bOING bOING #12 (San Francisco)

There's always something interesting and fun to read in any given issue of bOING bOING and #12 is no different. The "Brain Candy" section offers up reviews of "mostly cool stuff" like software, gadgets, books and miscellania; there's an interview with writing genius William Gibson; an overview of new typography; Mondo 2000's R.U. Sirius' "Guide To The Alternative '70s;" an interview with filmaker Richard Linklater; "The Ignorant Human's Guide To The Internet;" and the usual book, zine, comics and music reviews. One thing that bOING bOING always did well was to incorporate comic art and strips into the zine; this issue, for instance, includes "Keane Vs. Keane" about the art world scandal, while other issues have included Shannon Wheeler's Too Much Coffeeman strip and other cool alt-comics. The impact that bOING bOING had on the cyber-subculture and today's tech-oriented pop culture can not be overestimated.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #12
• no date given - 1994?
• B&W, 64-pages (including color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
William Gibson interview
Richard Linklater interview
Front 242 interview
R.U. Sirius' "Guide To The Alternative '70s"
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.4" column
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #11 (San Francisco)

Maybe editor Mark Frauenfelder named the zine bOING bOING 'cause it bounces around from location to location. Firmly entrenched in their fourth year of publishing, bOING bOING has moved from Colorado to several locations in and around Los Angeles and now to San Francisco. The zine's editorial quality never suffered, however, probably due to the vision of Frauenfelder and his co-editor and wife Carla Sinclair. That said, issue #11 is a bit of a jumble in terms of content, the theme (loosely) being "fun and games." You have articles like "Fake Funland (A Trip Through Toys-R-Us)" and "Musers Not Losers!" (a visit to MIT's "Cyberion City") as well as "The Poor Human's Guide To The Internet." There's a lot of info crammed into the pages of this issue, too much to really digest at the time and still illuminating (and somewhat maddening) today.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #11
• no date given - 1993?
• B&W, 64-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Emergency Broadcast Network interview
Mondo Vanilli interview
Nick Herbert interview
"Fake Funland"
"A Six-Pack Of Dystopia"
"The Poor Human's Guide To The Internet"
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.3" column
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #10 (Los Angeles)

With bOING bOING issue #10 you get the inevitable "SEX" issue, another subject that was de rigeuer with alternative culture types at the time. And for good reason, really...with the technological advances of the late-80s/early-90s you also had a second sexual revolution. Video technology and the Internet had revolutionized pornography, taking it out of the adult bookstores with greasy floors and bringing it to your living room and bedroom. This issue includes interviews with visionary Terence McKenna, sexy rocker Nathalie of the Lords Of Acid, and writers Brenda Laurel and Marc Laidlaw; a review of aphrodisiacs; articles on "virtual sex,""holy whores" and computer porn; and more book, zine, comics and music reviews than you could shake a stick at!

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #10
• no date given - 1993?
• B&W, 64-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Terence McKenna interview
Marc Laidlaw interview
Brena Laurel interview
Peter Stafford interview
Nathalie/Lords of Acid interview
"Bottled Libido: Aphrodisiacs"
"Virtual Sex"
"Confessions of a PC Porn Fanatic"
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.2" column
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #9 (Los Angeles)

With issue #9 bOING bOING continues the growth spurt that began with the move to L.A., adding pages and expanding editorially to include more aspects of alt-culture alongside the cutting edge tech and shamanistic content. The zine changed somewhat graphically around this time, featuring the now-familiar computer-generated look that was so de rigeuer among Mac cultists at the time. This issue includes an interesting interview with Bruce Sterling, an interesting guy and frequent bOING bOING contributor; a fascinating column by sci-fi writer and free-thinker Rudy Rucker; an interview with Scott Benzel of Machines Of Loving Grace; the Ramones on acid, and the usual spate of book and zine reviews. Another entertaining issue of a zine that was probably years ahead of its time....

