at things like this and I wonder if people are becoming less political than they have been in the past. You read about things like boycotts of South Africa in the 1980s and political songs getting airplay and I find it puzzling; have people just became apathetic or has our society changed in some other way? Hmmm...I feel like I need to discuss this with someone in person.

The second piece is an interview with one of the people that works at La Fanzinotheque, which seems to be a pretty rad library/art gallery/social centre type place in Poitiers, France. It's pretty inspiring that a place like this has been around for over twenty years! My only problem with this (and a couple of the other interviews in here) was that it seemed to reprint everything that the other person said/wrote, and I think parts of it could have been edited a bit.

There are also pieces on digital storytelling, winter cycling/swimming (horrifying!), a comic about how punks really can't seem to stop drinking, and an interview with a guy from Poland who runs a distro/label in Ireland that is pretty interesting, even if you're not into the scene, as it discusses some of the economics behind that sort of thing (ie. don't start a punk label if you want to get rich).

Mild Peril #11

By Dean and Pete
mildperil@hotmail.co.uk
myspace.com/mildperilzine

As we head down the path to BIG CHANGE (not with a bang, but a whimper) I come across another old punk zine. Several years old, other issues already reviewed on this site, almost unreviewable because you either are interested in it or aren't. Let's go!

This thick zine is filled with what you would expect from a punk music zine. Rants (the politics! That is the part of punk I really enjoy), band interviews (I only read the parts on touring and life in other countries at this point), tour diaries (the short distances here still blow me away), show reviews (generally ignored!), vegetarian recipes (possibly good!), random jokes, pictures, and drawings (confusing!), and CD and record reviews (completely ignored!).

You probably already know whether or not you're into this sort of thing, and my review can be summed up as "generally positive". There're some spelling, grammar, and layout issues, but those have never really been a strong point of the punk scene, and really don't detract from the overall product. Am I burnt out? I think I might be despite only writing one review in the last week.

I guess the only reason I reviewed this at all is a misplaced sense that I should review _everything_ I've been given, and wondering where I should send the punk records a friend gave me before returning to Canada. I want them to be reviewed, who (in the UK) should I send them to?

Lights Go Out Issue 9

Edited by Mr. T
www.lightsgoout.co.uk
myspace.com/lightsgooutpunkzine
£1/$2/€1.50

I was all ready to write a review about how I wish there were music zines that weren’t about punk/hardcore, but then I actually sat down and read this issue of Lights Go Out. Yeah, there are the usual tour diaries and interviews with punk bands, but this zine also includes some non-punk content that’s quite interesting.

The first is an interview with Thousand Yard Stare, an indie rock band who seemed to be on the cusp of hitting the big time in the early ‘90s. Four of the band members were tracked down and interviewed independently, each giving accounts of their time in the band, and what they’ve ended up doing since then.

The other piece is a series of interviews with Girls@Play, a manufactured pop group from the early 2000s. This was not what I expected from a punk zine! Again the interviews ask about their time in the group, and what they’ve been up to since then.

I hadn’t heard of either of these bands before, but both of these pieces were interesting reading, especially as companion pieces. Neither group ever got really big, and they came into the music industry from very different directions, but it’s interesting to compare and contrast their experiences, some of which are quite similar.

The only real problem with the interviews is that they were clearly done over email, and the answers can get a bit repetitive. Still, overall they’re good pieces and must reads if you liked either group.

There are also a bunch of opinion columns (some good, some bad), a show review section done partially in haikus, and a music review section that covers everything from thrash/hardcore bands to Kylie Minogue to Tegan and Sara. Sadly neither of the latter two reviews featured lines like “It blasts right into your head and refuses to let go like a vicious little dog attaching itself to your nutsack and biting for all it’s might.”, though that would be pretty amazing to see printed on the front of a Kylie record.

Oh dang, apparently they reviewed one of my zines in issue 10. I'll have to give them bonus points for that, even if I have no idea if they even liked it or not.

With more than forty pages of content in tiny typefaces, it’ll take you quite a while to read everything in this zine, which definitely makes it value for money. I'd still love to read a zine about hiphop or electronic music though, any suggestions?

Ripping Thrash #26 / You Can't Say No to Hope #13

Ripping Thrash by Steve
www.rippingthrash.com
PO Box 152
Burton-on-Trent
Staffordshire
DE14 1XX, UK

You Can't Say No to Hope by Jon
myspace.com/youcantsaynotohope

This zine was sent to me by Zinemonger Distro, a distro that distributes free zines. Awesome! Go check out the site to find out how you can get some!

Punk music almost seems like the default type of music for zines. Not necessarily because all zinesters listen to punk music, but more because fans of other types of music have seemingly abandoned zines and embraced newer technologies to a greater degree.

This isn't to say that there aren't other zines about other types of music out there, or that punk music doesn't have countless websites and blogs devoted to it, just that the lo-fi, diy asthetic that is embraced in punk and leads to bands releasing music on vinyl means that zines are seen as a more acceptable form of media for the genre.

