Knock Knock show saturday at the Coolcat, but you probably already know that.
I thought for sure I had already talked about Rollerderby Zine at some point on heckasac (is that called blogger vu? terrible), but google informs me this is not so. It's on my mind because smiller scored me a copy of one of her books from Beers. I only got a few issues of Rollerderby but is freaked me out and fascinated me in a way things can do when you're young. The same kinda way I would feel when I would see G.G. Allin on some talk show. And indeed, Lisa Carver mentions running into G.G. Allin in a bus station when she was like 16 and how it changed her life. Luckily I was so scared by that stuff that I never became some poo eating performance artist or anything. She has a real six degrees of sacto connection, or more like one degree because didn't she live here or something? Or she dated Bill Callahan when he lived here? There's juicy stuff about Bill Callahan in the book I think, maybe she will mention Sac. Did anyone else read this zine? What zines did you read? I check out the zines that are for sale on ebay occasionally to see if they are ebay gold yet and they are not. I used to mostly read Morrissey zines and Maximum I guess. I had a few riot grrl zines. I did a zine that only one person has ever read and it's humiliating to think about.
I liked Rollerderby but haven't read one in years. Cometbus is great.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll get off my ass and print up the last issue of Jerk. Tippy, Beercan Dick, and I worked on the last one when I worked at the 'Net. I'm pretty sure it needs to sit, ready for photocopying, for 7 years before it can be released. I really should do that before the (hopefully last) Peep Off. It'll go great with the Tabasco Snow-cones Skipper and I are making.
I grew up with Adrian Tomine, so I had multiple copies of his first 4 or 5 Optic Nerve zines. I agreed to stand outside the Tower on Watt, one excrutiatingly hot summer day, to help him sell copies, and I remember him saying, "Just take a stack of 'em. It's not like I'm ever gonna sell all of them." Now he's a regular at the New Yorker.
ReplyDeleteThere was priceless stuff in those zines, like playing his first show at Cattle Club in Piss Ant. Best name for a h.s. band ever.
Sadly, my younger sister got angry one day and threw away the zines and my senior yearbook (which incidentally had amazing cartoon renderings of all of our friends and the evil jocks who tormented us, drawn by Adrian). It was rumored that the captain of the football team was moonlighting on the weekends as a stripper, and Adrian drew a two-page spread in the back of my yearbook about the guy's journey from childhood to Amateurs' Night at the El Dorado Saloon.
I'm sure those zines would be worth something, but I'm not even going to look.
-Dani
he was on fresh air the other day talking about his new graphic novel. do you have that? his interview was pretty darn boring. the new yorker gives him tons of work now, and he recently did an illustration for the new york times, too
ReplyDeleteIs the Knock Knock show still happening?I heard Coolcat got shut down by the man (weeks after a nice write up in the bee). Maybe all agess venues getting lots of press isn't such a great idea...
ReplyDeleteknock knock thinks it's still happening, i think. after that ancient sons show was forced to be acoustic and the place seemed so disorganized i figured it was doomed.
ReplyDeleteI thought Lisa Carver was a genius when I was about 16. 15 years later I am curious what I would think. They sold them at Newsbeat in Davis when I was a kid I wonder if they have a good zine selection still? R.M.
ReplyDelete(speaking of- anyone check out the Newsbeat in the MARS building?)
Is Lisa Carver the same person as Lisa Suckdog? I just remember her being around the same time as the Karen Finley NEA controversy and wondering if eating poo beat yams up the yin yang. They shoulda done a show together at Gilman!
ReplyDeleteI am hella old, but my favorite teenage zine was Matter, which Tower Records used to sell when it first opened up its Sunrise location. Great stuff like interviews with Nick Cave, the 'Mats, the dbs, the Minutemen, Robyn Hitchcock and REM back when Michael Stipe had hair and didn't form a coherent sentence (the band went downhill once you actually could start understanding what he was saying).
