This is TOTAL FEST VIII !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total Fest is 3 nights, 50 bands, a record swap, a bbq, @Missoula, @the Badlander.

I could only attend Saturday, but it was more than enough. I don't think I have the kind of rock-conditioning necessary to survive all three days.

Thanks Josh, Nikki, and everyone else involved. It was amazing....

(pics: Japanther, Glassell Park #3)

Damage Done

Hardcore. Straight up

on the way back to Coeur d'Alene today we stopped in St. Regis Montana to pee (its about half way and i have a very sensitive bladder). As I was walking down the isle the singer for Damage Done walked toward me. I immediately flashed my new Total Fest VIII shirt, fist bumped him, and told him that they ruled.

Sandrider

Although Akimbo wasn't playing this Total Fest, I kept seeing dudes from Akimbo walking around and watching bands. Turns out, two dudes from Akimbo and some other cat are called Sandrider and they as battle as all hell. This was an unexpected gift from the Total Gods and it was goooooooooooood.

Goddammitboyhowdy

punk rock, straight up

Japanther

after they spent five minutes making a goddamn health drink in a blender on stage, Japanther pounced on the Badlander to end the evening in a joyous sweat-and-pabst soaked dance orgy.

El Zombi Gato

Millie trying her best to attract zombies

Git Some

These guys were incredible, they sound exactly as their name implies. The singer, however, was standing in front of me during Helms Alee and kept fist-pumping his hand in my face.

Helms Alee

For me, this was the band of the night. Not-so-subtle ambience combined with acutely reserved brutality.

its a life style

our new band (and I use that term loosely)

sign of the times

I can't say that I didn't see this coming, my beloved Skyscraper is no more. For the past seven years this has been one of my three go-to mags for sweet music knowledge. Every other month I would eagerly snatch up the latest issue and spend the next three evenings alone in my room drinking whiskey and listening to the bands covered online. Your pages have introduced me to so much amazing music and art across the spectrum. For this I am truly greatful.

my glass is raised in your direction.

latest from the sketchpad

hmmm

Mike and.....And

Tim and Dave back together again for Dave's wedding. This was really cool, these guys are as funny as it gets. Hopefully somebody will post the whole performance on youtube.

The DaveErikon

after ten years of dating Dave and Erika are finally getting married. Two passenger vans were rented, two drivers hired, two teams of ten, one referee, ten bars, challenges galore. epic.........

zinEs

From 1994 until roughly 2002 I published Spaghetti Dinner & Dancing fanzine. I was obsessed with it back then and had the time of my life. During that time I got to know all kinds of amazing and gifted people through the mail and through their zines. We shared stories and art and followed bands and causes, all courtesy of the United States Postal Service. It was an incredible time and worthy of my romanticism. We were all in on a big secret that empowered and inspired a movement centered around the anti-consumer philosophy of DIY; do-it-yourself. Our only masters were the postal workers of America.
Unfortunately, I lost touch with most of the people I had been corresponding with due to time and circumstance. In 2002 I moved from my beloved Missoula Montana in search of action and adventure and started guiding hikes professionally. It was a dream job, and along with a new and very serious relationship, my priorities shifted.
It wasn't until I stumbled upon the website, "wemakezines.ning.com" about two months ago and started reconnecting with some of those people that I decided to document it all. So, here is my first installment of some of the incredible zines and zinesters I have come in contact with over the years. Its a small but personally significant sampling. (Bear with me on this, I'm not the most computer savy cat, plus I like to drink and listen to loud music during the evenings when I have time for this....)
Zine culture is still alive and thriving. Obviously the internet changed things a bit, but I think that we are starting to recognize that the things that made fanzines so unique and cool back then are even more important now. The idea of actually holding something in your hand that someone made and reading a type or hand written note along with it.....in the anonymous, cold, and confusing world of today's internet, cut and paste seems high tech.

Firsts

Furia was the first zine I ever got in the mail. It was intensly personal and well written. The Dove was the first zine I ever wrote. It was really bad.

Tatterfrock

Another great everything punk zine. What the hell is TJ up to these days?

fucktooth

Jen Angel. DIY. This was a great zine.

Flipside

Flipside was like the Vince Vaughn to Maximumrocknroll's John Favreau. Both are cool, but Flipside was a bit more hip.

Dishwasher

Like a lot of people who were working dead end jobs and reading Dishwasher fanzine, I kinda always hoped I would run into Pete in some dishpit somewhere. Unfortunately I never did. This is a classic.

Kittums

I bought the first two issues of this zine at a J-Church show from Mikel who was running the band's merch counter back in 1994. It's a zine about her cats Kittums & Jesus. I lost those old issues a long time ago, but still remember how funny and low-tech they were, which is always my favorite kind of zine.

Sic Teen

I don't think Reverened Norb ever put out another issue of Sic Teen. If he did, let me know. I love this zine, the actual zine. Its like having a piece of rock history from someone who knows more about rock history than anyone else. Rev. Norb is a complete rocknroll schitzophrenic, an enigma of the highest order.
The other pic is of an interview I did with him in SD&D #1.
Norb writes a column and does reviews for Razorcake.