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #9
• no date given - 1992?
• B&W, 64-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Bruce Sterling interview
Scott Benzel/Machines of Loving Grace interview
The Ramones
"Nanoflash"
"New Facts On Saving Our Environment"
Paco Xander Nathan's "Robot Groupies"
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.1" column
Bruce Sterling's "Let's Go Downtown" (Tokyo & tech)
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #8 (Los Angeles)

With issue #8, bOING bOING made several big changes. Editors Mark & Carla Frauenfelder picked up and moved the zine from Boulder CO to the Los Angeles area. This issue jumped up in size to a healthy page count of 56, and the staff now included Gareth Branwyn, Factsheet Five's Mike Gunderloy, and Paco Zander Nathan as well as interesting writers like Antero Alli and Richard Kadrey. Maybe it was just me, but I seemed to be understanding more and more of the normal bOING bOING fare with each issue. This one includes a good interview with underrated sci-fi/cyberpunk author Lewis Shiner, an intriguing piece by Antero Alli on "World Entertainment Wars" (seeing through advertising), and a new music review section written by Gunderloy and Steven Ellis White. In this case, change was good for bOING bOING.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #8
• Spring 1992
• B&W, 56-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Lewis Shiner interview
Nina Graboi interview
Antero Alli's "World Entertainment Wars"
"Metanoids Untie" (?)
"Everything I Know I Learned From Editing Pihkal"
"International Drug Paranoia"
--> also reader mail, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #7 (Boulder CO)

For a couple of years, bOING bOING had been calling itself "the world's greatest neurozine," however you want to define that. I always called it a "cyber zine" because of its connection to the fledgling online world. As far as I know, bOING bOING one of the first zines to pair technology and the 'net in an editorial capacity. Editor Mark Frauenfelder also did a great job of bringing on interesting, illuminating writers like Robert Anton Wilson (one of my personal faves, and a mad thinker that was still decades ahead of the rest of us at the time of his death), Antero Alli, Gareth Branwyn and even Frauenfelder himself and his wife Carla.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #7
• 1992, no month given
• B&W, 48-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Robert Anton Wilson's "Men Against Defamation"
Antero Alli's "Breaking Cultural Trance"
Janey Fritsche interview
Roger Price interview
"Heaven Sent Me An Angel, C.O.D." fiction by Paul Di Filippo
--> also reader mail, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #6 (Boulder CO)

With issue #6 bOING bOING continues to grow both in size and stature, this issue including an interview with Robert Anton Wilson (by Antero Alli), Rudy Rucker on James Gleick's Chaos: The Software, an interview with comic artist Daniel Clowes and some high-falutin' high-tech articles about subjects that are still miles above my head (and, believe it or not, I have an above-average IQ...allegedly). Still, it was always good to see bOING bOING on the newstand, if only because their coverage of new media (books, zines, software) was second to none and always satisfied this young man's craving for fresh sources of information.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #6
• 1991, no month given
• B&W, 48-pages (including covers, spot color)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Robert Anton Wilson (prophet)
Daniel Clowes (cartoonist)
Brigitte Mars (herbalist)
"Passport To Invisible Utopia"
"Confessions In A Drug-Free Zone"
"Accessing Alternity With Consciousness Technology"
--> also reader mail, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #5 (Boulder CO)

I have to admit that about half the time, I had no idea what they were talking about in any given issue of bOING bOING. The other half, I was simply confused. Editor Mark Frauenfelder was way ahead of his time with this cyber-oriented zine, discussing subjects like smart drugs and "memes" and software and interviewing evolutionary agents like Peter Lamborn Wilson years before the Worldwide web and the Internet explosion. I always enjoyed the zine's book and zine reviews; a lot of their software reviews were more Mac-oriented and I've always been a hardcore PC hacker. An interesting start for a zine that would only grow better as time went along. These days, Frauenfelder is still on the cutting edge, editing the uber-popular bOING bOING blog and writing books like Rule The Web.

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #5
• 1991, no month given
• B&W, 40-pages (plus squigley color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Peter Lamborn Wilson
"A Memetic Lexicon"
"The Death Mask of F.W. Murnau"
Smart Drugs
"Underground," fiction by Paul Di Filippo
--> also reader mail, book & zine reviews

Rock & Rap Confidential

For over a decade I subscribed to Rock & Rap Confidential, the irreverent and honest music newsletter published by Dave Marsh, Lee Ballinger and Danny Alexander. Every issue of the newsletter was jammed with music news that you wouldn't get anywhere else and CD reviews that were written from an honest perspective (kind of like TMQ). Because R&RC never accepted advertising...from anyone...they didn't owe anything to anybody, and they were free to comment on the hypocrisy and greed of a music industry run amok without financial considerations.

