This is my contribution to Sticky's Target 168 Challenge

Sticky: Target 168

So I have just sent off an email to Sticky, I'm entering into their Eurovision themed Target 168. Whether this comes out as Capital Eyes #12 remains to be seen, but I am thinking that's a probably yes.

Something different for Sticky monthly column

As I mentioned on the last post, for this month's Sticky contribution, I've decided to do something a little bit different. I didn't go to the zine fair at the beginning of the month, so I don't have too much news to report. Instead my good friend Bridget (Screwdriver Guilts, Trees Die Standing) also famed for making excellent hot chocolate and getting arrested in Palestine, we did interviews with each other about zines.

So for all my followers...

Here's an early look at the interviews

Here's the interview questions I answered for Bridget

Daniel Boyle- Capital Eyes

You're from Bega... did you get in to making zines there, or when you pulled up in the teaming metropolis of Canberra? How did it all start?

I didn't really know about zines when I lived in Bega. I used to however, when I was still fairly young, do a lot of the things you will find in zines. I would fill exercise books with my top 50 or 100 songs, and write my own album reviews and things like that. So these were really handwritten 1/1 zines when you think about it...

I lived in Sydney for a while and I picked up a few zines, I always picked up anything that was free or really cheap in some of the different music shops, but once I was in Canberra I helped do a zine with a couple of my friends, it was called Can I Scream (the name was from the Refused song New Noise, and it got a lot of criticism in the reviews)....we made it for free, we did three issues, I think we actually printed more than 500 of the first one. When we were doing that I was thinking, I would like to do my own zine, but it was a couple of years before I actually went and did that.

Your zines feature a lot of band interviews. How influential would you say zines are in Australian punk & hardcore these days (promoting, finding new bands, etc)?

Within Australia, particularly in the punk and hardcore scene, or all scenes I guess, people are getting their information online. It's instant and you can listen to the music straight away. For information about what's on immediately, I guess the street presses can be ok, although not everything is in there. The whole zine thing is a bit more fun, I guess.

Some people may read about a band and get into them from there, particularly this “bigger” zines like Pee Zine, which has been going for ages and is up to issue number 40 something, or Unbelievably Bad, though that doesn't seem to come out much anymore, those sort of zines have a good chance of giving you some ideas about new bands, whereas a lot of the smaller zines, I guess it's just a look at some punk rock dudes life with a few interviews of bands they like, which you may want to check out.

There are not that many punk/hardcore zines around, maybe one or two in each city, but I always love to pick up any zines when they're at shows.

Before I left Canberra you were the only other zine person I knew there. Now, it seems like the nation's (spew) capital has exploded in ZINE FEVER! Is this correct? How's the zinescape (yeah, zinescape) looking these days?

I'm not sure if these people were around already, or that it's just getting more organised. There seems to be a lot more zine fairs, there's one coming up at Gorman House next week, and zines were even featured in the National Gallery of Australia, now isn't that Art.

I think a lot of these people were already around previously, but basically you just had to know them if you wanted to get a zine, whereas there are more outlets to have your zines, Smiths Bookshop is selling a whole lot of zines now these days.

You're writing a zine blog now, right? How's it going? Have you ever given a zine a bad review?

I have a blog which I kind of use as a zine blog, I mainly use it to put up the old interviews from previous zines, or I put some of my other writing in there, mainly travel stories or comments about the Canberra Raiders season (currently going very badly) in there. I have been doing some zine reviews. I mainly write about ones that I like from these piles of zines sitting in my loungeroom so they are mainly good reviews, but not all zines are great!

Have you legally deposited your zines at the National Library (that is, donating one copy of each to the National Library for posterity)? My friend who works at the National Library says legally depositing your zines is not only important (for archiving media history etc) but COOL!

I think there are a couple of mine in the collection at the Library. Some of the ladies got a few of my issues at the last zine fair. I have been meaning to put a copy of the rest in there, but I'm trying to track down copies of all the previous issues somewhere around my house.

