I REALLY MISS FANZINE’s. TWO OF MY FAVES RESURFACES IN BOOK FORM!

There is something I really miss in today’s music scene and that is fanzines. Fanzines are/were little magazines (if you could even call them magazines, I wouldn’t myself) that a “fan” would put out. In the mid 80’s they really started popping up all over the place and then in 1986, I started mine. Zines back then were mostly cut and paste type of things and personally, I didn’t really care about layouts when I would read somebody else’s. It was the heart and soul that mattered to me and trust me I could tell that when I would be reading the interviews and especially the reviews at the time.

When the mailman would bring me my mail (this was back in the 80’s) I would love it when I would see an 8×10 envelope in it (I would get mail pretty much every day) and it was a new issue of someone’s zine. Back then most fanzine editors would trade zines with other editors and we would spread each other’s flyers throughout our mail. I had my own desk down in my parent’s basement with a whole stack of flyers.

When the internet first started fanzines were still around, but it when sites like MySpace came around and just more social media sites/places that fanzines were replaced by webzines. I still go and visit some webzines at times, but it just isn’t the same.

One cool thing that has been done is that 2 very famous fanzines, Voices from the Darkside and Slayer (no relation to the band) have had all their issues put out in book form. OMG, it is an insane read. Both books are over 400 pages and I have already read Voices from the Darkside twice and I am almost done reading the Slayer book for the 2nd time. Reading both these books brought back so many memories. Now I actually still do a few reviews for Frank (Voices) website. I also used to write to Frank back in the day so it is great to still stay in touch with him. I have never written to Metalion who did Slayer mag, but I hope to do an interview with him one day as I did do one with Frank when his book came out.

Hopefully, in the near future, more fanzine books will be coming out and one I’d love to see would be all the issues (or even most) Kick Ass Monthly.

See ya next month