The late 1990s were the heyday of “brothers going their own way” when it came to underground, rock-adjacent music – as least as it was covered by fanzines at the time. I’ve already yammered about how averse to free jazz, abstract folk and experimental noise I was at the time in my previous discussions of Tuba Frenzy #4, Astronauts #4 and Gold Soundz #4, so I won’t belabor the unimportant point here, nor the unimportant point that I’ve come whimpering back to it all in the subsequent decades. Just be glad I don’t have any issues of De/Create or Opprobrium. Those were the ones that really pissed me off back then.

This brings us to Deep Water #5 from Winter 1998, which emanates from the same genus as those others.  You see a fanzine published from Iowa City, Iowa and there’s a pretty good chance that someone’s going to college. In fact the mailing address is on “College Street”. There are three editors, and I’m a bit suspicious of their listed names: “Kevin Moist”, “Bill Reader” and “Chris Curley” – though I suppose if Reader and Curley were going for something wacky they’d have done a little better than that.

The fanzine begins inauspiciously. There’s a long article from a pal of theirs, an American in Poland, haranguing the music fanzine reader (who after all, just wants to ROCK) about Poland’s inelegant post-Communist transition to democracy and hyper-capitalism in the 1990s. It smells like a ploy by the writer to get published in the only place he might be able to – his friends’ budget music fanzine. He probably bugged the crap out of them to shoehorn this dreary drone in there. That said, there are recipes in the magazine – like recipes you cook, for food – so maybe Deep Water was attempting an omnivorous approach to culture as they themselves defined it.

There’s nowhere to go but up from there – and thankfully they go way up! Kevin Moist’s intro to his Brother J.T. interview is exceptionally well-written. Now I know he was a college boy. Just a well-done interview through and through – like one of the better wide-ranging fanzine discussions with a smart person you’ll ever read; if you’ve ever read a good Dan Melchior interview, it’s the same vibe – and now I’m feeling like I need to go back and listen to more Brother J.T. records. I mostly started and ended in the 80s with “she’s just fourteen and I don’t care!”. The same thing happened to me when I read the long piece on Cordelia’s Dad – another erudite exploration that makes me wonder how I missed this band. Good music writing’ll do that, and is all too rare. And how did I forgot all about Grimble Grumble until today??

Honestly, maybe I’m most taken with the Times New Roman font, always the font of choice for my own mags. I know I ask for details sometimes on these obscure mags and it’s been very rare that anyone’s been willing and able to provide it, but: does anyone know anything more about Deep Water and the fellas that put it out? (I found this, so that’s a good start). You leave a comment about it if you do, and fifty years from now some middle-aged dude that hasn’t been born yet will totally thank you.