'Zines help fans keep the faith
| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | 'Zines help fans keep the faith |
| Commentator: | |
| Date(s): | June 6, 1992 |
| Venue: | Toronto Star |
| Fandom: | Music fandom |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
'Zines help fans keep the faith was an article in Toronto Star about fan clubs and fanzines. It had a mixed tone, the author did not seem to think much of music fans in general and didn't seem to think well of fan clubs, but they did appreciate fanzines, many of whom where put out by members of those same fan clubs.
Excerpts
Whenever I think of people who run fan clubs, I think of alarming, over-aged sociopaths enslaved by their bizzaro adoles- cent pipedreams, like the Rush Superfan saving up to afford plas-. tic surgery to look like Geddy Lee, or the young woman I wit- nessed at a Sandra Bernhard concert who climbed on stage and unabashedly professed in front of a packed house how it felt to be her hero's long lost sis- ter. You can always pick these peo- ple out of a crowd: They stand near the front of most maniacal post-gig scrums clutching their cachet of 8-by-10s and various memorabilia against their official tour T-shirts or team jerseys, their eyes adazzle and arms flail- ing in hopes of capturing their Idol's attention.
Other music fan clubs are in- tensive trading networks for bootleg tapes and memorabilia, like those honoring The Grateful Dead or Little Feat, while some are just goofy Teen Beat wan- nabes, examining issues like "What Jason Eats For Breakfast!" and other variations on the same theme. But many fan clubs are also the result of hours of hard work and obvious dedication; their accom- panying newsletters and fanzines are the product of fervent base- ment publishing at its purest - six or seven sheets of photocop- ied paper printed in black and white and tirelessly stapled to- gether to herald either Yoko Ono, Phil Lynott, The Cult, The Jam, The Ramones, Slade, The Who or thousands of others.
Ontario, it seems, is a haven for fan clubs and their 'zines. The front desk at Fandom Paradise, Toronto's rock collectible store (162 John St., upstairs), is rife with local publications extolling the virtues of artists from Presley to Costello.
Also, unlike many other more strident publications, The Little Express has the look and feel of a literary journal, and even though each issue contains pages of ex- cited correspondence from fans to and from each other, there's no sense of mania here, reflect- ing, I suppose, the poised and mature nature of the very group that is its raison d'etre.The same could be said for The Kiss Machine (138 Westchester Ave., St. Catharines, Ont., L2P 2N9), a dual effort by Chris Tri- podi of St. Catharines, Ont., and Sean Eggers of Niagara Falls, N.Y. Like the group that it champi- ons The Kiss Machine is dopey and cartoonish, as if the lunch- room noodlings on the back of your high school knapsack were published. Featured inside is Kiss poetry ("Pounding out a thunder- ous backbeat/With ten hundred pounds of hair") Kiss comics, and Kiss clippings, not to mention let- ters from fans recounting the first time their gods gazed upon
them. It's worth three bucks and it's short enough to read on a subway ride from Islington to Yonge. Cool.