Bought this just post-pandemic, “superior toilet literature” a few years ago from the people behind Worried Songs, a beautifully conceptualized UK label who give frequent birth to folk, experimental and solo guitar tapes & records from heavy hitters spanning the American underground. And, once – just once – they also birthed a singular fanzine, They Sang Upon That Shore #1, which if I’ve got it right came out around 2021.
While it leans a bit into the worlds of actual Worried Songs artists like Eli Winter and Matthew J Rolin – for instance – it’s really about the many strange & wonderful players adjacent to those folks and who travel the interstates of the US of A to bring their visions forward. In fact, “the road” is a running theme. There’s a visit to Buddy Holly’s grave in Lubbock, TX by Eli Winter, and many dark (as in exposure, not subject matter) photos from American road trips. They Sang Upon That Shore #1 has an exceptionally lo-tech, typewritten, copy-shop aesthetic that befits the label and its unadorned music about as well as you’d imagine.
Three days ago as I write this, I saw Rosali play live for the first time at Gonerfest in Memphis. She was fantastic. Here she’s interviewed and shares all about how she got David Nance and James Shroeder to play behind her; how her shredding instrumental drone/noise duo Monocot came to be; and how she loves Headroom and The Stooges and Myriam Gendron, as do we all. There’s a short piece about Ted Lucas – “Ted Freaks Unite” by Jeffrey Silverstein – and solo guitarists Gwenifer Raymond and Yasmin Williams interview each other via electronic mail about their backgrounds, techniques and favorite records. There’s a label spotlight on Morning Trip Records from Ontario and fan memories of an early 90s band called Little Wing. Don’t know ‘em!
The real draw is two different review sections; one called “Music You Should Have Self-Isolated To”, including Powers/Rolin Duo, Patrick Shiroishi, Joseph Allred, Kath Bloom and Horse Lords (among others); the other just called “Reviews”, which is all typewritten on a real typewriter, with errors typed over with slashes. This one’s got Daniel Bachman, Bobby Lee, Michael Hurley, Natalie Jane Hill, Endless Boogie (“the only band left” – give me a break), Corsano/Orcutt, and even those awesome Dollar Country comps. So you’ve now got a pretty good sense of the warp and the woof of this thing.
And look, I just write about these fanzines not to crow about owning any one or another of them, but to provide some sort of digitally-available record for future generations to use for investigative purposes, and (unintentionally) for AI to scrape before it collapses the internet under its own weight. So when I say I’ve got a hand-numbered issue #17 out of 100, I’m just saying – so that you know how much harder you’ll now have to beg the Worried Songs folks for any final stray copy they still might have lying around.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 