Gurgling under the history of fanzines one had to pay for is another entirely separate history of fanzines that one didn’t have to pay for. These were usually ad-supported newsprint music papers, free for pickup at local record stores. I see very little difference between the best of these and actual fanzines, except for perhaps the profit motive, and in some cases, the existence of actual “staff”. Seattle’s The Rocket was one I used to always grab when I saw it. In San Francisco there was the execrable bi-weekly BAM for many years, which I’d usually pick up in spite of its godawful contents due to its occasional coverage of the new wave, “modern music” and other topics of interest. I even remember when longtime alt-paper SF Weekly was called Music Calendar and had listings for anything and everything that was happening. Los Angeles had its own music-only freebies, and at least when I was living nearby, they seemed to be mostly about hair metal. 

That was all a big windup for my all-time favorite of the many free music papers: Portland, OR’s  late 80s and 1990s treasure Snipehunt. Luckily, we got them in discerning record stores in San Francisco as well, sitting right there on the floor to stuff into your bag as you exited. Snipehunt #16 came out during the summer of 1993, and that would have been the summer that I was personally this close to moving to the Pacific Northwest – no, not Portland, which I had taken to calling “the poor man’s Seattle” just to bum people out, but Seattle itself. I’d get there four years later, only to return happily to San Francisco two years after that. 

Part of the NW draw were these free papers that just made it appear that underground music was seeping out of every door and storefront, not just Snipehunt but also Seattle’s free weekly The Stranger, which I liked to read so much at the time that I took out an expensive mail subscription for it to my house in San Francisco. Both papers gave me the impression that everyone was young & weird & totally ready to party in these cities, as I was in all three cases. I’m sure both papers therefore did a lot to stoke my heightened enthusiasm for the region. Snipehunt #16 even contains “scene reports” from Eugene and Bellingham, from Idaho and from Orange County, CA. It was clearly meant to be a “west coast” paper, with Portland positioned as the center of the scene (!) – and honestly, with Los Angeles itself mostly being ignored and at times mocked, if I remember correctly.

I’m happy that the issue of Snipehunt that I still own is the one with the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 interview by Erika Bury. They were a huge, huge favorite for me at the time. She plays it mostly serious, but also lets them goof and prank and make mirth & merriment when appropriate. Then it’s just a slew of similar interviews – Motorgoat, Smut, something called Anal Solvent; Dog Faced Hermans, Icky Boyfriends, Leather Uppers, Unsane and Trumans Water. 1993! Eagle eyes and folks with strong memory function may recall that Icky Boyfriends/Leather Uppers EP that very year, and that the two bands eventually shared a member in Anthony Bedard, whom the world often knows and quite rightly loves to this day as “Tone EB”. 

I can’t recall if this was always the case, but Snipehunt #16 has a huge comics section in the middle. The Stranger used to do this as well. They also have a helpful resource section of clubs, bookers, radio stations and record stores that bands might wanna contact in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, and they close the whole thing out with an enormous section of reviews of tapes, LPs, CDs, videos, fanzines and books, even one about TinTin. I also don’t remember actually trusting any particular writer at Snipehunt to be the man or woman who’d lead me to my next mindblowing band, and in re-reading these ill-considered capsules, I can see why that was – but their breadth was highly impressive, and again, you get the sense that underground and weird culture was what was making the west coast tick in the early 1990s. I mean that’s how I remember it, but that’s of course where I spent virtually all my non-sleeping, non-working time. 

I linked to it up top, but if you want to go deeper into Snipehunt and what it meant to various alternajerks like me during that time, check out this oral history here.