Here’s a bunch of photos of the haul from my friend Chris Francz, my half of the book trade we did. I wrote for his zine, Crucial Times, a while back, and I’ve always liked his art and writing. His Etsy store is here.
I’ve only skimmed these for now, but I’ll dive into these after beta reading Jill‘s new book.
10 Comments
Thanks. Punk zines were so much easier. I did music zines ftom ‘86 – 2000. Instant audience, simple format: everyone did the same format – editor soapbox, band interviews, record reviews, zine reviews. Some youngsters still make paper zines but 99% of music-related networking is in blogs and other social media. Dinosaurs like me moved away from music-related zines (we stopped liking most music made after 1989) and are committed to photocopying and stapling our thoughts together in booklets for an audience that is dwarved by the number of people who have seen the Loch Ness Monster.
So you hated all the bands you covered in Crucial Times? Not a completely serious question. 😀
That was a very exciting time for me – discovering all that new music. I loved a majority of the stuff I reviewed and I never interviewed a band I did not like. I’m still fond of a lot of it. Certain music is tightly woven with a lot of memories I have of each season, and even individual months. My previous comment was written by Grumpy Old Man Chris.
I read in Stolen #16 that “zine” is pronounced “zyne.” I thought it was pronounced like “zeen,” like in “magaZINE.” My world is shattered.
Pretty sure I wrote that I once THOUGHT it was pronounced ZYNE. That was at the beginning of 1986 when I spoke on the phone with Jim Testa who did Jersey Beat zine. I said ZYNE and he corrected me. Haha.
Well, I used to see “zine” written with an apostrophe, like “‘zine,” to imply that it’s shortened from “magazine,” but most people didn’t do that. “Zine” by itself looks like it should be pronounced ZYNE.
Did you beat up Jim Testa after he corrected you?
I read all of the books. They were good. I hate it when people let you go first in an intersection, even though they were clearly there first. Happens a lot when I’m on my bike. It’s like they are storing up brownie points for being nice to the cyclist who probably lost his license for too many DUIs or drugs (not me). Stop being nice, just drive!
Zyne would not make sense since zine (zeen) is still derived from magazeen. In the 1930’s I think a guy self-published some pamphlets about sci-fi and called it a fanzine. That was where the term was first used. I rarely use the word zine with people that don’t know about the stuff. I just say “I make little booklets of my writing and drawings.” Jim Testa was an older guy and he was just helping me out with the pronunciation. Suprisingly, in this digital age, there are just as many people making zines as there ever were. A lot of cities have annual zine fairs / expos every year.
There are zine conventions? Huh.
In 2011 Seth came with me to the Scranton Zine Fest. I had a table there. I was thinking about getting a table at the Lehigh Valley Zine Fest but the last I checked it was cancelled because of Covid. I sold a lot of zines from my Etsy shop during the pandemic because everyone was at home buying stuff with their phones.
The Scranton Zine Fest site (judging by the URL) is a landing page for posture. LOL
https://scrantonzinefest.weebly.com/
The Lehigh fest has a Facebook page at least
https://www.facebook.com/lvzinefest/
Pittsburgh has one. Interesting. Doesn’t look current though:
http://www.pghzinefair.com/