Reread: Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed

Editors Kim Cooper and David Smay can be proud of this collection  of essays on the obscure, unheralded, and just plain unheard music. Rather than reeking of rockist snobbery,  a lot of the choices here just leave you scratching your head (Aaron Carter? Really?), but that's what makes it such an enjoyable read. Anyone can cobble together a list of critic's favorites, but how many people cop to their love of old Muppets records, Kylie Minogue, The Dictators, or Swamp Dogg?

I can't really say I was inspired to pick up any of the music mentioned (scarily enough, I owed more than a few of those records), but as someone who's admittedly spent a good chunk of her life trolling used record stores or dingy old thrifts, I get it. And not to sound like an old fogey, though I guess I have no choice by now, though all but the criminally obscure is available for downloading, nothing can replace the feeling of digging through dusty record bins

We Are All Stars

It's tempting to think that your audience is essentially... you. Or, I mean, about the same age as you, therefore, no need to adjust your cultural references for relevancy. ('Cause you know somebody out there also bought that Reef CD, right?) Sometime during the half-decade or so, I officially became an "old," meaning there are scads of other people writing about music and pop culture, and many of them are young enough to be, well, my much younger siblings.

Particularly with music, I sense a big generational divide. Not necessarily the bands or artists being blogged, but the way the topic of what's "good," or even what's "cool" is approached. This comment on GenerationXpert  (note: the original post veers dangerously close to slut-shaming, and some of the other comments are downright homophobic), I think, sums up the difference between X and Y when it comes to music:

In music, for example, I thought X'ers's formative experiences covered a wide spectrum, from the hair metal days (which I seem to recall you being a fan of, and which certainly used sex to sell) to the more "authentic" grunge revolution, which didn't. In the Eighties, pop icons could use sex and be "outrageous" (Madonna, Prince), or not use it at all (R.E.M, Springsteen).

I think you could take that further and say during the 80s and 90s, the chasm between commercial music and indie was wider, and if you were someone who preferred the latter, you'd rather have root work done than listen to radio music. Even more importantly, there was no great equalizer like YouTube. Rebecca Black wouldn't have existed in 1987, or if she did, she wouldn't have been that season's Tiffany or Debbie Gibson (that would be Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, respectively), she could have been playing in a punk band or penning a zine. She wouldn't have been famous, or "internet famous," because her kind of fame didn't really exist.

I don't think this is truly a bad thing. If it weren't for this internet thing, I wouldn't be blogging, or probably writing at all. I'm just as much a part of the problem, though I'm not sure I consider it a problem. But I do find it a little disheartening that everyone seems to want fame, even a small part of it.

Death of Print: Zines

I really wanted to write a zine when I was younger. I'm pretty sure that's why I have a blog now: I never got my zine. Oh sure, I made a few distributed only between my cousin and me. But lacking an entrepreneurial spirit (and friends who worked at Kinkos), I never pursued it any further.

Fast forward a decade and I'm a blogger. So is everyone else. And her mom. And possibly her cat. Before you could say "Jordan Catalano" zines were gone. Uh huh, they're still some out there, but given the ease of starting a blog -- or even a Twitter manifesto (provided your manifesto is fewer than 140 characters) -- cutting and pasting a zine seems like a huge timesuck. As much as I love the idea of push-button publishing, I still pine for paper zines. Plus zines were a huge boon for third-wave feminists. A new book, Girl Zines, focuses on "the careful study of the zine movement in girl culture is a powerful and convincing articulation of the ways women's and girl's activism has developed, and the creative forms it has taken."

Says Jezebel:

Zines are perhaps one of the most democratic forums for disseminating ideas and concepts. In contrast to glossy fashion mags, zines provide a rough-edged place in which to cut and paste, tear and build. The almost Dada-ist aesthetic of haphazard construction plays with and speaks to "feminine" arts and crafts while also partaking in the angry sneers of the punk/grunge/riot movements. While the material inside is fascinating, Clark rightly focuses on the unique form.

Related Links links:
"Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism" is a history of an art form (AfterEllen)
Riot grrrl library (Broadsheet)