From: bobc@pyramid.unr.edu (Bob Conrad)
Subject: Re: Latest F5 info
Organization: University of Nevada, Reno  Department Zine Revisionism
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 00:04:14 GMT
X-Posted-From: pyramid.cs.unr.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <1993Jan24.214437.15525@eng.ufl.edu> edo@ugrad.ee.ufl.edu writes:
>
>The zine explosion is on. 
>I heard the CNN story on ZINES (no cable = no see) and was amazed that CNN
>would do a news story on such.
>Alas, USA TODAY also did a story on ZINES back in AUGUST.  I believe Ace Backwords picture appeared in the story.
>UTNE reader has also done some "zine reviews."  
>The news is spreading...
>

i never thot i'd have to do this but some people are apparently clueless.
so, here goes.  from Cometbus #29.

	all of a sudden, fanzines are getting a lot of attention.  it is
an interesting situation.  "zines" are all the rage.  stores are carrying
them, people are buying them, mainstream magazines are talking about them.
hey even the utne reader (which has the nerve to herald itself as "the
best of the alternative press") finally recognized our existence in a
small article.  it's like "the fanzine revolution" is some big new
revelation, but how could everyone not notice it until now?  along with
all the attention, there's people trying to take the wind from our sails.
people like "cafe magazine -- the zine for the 90s" show up out of nowhere
with a large circulation and a reprinted selection of what they label
"the best" of the bay area's small press.  i have told them that if they
really wanted to help local small press, they would help the individual
mags get printed and distributed.  they disagree.  instead they play
big daddy and oh-so-charitably "help" the little mags by selectively
pillaging their creative efforts.  it is not the first time someone
with more money and more connnections has moved in to co-opt and shape
and in effect edit a whole scene.  fuck their 'help', and the help of
the next people who show up to put their own banner on our momentum
and our work.  "cafe" asked to reprint some more stuff from cometbus,
and when i told them what i thought about it, they called me a "purist."
okay, fine then, i'm a fucking purist, i encourage everybody else to try
to keep their work and art pure too.  the other thing about all this zine
talk that's pissing me off is evident in an announcement i got in the mail
for an upcoming zine show.  it said "fanzines=artzines, homozines, litzines,
femzines, musiczines, personalzines, punkzines, comiczines" or something
to that effect.  to read it you'd get the impression on "punkzines" are
some little bastard faction of fanzines, when in reality fanzines have been
nurtured and hyped almost exclusively by the punk scene for the last
15 years!  sure, they word "fanzine" originally came from sci-fi rags
in the early 70s but it's been punk culture that kept the word alive
and then pushed it to its presnt possibilities.  it's been the punk
culture that nurtured and revitalized the small underground press the same
way it nurtured and revitalized vinyl and cassette tapes and film and
fashion and rock-n-roll and, to some extent, radical art and radical
politics....END  (there's more but you get the point)
++++++

the point being roughly equivalent to thinking twice about your doc martens
and nirvana before running around like some sort of counter-cultural icon...

got it mr. major label???
Newsgroups: alt.zines