Aaron Cometbus Interview by MRR
Few fanzines have had as obvious and important an impact as Cometbus.
Started 18 years ago, Cometbus has redefined the role and format of
fanzines in the punk community. Cometbus began the trend of focusing on the
personal side of the punk scene, instead of the usual political or musical
aspects. Since then, countless writers have imitated or been inspired by
Aaron's style of writing and subject matter, to the point that the word
"Cometbus-esque" has been entered into the punk dictionary. What has set
Cometbus apart from the fanzines it has influenced, is Aaron's ability to
regularly and continually put out unique, well-written, and interesting
issues. Its longevity has allowed for its evolution -- from a small
music-based fanzine, to its current format that has included hundreds of
stories revolving around Aaron's travels, friends, and observations. Some
are told with ironic humor, others with desperation, anger, or sadness.
Cometbus has changed the way fanzines are written, and has become, it's safe
to say, one of the most important contributions to the history of punk.
Interview by Mike Millett.
Aaron: I will try to speak clearly. So what's the the question I always get?
MRR: Oh, just the origin stuff — like when did you start the magazine, when
you were thirteen, right?
Aaron: I did a fanzine in the summer of '81 with Jesse Michaels. Then when
he left town I started my own, in Ocotober of '81, and I've been doing it
since — except for three years I took off, from '86 to '89. To recover,
which was a good thing to do in the long run, I realize.
MRR: When you went away from it and came back, did the size and content
change? I just wondered. I don't have any of the small ones.
Aaron: Luckily, the old ones seem to have just vanished. Which is a shame,
'cause they were so good. Not really. No, it was really tiny at first, 2" x
3", and impossible to read through. I didn't think so, 'cause I wrote it.
The mag was small and free the first three years. I liked doing it like
that, but then it grew in size. It's changed a lot along the way, but I kept
the same name because I think it's important to have continuity. To change,
but keep things constant, and also to have something that people recognize
as they change too. It was originally mostly about bands and music, then
became more about the energy behind the music and the people behind the
music, and the ideas. I think it's important to keep doing what you do —
change the context and style and content — but keep certain things for
people to hang onto. I think consistency is as important as change in the
scene.
MRR: Were you involved in the punk scene before starting the zine?
Aaron: I wasn't really involved at all. I'd been going to shows a little
while and that's about it. It's been sort of backwards with me. I did the
fanzine for years and years — that was my involvement. Then I played in
bands. Then I started putting on shows. I've been involved in different
stages at different times. It's been nice that way. I was glad to see bands
without being involved with them in any way for years. Then it was nice to
be in bands for a little while. Now it's nice to be on a different side of
that. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Starting the fanzine was my
first involvement. I think it's important to give back the inspiration and
energy you've gotten from other people and the community in general. I was
doing that with Cometbus more back then, I think, at least more directly. It
wasn't just my mode of expression, it was to support other people and put
out their writing and support their bands. I put out a lot of comp tapes
too, in the early times.
MRR: And the reasons for doing it now? I ask because you were talking about
it in the past tense.
Aaron: I was talking about it in the past tense because now a lot of the
zine is my own writing. I try to write about other people's lives, and our
life as a community and our values as a community, but it is my perspective.
As a result, a lot of people see Cometbus as me. I think of it more as a
forum, or a dialogue. I'm happier when I'm a little more in the background.
Like helping around the show,instead of being on stage. Doing the flyers,
putting out other people's records and tapes, and putting out issues with
other people's writing. That's what I like the best, but people like my
writing better.
MRR: How do you decide whether an issue is going to have contributors, or be
all yourself?
Aaron: Well, I like to do a contributor issue every third or fourth issue.
It depends how many good contributions I get.
MRR: How does someone end up becoming a contributor? Do they just write you?
Aaron: I ask them, or it's someone I know that has a story that's needs to
be pulled out. I work with them a lot. Generally, left to their own devices,
people will tell the least important parts of the story. They won't tell you
what they already know — the things about themselves that are obvious to
them but not to you. It's up to you to drag it out of them. That's the most
satisfying thing for me, being an editor, and I think I'm a good editor. But
I don't get the opportunity enough. In the long run, I'd rather have the
magazine be more that way.
MRR: But everyone likes your writing.
Aaron: Right, but their not going to like it forever.
MRR: So there's the font question.
Aaron: No one's made it yet.
MRR: You've been asked before?
Aaron: Yeah, but I can't type very fast either.
MRR: So no computer still? It's all by hand?
Aaron: Oh yeah, it's all by hand. I type out the titles — that's about it.
Usually people think I'm trying to prove more of a point, but my point is
just using what's natural, available, and comfortable. Graphics were one of
the most important parts of the magazine before but I started moving places
that didn't have Xerox machines or the resources I needed. I'd be living in
a bus or something. So I started doing all-handwriting issues.
