John Scharbach Interviewed by John Davis May 3, 2018 College Park, Maryland 0:00:00 to 0:30:03

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0:00:00

Davis: Today is May 3rd, 2018. My name is John Davis. I’m the performing arts metadata archivist at the University of Maryland, and today I’m speaking with John Scharbach. We're going to talk about D.C. punk fanzines and John’s experiences with them. So I usually start by asking—how did you get into punk in the first place?

Scharbach: I’ll just—you pronounced my last name exactly right.

Davis: Oh good!

Scharbach: Have you talked about...?

Davis: I don’t think we've gone over that before, no.

Scharbach: I don’t know—I was very surprised. But I got into punk in North Carolina originally in I’d say 1997, 1996, through skateboarding, which I feel like is a pretty common tunnel for a lot of people in that time. And it was later. Like “Tony Hawk Pro Skater” I think was a big gateway for a lot of people, but that was before then. I got in through skate videos, and like music and skate videos. And I discovered friends that were in local bands and hardcore and punk and Danzig and Gorilla Biscuits.

I got introduced to Revelation Records real early on, and their early catalog—late ‘80s, like hardcore, straight edge stuff, coming out of New York and Connecticut—and that really took a hold of me. And after that, it was kind of—that was my initial entryway, and then after that, I got into Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Discharge. Like kind of backlogging everything.

Davis: How old were you when you went to your first shows?

Scharbach: First show was probably like 15? It was local shows in North Carolina. There was this band called Empire Falls, who—members of that band actually went on to be in less desirable bands, like white power and racist-type crap that is not good now. But this band, High Point, that became the band The First Step from North Carolina, that I kind of traveled with and toured with— like went to Europe, East Coast, West Coast—that was like the first band that I really kind of saw everything and they just showed me everything.

Davis: Where in North Carolina?

Scharbach: Fayetteville, which is like two hours from the cost. Fort Bragg, which is why I was there. My father was in the military. Most of the people that I hung out with that were into punk and hardcore, their parents were in the military also. Mine was in the Air Force. Most of them were in the Army.

After that, I moved away two years later to Tennessee. Still kind of stayed into hardcore and punk. And then I joined the military myself because I had no idea what I was going to do. College wasn’t an option. I did bad in school. And the military life, I had already been accustomed to, so I joined the military.

I was stationed in Mississippi the whole time, for six years, and I would take buses and planes up to the East Coast to go to hardcore shows and punk shows. I went to a few like in New Orleans and Florida, but just kind of wasn’t what I was used to, so I wanted to get back to the scene that I knew about.

0:03:03

I would come to D.C. often. Shows at St. Andrew’s and St. Stephen’s.

Davis: And when did you wind up settling here?

Scharbach: I was in the Air Force for six years, from 2002 to 2008. Probably halfway through my time in the Air Force, I was like, “What am I doing? Obviously I don’t want to be in the military.” I finally figured out something I want to do. “I want to be in a band. I want to make music, tour.” All that stuff. And I was basically counting down to move here in 2008.

We started a band, but I didn’t want to play shows or do anything. I would just come up like once every five months to practice, write songs. Then once I finally came here in 2008, that’s when the band that I was in—or the band that I’m in now—that we started in 2008, and I moved here in 2008.

2 Davis: As far as fanzines would go, what were some of the first—as a teenager in North Carolina, were those the time you would have first started coming across zines?

Scharbach: I was real young. I remember—because zines kind of came to me with hardcore. And I was just—it completely blew me away that you could make your own magazine. Like I’m sure everyone’s had the same initial experience, like, “Wow, I can make this—write about bands that I like, and put it out, and people will want to buy it hopefully.”

I was really, like I said, drawn to the straightedge scene, so fanzines like Boiling Point, Schism, Open Your Eyes, Common Sense—those zines really—I feel like a lot of those zines at that time, they had the style and the substance. They had good bands they were writing about, and they looked awesome.

Now, I’m kind of—I’ll write about anything; I just want to make it look good. Like I almost don’t even give a shit about the content. I want it to just look good. Which I know there’s like maybe some push and pull with other people in fanzine—like they want the content to be interesting and they could care less how it looks, but they just want someone to be interested in what they're reading. For me, I just want to make it look good.

