Sticky presents Capital Letters zine fair

So yesterday marked my second appearance at a zine fair. Both have them have been as a stallholder, I've never actually been to a zine fair to just look before.

So the last one was the one at Gorman House a few months back. I think I wrote something in this blog about it. I probably enjoyed that one more, and the main reasons were that I had a great table, and I did not have a hangover.

So I had a ticket to the opening of the street art exhibition at the gallery, but I was convinced against going and instead went to a Pantera cover night. This will probably make its way into the next issue so we can talk about that later.

So we can just say I woke up early with a seriously mean hangover. I hadn't even finished making the copies of my zines, so I headed into officeworks to do that. I spent a lot more money than I wanted to on doing that.

At the last zine fair, I made a new pal Viv, her boyfriend came into Officeworks because he had to copy something, so I gave her a lift to the zine fair. She helped me out on my stall. There wasn't much to help out with because people weren't really interested.

I was sitting next to some people who made these prints, they were very fancy and the caught the eye of people coming past my table. Coming into the fair you got a zine that was made specially with a top 5 of different things. I put in a top 5 Canberra releases into mine.

So I went and had a bit of a wander around the stalls and came up with a few zines. I have just pulled a bunch out of my bag so I'm going to write down what I got.

first the zine about the zine fair. Turns out I have a couple of copies.

iZine- 2.0. This was made by a guy David, he's from Katoomba. He came over and asked if I wanted to do a trade. I said of course. He was a really nice guy actually. I showed him the book I made for my Dad's 50th, he was really impressed. I took it along to show some people some of my other writing. I thought there may be some people interested.

So it's this pretty random collection of pictures and crazy articles from newspapers, accompanied by a tape. That's right, tape is on the comeback, see a few posts down, Talking Tapes w/Jerkstore.

On my first wander around I bought this zine called Night Shift, to remember my times on the graveyard shift, that zine's actually quite old, the drawings are amazing and it's really funny I liked that one.

I stopped by the Half Arsed stall and checked that out, they were just across from me, it's a Canberra skate zine, it brought back a lot of memories. They also had the plans for the new belco park which I discussed in my last post. I got issues 1 & 2, they are extremely thick and were only two bucks each.

Another guy came to do a trade, I can't remember his name actually. Stuart I think it might have been. So he did a trade with me, he gave me his zines Grunted Warning 2 and 3, he also gave me a copy of Blackguard (#3), a zine he edits. I picked up issue 2 of that one actually when I was in Adelaide.

Then I went over to the Smells Like Zines distro and met Elouise. She had some great zines there. I gave her a few issues of Capital Eyes, so if you are in Qld and want them, that's the place.

Elouise was super nice, so I bought numerous zines from her. I really like this one "Whenever I see a bearded hobo on the street I'll think of you and smile". It was a bit pricey ($8), but it's more like a real magazine (colour etc) and full of interesting stories.

It makes me want to give America another chance. I did only go there for one week, to one of the worst places, so there's plenty more to see. There's plenty of adventure in that publication.

Also from that table I picked up Nerf Jihad #7 and another one called "How to have an amazingly adventurous life for zero dollars per day". After that little trip around I went back to my seat. Not so many people came by. An older gentleman came and said "hey, you're not doing anything, what's this all about?". I gave him a little explanation about zines and that a lot of people had traveled from out of town to have a stall and he said that's very impressive.

Then the girl opposite me, Tasha, she came and did a trade with me. Her zines are literally full of writing. There are two zines I got- Age and Circumstance and also Cut Up The Old. I had talked to her a little bit on the We Make Zines website which I just joined up to the other day, so it was good to have a friendly face there immediately.

The Sticky table didn't really have anything I was all that interested in which was a little disappointing, there's a lot of stuff on the website I probably would have picked up, but I guess that's a good thing.

So my sister Alison came down to visit. Once she had looked around at the fair I decided it was time to go. I said goodbye to my new pals, and hit the road for Sydney. I dropped her off the Oktoberfest where she claimed she was not going to drink. I wasn't so sure that would happen.

Capital Eyes Issue #8- review in Pee Zine #46

So I'm feeling pretty impressed with myself as I'm going into my tenth issue...along comes the great Pee Zine with Issue #46, still going strong.

