Miranda Fisher – Fanzine Hemorrhage

I don’t have a social media presence any longer – wait, have I said that before? Look at me everyone, wow, look at me, I’m not on social, so incredibly brave, wow – and therefore this site is my quote-unquote “public face”. Thus, it’s where I shall inform you about some things:

*** After five months of slumber, my Agony Shorthand music podcast – once called Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio, then Radio Dies Screaming – has a new episode out. You can go listen to it if you like music.

*** I have a Fanzine Hemorrhage column in Record Time #4 fanzine. It’s now out, and I’ve seen it. Ignore how the layout cuts off some of the text and punctuation – you didn’t need to understand my sentences anyway, right? The mag’s great. Order it here.

Now, on with our programme.

I was probably in a condescending, holier-than-thou, nattering-nabob-of-negativity headspace when I read Sniffy Linings #1 last year. I mentally filed it as “yeah, it’s okay”. And yet something obviously brought me back, and it wasn’t an interview with Itchy and The Nits. No, I’ve always dug what Rich at the Total Punk label’s been about; his label is class, and he just seems like a great fella. We got to bantering the lone time I met the dude about Teddy & The Frat Girls, as one does. He puts together the new Sniffy Linings print fanzine from his Portland, OR home with a set of bigtime punk rocker contributors – folks like the other punk rock Rich (Kroneiss, who did Terminal Boredom); Mitch Cardwell; Miranda Fisher, who does The Bible; Joe Chamandy and others. Even Gerard Cosloy – yeah, that one – lends a hand.

So last night I dove into Sniffy Linings #2 and I went full “cover to cover” on the thing. I walked away inspired, refreshed and with a far better outlook on the scene than I had two hours previous. To wit: the chitty-chat with Matthew from Black Time & Midnight Mines by his fellow Englishman Chris Taylor is highly enjoyable, despite my only being marginally acquainted with the man’s work. It’s fun to see just how obsessed this guy was with Crime, the band, from an ocean away, and get to hear his stories of meeting up with Johnny Strike and Hank Rank in California years later. I remember being pretty fucking stoked myself when I found myself in person with them a couple times.

Better still is Miranda Fisher’s “I did it for the article” trip to a Roseville, CA sports bar to see Greg Ginn’s new Black Flag, the one with the female singer. Loved reading about the crowd in their Papa Roach and Tool shirts getting bummed every time the band played anything post-Damaged; loved the story of the show being listed as an 11am show, rather than the 7pm it actually was; actually, I love everything about both Fisher as a comedic writer and about a brain-friend Ginn playing live gigs as “Black Flag” with three kids.

Three of the guys from The Lavender Flu are interviewed as well, and man, I feel like I’m the only person in whatever cohort I’m in to not get the love for this band at all. Everything they say here makes me think that they’d be phenomenal – despite the fact that I nearly walked out of the room when I saw guitarist Chris Gunn’s Hunches long ago, but that was mainly due to the singer making a Stiv Bators-esque ass of himself on the floor of the club. You keep writing the songs and I’ll keep trying, Lavender Flu, okay?

So many other things to consider here. There’s a now-recuring “I Don’t Get It” column where the writer gets to gratuitously bash a band of his or her choice, which is a blast. I tried my hand at this sort of tomfoolery on a blog over two decades ago – Waylon Jennings, The Dictators, The Pop Group and so on. So fun, and as you might imagine, I received my very best “fan mail” about this series of articles. (Note: I’ve subsequently changed my tune on The Pop Group). Anyway, in Sniffy Linings #1 the takedown was on Redd Kross, and it was great. This time it’s Randall Cummings carving apart Guided By Voices, and while I don’t quite agree, I love that he’s only heard Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes – their two best records – and feels that’s already more than enough. “Maybe it’s not fair to write off an artist with 400 plus albums because you’ve partially listened to two of them, but how bloody does your nose have to get before you decide to stop punching yourself in the face?”.

I’ll leave it there to let you “do the needful” and get your own copy here.

I’ll never lose sight of the magnanimity shown by Miranda Fisher to yours truly in 2013 when I was working to get Dynamite Hemorrhage #1 fanzine off the ground, when she and photo editor Jon Chamberlin gave me heeded advice on ad rates, the proper weight of paper and what to look for in a printer. She was publishing Rubberneck fanzine from Texas at that point, at a time when underground music fanzines were kinda scarce. She’d later go on to do one called Casting Couch – color covers and everything for both mags – and played in a number of wild garage punk bands, the most well-known of whom – relatively speaking, folks! – was probably The Zoltars.

So I see a thing about this new music fanzine The Bible #1 online; Dave Brushback was waxing enthusiastically about it most certainly, and hey, being a fan of the fanzine genre, my interest was piqued and an order was placed. Moreover, I’m looking at the cover and wondering if there was maybe a Grady Runyan interview in there somewhere. Yet little did I know it was a Miranda Fisher ‘zine until it arrived in the post, and moreover yet again, that she published it right here in my hometown of San Francisco, California, where she too now lives. Welcome, Miranda. I do hope the Golden Gate has opened its arms to you.

The two best pieces in here do in fact happen to be Miranda’s, and they’re ruminative explorations – one on the nature of music taste and how one comes by it, and another about her obsession with “TikTok” videos in which average doofuses make short videos in order to rate and review everything on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums list. I’m glad she described these excruciating exercises in dumbassery for me, because not only do I not have access to “TikTok”, there’s just certain stuff I can’t watch any longer, even ironically – like, say, a Presidential debate, or an 80s boobie comedy, or any sort of video by a would-be influencer or talking head on social media.

The Bible #1 is also enriched by Miranda’s reviews of records more or less in the garage/psych/spazz realm, with exceptions like Rosali and Winged Wheel and other things of that ill-defined ilk. Mitch Cardwell – a great American whom I did know lived around these parts, as he always has – writes about David Nance and Mowed Sound in Oakland, a show that literally took place only two months ago. So yes, this is a new fanzine. And among other things, there’s a long talk with Donna Allen from Chronophage, and it’s clear that Miranda and Donna know each other from ‘ol Texas times and have the sort of comfort and familiarity to put forth a pretty “intimate” talk, in the figurative sense. There’s some joshin’ and free-associatin’ and perhaps some secrets spilling out. Maybe partying had helped!

Anyway, I think it’s one of those things where you get in contact with Miranda directly to be allowed to order one, sort of like “ask a punk” shows at someone’s house. The Bible #1 can be obtained by asking nicely at thebiblezine@gmail.com.