You went to Papua New Guinea, whoa! My dad, who btw is a badass, told me a story one time from when he was in PNG (he is a geologist/rock star. geddit? Haw!) & got robbed for everything he had on his back – including his undies - & had to walk back to Port Moresby naked.* Did anything like this happen to you?

I remember reading a story about your Dad in one of your zines, maybe it was a letter from him from China and it was mainly about pandas, he sounds like a good guy. We didn't have anything bad happen to us, we went on a surf trip which left out from Kavieng, which is in the north of PNG. Port Moresby airport seemed like a very sketchy place, but on the advice of the people who took us on the trip, we took a taxi to some rich guy hotel and ate lunch while we were waiting for the next plane. Not very “travel guru”, but better than being robbed. The trip itself was awesome, all the people we met in the islands were so friendly to us. For those playing at home I wrote about this trip in Issue #7 of Capital Eyes.

You're moving to Chile! Have you sussed out the zinescape there?

I'm looking forward to going to Chile. I don't really know too much about the Chilean zinescape actually. There is a girl that gives updates on the Sticky newsletter so I will have to get in touch with her before I go. I just got married this year and my wife is from Chile, so we will head over there for around two years. I guess I will make some zines about my experiences of being a gringo over there.

When the uninitiated ask you “what's a zine?”, what do you usually say?

I usually tell them it's a home made magazine, made by cutting and pasting and photocopied at your work or some other place cheap. Then they look at me and wonder why somebody would do such a thing.

I picked up this A4 folded thing at a gig the other night labelled “FANZINE” & it turned out to be some promotional crap about some crap sponsored by the EU. I felt a tinge of the same outrage that an African-American rapper maybe feels when their subculture is used to hawk mass-produced sweatshop corporate sportswear. What do you think? Do you think it's kinda cool that zines are considered so significant a medium as for their POWER to be harnessed by Big Money, or is it a contrived insult to our collective intelligence?

An interesting question really. Generally if a “zine” is made by some “big, powerful organisation”, it loses the touch of the zine world. It's all formally presented, the staples are nicely in place, the paper is suspiciously high quality. However, zines could be used as a massive promotional tool in any situation, and I guess it's up to the reader to interpret it as they will. In countries where the state runs all the TV, newspapers etc, making a home made “zine”, though it may not be called that, is a way of getting your message to people.

Every now and then, I have been giving a contribution to Sticky's monthly zine report where they have correspondents from all over the place. This month, I saw that my good pal Bridget (Trees Die Standing, Screwdriver Guilts) had done a contribution too, so that got me thinking of a new idea, that both Canberra Correspondents could interview each other, in something to impress the zine world, akin to typing Google into Google.

So we did that and you will be able to see that in the next monthly newsletter from Sticky.

Sticky Monthly Report

This was my monthly submission to the Sticky Institute report on all that's going on in the zine world.

FROM OUR CANBERRA CORRESPONDENT, Dan Boyle

This month: What's on in Canberra

Did you know the publication "This Week In Canberra" only comes out every three months? Controversial, I know.

The big news in Canberra is in just a couple of days time (by the time you read this it will actually be over, but this is the big one I'm preparing for), zinester will be a part of the Art world. The National Gallery of Australia as part of their "Space Invaders" street art exhibition are holding a zine fair in their newly refurbished building.

If you get a chance when in Canberra, definitely check out the gallery, it's been doubled in size, has some amazing new indigenous art exhibits and the front of the building is no longer a monstrosity. Back to the zine world though, those excellent characters from the Sticky Institute have organised a large number of zinesters to come along to the fair, it will be a zines only event, don't expect any cupcakes there. I have read varying numbers on how many stalls there will be, but 30 seems to be the number I've seen the most.

This will be only my second zine event, so I guess I will be a little more prepared than the first time around. You would hope so anyway. I've got a couple of new issues either finished or just about to be done. Capital Eyes issue 9 has interviews with Jerkstore, Ruiner and To The North, and my newest effort Issue 10, it's about a recent trip I did to see Alexisonfire and Break Even in Sydney and Melbourne.

