Motorbooty #5 (Ann Arbor MI)

Motorbooty is one of those zines that a lot of people know but few people have actually read. Much like similar zines such as Hitch or Chunklet, Motorbooty evinces a certain sarcastic attitude. Unlike those other zines, Motorbooty swaggered along with a Motor City vibe. Published out of Ann Arbor, Detroit's politically radical sister city (home of the White Panther Party in the '60s), the zine offered up an interesting combination of music and culture.

Motorbooty issue #5 features some great interviews in its section on the "Secret History Of Detroit Rock," including members of the MC5, Ron Asheton of the Stooges and poster artist Gary Grimshaw. This issue also includes interviews with free jazz giant Sonny Sharrock and gritty Southern novelist Harry Crews, articles on the Stooges Wax Museum and Ted Nugent as well as a number of full-page cartoons, including one by Peter Bagge, many of the others done in a '60s-influenced underground comix style. Altogether a very good issue of Motorbooty, a lot of fun to read and a welcome addition to the TMQ Zine Archive.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #5
• Winter 1990
• B&W, 72-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: music zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
MC5 interviews
Gary Grimshaw interview
Ron Asheton/The Stooges interview
Ted Nugent
The Stooges Wax Museum
Peter Bagge cartoon

Punk Planet #15 (Chicago)

Sadly, I recently heard the news that Punk Planet is ceasing publication with its latest issue, its 80th over the last 13 years. The usual suspects are to blame – a dwindling number of subscribers, fewer advertisers and, perhaps the deepest cut of all, distributors that rip them off. The zine's web site mentions a problem over at McSweeney's, where that publication lost $130k with the bankruptcy of one of its larger distributors. I seem to remember Punk Planet having a similar problem a few years ago.

Here's why this is such a problem: distributors are a necessary evil in publishing; the good ones will get your magazine or book out on local shelves across the country and pay you for those you sold. However, bad distributors will take your product, duckwalk it half-ass it onto a few shelves, and "lose" your payment. I'm convinced that many magazine distributors, in particular, are mob-styled operations much like a lot of record companies once were. They're formed as limited liability corporations, they fleece as many of the publications they distribute as they can for as much money as they can, and then they file for bankruptcy and/or simply go out of business, leaving indie publishers like Punk Planet or McSweeney's holding the bag. Many publisher just can't recover from the loss....

Looking back at healthier, happier days, Punk Planet #15 features a wealth of content over its 120-pages. PP took a strong political stance early on, this issue featuring extensive and interesting (punk-cum-anarchist) coverage of the Democratic and Republication conventions from 1996. There are also interviews with punk bands Rhythm Collision, Cheescake and Chamberlain and with Action Girl comic creater Sarah Dyer. You'll find the usual columns and more record and zine reviews than you can digest in a single sitting.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #15
• October/November 1996
• B&W, 120-pages (including covers) on newsprint
• Style: punkzine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Sarah Dyer/Action Girl comics interview
Rhythm Collision interview
Cheesecake interview
Chamberlain interview
Democrat & Republication convention coverage
--> also reader mail, columns, music & zine reviews

Punk Planet #9 (Chicago)

It's unusual, for any publication, but Punk Planet found its voice very quickly, issue #9 showing the same independent spirit and developing the basic editorial direction that the zine would pretty much follow for the next dozen years. Editor Dan Sinker had moved from Hoboken, New Jersey to Chicago, where the zine would be published for many years. This issue is a fat one, growing better than 20% in page count from #5 in our archive.

There are interviews with the Mr. T Experience, the Lunachicks, Reverend Norb and Earth Crisis, as well as MR&R style columns from folks like Sinker, Larry Livermore, Julie Cole and David Hake. There are a slew of record and zine reviews, some fiction and the issue's "DIY" column is offers up a dated view of the Internet and web. This issue also includes a 7" flexi disk bound in the zine with tunes from the Mr. T Experience, Squirtgun, the Queers and the Hi-Fives. For you youngsters out there, a flexi disk (or "sound sheet") was a paper-thin square of vinyl that was grooved like a 45RPM single that zines during the '80s and '90s used to hype their favorite bands. Much likes zines themselves, the flexi disk is a media relic of a quaint time long passed.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #9
• September/October 1995
• B&W, 112-pages (including covers) on newsprint
• Style: punkzine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Mr. T Experience interview
Lunachicks interview
Rev. Norb interview
Earth Crisis interview
--> also reader mail, columns, music & zine reviews

bOING bOING #14 (Los Angeles)

Issue #14 of bOING bOING has the zine moving its offices...again...back down to southern California and the Los Angeles area. For those keeping count, that's eight moves in seven years, circa 1988-1995. This is only mentioned because editor Mark Frauenfelder and the rest of the gang have such a casual attitude about it, even going so far as to opening this issue with a recap of the publication's many homes (which is actually pretty funny). Sadly, this would prove to be the next-to-last issue of bOING bOING the print zine, with Frauenfelder, Carla Sinclair and crew moving the zine online, to a web site, sometime during 1995. While I felt, at the time, that the readers might actually be catching up with the zine's futuristic vision and subject matter, evidently not enough readers evolved to continue supporting the zine's future.

This issue remains one of my favorites, featuring cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling's proposal for his innovative "Dead Media Project", which I had the pleasure of talking about with Sterling at the DragonCon convention that year. There's also a piece on Russ Meyer's "vixens" that includes interviews with actresses Haji and Kitten Natividad (complete with pulse-quickening photos), and another interview with '90s pin-up queens the Barbi Twins and, finally, an interesting interview with horror author Clive Barker. There are a couple of full-page cartoon strips, some very cool article illustration and the book, zine and music reviews that readers had come to expect from bOING bOING.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #14
• no date given - 1995?
• B&W, 64-pages (including color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Clive Barker interview
Russ Meyer's Vixens Haji & Kitten
Barbi Twins interview
Bruce Sterling on "The Dead Media Project"
Marc Laidlow on "Becoming William Gibson's Screenwriter"
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.6" column
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews

bOING bOING #13 (San Francisco)

Whew! One mention on the popular bOING bOING blog and the hits go through the roof! The blog ran a post on our humble little TMQ Zine Archive and all of That Devil Music's blog's saw attendance jump from 1,000 unique visitors daily to a high of 6,000 right after the blog, since settled down to around 2,000 readers daily. Thanks and welcome to all of you newcomers!

Since the gang at bOING bOING did us a solid with their blog posting, I dug a couple more issues of the zine out of the old vault to add to the archive. Issue #13, which seems to be from 1994 sometime (they were always bad about dates) includes interviews with Ben Is Dead zine publisher Darby Romeo, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, John Balance and Peter Christopher of Coil and the visionary Kevin Kelly, former editor of both the influential Whole Earth Review and Wired. There are also articles on dark wave and human branding as well as the usual insightful and interesting reviews of books, zines, music and such.

(Click on the cover thumbnail to see larger picture)

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #13
• no date given - 1994?
• B&W, 64-pages (plus color covers)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Kevin Kelly interview
Adam Yauch/Beastie Boys interview
Darby Romeo/Ben Is Dead zine interview
Coil interview (Peter C and John B)
Dark Wave ("Goth Sharpens Its Fangs")
Rudy Rucker's "Zip.5" column
--> also reader mail, music, comics, book & zine reviews