Rock & Rap Confidential has been converted to an online publication, available both on the R&RC web site (link above and banner below) and/or via email – go to their web site and sign up! And why should you read R&RC? Although I'll miss receiving my print copies of R&RC in the mail, they're still the only publication that reviews and promotes every type of music...even the Reverend can't make that claim! They were the first to oppose Tipper Gore and the music censors back in the late-80s and they remain vigilant for those that would try and restrict creative expression in music. They regularly ask "why do we need the music industry?" and pull back the covers on the industry's shady practices and lies.

If you love music – and you probably wouldn't be on this blog if you didn't – you should really subscribe to the R&RC email. Hey, it's free, it's entertaining, it's informative and Marsh and crew piss off the RIAA on a regular basis. What more could you want?

Bad Newz #17 (San Francisco)

Bob Z bounces back after a fractured issue of Bad Newz with a slightly bigger, but much more focused issue of his erstwhile punkzine. Issue #17, from sometime during 1992, includes interviews with Greg Sage of the Wipers, Gifthorse, the Lie Detectors, Internal Malfunction Institute and an older-but-still-cool interview with Fred Frith from 1987. There's a lot of stuff on the death and attempted rebirth of the legendary zine Factsheet Five, and lots of poetry crammed in between scores of album and zine reviews.

Bob gets more political with this issue of Bad Newz as well, running the anti-corporate satire "Union Of Time Thieves #00," another piece on unrest in Yugoslavia and, ahem, my rant on the Ice T and Body Count controversy from the time. The "punkature" styled graphics are still present, and although not as busy and claustrophobic, still delightfully crowded on the page. Altogether another enjoyable issue of Bad Newz courtesy of Bob Z.

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #17
• 1992, no month given
• B&W, 34-pages (including purple-colored covers)
• Style: punkzine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Greg Sage/The Wipers
Fred Frith
Gifthorse
The Lie Detectors
Factsheet Five zine update
--> also live show reviews, album & zine reviews

Bad Newz #16 (San Francisco)

A year or so after moving to San Francisco, my buddy Bob Z (a/k/a "Robert Beaper") has fallen on some hard times. Benefit shows for Bad Newz have barely broken even, bands have backed out of their support, and it seems like Bob's just not having a very good time on the left coast after leaving NYC. That doesn't stop him from putting out another issue of his fun-to-read punkzine Bad Newz, though, even if issue #16 is smaller, somewhat disjointed, and offers up confusing pagination and lay-out.

Nevertheless, Bob includes the second part of his interesting Mike Gunderloy interview; by the time of this late publication, Mike had sold Factsheet Five and gotten out of publishing, but there's still a lot of interest for zine people to read. There are also interviews with New Mexico punk band Red, White & Black and with Debbie Jaffe of Master/Slave Relationship, some cartoons by Ace Backwards, and the usual bunch of album and zine reviews. Bob rails against the local SF scene with a couple of well-placed rants and there's your usual, invigorating "punkature" styled graphics as only Bad Newz could do it! By this time, methinks, Bob Z was spending more time and focus on his poetry and less on the zine, but this issue still provides a lot of value for a couple bucks.

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #16
• 1991, no month given
• B&W, 32-pages (including purple/blue-colored covers)
• Style: punkzine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Mike Gunderloy/Factsheet Five
Master/Slave Relationship
Red, White & Black
--> also live show reviews, album & zine reviews

Bad Newz #15 (San Francisco)

With punkzines mostly a relic of the past by 1990, and with grunge about to jumpstart a new zine revolution in a mere year or so, my buddy Bob Z's Bad Newz kind of fell in the middle. Bob took late-70s "punkature" styled lay-out to the extreme, and this issue of Bad Newz, #15 from some undetermined month during the fall of 1990, was his biggest and best to date, a visual feast of cut-n-paste columns, "found" art, mind-blowing graphics and punk attitude.