Also being hella old, I remember back when Bust was a kickass zine instead of its current depression incarnation as InStyle for the hipster set.
I have every issue of "Teen Meat", including the ultra-rare Nar interview with Miller and his record collection. That zine used to crack me up, even if it wasn't very good. I lost some of my enthusisam for the zine when Penny left Dennis and took what she thought were the most valuable of the records in his collection, not knowing they were mine. How am I ever going to replace that 22 song D.R.I. EP?
ReplyDelete-charvey
p.s. Still love to look at my old copies of Johnny Marr's "Murder Can Be Fun." Timeless!
The "Dirty Rotten" ep, eh? I've got records that I'll be putting on eBay in the next couple days. I'll make sure that's one of 'em.
ReplyDeleteThe 18-second (?) song "I'm a first-round draft choice" off of that EP is one of my favorite songs ever. Actually packs in two verses! Classic!
ReplyDelete-Whause
Wow, I really had to think about this one... so, Dishwasher, Dishwasher, Dishwasher I only had like three issues but I held them near and dear. Jerk, Optic Nerve, Drop Out, Alphabet Threat, Murder Can Be Fun, and there was another whose name I can't correctly remember off the top of my head; Milk and Cheese? Cheese and Milk? Oh well.
ReplyDeleteOMF recently introduced me to his 10 year old issues of Front Porch which I found quite entertaining. Somewhere I have the Probe with naked Ed Hunter in it, although that maybe considered more of a magazine as opposed to a zine what with the shiny cover and all.
Lastly, pretty much anything Matt K Shrugg has laid his hands on in the past 7 years has been solid gold. It's seriously time for the next issue of the Swinger Creeper!!
Rollerderby was the shit. I have quite a few old copies. There was also another Sac link too - a girl, who's name I forgot and (I think) worked at Tower Records, who appeared nude in an issue or 2 of Rollerderby. Cindy something?
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of nude, does anybody remember The Probe?
I still have a giant box of zines from my days of zine trading and poring over issues of FACTSHEET 5, and still have a couple shelves of MRR from about 1984 to 2002. I did go through my zines a few years ago and tossed the ones that weren't any damn good or that I didn't have any sentimental attachment to...it's unnerving how much sentimental attachment I can generate for photocopied paper.
ReplyDeleteI started doing a zine basically as a way to get free stuff and get on the guest list, but stopped in 1994 because I discovered BBSes and later Usenet and wrote on those instead--a pastime, bad habit and drag on my creative output to this day.
I too enjoyed TEEN MEAT, as well as BIG DUCK and JERK and the assorted comic/zine things that Tom Working used to do. This town had a fine crop of zines, more than I can remember...dammit, now I'm going to go in my back room and flip through my zine collection and get maudlin. Thanks a goddamn lot!!
Murder can be fun and one zine about how cool products looked in regards to packaging.The swingin creeper is awesome!!!
ReplyDeleteJay
RE: "a girl, who's name I forgot and (I think) worked at Tower Records"
ReplyDeleteThe lovely Cynthia Dall, CK McClatchy High School class of '88, later a Drag City Records recording artist and paramour of Bill Callahan.
I used to have quite a correspondence going with lisa suckdog when I was about 19. I have a fat envelope of letters somewhere. I have so far avoided ever re reading her responses, to save myself the pain of remembering how lame I was then. I do remember that she was surprised that I was a girl. I guess my 19 year old self sounded like a dude in writing. I was smart enough to ask her not to print my letters however. Thank god for that. I remember when she decided to move from NH (or had she already moved to RI? Whatever, the east coast) to Dogtown, CA. I remember writing her and pointing out that there were no apartments or houses to rent in Dogtown (which is like population 49, right on the ocean)and that it was totally impractical. This didn't seem to make any impression on her. They moved to Gurneville instead.
ReplyDelete-signed, Ella "is still square and still maybe sounds like a dude" Cross.
