July 16, 2004
HOT LIKE CHILI
"Re: OG blogging, non-theory-laden edition. In about 1995, a couple of fanzines—HIOQI, Norm Arena's influential Anti-Matter, Outpunk and Bikini Kill, among others—switched it up and started writing about things in a tangental, narrative style. Things became PERSONAL. Fanzines went from aping legitimized forms of HOW MUSIC/CULTURE IS COVERED, and married it with what was starting to emerge, giving rise to "perzines" (i.e, personal zines). Some perzines were Burn Collector (my band mate Al's zine that has been going for about 8-10 years) and Cometbus, which had come into real influence and prominence in the mid-nineties. More and more zines were like travel-zines, "what I did today" stuff, people writing about their lives and tying it to culture, BUT more important was the writing in the first person about nothing fancy. Now, at the zine stores, that perzine style outnumbers every other type or genre of zine. This also kind of explains emo. I blame most of this on eight years of Clintonian armchair comfort. We were allowed to be self-obsessed because things were not so bad. (Or so we thought—right?) The first-person narrative was a big trend and I remember, circa 1996, catching real heat from people about how my writing in my zine was about me, about my opinions, NOT ABOUT the bands and like, who did I think I was? Those were the traditionlists, holding out in the foxhole. I remember it well. I think it all just got upgraded with the technology."
Posted by Sasha at July 16, 2004 05:13 PM | TrackBack