The first zine I ever did was called Nothing Can Compare, which is named after a Hands Tied song, which was a straightedge band from New Jersey in the late ‘90s. I did that when I lived in Tennessee after I moved from North Carolina in like 2000, 2001, and that was kind of a way that I could be a part of the hardcore scene still in Tennessee. Because there was like nothing happening. I would go to shows sometimes in Nashville, but...

Davis: So even then, did you have that same sort of attitude about aesthetics?

Scharbach: I think I did, but it was more subconscious.

0:06:00

I was just happy to do anything, more so. But now I’m very concentrated on I want it to look good, and in my opinion, what looks good, I’m very strict and snobby about.

Davis: And that’s a question that I’ll get to, because I’ve noticed that, and I was going to ask about that. I think the first zine that I saw that you were involved with was Strawberry Dreams, so that was around 2014, ’15-ish. And we’ll get to those two, but were you

3 doing other fanzines between the early—the one you did in the early 2000s, and that? Have zines been something that has been a constant in your life?

Scharbach: To me, zines are one thing, but it’s mainly like design and layout, and zines is a way to kind of facilitate that creative desire. There was a zine before Strawberry Dreams that I did called Mosher’s Delight, and I think that started in 2012. But I was more concentrated on doing a band, and doing flyers and record layouts and all that stuff kind of satisfied that.

Fanzines I feel like is just—it’s design, to me. Like journalism is kind of more—it’s becoming—I’m more interested in it later in life, like now. But then, I just wanted to make stuff that looked cool. That was all I cared about. And getting a story or creating interesting content was not the focus. As a kid, you kind of just stumble on that stuff. But now, I understand that that’s kind of like—you have to have both go hand in hand.

Davis: What did you use sort of technology-wise, when you were first doing zines in like the early 2000s? Was it cut and paste?

Scharbach: Yeah. It was strictly—and I was kind of like a cut and paste purist up until like two years ago.

Davis: Hmm!

Scharbach: But yeah, when I first started, it was all cut and paste, Xerox, Kinko’s, Office Depot, things like that. Questionable quality, but they just had that—and I think this was a big thing—it was like you want it to look old. Which is something I probably struggled with my whole life, is like, why do you want something to look old? Because it’s what you grew up on. But shouldn't you make something that looks of the time? Or wouldn't you want to make something that represents your time now? Blah blah blah blah. So.

Davis: Well, the things that I had seen, like the more recent years—the things you've done in recent years seemed of the time, because there is like sort of a throwback quality to some of what you do, but also because I feel like that became a dominant aesthetic again in zines, was this sort of—because kind of everybody thought that way. That it was like—we like the way zines look. We like the way Maximum Rocknroll looks, or HeartattaCk, or any of those kind of zines that a lot of people were emulating.

0:09:11

4 So Strawberry Dreams, which again was the first one I saw that you were involved in, caught my eye, because that hadn’t fully really come back yet when the three of you were doing that. And so I guess we can get to that one, unless—did you do any other zines in D.C. before that? You said Mosher’s Delight? I’ve never seen that one.

Scharbach: Yeah. There was a zine called Mosher’s Delight that I started in 2012, and that was kind of—I had been in the band that I had been in, Give, for a while, and I was kind of like, “I want to do zines again. I want to do more layout stuff and kind of expand what I can design.”

So we did this zine called Mosher’s Delight, and it initially started as like a one-page front and back. One page would have demos that came out, like hardcore demos, and then reviews, and the other side would have an interview with like an up and coming band or whatever. And that was strictly cut and paste, and it was meant to kind of look like an old fanzine, like New York hardcore, late ‘80s type stuff. Very crude but also kind of just looks good. Like you can read everything and the pictures are clear and whatnot.

And then Strawberry Dreams actually came about in the middle of doing Mosher’s Delight. The three people that were involved in Strawberry Dreams were me, Paula Martinez, and Farrah Skeiky. And Paula was a younger girl from Florida who—we followed each other on Instagram, and she had dated one of my friends who was in a band.

