Escargot #1

I’ve got a friend in the fanzine obsession game who occasionally will magnanimously take care of me by sending along small packages of stuff he’s accumulated that he thinks I might like, and he’s usually spot-on. I recently received an unasked-for copy of San Francisco’s Escargot #1 from Autumn 1995, published by three women, one of whom I personally know quite well: Windy Chien. She used to run Aquarius Records, and she’s since gone on to some very deserved recognition for her fine art knotwork, something that really has to be seen to be believed how cool it all is. 

This mag came along at a time and in a year when I very much should’ve appreciated it and known what it was, and yet I’ve never heard of the thing. Devoted to “Music and the Internet” – mostly the then-new information superhighway – it seems to have been put out by something called “Sick & Tired”, which I vaguely recall being another fanzine or a record label or something. I believe the name is meant to be a witty counterpoint to “snail mail”, which is what folks started calling “hand-written mail with a stamp on it” at this point. 

You know, I wasn’t really an early Internet guy. We got “e-mail” in at my job at Monster Cable in 1994, and as I’ve written about here, it was a revelation for those of us who sometimes made more time at work for pranking each other than we did, you know, actual work. My mom, of all people, was cavorting on the Internet a good 18 months before I was, farting around in AOL chat rooms and telling me all about it. She once asked me if I knew who someone named “Costes” was, as he was a strange Frenchman she was being weirded-out by online, and whom she deduced was probably running in similar underground circles as I was. I did know – he was a Lisa Suckdog compatriot.  I don’t think I got my own e-mail address until late 1996, on “The Microsoft Network” – jhinman@msn.com. I never participated in chat rooms, the “Chug list”, on listservs or anything like that. I think my early web activity was restricted to reading Suck, Salon and Feed every single day, but honestly, until streamable and/or downloadable music became a thing, I mostly refrained from connecting with my fellow music freaks outside of e-mail correspondence until the late 1990s.  

Given the current enshitification of the Internet in 2024, the boundless enthusiasm in Escargot #1 for its potential to liberate us all from Kathleen, Jeanne and Windy in 1995 all seems very quaint, and a little sad, I suppose. We humans really fucked it all up, didn’t we? The whole idea here is to help shepherd readers, most of whom were new to online life, into the underground music crevices and ratholes that Kathleen, Jeanne and Windy were so excited about. There are lessons in “netiquette”, “modem musts”; a jargon dictionary; and helpful instructions for how to get going on e-mail, mailing lists and “the newest and most glitzy aspect of the Internet”: the World Wide Web. Then, at the end, they list who’s online that you ought to check out, like a Kiwimusic page, KZSU radio, Sebadoh’s and Stereolab’s respective web pages, and many lists to subscribe to.

When they interview someone, like Pussy Galore/Free Kitten’s Julia Cafritz or Franklin Bruno, the talk is fun and gossipy, primarily revolving around Internet stuff. These early adopters, Cafritz in particular, are already getting a little over it. I wonder how they feel now, after the birth, heyday and slow death of social media? Midway in, there’s a stream of live reviews with zero Internet content (I’m capitalizing that word and hyphenating “e-mail” because that is what we did in the 1990s), including shows I was personally in attendance at, such as the Dirty Three opening for the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 during “Dirty Three Weekend” in San Francisco, which Windy Chien rightly reports as a long weekend in which everyone in town’s mind was suitably blown by that trio’s live performances. Mine certainly was – knew I’d like it because I’d been such a big Venom P. Stinger fan, but that first trip through from Dirty Three was even better.

I also liked Jeanne McKinney’s description of “the lovely Miss Cindy Dall” during her time playing live with Smog. I certainly was smitten with her from the word go when I saw her play. “If you’ve seen them on either tour you’ll know what I mean by ‘the lovely Miss’…it’s what my friends call a ‘high-maintenance look’. Much of the time not only is Miss Dall tastefully made-up, with tastefully coiffed hair, but also with a theatrical gown. And while her guitar playing seems error-free, it’s pretty simple stuff…and even after the many shows she’s played with Smog, she still seems nervous but self-confident, on the one hand hiding behind her stage persona, on the other not quite sure where the persona ends…This is fascinating stuff for me.” Dall, sadly, died way too young. I really enjoyed her in Bill Callahan’s band, and there’s a great 1995 show available to watch right here if you’re interested. 

All fanzines are time capsules in their way, of course, yet Escargot #1 especially marks a moment in time that was unique, refreshing and exciting for those caught up in it all. You can feel the promise of the Internet as a place where oddballs and obsessives are already starting to find each other, an algorithm-free, advertising-free, VC-money-free, bottoms-up collective of misfits who are straddling the world of print fanzines on one hand and an undefined, exploding digital realm on the other. It’s one of the more interesting fanzines I’ve ever come across.