MRR: It's all true?
Aaron: It's all true all the time. Well, it's 99%, possibly 98% true. It's
funny, because the strangest thing about telling a story is that you can
reveal things that you would never usually reveal and say it straight as
day, and people will assume something is fictionalized, it's easier to tell
the truth. I can say I burned down a house and stole a car and did all these
other things and people will assume it's fiction. That's fine, but it's not.
MRR: Were you born in Berkeley?
Aaron: Yes. Alta Bates. It's the hospital in Berkeley.
MRR: First punk show?
Aaron: No Alternative, Flipper, and the Dead Kennedys at the Keystone in
Berkeley. A KALX benefit. Only saw one DKs song before I had to leave. It's
nice to still see Greg (the drummer from No Alternative) around. He still
plays in lots of bands. It's nice, because he was first drummer in the first
punk band I ever saw. I'd been listening to punk for about a year, and I was
reading fanzines before I ever went to a show. The first fanzines, those
were more important to me. Ripper from San Jose, then Creep and Damage from
San Francisco.
MRR: Any favorite zines from then to now?
Aaron: There were a lot of amazing fanzines when I first came around, and
there are just as many now. There may be more bad ones, but I don't get the
bad ones in the mail. I get great ones that almost no one sees, incredible
stuff by people whose stories and perspective I don't hear otherwise,
anywhere else. I won't mention particular names, past or present, but I
think zines are still a real vital exciting thing.
MRR: Do you think zine community is more vital now than say, punk is?
Aaron: I think of fanzines as being an intrinsically punk thing, but also
existing separately. I guess that's the best part. I'm able to reach a huge
cross-section of people and also be very true and specific to one community
and culture. I like that about punk and fanzines — that it's a community
that's very ill-defined. As much as 90% of what we talk about is defining
it, and still it's very ill-defined. I like that search and that
contradiction. But the zine community? I don't know. I feel part of the punk
community and not necessary part of the zine community. But I do feel like I
try to provide a forum that is a almost physical thing, to build this place
where people can exhange ideas and talk, even if it's just me talking. I
think of the people who get the mag as a loose knit community.
MRR: I notice between the two things, you keep your music very separate
from...
Aaron: Church and State.
MRR: ...the zine. Very much Church and State.
Aaron: Yeah. Though lately, I've started to write more about being in bands.
And my songs are starting to be more like stories, and my stories are
getting to be much more like songs. I can't believe that everyone isn't
really annoyed. I think it's going a little overboard how rhymey they are.
No, they are. There's verses and choruses in them. I've started thinking of
writing in terms of music too: how a story has a certain ryhthm or momentum,
and even certain refrains. It's been really fun mixing things that way,
stylistically. But I still keep the two worlds separate. I don't really know
why. It's just that I enjoy music as it's a way of interacting with the
people that I'm playing with mostly, and a way of collaborating. The mag is
a meeting of people and a collaboration, but in a different way. Music gets
a very different kind of response, and carries with it different kinds of
expectations. Also, I think the musice scene is poisonous. There's so many
record labels that started as fanzines. They started doing records and they
got more support and more financial success that way. Slash, Lookout, Touch
and Go, No Idea, the list goes on.
MRR: That's seems to be the way it goes. From a zine, to a zine with a
record, to just records with an occasional stab at a zine, if even that. I
could never picture Cometbus coming with a record.
Aaron: Actually my newest issue is a record, #45.5. It's a spoken word 12".
I wanted to say, I can picture doing Cometbus in 10 or 20 years. I could see
easily getting older and changing and doing another 18 years, though I think
of those years I took off, and I might need that again someday. I see the
zine as something I can change with. Music is less forgiving and people are
less forgiving about it too. It's the difference between The Who, and an
author who's fifty. I don't know, it's just different. I'll continue doing
music, too, but the writing is what's most important and satisfying to me,
and what I think has the most possibilities and flexibility in the long run.
MRR: We touched on the spoken word thing. Could you ever see yourself doing
a reading somewhere?
Aaron: I'm not against it, but my voice is kind of weird, for one thing.
MRR: Aw geez, come on, you have a good voice.
Aaron: No no no. It's not so much of a self conscious thing.
MRR: Aaron, you could be on the radio. I'm serious.
Aaron: OK, the voice I hear in my head, the voice that the writing has, it's
not my voice. The sound of it, and the timing, and everything. It's totally
different than the way I speak. So when I've tried reading the stories
aloud, it just doesn't work. I think I'll just leave that to other people.
That's the most important part of the printed word, each person reading it
to themselves, hearing it in their own head, in their own voice, anyway. I'm
not very much into performing. Every once in a while it's fun to play a
show, but I'm a drummer. I need three people standing in front of me at all
times.
