Drawing by Al Ackerman.
I discovered zines in high school. No email, no websites . . . just a far-flung network of similarly minded anti-establishment types who reveled in oddball humor, literary esoterica and comix. This was before Googling, so you never knew where your memes were taking root. I remember receiving a cassette tape from England; it turned out to be a spoken-word small-press review (Andrew Savage's "Super Trouper") containing, among many other things, a musical rendition of my poem "Elvis In My Pants," which had originally appeared in "FEH!: A Journal of Odious Poetry."
The last I knew, "Meshuggah" had changed editorship and had moved from New York City to Athens, GA. This was in the early 90s, and I had hopes that some member of R.E.M. would chance across it at a local bookshop.
I haven't exactly checked lately, but I imagine zines are still a thriving industry. But the Web has stripped them of their once subversive status; I suspect they're less "samizdat" than badly penned self-indulgence.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all the hip blogs I monitor are missing out on some fundamental vibe; maybe electronic publishing can never precisely outgun the sheer memetic impact of a cheaply stapled zine, with its shoddy typography and anarchic leanings . . .
Strangely, the names I remember from the zine era (of which I caught only the tail end) don't seem to produce too many Google results. Did "Super Trouper" take its act online? Is Blaster Al still furiously grinding out pen-and-ink mail art or has he traded in his arsenal of envelopes for a wi-fi enabled laptop?
1 comment:
Are you still out there, Mac? I remember 'Pulling Strings.' Oh, how I remember it. I like to think I'm made of strong stuff, but that as disturbing - but in a good way.
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