I just bought it today at Smith's Bookshop, they are getting more and more zines in stock, which is awesome for the Canberra zine scene.

This is what the reviewer "No Show" had to say about Issue No 8. I was a bit disappointed as I sent a copy of Issue 7, which I think is better, maybe that will be in the next zine or something.

Once I read the zine I may just give a little writeup about that.

Capital Eyes #8

A4 $? http://capital-eyes.blogspot.com

Canberra dude Dan has published issue eight of his zine and it's a nice cut 'n' paste job. Featuring interviews with two awesome bands: Four Dead and Dangers. It's a 10-page A4 effort so it's not overly thick but still a good read. The interviews are very thorough and well-written as is Dan's editorial. You also get some cool live pics and a Dangers show review. Dan says he has a couple of interviews left over, so hopefully issue 9 is a bit thicker. There's no price on the zine, so hit up Dad at http://capital-eyes.blogspot.com to organise your copy and support a dude doing his bit for the Canberra scene.

REVIEW BY: NO SHOW

4 Dead

I have a 4 Dead interview in the current issue of my zine (#8). I did a few copies for the zine fair, hopefully I will do some more in time for their house show with A SECRET DEATH.

I'm not going to put the interview up quite yet, but here's an old classic from The Riot Act, a Canberra "news" website. It was posted by user Carzee in October 2007 after a show at the (now defunct) Jamison Inn.

I photographed an All Ages thrash/scream metal gig at Jamison Inn last Sunday. The line-up was 4 Dead, 50Lions, and Parkway Drive –all from north coast NSW. Disclosure: I am late 40’s.

Anyway, from the first chord of the first song of the first band there was a LAM, large area mosh. It was like someone threw a switch. Well, lets get physical! Lets get violent! I’ve seen mosh before, but at gigs like Wolfmother etc the security dudes damp it right down pretty quick as they can and get rid of the nasty -usually drunk- boofheads that can ruin it for others. Well, this was an under-18 event and these guys were not drunk. I’d guess they were on caffeine or red cordial because they moved around very fast. ‘Frenzied’ fits here. So does ‘disturbed’.

I don’t think it can last. Yeah, I know, “alert the fun police”… but who’s insurance company was covering this? If my 15 something year old was in there at risk from the stage diving and human dodgem cars etc I’d be concerned. [ I didn't include a ref to girls just then because this mosh stuff is a wannabe alpha male thing apparently. A smaller percentage of the audience were female. They were there waving their arms around but unable to see much to the front and sensibly staying out of the way of the running-jumping-shoving rumble in the center which looked like a gang fight with a soundtrack].

It may be a Jamison thing. The band’s singer encouraged “this weird thing you do down here” and launched in another set of lyrics. Thats being kind btw. The rock star wannabe also felt it a necessary part of the thrash scene to fill the breaks with very very crude/off jokes about oral sex with babies (3 or 4 jokes on the subject) and one other obligatory joke about sex during menstruation.

The main act had about 1 metre of space between themselves and The Front Squashees at the front of the audience. By the time this photo was taken the energy level had died off a tad (!) and the worst of the boofheads-on-cordial were most probably worn out. In this pic you can’t see The Front Squashees, but they’re down there.

I was surprised to see Jon give a reply to the original post. Here it is here...