Zine publisher and show promoter, Bob Z. was a well-known fixture on the NYC punk scene for several years before pulling up stakes during the summer of '90 and moving lock, stock and barrel to San Francisco. Z had won a decisive victory over the NYC "postering police," who had cited him for littering with show posters and fined him $3,700; when the authorities found out that Bob was campaigning against the postering laws, they jacked up his fines to over $22,000 and took him to court. "Bob Z vs the Postering Police" became the underground "cause celebre" during 1988 and '89, and Bob raised money and received support from dozens of zines (mine included), some as far away as Poland. In the end, Z won his battle on appeals and the city's anti-postering law was found to be unconstitutional as it was being enforced at the time.

Bad Newz #15 was the first issue Bob published from San Francisco, I think, and Bob put some good stuff in these jam-packed pages, including interviews with Mojo Nixon, the Fixtures, Bloody Mess, the Amateur Gynecologists, 8-Bark and Steel Pole Bathtub. Bob also provided some pretty in-depth coverage of the era's underground zine scene through interviews with Factsheet Five's Mike Gunderloy, Maximum Rock & Roll's Tim Yohannon and cartoonist Ace Backwards. There's also a slew of album and zine reviews crammed into every free corner of each and every page.

I always enjoyed each issue of Bad Newz and corresponded regularly with publisher Bob Z at the time, trading zines and sharing war stories about the battles fought just to get our zines in print. These days, with the resources of the Internet providing anybody that can string together two sentences a potential audience, people forget (or don't know) just how hard it was to publish something...anything...back in the pre-web days.

Besides the arduous and time-consuming work of physically typing up and preparing a zine for printing, you had to worry about money and advertising (which mostly came from bands and indie labels – the sort of people who would support a zine were unfortunately also those who wouldn't or couldn't pay for their ads) and, finally, the possibility of censorship. It was a free press minefield, to be sure, especially for good folks like Bob Z who would push the envelope of free speech and free expression with every issue of Bad Newz.

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #15
• 1990, no month given
• B&W, 54-pages (including yellow-colored covers)
• Style: punkzine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Mojo Nixon
The Fixtures
Steel Pole Bathtub
Mike Gunderloy/Factsheet Five
Tim Yohannon/Maximum Rock & Roll
Ace Backwards
--> also live show reviews, album & zine reviews

Bang! #24 (Medford MA)

Flash-forward five years and Rocco is still plugging away at it with Bang! Unfortunately I didn't see copies of the zine at Tower all that often, and I seem to remember actually trading zines with Rocco by this point in 1993, so my knowledge of Bang! suffers from several lost years. Compared to the previous issue I reviewed, #24 has largely moved away from mostly being a music zine towards being a sort of alternative culture zine with lots of movie stuff. This issue does include a good cover story on Babes In Toyland and a cool article on White Zombie as well as a wealth of album reviews, including such varied fare as Jesus Lizard, Tori Amos, Lunachicks, Scott Kempner and Celtic Frost.

Rocco did love his women, though, and he usually found some way to sneak a little cheesecake in between the rock music stuff, and with this issue he scores an interview with '90s "Scream Queen" Brinke Stevens, including several pulse-quickening pics of the lovely and brainy actress. This issue also includes interviews with strippers Niki Knockers and Pandora Peaks as well as a handful of video reviews and a nice pin-up photo of B-movie actress Jewel Shepard. An alluring photo of zine queen Lisa Suckdog graces the back cover of the issue. So there's a lot of music coverage still going on between the covers, but by '93 Bang! obviously had bigger things in mind!

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #24
• 1993, no month given
• B&W, 24-pages (including covers)
• Style: alt-rock zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Babes In Toyland
White Zombie
Brinke Stevens
Pandora Peaks
Niki Knockers
--> also album & video reviews

Bang #19 (Medford MA)

Published by my old buddy Rocco Cipollone out of Massachusetts, Bang! was a classic, '80s-era old-school music zine. Black & white covers, standard magazine-size pages printed on 11"x17" 24# stock, folded and stapled in the middle, typewritten text...this was the way that music zines were supposed to be! Unfortunately, Nirvana and "grunge" and the whole damn "Seattle scene" ruined all of that as a massive influx of major label advertising dollars propelled many alt-rock zines into the mainstream with slick covers and innards. I certainly never benefited from the label's largese, and I'm bettin' that Rocco didn't either!