I'd love to see zines about electronic music or hip hop, but I think in the case of the latter I've only ever seen them in a museum exhibit (seriously!). Can you suggest any?

From that intro you can probably guess that this split zine is about punk music, and while I like punk music it's clearly not my genre of choice, so while I will generally read through all the reviews of shows and albums they frequently don't really register with me and I rarely bother looking anyone up.

Thankfully this zine does have content that's not reviews. You Can't Say No to Hope... begins with a fairly amusing hatelist, and is followed by a pretty awesome section about rabbits! I really love reading a zine you expect to be about one thing and then discovering that whoever made it also really loves this other thing and is going to include it even if it's kind of jarring. These pages include how to follow rabbit tracks in the snow, and some disgusting rabbit facts, rad! Plus there's an account of how Jon's football team is doing. I really find it kind of bizarre how punks in the UK frequently seem to be into football and play in leagues and follow teams. Still, good on them for actually being active.

Even ignoring all that, if you enjoy finding new punk bands by reading reviews and interviews then this split (and other issues of both zines) is probably worth checking out.

Loserdom #19

By lots of people!
loserdomzine.com

I always think it's fun to read travel stories about places you've been or lived. You get to critque what the author did: "Why didn't they go there? Of course that's awesome! Hah, you fool, you should have known better." and wonder if you ever walked passed them when you were in approximately the same place.

So it was with some joy that I opened up this issue of a (quite thick) Irish punk zine to discover an account of a trip to Vancouver that one of the authors went on a few years ago. I was a little disappointed that it didn't mention more places I had been to (or even exciting new places I hadn't heard of), but I was at least vindicated in my belief that the thrift stores there are a billion times better than the ones over here. If only the creators had a copy of my zine guide to Vancouver though!

Also included here is an article on urban foxes, a good interview with someone who works for the Irish Refugee Council (a group that helps refugees arriving in Ireland, as opposed to helping Irish people become refugees), a comic about how awesome cycling is, and the standard band interviews and zine reviews.

Still, there's a lot of good content here, and it's presented in an attractive package featuring a lino-printed cover!

Mild Peril #9

By Deanperil and Sausage Punk Pete (and others)
myspace.com/mildperilzine
£1 half sized.

Somewhere in here amongst the 40 or so pages that make up this zine there's a reference to it being used as bathroom reading. Not something I'd have mentioned in this review if I hadn't managed to accidentally drop the zine into the (thankfully clean) toilet and then snatch it out again without it getting even a little bit wet. My quick reflexes, combined with the weight and solidity of the zine, and the way it fell into the toilet meant that it barely even touched anything at all.

Despite all that, this zine really doesn't belong in the toilet, being a totally solid punk zine filled with record reviews, band interviews, rants, tour diaries, show reports that start off as factually inaccurate accounts of viking history, bad spelling, and recipes (I really want to try the caramel shortbread recipe but fear it would be all I eat for the rest of the week).

Reading through all the reviews and everything here I'm struck by two things. First, none of the bands seem to be able to take being interviewed seriously. Their answers to the questions are constantly filled with brutal honesty, stupid jokes, and outright lies. It's kind of strange to read an interview with a band and have them say that at the last show they played nobody showed up, and yet they still had a good time.

And that's the second thing that struck me, the repeated references by various bands and reviewers about bad turnouts, promoters disappearing, nobody showing up to shows, or the people that do being assholes. And yet they keep doing it because they love it and when they do have good shows they're amazing, and even the ones that sucked they're able to laugh at. One of the bands talk about how on the last date of their first tour the bar didn't even seem to know the show was supposed to happen, so instead they all piled into someone's car and drove off to another show and had an awesome time. Being able to create positive from negative situations is a way of living that should be adopted by more people (including me). Hurray!

Revolutionary Women Stencil Book

By Tui
www.cherrybombcomics.co.nz

The cover (and woah, that is a terrible photograph up there, sorry!) and title of this zine are a little misrepresentational: there are lots of stencils in here, but there are also bios on twelve different women revolutionaries that are pretty interesting.

Who's included? Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, Lucia Sanchez Saornil (pictured below), Angela Davis, Leila Khaled, Comandante Ramona, Phoolan Devi, and more. The zine apologizes for having a Euro-American bias, but only five of the women included are white, which seems like a much better ratio than you'd usually find, and probably indicates who you can actually find information about in English.

While I don't agree with all of the politics and beliefs held by all of these women, I think it would be hard for someone to list twelve different people who's politics they do agree with entirely. I also found the zine interesting in that it raised the question of "what is revolutionary?" in my mind and made me think and reconsider what the word means to me and to others.

The zine says that a lot of the research was done by "cutting and pasting stuff off the internet", and I'm not exactly sure what that means. If it means that the text was taken without permission and not credited than I'm not really down with that (I'd be pretty pissed if someone took some of my writing and reprinted it without giving me credit).

The stencils themselves look good and there were a couple of them that I would totally be up for using if I was into stenciling (someday...) both because of their design and because of the ideas that the women represented.

My copy had a few of the pages out of order, but it was easy enough to figure out which bio went with which stencil.

And now a terrible photo of one of the stencils.