Killer Squirrel Interview about Zine Project
This interview with Killer Squirrel took place on the night of Friday, October 13, 2006, while watching horror movies and drinking beer.
Interview by Robbie Hernandez
R: What is Punkzines.com?
KS: Basically, it’s an ongoing punk zine project to get out-of-print zines on the Internet, so people can read them. The Punkzines.com part was recently added to the project because the actual address for the archives is way too long to remember, and this one is much easier to type and spell. Punkzines.com isn’t really the name of the project or anything like that. A lot of people have problems spelling the word “phoenix.” Plus, the shorter address helps with printing zine classifieds. Simple is usually better. Anyway, where the hell was I…
R: The site…
KS: Oh right. Yes, so this site allows people to read old interviews and articles. They can check out the reviews for old albums or look at the advertisements. Punk columns, scene reports, top 10 lists… if it was printed, it’s online to read. There’s no need to spend money on these old zines, so people can support the current zines by spending money on them.
R: Do you see that as a problem?
KS: I do for several reasons. A person can buy one early 80’s copy of Flipside or a current year long subscription to Maximum RocknRoll for about the same price. The second option has a direct effect on the current punk scene. The point is that people had to be willing to work, produce, and purchase that Flipside issue for it to exist in the 1980’s, and the same is true for the current ones. Although I don’t want this to become nostalgic jerkoff session, I do want people to have access to the information for research or entertainment or whatever. If they can save a few bucks and spend that money on supporting the current punk scene, everybody wins. Obviously, I’m also not part of that group in the scene that feels everything in the past is dead and to be forgotten, either, or I wouldn’t be doing this.
R: How has the project changed from the original idea?
KS: Initially… you know I’m such an idiot, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. Ok, I started thinking about this zine project in maybe 1999, and the first thing that I envisioned was a copy of Maximum RocknRoll and Flipside reviews online and right next to each review, I was going to have a copy of the album or single for people to buy. Every single one! This idea seemed reasonable for all of 10 seconds before I started thinking about how I would get the out-of-print stuff. My brain is great at suspending reality. Then I thought about only posting reviews and interviews, but so many people like the columns and scene reports, so I said, “Fuck it, I’ll do the whole damn thing.” I knew the file sizes were going to be a problem because all the hosting companies, at least at that time, were limiting bandwidth and storage, so that was going to be a major problem. With technology advancing over the years, that’s not as big of a problem anymore, and the problem should keep getting smaller over time, unless the world blows up. So then, I went to the other extreme and decided that I could post all punk zines. Every single one! That idea also seemed reasonable for about 10 seconds because I’m not a trust fund baby, so I have to work. Anyway, I finally settled on posting zines that I’ve enjoyed reading over the years, and putting everything online – cover to cover. Oh, I also considered converting everything to text at some point, but that would take way too much time. I actually tried that one.
R: How did you get involved in zines? I know you had one of your own…
KS: Yeah, we can talk about my zine failure some other time. My introduction to zines was actually kind of weird. Like I was talking about earlier, I grew up in a small Midwest town. The fact that we even had a music store in my hometown was a miracle on the scale of the Red Sea parting. Anyway, they didn’t carry zines like some of the music stores in larger cities. And even though I had heard about zines, they were always referred to in the past-tense, so I thought they were dead. I mean zines like Punk and Sniffin’ Glue were obviously not around anymore, and those were always lumped in with Maximum RocknRoll and Flipside when people were writing about punk music, so I was completely floored when I finally saw a Maximum RocknRoll at maybe 17 or 18 years old. Until I noticed the date on the cover, I thought it was some kind of reissue type thing, but there it was staring me right in the face. It was great! It was proof that others existed!
R: Did that experience play a part in starting the zine project?
KS: I’m sure it had some effect. To a lot of people, zines are like a daily newspaper. You read it once and toss it. I remember HeartattaCk making a comment once about how punks should recycle old zines instead of throwing them away, and I immediately thought, “Who is throwing away these zines?” It’s as ridiculous as someone listening to a 7” record once and tossing it – exactly the same thing in my head. Now, I’ve got plenty of shitty 7” records, but I’ve never thrown any of them away or recycled them for that matter. Can you recycle vinyl?
R: No idea.
KS: See, this is the kind of stuff that runs through my mind all day long. I don’t even know how I’m able to function. Damn. I need help. If it’s not some half-crazed idea for a project that will never work, it’s some pointless thought that pokes at my brain incessantly.
R: So which zines are going to be included in this project?
KS: Maximum RocknRoll and Flipside are cool with it. HeartattaCk recently said I could post their stuff. I think Suburban Voice is fine with it, but when I first contacted him, the plan was little different. Razorcake is doing something on their own, and there was some legal issue or something, so that was a bummer… and… let’s see… and I’m still waiting on word from Aaron about Cometbus. I’ve only written him once or twice before, and it took forever to get a response, so by 2015, I might know if he’s cool with it. Until then, my lame ass will be camped out by the PO Box. And that could be a long time because I’m not sure if I had the right mailing address for him. We’ll see...
| |