So… I missed all of this as I was away for a few days. This was forwarded to me by a friend. I wouldn’t normally reply to this sort of a thread and I’m not even sure that anyone else cares anymore or at all, but here’s some facts:
“Carzee” actually came up to us after the show and gave us some positive feedback, right to our faces. Very little negative comments were made by him, none about us in particular, there was some mention of the crazy pit… we assumed this guy hadn’t been to too many punk or hardcore punk shows. So… I think in light of this, I think his views expressed here are a little strange.
I also find that his internet barrage is a little ignorant and ill-informed. There really isn’t much else that upsets me more than gutter journalism or keyboard ninjas that use the internet to spread pure rubbish.
As the vocalist in 4 dead, I know for a fact that I said one joke that may not have been in the best taste but in no way was it sexist, in fact it had nothing to do with sex what so ever. The Jokes which offended him, said by kids in the crowd, also offended me a little too. I also didn’t think that they were the most appropriate due to the age of the kids at the gig etc. But it’s their call.
On Rockstardom: This is a personal attack. Not one person attacked your character as a 40+ year old Male with a camera at a show where the average age of those who attended would’ve been 16 IF that. You clearly have no idea about DIY / Punk ethics held dear to bands like ourselves. That established, I think you have also forgotten what it’s like to be an angry young man living in Australia. Maybe you should give both the kids that are part of this more credit, particularly the womyn! I believe you have once again mis-represented both myself as well as 4 dead by stating that we encouraged the alpha male behaviour, as you put it. The thing that strikes me is by commenting about what was going on in the audience, I was suggesting that people may use the space a little differently, prompting the kids to approach the stage and close down the area being used for circle pits etc.
As far as legal matters are concerned, you’ve missed the point. These people don’t want to sit in a chair at the sydney football stadium or wherever. They don’t want barriers. They, as minors, certainly don’t want to be dragged outside of a gig they’ve payed $20 for and kicked til they bleed from a bouncer. They don’t want to be told what to do… how many weeks of a paper run, or how many pizzas delivered, burgers made is that for a kid? Punk has always been about accessing music and being involved. Musicians aren’t looking to be put on a pedestal here, they’re just angry kids being boxed in by a plethora of social pressures (as are the people who come to shows). It’s supposed to be about taking all the shit things out of music and music industry. It’s about “F*ck you! I don’t want your war, or your beer or your overpriced ticketmaster or your platinum club tickets. F*ck Big Day Out. F*ck Wolfmother and F*CK YOU! If your into it, I’m NOT.” I emphasise the word “supposed”.
On top of that, do you think when Iggy Pop was busy pissing blood onto people and breaking ribs that people were thinking “Öh dear, what a liability!”. Or how would Jimmy Hendrix have set his guitar on fire if he was thinking about public liability? Due to people like yourself, with these opinions, characters like Ray Ahn from the Hard Ons can’t breathe fire on stage anymore. I don’t wanna see the day when gigs become predictable.
By a book, read up. This is how it should be. No rules. No bouncers. No Rockstars. No authority figures. A great leveller.
For someone who seems very unsure about the legalities of these shows, I sure hope you had written permission from the correct people to be photographing minors. You wanna be careful with that stuff.
Stick to Jazz.
Jon Dangerous

I left everything as is, but one of the final points sticks out to me.

This is how it should be. No rules. No bouncers. No Rockstars.

The Jamo was a great venue while it lasted. Now it stands, fenced off, burnt down, waiting for something to happen which seems as if it will never come.

I will probably post up the 4 Dead interview next week.

Dangers

Here's an interview I did with Al from Dangers last week after their show with Graf Orlock at Bar 32. We did it outside in the van where it was quiet, it was however really cold. I didn't really know much about Dangers before the show, but I really enjoyed.

So we've got Al here, he's from Dangers. How are you handling the cold?

Well (laughs)....not very well. People come to California in the winter time, they're like “what the hell, it's cold here.” I say “yeah, we have seasons too”. I knew it would be cold, but not this cold. Especially because you guys do celsius, I had a day where I was looking at the numbers, I thought, twelve, I could do that, it's probably 25, 30F. Everyone else dressed a lot more appropriately than me tonight. All I have is this sweatshirt. I think tomorrow I might go buy something warmer.

You're touring with Graf Orlock, have you toured with them before?

Yeah, we're all really good friends. We share...Graf Orlock's guitarist is our guitarist as well. That wasn't always the case though. A couple of years ago Dangers toured with Graf Orlock, we got to being friends with Justin, he eventually joined our band. Any touring we do is usually with Graf, or his other band Ghostlimb. He's a very busy man. Some people thought they would be on this tour too, but they're doing a trip to Canada later this year instead. Touring with Graf is a lot of fun, as well all know each other so well. We've lived in each other's houses, it's almost like it's not just another band that we're travelling with. It's like, this is what we do, let's take it to Australia.

How are you liking Australia so far?

