The format of Basement Food is double sided 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper stapled together. About one quarter of this zine is given over to guitar charts of Metallica songs. This is the regular feature called Guitar Player’s Corner. Basically it cracked me up. It’s also highly actionable if Metallica’s lawyers ever saw this little item. So that’s two reasons to like it. There’s also a rant against the media, this being the media/pop culture issue of Basement Food. Like so many people in zine-land, Ash hates the media and accuses the media institution of turning us into idiotic drones. But isn’t it more complicated then that? In this very zine he provides the lyrics and tabulations of a Metallica song, a band which is very much a part of the mass media complex. On the one hand you have zines which accuse the media – whatever that is – of the most heinous crimes, on the other you have zines obsessed with pop culture and its vagaries. There is a middle ground represented by Ashley’s endorsement of Metallica – we have to recognize and endorse the creative and the way we use the creative without necessarily endorsing corporate monopolies and relentless marketing that exist as the proxy creative. Anyway, Ashley’s in high-school and there’s plenty of time for him to think about things of this nature. When I was in high school I spent all my time in the basement trying to play Metallica songs on my classical guitar. (HN)
zine, #10, Ashley Lambert, 10720-99 Ave., #204, Fort St. John, British Columbia, V1J 1V8