Bang! may never have been very pretty to look at, but it's what's between the covers that counts, eh? Rocco had his finger on the pulse of the late-80s alternative rock scene, and he knew how to cobble together an interesting zine with solid writing and interviews. Issue #19, from some undetermined time in 1988, offers up features on such diverse bands as the Wipers (Greg Sage), Live Skull, Penelope Houston of punk legends the Avengers, Big Stick, Bullet Lavolta, the Pandoras, the Fleshtones and the Cynics. Album reviews were just as varied, this issue covering discs from Scrawl, the Misfits, Eric Ambel, Fatal Flowers, Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth, among others.

Rocco also liked his women, and he liked his horror films, so Bang! had a smattering of both, this issue's interview with '80s "scream queen" Linnea Quigley featuring a couple nice photos of the good-looking actress alongside an interesting conversation, and the zine reproduces ads for a number of movies, including The Corpse Grinders, Deep Red and Surf Nazis Must Die! Surprisingly, Rocco wasn't a writer himself, so he depended on some pretty good scribes like Mike Snider, Joe Harrington, Chris Porter and Aram Heller to carry him through. Bang! was always a lot of fun to read, and the zine covered music that, more often than not, lined up nicely with my own tastes at the time.

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #19
• 1988, no month given
• B&W, 28-pages (including covers)
• Style: alt-rock zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Greg Sage/The Wipers
Live Skull
Bullet Lavolta
The Pandoras
Penelope Houston
The Fleshtones
The Cynics
Big Stick
Linnea Quigley
--> also album reviews

Music From The Empty Quarter #4 (U.K.)

Say what you will about Tower Records (and I've said plenty through the years), the fact is that the opening of the Tower store on West End Avenue in June of 1988 opened the door on a world of possibilities for we naive Nashvillians. The store's presence quickly transformed the city from a podunk, backwoods cultural outpost into a sophisticated backwoods cultural outpost. Aside from the biggest and most diverse selection of music that we'd ever seen in town, Tower's zine rack would become the stuff of legend, offering a glimpse through the looking glass into culture and music from across the US and Europe.

Case in point: Music From The Empty Quarter zine. This British music zine was a digest-sized stick-o-dynamite with slick black covers and bright white pages. Ostensibly an industrial music zine, our meek familiarity with the genre (we had heard of Throbbing Gristle, yes, and artists on Chicago's Wax Trax! Records labels were well-represented on Tower's shelves -- besides, Nashville had Dessau, now didn't we?) couldn't have prepared us for the wealth of information provided by Music From The Empty Quarter #4 when it hit Tower's zine rack.

Although the articles and interviews in this issue -- which included pieces on Debbie Jaffe of Master/Slave Relationship, Chris Connelly of Pigface, Pankow, avant-garde musician Karl Blake and a great overview of Krautrock legends Can -- were certainly of interest, it was the album reviews that grabbed the imagination of my friends and myself. Music From The Empty Quarter would review damn near anything, briefly and concisely, from industrial artists like Clock DVA, Foetus, Non and KMFDM to Current 93's "freak folk," art-punk Lydia Lunch, Scratch Acid's "noise-punk," prankster John Trubee and the garage rock of the Gibson Brothers.

There were reviews of all of the usual suspects from Wax Trax! like the Revolting Cocks, along with a fine article on the label, and reviews of other sonic-terrorists like Swans, Nurse With Wound and Nitzer Ebb, records released by proto-industrial labels like Mute, Nettwerk, Play It Again Sam and United Dairies. It was all very esoteric to us at the time, very foreign, and it provided great sport for us all during a brief "industrial music" phase (1988-93) that included dancing (or, more accurately, watching the women dance) at Nashville's 176 Underground club.

My personal interest in "industrial music" waned as my tastes drifted back to various forms of good ol' rock & roll. In '92 grunge was still on the rise, Rage Against The Machine provided all the industrial-strength anger that we needed, and rap was set to commercially explode. I still pull out the old Dessau, Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle and Ministry discs now and then, and reading through this lone issue of Music From The Empty Quarter that I found at Tower brings up fond memories of a noisier time....

