Favorite Zines - Web or otherwise...

I got a kick out of the recently posted Lester Bangs interview with Brian Eno, which has this hilarious anecdote:

I mentioned that I was getting ready to do a story on prostitution, interviewing call girls from a midtown agency that advertised in Screw, and he said: "I called for a girl in response to one of those ads once. It said 'Unusual black girls.' So I phoned and said, 'Just what do you mean by unusual?' They said, 'Just what did you have in mind?' I said, 'Well, I'd like one that was bald with an astigmatism.' 'Well, we'll see what we can do,' they said. They found the astigmatism but not the baldness."

"Why astigmatism?" I wondered.

"I'm terribly attracted to women with ocular damage."

Print: Providence Machines, Scenery, Cometbus, The Broken Face, Ptolemaic Terrascope

I am realizing that a lot of the sites I used to frequent a few years back no longer exist. It is kind of sad in a way because I am sure a lot of interviews from the 90's are not allowed to see the light of day right now.

I should devote more attention to just reading Freaky Trigger, but i often get to it backwards via the run-off here.

even though I write for it and it's sometimes too serious and/or indie

I still wanna speak up for PopMatters (and I write for it too) -- for such a comprehensive zine, the general writing standard is consistently high.

I agree that list was annoying, yet nobody is to blame -- and I would not go so far as to call it an abomination.

come back mentalist--
we are trying very hard
(we all write for free!)

um, why?

ND is probably the only magazine I've ever subscribed to where I read the ads as carefully as the articles, reviews, etc. They seem to ONLY run ads by artists who fit their musical universe. That may seem obvious to some, but most other magazines will go from Beefheart to Backstreet without a hitch....

There once was an underground pop magazine I loved.....Yeah, Yeah, Yeah that was published out of NJ. I can't think of a zine that led me to more good music than they did. It only proves that pop music need not be popular (?)....which is why bands like The Negro Problem, Baby Lemonade, Jellyfish, etc. remain, alas, a footnote in pop history.

Not sure whether it's still going at such a ferocious pace since things like "Evan Parker vs. William Parker" and "the Keiji Heino craze" have quietened down a bit. It's edited by someone i seem to have had differences of opinion in the past with on a consistent basis, Nick Cain. Despite that, i'm always curious as to what _new_ material he's informing us about given the alternative noise etc. craze peeked a few years ago now but given his sworn interest in so much "new" or "mind-changing" music, and what seems to be his own personal favourite, "obscure and expensive music". It represents a comparable 'view demograph to The Wire (and closer still to Bananafish). I'm looking forward to the next installment.

The 'zine itself is full of interesting and informed opinion and fact from people with years of experience listening/playing in those areas of interest
(Kevin Lian Anderson, Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Paul Collett, Tim Cornelius, Dave Cross, Alan Cummings, Brian Doherty, Ed Hazell, Michel Henritzi, Robert Iannapollo, David Keenan, John Kennedy, James Kirk, James Lindbloom, Alan Licht, Marc Masters, Donald Miller, Andrew Moon, Jon Morgan, Iain Smith, Nathan Thompson, Mike Trouchon and Bruce Russell).

A more modest but nonetheless intriguing long-term site is Paul Collett's own "psychedelic noise from Japan and New Zealand", which is usually "rotating across new finds" i suppose. It has some useful links (whereas Opprobrium is awkward to navigate, and seems to have none).

;-)