There's two aspects to it, there's the country, then the shows. The country itself, I'm actually really surprised at, this may be because we're here in winter. There's probably a different vibe than in summer, but it seems as if everyone is really relaxed. The phrase we really hear a lot is “no worries”. Makes you wonder if these guys worry about anything. We got a speeding ticket the other day, Justin said “oh, I'm so sorry”. He said no worries. If there's no worries, there should be no ticket then! Let's go!

The people have been really interesting. It's been very refreshing. The people are a lot more knowledgeable about the world, kinda like Europe, where people know what's going on in other countries, as opposed to where we're from, where they don't give a fuck.

Show wise, it's interesting. People will stand there as if they don't give a fuck, arms crossed, a slight clap after each song, then they'll buy a load of merch and say how great we were. At first, I was offended...well, not offended, but wondering to they like us? They have their own way of doing things though. It's refreshing for me though. Having less people, you know, handing out the microphone to them, that kind of standard hardcore bullshit, it gives me a chance to be more introspective about the lyrics. Think about what I'm saying as we're playing it. I think our performances have been somewhat better than at home, for that reason.

How about the show tonight?

Tonight...in Canberra, it's interesting, we don't ever play bars, or 18+ shows back at home. We only play, basements, halls, community centres, that kind of thing. It would be good if we could be like Fugazi, say we'll only do all ages shows, $5 entry across the world, but we're not as good a band as Fugazi. Dealing with some of these places, we played another club place in Sydney, it was called Blink or something, that was a pretty weird experience for us. What's really cool about it, no matter what the shell, the shows will still be...affecting I guess is the best word for it. Kids will come up to us, tell us they've never heard us before, they'll be interested in some of the ideas that we have. That's a good as I could expect really. The same thing happened tonight, I didn't really expect that many people at the show, Tuesday night, we're from ten thousand miles away. Humbling, I think that's the best word to describe it.

I'll admit I'm one who didn't know much about the band before tonight. Tell us a bit about your records.

We've got two LPs now. One is called Anger, it came out in about 2006 or 7. Will still play a couple of songs of that, the kids seem to respond a bit more to those songs then the ones from our new album. The new one is called “Messy, Isn't It”. That name comes from an author, Richard Brautigan who was living in California in the sixties and seventies. He had written a lot books, he was the end of the beat movement. He was a depressive man, he went back to his house and shot himself, nobody cared about him, so he wasn't found for two months. The police eventually went to see what happened to this guy nobody had heard about for two months, it was a shotgun to the head. The note next to it said “Messy, isn't it”. We thought, as a band the ideas in this record, it's quite long, there's eighteen songs, but it's more of a whole movement. It's not like The Wall or anything, some epic Pink Floyd piece, it's about questioning each day what the purpose of being here is. The sun will blow up some day and we won't exist, what makes today important. A lot of familial stuff is on the record, with the themes. What my mum had to go through being a single mother, having to have a career just to feed us. You wonder, would it have been better had she not had kids. It's about trying to understand your place in the world. We're really proud of it.

Are you guys from San Francisco?

Partly, both bands are kind of a strange mix of people. Most of us are based in the Los Angeles area, but in saying that, the drummer lives two hours from me, I live at the beach, Justin our guitarist lives an hour away from me and our bass player lives in San Francisco, which is six hours drive away. Practice is...occasional, but intense. We set aside times for doing band stuff.

Do you have a central location to meet?

We meet in LA, Vitriol Records , our guitarist runs that. We have a garage space, half is filled with records we send out, the other half has been converted into a 7x7 soundproof room. We hash out everything, each band has their own time for doing things. So we're spread out all through California, but centralised in Los Angeles.

Have you guys toured Europe before?

We haven't done Europe yet. We're planning on heading there in the Spring for us, so about six months down the track. We'll do an East Coast US tour, then to Canada, then over to Europe.

Who put this tour together?

The first half was done by a booking agency, Strike Hard. We've never worked with a booking agency before, so that's a new experience for us. The main reason we came to Australia, we got a whole bunch of emails from people here for the past year and a half or so, they were really passionate about it, we've met some of these people over here, and they're all really happy that we came over, but really, we had no idea where to start.