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #4
• February 1992
• B&W, 80-pages (plus covers)
• Style: industrial music

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Debbie Jaffe of Master/Slave Relationship
Pigface
Can
Numb
Pankow
Wax Trax! Records
--> also album & zine reviews

Nuthing Sacred #5 (Hollywood CA)

Although punk in attitude and appearance, Jay Sosnicki's Nuthing Sacred zine was much more than your typical jugheaded punkzine. Published out of the sleaze-rock capital of the world, Hollywood CA, Nuthing Sacred had a very "street" vibe to it; between the covers you'd find a mix of underground culture, punk poetry, observational articles, literary fiction and artist interviews.

I picked up a copy of Nothing Sacred #5 somewhere because it included an excerpt from Pleasant Gehman's "Rock 'N Roll Diaries." I had interviewed Pleasant back in '85 for the second issue of The Metro, Nashville's music magazine, when she was singing with the Screamin' Sirens. The Sirens had just put out their debut album on Enigma, and since I had a good relationship with the label at the time, I agreed to talk to Pleasant. Aside from being drop-dead gorgeous, Pleasant also turned out to be intelligent, quick-witted, flirtatious and creative, and I subsequently hung out with her and the band (which also included the talented Rosie Flores on guitar) whenever they came to Nashville. We kept in touch, sporadically, throughout the years that followed....

Gehman had a lot of stories to tell, and a few of them are included in this segment of her "Rock 'N Roll Diaries." Pleasant was a well-known fixture on the LA punk zine, good friends with Darby Crash of the Germs and Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club, and an early writer for local zines like Slash and publisher of her own zine, Lobotomy. Her diaries are exactly that, a day-by-day, blow-by-blow accounting of her life, no matter how mundane or glamorous any given moment might be. It makes for interesting reading. Unfortunately, I don't remember seeing any other issues of the zine (distribution for Nuthing Sacred, particularly in the Nashville area, seemed to be spotty), so I missed further excerpts from Pleasant's diaries.

Nuthing Sacred #5 also includes a lengthy interview with underground film legend Nick Zedd, humorously starting out with a conversation between the zine's Jay Sosnicki and Film Threat publisher Chris Gore on whether or not Zedd had actually died, as per Film Threat's 1991 obituary, or if it was just another Zedd publicity stunt. To provide balance to Zedd's self-promotion during the interview, Sosnicki also interviews NYC underground filmmaker and Zedd nemesis Richard Kern. The rest of this issue includes an interesting illustrated interview with young comic book artist Aaron Bordner, stark fiction from Conrad Nava, Sosnicki's funny "Slacking Off On Venice Beach" story about trying to score LSD in Venice, and lots of fair-to-middling poetry, including one by my old buddy Bob Z.

Nuthing Sacred featured a semi-punkature styled lay-out, a lot of text transposed against black backgrounds, columns askew and graphics landing wherever they felt like it. The zine made good use of the limitations of publishing in black & white, creating impressive-looking pages with high-contrast photo reproductions and bleak pen-and-ink drawings.

Altogether, I enjoyed Nuthing Sacred as something quite different from the standard fare of music zines that I was consuming during the early-90s. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only issue of the zine that I have in my possession, although I'll keep digging...one never knows what lurks in the next unpacked box!

The Official Site Of Her Majesty Pleasant Gehman

(Click on cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #5
• September 1992
• B&W, 52-pages (including covers)
• Style: underground culture

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Nick Zedd
Richard Kern
Aaron Bordner
Pleasant Gehman's "Rock 'N Roll Diaries"
--> also reader mail, a couple of zine reviews and lots of poetry

Punk Planet #5 (Hoboken NJ)

From my perspective down in rural Tennessee, Dan Sinker's Punk Planet zine was the East Coast response to left coast punkzines like Flipside and Maximum Rock 'N' Roll. Originally published out of Hoboken, New Jersey Punk Planet featured cleaner, more readable lay-out than most punk-oriented zines, and this early issue was printed in B&W on newsprint.

