I haven't given much thought to what it is I'm doing here until I uttered the word "fanzine" to T. on the couch this morning. And when I went online to see if I could come up with one of my favorites, Murder can be Fun (whose special issue on "(Anti-)Sex Tips for Teens" was a mainstay in the back rows of my trigonometry class), I realized that there was - of course - already a whole discussion online about the fate of the zine in the digital age.
I don't really have a desire to contribute to that conversation other than to quizzically call attention to the website of MRR (Maximum Rock 'n' Roll), which was the music rag of choice of my teendom. Unlike Rolling Stone, in which you were guaranteed to have heard of every band they mentioned before you read the issue (thus serving to reinforce what you already knew and goading you to go ahead and buy this or that album after all), in MRR, it was a right honor to your cred if you had heard of a single band mentioned within its crappy newsprint pages. It was the magazine where you learned about your friend's band before she even got the chance to tell you she had a band.
While I love the idea of rediscovering MRR online, it is germane to the experience it exists to promote that you get physically dirty from the ink flipping the pages. And it would seem that I'm not the only one who's attached to the paper - the website is devoted to radio broadcasts, subscription info, and a history lesson about the magazine, but the thing itself still has to come in the mail. Diggit!
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