I miss the zine era. I mean the paper ones that you could hold and shit. While I was never the most passionate follower of the more personal ones like Cometbus or Rollerderby (at least then), I enjoyed The Probe quite a bit (and yes, I did read the articles). Hardcore zines like Rumpshaker and Change figured most prominently in my personal stacks, but the siren call of Ebay has prompted the acquisition of scads of music zines. Hell, I have a floor to ceiling wall unit full of them six inches to my right. If I were to be crushed under it, few that knew me well would be shocked. Still, the advent of the Interwebs has homogenized the genre while simultaneously gutting world of the paper zine. Bound compilations of older zines are becoming more and more popular (and necessary) to keep the zine alive. It works for me, and the reissues of Anti-Matter and Schism sure take up a lot less space on the shelf.You Idiot: The First Book is a collection of the zine work of one Nate Ganglehoff, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Around the JS-NYC HQ, he gets props for having been a part of the hat trick of band membership in Rivethead and Off With Their Heads as well as helming the mighty Banner Pilot. You Idiot was his first zine and it did a pretty good job of raising hell on message boards and exposing nuttiness like Christian video games. Towards the end of the the zines tenure, he introduced my personal favorite column: Reviews Of Books I Sort Of Skimmed Through. That is pretty fucking brilliant. Later, Whiskey Plus came on the scene, sort of concurrently, I guess, and focused more on the music end of things. Two issues of same are included in the book and feature some pretty fabulous features, including City Sounds: Reviews Of Bands I Overheard At Our Practice Space and Reviews Of The Music My Coworker Listens To When I'm Hungover. It's pretty great. You want this.
No comments:
Post a Comment