Thursday, January 05, 2017

FANZINE REVIEW! AVANT GARDE WORLD 46 (available via Box Dog, PO Box 1856, Seattle WA 98111)

I haven't been receiving that many "fanzines" as of late (not that many that I would consider actually purchasing are being made), so finding this one turning up in my mailbox really was a dog gone juicy surprise.

That is, if you can call AVANT GARDE WORLD a "fanzine" in the strictest Werthamesque sense. And it actually looks like one of those home-made dada 'zine things that were all the rage back inna eighties and nineties which really does send memories up and down the ol' medulla oblongata.

Of course many of those memories are BAD ones but we can't exactly blame "Jo Smitty" (who I assume is the same one who was behind the old FEMINIST BASEBALL magazine) for that now, can we?

Interesting home-done staple job and one-side print with off-the-top ruminations regarding loads of current and not-so happenings in both Jo's and maybe even our lives. Remembrances of recently departed people from Alan Vega to Lou Reed (this musta been inna works for quite some time) intermingle with thoughts on everything from the presidential election and Ed Sanders' autobio to a page on Barbara Rubin complete with the usual graphics (including the tried and true "smeared mimeograph" motif) that always seemed to pep these papers up quite a bit. Book reviews and a heartfelt farewell to some "Marianne Lambert" (one of the lower rungsters in the underground film canon I'd surmise) can be noted as well.

In this age of instant loudmouth gratification ("Golly, I can make my own humble opinions appear on the same stage as THE MOST POWERFUL MEN PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE!") these kinda mags might be the 2010's answer to buggy whips. But still it's sure nice to see some of the old media surviving long after we thought it would have all died away. Talkin' old media that had some fun and jamz to it, not like big city newspapers 'r anything like that. Might be worth a gamble to try and latch onto this obscurity!

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