Looking over this 12-year-old issue and comparing it with more recent ones, Punk Planet hasn't really changed much in spirit or content. Regular columnists back in '95 included Sinker, Will Dandy, Julia Cole, Slim Moon, Darren Cahr, Dave Hake, Leah Ryan, Jim Connell, Kim Bae, Larry Livermore and Jersey Beat zine's Jim Testa. This issue's "scene report" was from Edmonton, Alberta Canada; interviews include Bikini Kill, the Queers and Huggy Bear. There are a handful of fictional stories, John Crawford's "Revolutionary Fetus" cartoon and record and zine reviews.

Punk Planet is still kicking out issues today and making a difference in the punk community.

(Click on thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #5
• January/February 1995
• B&W, 80-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Bikini Kill
The Queers
Huggy Bear
MC5: The End Of An Era
--> also album reviews, reader mail, columns, record and zine reviews

Nothing But Record Reviews v2n2 (NYC)

Okay, here's the deal...Maximum Rock 'N' Roll columnist Mykel Board published this zine called Nothing But Record Reviews back in the early-90s, but since he also reviewed cassette and videotapes sometimes, he would change the zine's name however he felt like at the time. Since he also threw in articles like this issue's Roger Ebert interview, he would add the disclaimer "Almost," which made the name of this particular issue Almost Nothing But Record (and tape) Reviews. Board also had his finger on the musical zeitgeist at the time, putting Nirvana on the cover and adding the tagline "(Almost) Nothing about Nirvana in this issue" (and there's not).

Board crammed a lot of reviews between the covers of this issue, starting with video reviews. He writes that while he was living in Japan, in the suburbs of Tokyo, "there wasn't much to do except rent videos." That means that readers get well-written reviews of obscure Japanese fare like Bio-Therapy, Robot Ninja and Pretty Body alongside films like SS Experiment, She-Male Reformatory and Maniac Cops. The aforementioned interview with film critic Roger Ebert is pointed and interesting.

As mentioned in my other Nothing But Record Reviews entry, Board's musical tastes were quite diverse, and this issue's album/tape reviews run the gamut from notorious and/or well-known indie artists like G.G. Allin, Snuff, Band Of Susans and Roky Erickson to the truly obscure like Iron Prostrate, Drop Acid, Dr. Gonzo and Naked Violence. Throw in early-90s era advertising from labels like Lookout Records, Bomp Records, Alternative Tentacles, Dischord and ROIR and fringe musicians like John Trubee and G.G. Allin and you have a valuable print relic of a bygone time....

(Click on thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Vol. 2, No. 2
• Winter 1992
• B&W, 32-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

Mykel Board official web site

Mykel Board MySpace page

Nothing But Record Reviews (NYC)

Published by former Maximum Rock 'N' Roll columnist and all-around scenester Mykel Board, (Almost) Nothing But Record (And Tape) Reviews was a sporadically-published zine that featured, well, mostly record reviews, with a smattering of other material as per Board's whims and interests at the time. This issue included a flexi-disc of some sort that I didn't receive because I traded zines with Board (thanks Mykel!), but otherwise the zine is a lot of fun.

Ten years after the compact disc had raised its ugly head, Board was still reviewing only vinyl records and cassette tapes, focusing exclusively on indie labels and artists. Board had pretty diverse tastes, so (Almost) Nothing But Record (And Tape) Reviews covered everything from punk to heavy metal to Japanese pop. This issue includes reviews of such disparate fare as Pentagram, Rocket From The Tombs, Swans, Nuclear Assault and Mudhoney alongside more obscure stuff as Kyofushimbun, Osgood Slaughter, Kicking Giant and Nick Riff.

Board had spent two years in Japan previous to this issue so most of the video review section covers films like Tetsuo, Kurasawa's Dreams and Japanese animation as well as Hollywood releases like Pet Cemetery and Child's Play. This issue also includes "Letters That MRR Wouldn't Print," which outlines the feud between that zine's Tim Yohannan and cartoonist Ace Backwards. One of the things that is the most fun about revisiting (Almost) Nothing But Record (And Tape) Reviews are the ads for indie labels like Dischord, Alternative Tentacles and ROIR which help provide a snapshot of the era.

(Click on thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• No number on issue
• January 1992
• B&W, 32-pages (including covers)
• Style: music zine

Mykel Board official web site

Mykel Board MySpace page