Good call, Liv -- "Front Porch" is the greatest zine ever. Examples:
ReplyDelete"P.32: People who give a fuck about CJ Ramone"
"After leaving the Stones, Brian Jones enjoyed success with blues outfit The Napalm Death"
Patrone
chapter 3. wanna fight? (front porch classic)i actually do give a shit about cj ramone. -ed c.
ReplyDeleteProbe was the best, got a lot of those back issues and a lot of HSac readers know Aaron Probe 'cause he's at all the Peep Offs and such.
ReplyDeleteMultiball is still around. Cool Beans had tons of funny shit about being a cabbie in SF and sometimes came with a cool flexi. Cometbus of course. Lots of music stuff like Zum, your flesh (other roomie wrote for them), Glove Puppet, Plume, Dagger, and a pile of riot grrl-ish stuff i always got in the mail for some reason. Alphabet Threat's were always around. Jay Howell did a funny one called Super Monster Supreme, and Matty Luv's "You Bet Your Sweet Ass I'm A Turtle" was the best.
I had a zine library in my house in Davis that got so out of control we ended up giving garbage bags of zines to bands when they stayed there (I think Sone got two garbage bags 'cause they asked). My roomate did one (forgot what it was called) that was about all kinds of music obscurities - field recordings of fast food restaurants, a whole newsprint issue on Gary Young, millitant lesbian separtist folk singers living in the Ozarks & Appalatians (he collected those records)... those were fun.
Too bad you gave away the zines. You could've donated them to a university library. There's a few that take them. I liked just randomly picking stuff out of Factsheet Five plus the whole world of zine trading. Which leads to trading VHS and cassette tapes with bands when they tour. Lots of great prank calls made the rounds. Early Neil Hamburger stuff.
ReplyDeleteQuimby Quarterly was great and arty. Maybe they still do it. In the 80s it came with bumper stickers. I had the "bark if you love jesus" sticker on my Thing.
Lesbian Separatist Folk Singers in the Appalachians. Man, that's a little piece of heaven.
Milk and Cheese. Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer wrote some of the Space Ghost cartoons. And he did the shirts for All You Can Eat.
I'm going to go yell at kids to get off my lawn now before they kick my red lava rocks into my white rocks and ruin my rock Garfield. Check out that Garfield link.
I loved that story in Cool Beans where the 3 hookers were freaking out in the back of the cab, threatening to "go boo boo" and when they arrived at their destination they tried to pay him with wet bills the one girl pulled from her unders. Classic.
ReplyDelete~Dani
I think that hooker was trying to shit out a tenner she had hid up her bum to pay for the cab ride. "NO BOO BOO IN THE CAB LADY!" Classic quote. I'll bet Mike from Sic Alps has stories like that. That's why I'm always freaking out when the kids put coins in their mouths because you know somewhere along the line that coin has been up a hookers arse.
ReplyDeleteThose zines were becoming a fire hazzard and had to go, they found good homes entertaining fuckups driving around the country on drugs for 6 weeks, which was better than rotting on a shelf in my filthy house. Also, most of them were terrible and the product of me touring all the time and getting paid in zines, demos and foodstamps instead of money.
Favorite zine stores where you can still buy/sell zines and other limited handmade art:
Needles + Pens (SF)
Grass Hut (Portland OR)
Cinders (NYC)
... look them up online.
Smitty -- is that link you have on your message by any chance 'Garfield Minus Garfield?'
ReplyDeleteIf not you need to check out that site. It's the best thing ever.
-- Patrone
I liked Scrantmony.
ReplyDeletejd
I've seen Garfield minus Garfield and it's wonderful and depressing and sad.
