Drawing Moustaches
in Magazines Monthly Magazine (Bi-Monthly) #7
Josie Long, England – www.josielong.com
I bloody loved this zine, and that’s not just because Josie
Long is one of my favourite comedians! DMIMMM
(B-M) (yes, the Bi-Monthly part is important) is a mish-mash of facts,
flowcharts, photos, random phrases pasted in from magazines, e.g. “meet a cat
with style on page 20”, hand-written rambles, comics, and rants about Tories
(“David Cameron goes to gigs, stands at the front and talks loudly about how
drunk he is, then shouts “bollocks!” in quiet bits”). Some of the more substantial parts of the
zine include a discussion of Josie’s love of modern poetry – she invites us to
compare 2 English translations of ‘Waiting’ by Yevgeny Yevtushenko – and a page
full of facts about the silverfish living in her house. There are also some guest contributions – James
Acaster provides a Power Walk Playlist, while Isy Sutster draws a comic about
growing old and dull. You can read PDFs
of the first 5 issues at www.josielong.com,
or get in touch with the lady herself on Twitter
to ask her to send you some! Oh, and did
I mention that this zine is free?!
Lights Go Out #11
& #16
Edited by Mr T, UK – http://lightsgoout.co.uk/shop
Lights Go Out is a long-running music fanzine featuring
regular band profiles, music reviews, zine reviews, pop culture columns,
interviews, and gig reviews. At 48 pages
long, it’s a substantial read, with each page crammed full of text and
accompanying photos – and all for only £1!
The musicians featured in this zine are quite varied, from Reel Big
Fish, to Kate Voegele, from Antillectual, to Alice Gold. The interviews feature interesting questions,
such as “what are your thoughts on downloading and sharing music?”, and “what
would you say is the greatest film of all time?”. Although Lights Go Out seems to be rooted in
a punk aesthetic, I really liked the fact that they delved into other genres,
with an interview with musician Kate Voegele (Mia Catalano from ‘One Tree
Hill’), and the editor admitting his love for Kylie Minogue! #16 is a colouring book, with black and white
drawings of singers including Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and She-Ra. Lots of fun (though I don’t think I’d want to
ruin the zine by colouring it in)! Lights
Go Out represents my first proper foray into music fanzines, and I thoroughly
enjoyed the experience!
Fanzine Ynfytyn
#12
Emma-Jane Falconer, Kent – www.emmajanefalconer.co.uk
Another super-posi issue of Emma’s long-running
perzine. She opens the zine by
interviewing herself, with interesting questions such as “what do you smell like?”, and “This
is a perzine – where’s the angst? Why aren’t you spilling your guts?”. The rest of the zine is made up of random
lists, including small pleasures, things Emma likes to trade, and the best
albums to fall asleep to. We also read a
haiku for Ernest Hemingway, and the lyrics of the Welsh song “Fanzine Ynfytyn”
(“Fanzine Idiot”) that this zine is named after. Her layouts are really neat and pretty, so
it’s a lovely zine to look at too.
Fuck Shit Up #3
Emma, Sheffield – zines_and_teaAThotmail.co.uk
Emma, Sheffield – zines_and_teaAThotmail.co.uk
Emma explains in the introduction that Fuck Shit Up #3 is made
up of 2 merged zines– the first is a fun hand-drawn comic illustrating her
adventures on a trip around Europe with friends, the second is more of a
typical perzine, with typewritten articles on the best uses for garlic (popping
a clove up your woowoo will cure thrush, apparently!), drinking games, a recipe
for courgette cookies (which she assures us is tastier than it sounds), and how
to make a DIY punchbag. Emma also discusses
her favourite things about punk, including being political, living on the
cheap, and doing it yourself. A very
long section in the middle features a Lovecraft story called ‘The Outsider’,
followed by a guide on how to make your own plushy Cthulhu – a bit of easy
filler perhaps, but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless! The whole zine is good and cut-n-pastey, and
is filled with Emma’s drawings. Loved it!
Drink The Sunshine
#13 & #14
Tom, Cheltenham – finish_last_zineATyahoo.co.uk
Drink the Sunshine is a fun and friendly perzine, packed
full of handwriting, doodles, adventures, and musings on growing older. Issue 13 is a double-sided A3 fold-out page,
divided into roughly A6 sized jigsaw pieces.
Each jigsaw features a random observation, such as the frustrations of
Autocorrect, how excited Americans get about British history (“He’s older than Queen Victoria’s grave!”),
people making insensitive remarks about his height, the use of text speak such
as “soz” and “lol” in real life, and drivers using the wrong lanes on the
roundabout. I loved this zine – the format was original, the content was funny,
and I devoured it within minutes, which is always the mark of a good zine for
me! Issue 14 is subtitled “Eight Gigs I
Never Went To”; the zine documents 8 gigs that Tom was due to go to and somehow
never ended up attending, often with a story about why Tom liked the artist. At the end of the zine, Tom invites us to
count how many of the often-spotted things at gigs we can see, e.g. a person
wearing a shirt of the band that’s playing.
I have to be honest and say that I didn’t enjoy reading this issue as
much as #13, though people who are more into reading about bands and gigs might
dig it.