MRR: So you're not on the Cometbus record reading?
Aaron: No, it's this guy John Cotrona, who's a long time contributor to the
magazine. I love his writing. I think he's incredible. He's like part of the
family, although I've never met him in person. He wrote a full-length novel
and sent it to me on tape, along with a typed copy. But the written version
didn't work as well for me. I love his voice and timing. I like to put out
other people's work and lend the Cometbus name to it occasionally. It's a
risk, and it usually doesn't go over very well, but it's important to me. It
shows a bigger picture. I think all the stories kind of rub shoulders with
each other. I mean my stories, as well as the people I've connected with and
whose work I like. I think they all compliment each other and add up to a
bigger picture.
MRR: So where's Cometbus printed?
Aaron: It's printed in Berkeley. Finally I have a printer I like. What a
difference that makes. After years of printer problems. They are supportive
of what I do and accountable, and that's a word you don't hear much in punk.
MRR: May I ask how many you make?
Aaron: Yeah. I make 8000. It's probably more than people think I do. I like
the magazine to feel small and hand done. And it is small and hand done, but
it gets out in larger numbers than might be expected. It's going very well
right now and I know it won't always, so I'm very thankful. Thank you,
everyone, for buying and supporting it. It's good to feel like your work is
getting out there in a way that you want it to, at a level that's successful
but you feel comfortable with. So, I'm very thankful.
MRR: I read somewhere that you had translated versions coming out in other
countries?
Aaron: Yeah there was a German one, printed in Berlin in '97, and a French
one in Paris in '98.
MRR: Were they collections?
Aaron: Yeah. It was interesting. I didn't realize the stories were so
American, an they are. It was funny what the translators needed help with.
What things didn't translate. Or the stories were more interesting to a
foreign audience, in some ways. The things that are American, like doomed
plans, 24 Hour coffee shops, walking for hours along the train tracks,
living in small cramped houses that aren't provided by the governmnet. A log
of things I can't think of offhand, but the day to day life which is the
scenery, the background in my stories, totaly stood out as exotic to
Europeans. I hadn't expected that.
MRR: You've had talks in the past about doing a book collecting the best
stories from Cometbus. Any reason it hasn't come about yet?
Aaron: I never really found the right level. The publishers are either too
big or too small. They can't do what I can do better myself, and retain
control. And I'm not gonna jump just because someone outside my community
throws a rope down. Not without looking closer and seeing that they can't
sell as many as I do for the same price, and they can't get it where I can.
That's what I've seen so far at least. I am looking for a middle ground. It
wasn't so much a pressing issue, 'cause I had thousands of back issues left
over until very recently. Now they've all sold, so I am looking into doing a
collection of stuff from the last 20 magazines. I'd also like to do a
separate collection of just my writing.
MRR: I think you'll be hearing from some people.
Aaron: It's strange, though. Some things make a good 7", some things make a
good album, some things make a good CD. I'm very conscious of format (not
just cautious with it) and realizing that some thing that might be good as a
magazine might not be good as a book. It isn't like the food chain where you
keep going down the line. There's different ways to approacheverything. So I
would like to do a book here and there but, my heart is going to remain with
the fanzines and it will always come out there first.
MRR: So you wouldn't do just a novel or short story book that hadn't been
published in your zine first?
Aaron: I don't want to. I love books I love paperbacks. I'd love to do small
cheap paperbacks if it could be done well. So far I'm finding much more
satisfaction doing the magazines, and that includes the business aspects.
You do a book or CD and it's like a 300% mark-up, whereas with a magazine,
it's like 35%. I don't want to be concerned all the time with the financial
aspects, but the context that you get it in is important. If you get the
magazine at a small store, independently owned, for cheap, it's cool.
There's nothing doctrinaire about it, it's just better that way.
MRR: It seems that there is a whole genre of fanzines and writing that have
if not imitated, then been inspired to publish thanks to Cometbus. How does
it feel to have inspired so many people to create work?
Aaron: Well, in some cases it's been great because people have been able to
take a certain format and run with it and do things I've never been able to
do. Of course it feels good to inspire people, especially when they turn
that inspiration into something new. Or when they borrow some aspects of my
approach to show lives and ideas so vastly different than mine, or bringing
up issues and emotions and truths that I would have never dared to. When the
form is used to transcend its assumed limitations.
MRR: Is it strange, having the word "Cometbus-esque" entered into the
dictionary?
Aaron: Well, I don't want to be discouraging, because there's plenty of that
going around already. Let me just say, doing something great is more
important than doing something original, but something which is neither
doesn't do anyone any good. But rarely do I see something which is genuine,
with a lot of thought, character, and hard work poured into it, that doesn't
have some element of greatness.
This was printed in Maximumrocknroll #200 (January 2000).
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