Austin Fanzine Project

25¢ THIS IS MY YOUR GEEK WEEKLY [image of false teeth] WITH CARDS ROCK-N-ROLL MOVIN' BLUES GEEK REVOLUTION ROSTER CHICAGO TRAVEL STORY HANDY ADDRESSES MUSIC & SHIT - AND INTERVIEWS [scratched out] - maybe next time [image of crabs] WRITE YOUR NAME HERE ______________________________ [image of Saturn] VOL. #1 FALL 1994 NO. 1

Chi-town

I went to Chicago again this summer & I liked it a lot more than last time. Since my mom was out of the country, I got to stay in her house for free & I also got to use her car. This made it possible for me to do lots more stuff than the last time I was there before. The three best things were going to Blackout and Ajax Records, getting fucked up and going to Lake Michigan and getting to see Southern Culture on the Skids. That was one of the coolest shows I've ever seen. Chicago's a neat town that you should definitely visit if you ever get the chance.

Nuclear War playing card.]

INTRO

Hello freaks!!

Been a while, hasn't it? Sorry 'bout that. You know the power of chaos... Anyway, it's 1995 now and another chance to get my shit together, make this zine a little more regular (time-wise at least) and catch up on my correspondence... This issue (and all those to come, I hope) has more writing in it although I'm a firm believer in the power and eloquence of clip art. Another new feature is Jo Walston's dictionary brainchild which can be found scattered throughout the pages of this publication: we will start with the letter A.

What with the holidays (Jenworld translation: lost of old friends in town), a two-week trip to Chicago, and my awful sense of time and it's passing, I cannot possibly sit down and write about all of the things that have happened to me in the past few months, so this will be a very scattered, schizophrenic read. Love it.

All my love straight to you, baby, Jennifer.

Chicago Again

So I went to Chicago for 2 weeks around Xmas. I got to hang out with my mom and go junk shoppin' with her - I accidentally got her loookin' at some 78s one afternoon and it was amazing some of the stuff she knows about some of the songs and bands. I also got to eat lots of really great food. Just about anything you want is in Chicago - consumer heaven! For example, mom just moved out to a suburb much like Westlake Hills (so that my brother could go to a good high school and not get knifed every other day), and even in this rich white suburb, there's an Ethiopian take-out place across the street from their apartment!

I didn't have much access to independent transportation this trip and I had to work, so I didn't get around much. Also everyone I met up there this trip was a Deadhead or something, except for my old friends and my brother's friends. Ben (my bro) brought 3 of his friends into town with us one day when we got to use Mom's car. We went to record stores and pawn shops and "alternative" shops and an army surplus store and a bad diner. It was pretty cool. I blew all my cash at Ajax (one of my favorite places in the world). Ben's friends are pretty cool for 15-year-olds. They're really into Nirvana and Pavement and, of course, the Offspring and shit, but they're on the right track.

They have a band called Chlorine and they play in eachothers' basements. I started sending zines to Ben a few moths ago and I brought some up at Xmas. I'd come home and Ben and a couple friends would be sittin around readin' U-236 or Ben Is Dead or something (they really liked Peek-a-Boo also). The one night they did their own zine called Is Your Dad Gay? It's got lists of what's cool and what SUCKS and reviews of Chlorine shows and reviews of records by Sonic Youth and Nirvana and the Breeders and Pavement and some philosophical runnings-on and some scanned pictures of Kurt Cobain and themselves and some Nirvana lyrics and a pretty cool board game on the back cover. Ben made me proud by successfully lobbying to get the Inhalants on their Top Ten Bands list (he's also probably the only 15-year-old in Chicago with a Jesus Christ Superfly/Rise t-shirt.) So if you're interested in what the youngsters (hee hee, Ben) are up to, write Ben and demand a copy of: Is Your Dad Gay?/Ben 424 S. Maple #3N Oak Park, IL 60302 (send him a stamp or somethin'-jeez!)

On New Year's eve I went to my friend James's party. The crowd was mostly queens and people I knew from Whole Foods up there. It ended up bein' really fun and I kicked off my I'm-takin'-control-of-my-life campaign by poppin' my first champagne cork. Then I talked to a guy named Will Power. Later I thought that was a hell of an omen, but at the time I was already drunk and I guess I didn't take the cosmic hint. I drank some more champagne and passed out.

Mom and I had a great time and her man, Nat played me tapes of his old bands which were really great! Mom even got into reading Cometbus and she loved the kim chee article in Wipeout #7 since it's one of her newfound culinary favorites. She should be contributing something to GW in the near future. I'm tryin' to talk Nat into it, too. And if my lazy-punk-ass brother ever sends it to me, we should be seein' the occasional Spindly Man cartoon.

Man...or...Astro...man!"), you could always check out the huge painted wall-hanging/backdrop thing or several black and white TVs playing choice snippets of old sci-fi b-movies. I also had a pretty good laugh when they started throwing out Little Debbie snacks and assorted candies and chocolate into the audience and some guy behind me shouted, "Fuck the chocolate, WE WANT TANG!!!"

Whew, we went back to the hotel and crashed so hard that we forgot to wake up in the morning to go to Al Green's Full Tabernacle Church. Oh, the things I missed. Guess I'll have to go back.

Sunday, 25 June 1995

We walked down to this shitty pancake house which I always want to call "Biscuit House," although I don't think that's its name. (Susan, Scott and I went there when we passed through Memphis on the way back from Chicago once. I couldn't remember its name then, and I still can't.) After breakfast, we saw the boys off and went to Sun Studios.

We were apprehensive, as we had just recently seen Mystery Train and were pretty convinced the tour was gonna suck shit. Boy, were we surprised. The tour guide was very informative and talked about all kinds of neat stuff. He also played parts of songs recorded there. I swear I got goosebumps when he played the first part of "I Walk The Line' and announced that we were standing in the very room that Johnny Cash recorded it in! Then he told us this story about this recording session where Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash and somebody else were all recording together, but they kept cracking up because Carl Perkins was in the adjoining office mooning them through the window.

That night we hooked up with a friend of a friend, the wacky Andy Biscuit of the Resort Theory Recording Conglomerate. Andy drove us out past this industrial wasteland, like a decrepit, vacant warehouse district. Through that, to this bizarre neighborhood that had these creepy houses. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with them. Was it the paint, the architecture (I use that term very loosely here), the arrangement of them? Or was it that we didn't really know Andy too well (or the friend who referred us to him, for that matter), and there was the possibility lurking in the back of my mind that someone would be hauling my corpse out of one of these condemned factories the next day? Obviously, we lived. And I can say that Andy is a fine human, although he still owes us a visit.