This guy Daniel from Strike Hard, he kept emailing us, telling he'd love to help us out. We were hesitant to do it, we've never worked with a booking agency before. We kept talking to him, told him the important things we wanted. A majority of all ages shows, working on break even stuff, we don't want to worry about big fancy clubs or that kind of thing. He was pretty receptive to that. The best thing about it is, they didn't ask for any money either, it's just like a mutual helping each other out kind of thing. From here on, the rest of the tour is booked by the guys in Robotosaurus. Their guitarist actually put out our record on CD here. They came over to the US last year, it's going to be awesome to play with them.

You've played some pretty regional places on this tour, Lismore, Orange, tell us a bit about them.

We didn't end up getting to play the Lismore show, the show went on, but we couldn't make it there. The Gold Coast, I know there's shows there, but that one had a bit of a different feel to it. We played in Maclean as well, that was pretty similar to Orange. These shows in the middle of nowhere, we think it's similar to back home. Shows on either coast, they're always pretty good. In between though, there's two thousand miles in between....what's going to happen in Boise, Idaho or Little Rock, Arkansas.

The thing about the show last night, no one had ever heard of us, but they were happy, they told us we were the first touring band that had played in Orange. It was at a guy's house, there were twenty people there. Some of them didn't even like loud music, they were just young kids who didn't have anything else to do. With those shows, there's no posturing, no being “part of the scene”. It's just a bunch of friends that are there. I was joking about it before we played today, but I did about four stagedives of a tiny couch into no one, kids were going crazy. One kid had a seizure during Graf Orlock's set. He has epilepsy as well, but he was going so crazy that he had a seizure. It was a scary thing, but at the same time, you think in a town like Orange, this music can drive a kid to literally lose his mind. The shows are memorable for different reasons. Here, you want to break down the barrier between the band and the crowd, we're just people, let's share some ideas. At a show like that, it's like, your life sucks, every day, here's an oasis for you. Let's all go crazy.

It's a different breed of people in those kind of places. We're all vegetarian, they're all like...what's that. They're not idiots though, they're just joking around. We played with a band called Vegan Hate Violence, we were wondering if they were going to beat us up or what. After the show, their mum cooked us a vegan feast. That wouldn't happen in America.

What sort of places do you play in America? Mainly California?

All the west coast. I would say our best shows are in Washington, up the coast. There's Seattle up there, and this little town called Bremerton. There's a place there called The Tiki House, it's all these 16, 17, 18 year old kids living in the house with no parents. We play in the garage there, around seventy people will show up. There used to be this band there called Ape Escape. Instead of a microphone, they would have a banana, and kids would take bites out of the banana. We have some good shows in San Francisco. In LA we mainly book our own shows, some in halls, some in this run down business called Hyde Park Half. Anywhere really small, when you play there, it makes your band feel huge. Those our favourites.

Where will you stay tonight?

With the bass player...from 4 Dead. Morgan. Hopefully we stay with him. Hopefully it's warm.

Anything left to add?

Yeah, we always like to say this at the end of our interviews, people ask us about what bands are our influences, that kind of thing. We usually skip them. Music is so ubiquitous these days, it's out there on the internet, you can find it easily. For us, the big thing is reading more books. I'm currently reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. For our band we try to pull a lot from books. It's more fulfilling than just a song. It's something that can stick with you for ever and ever, in a different way to music.

Do any of you do any writing of your own?

We all do some our own writing. I'm doing a book right now, fiction, short stories. Hopefully that will be finished soon.

Thank you very much for the interview.

Thank you.

This Saturday is the Canberra Zine Fair. I have never been a part of a zine fair before come to think of it, so this is my debut. I planned on going to the last one, but I got called in to work on the day.

I will have some copies of Issue #7 (Polar Bear Club, Jungle Fever) and hopefully a whole bunch of Issue #8 (Dangers, Ruiner, 4 Dead). I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of other people who spend their time on this sort of thing. I will hopefully also have some copies of one more zine from a friend of mine.

It's free, come down and say hi. It goes from 11am until 4pm.

Some of the zines involved include

Caught in the breeze, Geeen Comix, lip magazine, Rhetorical Zine, The Sticky Institute, We Are Not Obscene, The Monkey waiter, Capital eyes, Little beats, elodi magazine and many more.

It's organised by the ACT Writers Centre and Canberra Contemporary Art Space, it should be good fun.