ReplyDeleteThat was a like to Lasagna Cat where a strip is re-enacted with a laugh track, then a short bit around a song. The whole thing takes about 80 seconds. Head like a Hole is great (go figure).
lasagnacat2.com
My moderately crazy GF (circa '85-89) put out a punk zine called Cranial Silt. She was a 'peace-punk' (meaning half punk half hippie.. you can figure it out from there). CS had a few good things like reviews of punk rock shows on the steps of the Capitol and a nice article about Einsturze de Neubaten, but overall, not so hot. I did quite a bit of art in them (also not so hot). I think there were two issues.
ReplyDelete-omf
I had a zine library in my house in Davis that got so out of control we ended up giving garbage bags of zines to bands when they stayed there (I think Sone got two garbage bags 'cause they asked). My roomate did one (forgot what it was called) that was about all kinds of music obscurities - field recordings of fast food restaurants, a whole newsprint issue on Gary Young, millitant lesbian separtist folk singers living in the Ozarks & Appalatians (he collected those records)... those were fun.
ReplyDeleteWas your roommate Jason Verlinde? If so, the 'zine was called Trundle. I think I might have helped him on the Gary Young issue, or at least I gave him some background. It's been a long time; Jason and I worked at Tower Records Pulse before he moved to Seattle to work for Amazon. Now he lives in Santa Barbara and he's publisher of the excellent Fretboard Journal, along with the exquisitely obscure Ukulele Occasional.
Funny, i was just telling my girlfriend about Trundle on Friday when we were out for a bike ride. Jason did one issue on faux-doily paper placemats, in memoriam to Gino Robair, the food critic/restaurant reviewer for the Pennysaver who had died.
Jason is a genius.
--Grwffydd
yeah, jason was my roomate. he played musical saw in some 2-man project with woodhouse on drums. that doily issue was great, we sat around staining those things with food. i can't remember if he lived in the house at the same time as mike trouchon, but between the two of them i got introduced to soooo much printed and recorded weirdness.
ReplyDeleteGrwffyd, in case Mark doesn't respond to this, you're right, he was talking about Jason Verlinde. And, amen to that - Jason is such a fascinating guy. Now we're gonna have to seek out his new mags.
ReplyDelete~ Dani
Yeah, Jason is the shizz. I keep meaning to get hold of him, because one of the few good things I did at my last job was I converted the Ron Schmeck Easy Living Country album to digital, and i have jpegs of all the artwork, too. I woulda finished the job, but our passive-aggressive art director never got round to sizing everything for CD.
ReplyDeleteI was wrong about Gino Robair, whi is still living and runs the avant-jazz label Rastascan Records. But Gino the restaurant reviewer at Pennysaver had a different last name. He was so much better than Mary Jane Popp, who replaced him after he shuffled off to that great J.J. North's buffet in the sky.
Jason also got me obsessed with "The Dreamweaver" show on Talk 650, with Stephanie Doren. I think he and Vicki Dunkak were making covert trips to Cafe Capri in Carmichael whenever Stephanie and her DJ/sound person announced they were going to be there. I think they even crashed the DJ's wedding reception. Good times.
Damn, I miss that guy. It was easy to get caught up in his enthusiasms, of which there were many, and strange and wonderful ones, too.
--Grwffydd
I still find the occasionsal Ron Schmeck album at local thrift stores and always snatch them up, just to bestow them on those who were previously unaware of the sideburned genius. I think I still have two or three. I remember finding my first one at the now long-since-burned-down thrift store that used to be across Alhambra from Luis's. The Alkali Flats have sworn to learn "Paw Paw Can We Go Fishing?" but we keep putting it off. Tim was pushing for "Traveling Man in a Minivan" but he got outvoted.
ReplyDelete-charvey
re: scrantmony:
ReplyDeleteyou beat me to that one, jd. i couldn't remember the name.
- josh chapstick
Haha, Kevin Seconds said The Probe. I named that zine and wrote a bunch in the first few issues. Aaron ran with it.
ReplyDeleteBen is Dead was fun, Answer Me! was undeniable. Man, I can't remember names today. Or any day anymore.