It was my Dad's 50th birthday recently. I put together a little book for him. It's a real testament to your character when this kind of thing reaches fifty pages. I got his friends and family to contribute stories. I've put one into my newest issue, it's all about the Sydney punk scene circa 1977/1978.

Smith's Bookshop in the city is starting to stock more and more zines, and they've even started to have some bands play inside the store. Check out their facebook page for more info. I've also started writing for the local street press, BMA. I had my first pieces published today, two on debut. Later in the year we might discuss whether writing for the street press is selling out on zine culture. Or we might not.

That's all we have time for today.

Shine bright, baby shine bright

Dan

http://capital-eyes.blogspot.com

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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.

Sticky

The Sticky Institute is a big time zine institution down under Flinders St in Melbourne. They are also running the zine fair which is a part of the exhibition coming up at the NGA.

So anyway, each month or so, they send out an email to let all zinesters know what's happening in the zine world. I noticed there was no Canberra information in the last mailout, so I asked if I could give an update. They said, no worries mate.

Here is what I wrote

FROM OUR NEW CANBERRA CORRESPONDENT, Dan
This month: Canberra is the place to be. (They wrote that, not me, I wrote the rest)

Hello all, this is the first column from your new Canberra correspondent. My name is Dan and I
write a zine called Capital Eyes. I'm currently working on Issue #9, hopefully that will be ready
in a couple of weeks. If you want to read more about that, you can read my blog (http://capital-
eyes.blogspot.com).

So in the big news, we had a big zine fair a couple of months back. That was on the 3rd July,
so actually it was just over a month ago. This was my first zine fair, and it was an interesting
experience. There were local zinemakers, as well as people from Sticky, Bird in The Hand and a
few other distros. There was a really big turnout to Gorman House, I think there were about 500
people. Not a bad debut. I sold or traded all the zines that I brought with me, so I guess you could
say it was a success, or I didn't bring enough.

Looks like we have another zine fair coming up, this one's on the 30th October at the National
Gallery of Australia as part of the "Space Invaders" street art exhibition. That should be a great
exhibition, and best of all, it's free.

I was in the US last week, I went to compete at the World Footbag Championships. If things go to
plan, I will be doing a zine about my experiences, so hopefully that will be complete by the time the
zine fair rolls around.

I have got some interesting zines lately. One by Bridget Chappell, formerly of Canberra, she used to
do a zine called Screwdriver Guilts, probably my favourite from last year. She has been busy being an activist in Palestine, you may have seen newspaper reports about her arrest. As far as I know, she is going to make a range of zines, but this is the first one, Trees Die Standing. It's mainly about her time heading out of Palestine, she has some interviews with some guys who operate a tunnel which sneaks in goods to Gaza, as well as some of her experiences.

Another one is nothing to do with Canberra, I picked it up and the Bound Together bookstore in
San Francisco, it's called Raider Nation. Ok, to admit it, I only picked it up because I am a fan of
the Canberra Raiders. If you can, try and get a copy of the "Rock n Raider" zine from a few years
back. Anyway, this zine is about Oakland, where I was staying, it's a pretty full on place and it was interesting reading about these much more crazy things that happened earlier in the year- police shootings, riots etc.

Your best bet for zines in Canberra while you wait for the next edition, head into Smiths Alternative Bookshop in the city.

Thanks for reading my first contribution, see you next time.
Dan

http://capital-eyes.blogspot.com

I am now wondering about the idea of going to the This is Not Art (TiNA) zine fair. I think the idea has a lot of merit, as I will already be going to the Sydney area that weekend. BUT what if the Raiders make it to the grand final. That could be a dilemma. I don't think they will get there this year, but the next few years, they are on for a premiership. Look at the side they have at the moment, all signed up for a number of years. Very promising indeed.

I'm also working on a bit of a secret project, it's for my Dad. I plan on giving it to him the day before, and I'm actually considering having it as a zine as well.