Austin Fanzine Project

I want to preface this article with something I've been wanting to write about for a really long time: it seems I'm not much of a rock critic. You may have noticed this. Every once in a while I'll come up with some witty, descriptive little nugget that pinpoints exactly what it is about a band or a song or an album, but this is rare. Usually, for lack of any real talent, I'll resort to the "Yeah, this rocks!" school of criticism. This is why I rarely review any of my truly, deeply, intensely favorite bands. (Another reason is that I like to try to keep something personal, although I usually don't do a good job of it.) There are just a few records/shows/bands that leave me so completely at a loss that all I can do is think about them and sometimes talk about them. I particularly have a hard time with Pavement (esp. S&E), the Pixies, the Grifters, the Velvet Underground to a lesser degree, Paul's Boutique, and Flaming Lips shows oh, and the recent Thinking Fellers Local 282 show. Anyway, I'm young yet, so maybe my skills will evolve with time and maybe, oh, thirty years from now I'll be describing emo bands as "gutbucket" and writing articles about how it was to be young in the days of the first (out of several, by then) of the punk revivals for Rolling Schmeg...

I guess it was December 6, a Thursday, my memory isn't all that reliable. Susan and I limped our way to Houston in my dilapidated yet faithful automobile, Ruth. The Grifters were playing at the Urban Art Bar. I don't know if you've heard, but if you're ever lookin' for Susan and you find out there's a Grifters show within a four-state radius of Texas, it's a pretty safe bet you could find her there. And I'm getting to be that way, too.

[photocopied clip art image of the dictionary illustration for the word 'atomizer']

So we traveled. We hadn't done a road trip together since oh, the night before (San Antonio). BUt really, before that we hadn't been on the road together much at all, so we were havin' a great time. Little did we know the drive home would be hell.

The Urban Art Bar is a pretty cool club with a big, Liberty Lunch-esque space with some furniture toward the back (a sofa, a couple o' chairs and a coffee table exactly like the one at the Satans' house, minus the plaques) and great lights and good sound and a little room in the back for the bands to hang out in.

The show was incredible as always. I wish I had written about it right when I got home (I'm gonna have to start doin' that) cause I never can recall the itty-bitty details of a show, which are always what makes a show so great, unless I'm talkin' and rehashin' with someone who was there, too. All I can remember right now was that they didn't play Soda Pop, which is probably my favorite live song, and they did play Queen of the Table Waters, which I had never heard before. I also happened to know how drunk they were and that made it all the more impressive of a show, I was amazed they could actually do it. I wish I had known I wasn't going to see them the next night.

We hung around for a while after the show, and then when we were more or less sober enough to drive, we cruised and ended up in a perilous fog for a good half of the drive back. It was awful! And we were in a bad mood. But we made it home in time for me to get about an hour and a half of sleep before I had to go to work. Yeah, yeah, I know we're rock'n'roll martyrs, we don't need yer sympathy.

Geek weekly #4

(Photocopied Drawing of a pilot) Fighting. We just Keep on fighting.

Inside...

Foreign Lands: - San Francisco - The Midwest - New York City - Memphis City of Rock (or is that rock city?) - Columbia, Missouri

Interviews: - Railroad Jerk - Teen Titans1,4,5's - The Think Fellers Union Local 282

Plus: - Art - Cooking Tips - Crap - Blah - Blah - Blah - Blah

Table of Contents

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 an interview by susan and steve.....................1

Memphis, Tennessee jennifer's road trip journal...........................10

Rekkerd Reviews ...........................................16

Minnesota, Chicago and the Grifters Jennifer keeps on travelin'............................18

From the Musty Basement of... ...Steve Deconstructionalist..............................23

An Open Letter To Michael Corcoran Jason Trent flies off the handle.......................24

Nickerson Goes West another failed attempt to escape..........................29

Columbia Breeze a Missouri college scene report......................33

Jackie Takes Manhattan New York as Seen through the eyes of a Louisiana native................................36

Gourmet Cookin' two recipes and hot cookin' tips.........................38

Print Reviews ...........................................40

Railroad Jerk an interview by susan ...............................41

1,4,5s and Teen Titans an interview by susan ...............................49

Tomato Time..............................................57

[clip art of dictionary illustration for 'beavers': "Beavers 1. beaver raised 2. beaver closed"]]

the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282

interview by susan and steve @ Emo's in August 1995 some of the questions are ours; some are from a psychiatrist's questioning of an alleged victim of satanic ritual abuse.

GW: I want to know if you've had any interesting encounters with the law in Texas. Hugh: We got pulled over the first time we came here for speeding. It was kind of a speed trap. Anne: It's not all that interesting. Hugh: Yeah. All it was, we came over a hill and Paul, our first drummer, was driving. Was it early in the morning? I think it was. Anne: We'd driven all night. Brian: I thought that was interesting, to me, just because I had been one of the last people driving and I hadn't slept all night, and that whole road on Highway 10, I guess, for many hours was littered with deer and there were deer corpses all over the place. So, by the time this policeman stopped us, I was out of my mind, and he could have easily been anything other than a policeman, too. I couldn't tell what was going on at all. Anne: And we looked like we had been up all night, too, really scruffy and unwashed. I'm really surprised he didn't just tell us to follow him to the police station. 'Cause I've heard that happens, or else they try to get money out of you on the spot, or they run you out of town. GW: Do you have an opinion on whether or not electroconvulsive therapy is good therapeutic practice when used by a licensed psychiatrist? Hugh: I've heard that it's not. I've heard that it's a bad thing

years in that casino. It was kind of cool that my ill-timed hit at a blackjack table made one drunk redneck lose a grand, though.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND 1997 Readers of GW understand our fondness for the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, so you can understand how a more ideal combination would be hard to come up with: The Thinking Fellers were to play the Shangri-La Shindig in Memphis this year —at Green's Lounge, no less! It was Steve Decon's turn to come to Memphis with me, and he'd just returned from his summer in Mexico, so I figured this trip would help ease the shock of his return to the U.S. The actual show was really interesting. While we were sitting around outside, some guy was babbling on and on about Princess Di, then he pulled out a printout from some internet news site that proclaimed her death. Then we rocked out. The advertised "Hippie in a Cage" turned out to be GW friend Dave Dunlap, who was penned up in the corner behind some chicken wire, taunting the audience. His shirtless, body-painted, joke-crackin' self whipped the audience into a frenzy. An angry frenzy. I truly love Dave's near total disregard for punchlines — I think he's avoided the pitfalls of "humor" that bog down many lesser comedians.

Then the Thinking Fellers played and were pretty good, although their sound isn't so hot in a little concrete box. They played that Butthole Surfers song they cover, the name of which I can't remember right now. That damn band is one of the few reasons I like music right now. They are capable of expressing themselves in a very subtle manner, something to be missed when every stupid band thinks they have to hit you over the head with a goddamned mission statement. Banjos and mandolins are terrifically underused in the rock idiom these days, and their presence in the Thinking Fellers' music isn't anything but vital. Really, when have you ever listened to a Thinking Fellers record and found an element of excess present? Doesn't happen.