Shat Upon

Andy Smetanka is a very talented person. This zine was an early example of that talent. When he stopped publishing Shat Upon, Missoula was left with a serious cultural void. This was a big zine in a small town. After each issue came out there was always a buzz for a few weeks about the content. It was packed with Missoula history, stories, band reviews, interviews, and strange Northwest cultural happenings.
I once wrote an article for Shat Upon about animal scat. Traditionally after an issue came out, Andy would take all the Shat Upon writers out for free beer at Charlie's to say thanks. To this day, I have never had a worse hangover....
Before I left Missoula in 2001 Andy and I spoke on a panel about our experiences as zinesters at the Montana festival of the Book. It was a cool bookend to my Missoula days.
Andy went on to become the Arts Editor at the Missoula Independent. He currently makes stop-action animated movies and music videos. Check his stuff out at nickellbag.com

Maximumrocknroll

To say that MRR is my favorite zine is an understatement. I wouldn't even know what a zine was if it weren't for that fatefull encounter with MRR at a Helena Montana record store in 1990. When I first started thumbing though it at the counter, I had no idea what the hell was going on, it was so sloppy and full of weird bands and people that I had never heard of. But it looked cool and I have always been intrigued by the weird, pissed off, and opinionated of which MRR most definitely is. I picked it up and gave it to a friend of mine who was into punk rock. He tore into it and explained it all to me in a way that my thrash metal and mullet head could understand. It wasn't long before I lost the mullet and was reading MRR every month.
Maximumrocknroll is an institution. It remains the most consistent and relevant punk rock forum in the world. maximurocknroll Pob 460760, San Francisco, CA 94146-0760 (maximumrocknroll.com)

the postcard is from Tim Yohannan about a year before he died.

10 Things Jesus Wants You To Know

This was one of the largest Northwest zines for a long time. It was kind of like the Pacific Northwest's MRR, or Flipside. Based out of Seattle this zine covered this region's bands and punk culture in a way that seemed a bit more personal than some of the other large zines. Although there were a ton of writers, columnists, photographers, and artists involved in the making of it, it always felt like Dan's zine when you read it. Dan Halligan is still very active in the world of zines and Northwest rock. Check out his blog, 10thingszine.blogspot.com Its updated regularly and full of great pictures and stories about northwest punk rock.

Monkeybite

After all these years Grindcore continues to be one of my favorite genres of rock n roll. This zine, which amazingly enough was put out by two monkeys, focused its energy on grindcore and the promotion of all things simian, except non-grind humans. For some strange reason, the visual dichotomy of seeing monkeys and hardcore bands scatttered thoughout every page worked. Very entertaining.

a little action is good for the soul

Here are a couple of photos that made the paper of my fellow tree huggers and I. In the first one I'm the guy with his hand to his mouth next to Hayduke's armpit. In the next photo I'm standing behind the guy with the beard. Howie Wolke is one of the co-founders of Earth First! and one badass dude. I met him at this protest and gave him a copy of my zine. He actually wrote me a nice letter about it later. Unfortunately my neurotic dog ate most of that letter....

Hikes are my business and business is gooood

Here are a few pics of my days as a naturalist

Memoirs of a street vendor

This is a novel "in serial form" by Phil Bland. Its her memoirs of running a street vending cart in Chicago. A really good read and very ambitious work. Yet another great pen pal lost in the great shuffle of life.....

Here be Dragons

HBD is another politically charged zine that I really liked that didn't feel to preachy or coldly distant. Mike Q, and Eric are really good at engaging the reader without alienating them. I think they might still be publishing this?

Spectacle

This was a very inspiring eco-punk zine. I was always passing it around to friends, encouraging them to read it. Unfortunately I lost my early copies, hopefully whomever ended up with those copies continued to pass them around.

I'm so fucking beautiful

Growing up in Montana I didn't have too much exposure to progressive causes. Even in Missoula, which is a very progressive town, I was introduced to feminist thinking through riot grrrl zines, not people. This zine really opened my eyes up. Not only did it expose me to a world of pissed off women with something to say, it humanized and empowered people with weight issues to the point that weight wasn't an issue to me anymore. Fanzines also introduced me to anarchism, and environmentalism, and a host of other radical and progressive issues and causes that no other source of media or life experience had done before.

innermuscle

Josh Vanek and Rich stoddart published this zine during the glory days of Jay's Upstairs. It was full of history, bands, interviews, and reviews. Josh is the man behind Wantage USA Records. www.wantageusa.com

slug & lettuce

This is a great zine, but you already knew that. The columns are consistent and full of realistic and radical green-tinged anarchism. Christine's DIY philosophy is second to none; she walks the walk. And after reading each issue and looking at her photographs, I always want to go out and start a hardcore band. Very inspiring.

chumpire

Greg doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon with this longstanding zine. He has a knack for getting to the core of whatever he is writing about quickly and without needless word fodder, be it bands, scenery, or life experiences. Along with the single page newsletter type zine, Greg also puts out records, and ocassionally the full-sized zine.

cryptic slaughter

This was a sharp-witted zine from Spokane that never gave my zine a good review, but that I always enjoyed regardless. very cynical, very pissed off, very good.

Burn Collector: Hellbend for leather

Al Burian is almost too good with words. Burn collector is a perfect example of this. I recently picked up BC #13 while traveling through Hood River Oregon with a big wine buzz. I don't know if it was the wine or the words or both, but this dude continues to get better, and that scares me. incredible.

Antipathy

antipathy
I have no idea if Mike Antipathy still publishes this. I only got three issues in the mail but was consistently blown away by the author's big brain. I have never really studied anarchism as a political theory other than from the zines I recieved. I've always kind of gravitated toward it on a personal basis, but when it comes to voting and civic participation, I vote very liberally and kind of dig the utopian bullshit associated with socialism (and take great pride in this when it comes to environmental and human rights causes). This and other zines like, The Match, ATR, and Here be Dragons, at least gave me some exposure to the intellecutal argument for anarchism. What was cool about this zine for me was that Mike wrote about anarchism in a way that made it more touchable and real. He wrote about his life experiences, sex, food, activism etc. and explained how his personal life reflected his political values.

cometbus

Aaron is an incredibly dedicated and talented person. His devotion to rock and the written word is truly inspiring. Cometbus continues to be one of the very best zines out there.