And I stopped following her one day, and this is—this story is humorous, but it’s so of the time. But—and her boyfriend asked me, said, “Why did you stop following Paula? She took offense to that.” Like blah blah blah. So then I was like, “Oh, I need to rectify this.” So I messaged her, and I was like, “Yeah, sorry I stopped following you, but...” And we started talking about zines for some reason. She was really into Bikini Kill and like riot grrrl stuff. So I was like—I proposed kind of to like patch up the bad blood that had seemingly been between us—“Why don’t we do a zine? You handle the content and I’ll lay it out.”

And that’s kind of how Strawberry Dreams came about. I just wanted to create a zine—the idea was to have it completely be centered on female voices—artwork, writing, poetry. Anything that like a woman wanted to include—it was all from women—and I did the layout. And I kind of struggled, like, “Should I be involved in this? Should I not?” Yada yada yada.

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And actually Katie [Alice Greer] from Priests told me—because I kind of expressed to her—I was like, “Should I even let people know that I’m a part of this scene? Would that be like—would that kind of like put it lower in people’s eyes?” And she said, “No, it’s good to have a strong male role model involved in something like this, to have that support and whatnot. “And so then I kind of made it known that I was like, “All right. I’m a part of this.”

And then we got Farrah, and Farrah was kind of reluctant to be a part of it at the beginning too, just because of the idea behind it. And we did two issues, and I kind of—I’m very controlling, I guess. I like stuff my way. And with Strawberry Dreams, I definitely wanted it to look a certain way. The way it looks—I was very adamant about it being like that. Like black backgrounds, white text, black and white pictures. Like very bold.

And I think Paula—I’ve never really talked to her about it, but— Strawberry Dreams has kind of ended, but I think Paula kind of felt like the zine didn’t completely represent her and her ideas, so she wanted to go and do other things. So that’s why the zine ended. And then after that, I started the zines that I’m currently doing, Shining Life. I don’t remember what the initial question was, but...

Davis: I was trying to get some background on Strawberry Dreams and...

Scharbach: Oh. The whole time of Mosher’s Delight and Strawberry Dreams, I was very strict about having it cut and paste. I wanted it to look like that. Because obviously computers have been used to do layouts since like the mid-90s, early ‘90s. And it all has a certain look to it. Like you can’t blow out a picture in Photoshop. It’ll never look the same as it’s done on a Xerox machine. And a Xerox machine will always look better. Always.

Davis: So sort of the division of labor for Strawberry Dreams was like Paula was editorial and you were sort of design, and Farrah was photography?

Scharbach: Yeah, and I kind of started trying to curate content too. That’s just the way I am. I can’t—I’m all in. You know what I mean? I can’t just sit back and be a small part. But yeah, that’s how that went. And Farrah was kind of—maybe she was like the publicist or press? Like she got interviews and—I don’t know. Strawberry Dreams was a very small and short thing, but talking about it now makes it seem like it was bigger than it actually was.

6 Davis: Well, it stood out, because there weren’t a lot of music fanzines, or very few music fanzines, in D.C., at that time, it seemed to me at least, and to others. And I think that’s why it was exciting and might have gotten a little more attention.

0:15:09

Scharbach: It was probably—if I could have reined in my own involvement and kept it more minimal, it maybe could have went further than it did.

Davis: Did Paula live here? Didn’t she live elsewhere?

Scharbach: She lived in Florida. She’s from Brazil, originally. She lived in Florida, and she moved up here maybe like four or five years ago? She lives here now. She goes to I think American [University], but I could be wrong, and she’s an aspiring artist, and she’s great.

Davis: Has she gone on to do any other fanzines?

Scharbach: She’s working on a fanzine right now with my good friend, Ambrose, who is like a—he’s under the wing of Chris Richards.

Davis: Right, right.

Scharbach: And he did a zine called Neighborhood Life that I’m going to bring in and give you a copy of. That’s a D.C. zine that’s—he’s a really good writer. Him and Paula are doing a zine right now called Demystification that should be out very, very soon.

Davis: And so Shining Life which you mentioned—that isn’t even that long ago, that you started that, right? It was sort of last year?

Scharbach: It was probably December or January?

Davis: But you've already churned out something like 12?

Scharbach: That was kind of—my whole plan with Shining Life was I wanted to be—because like fanzines, especially now, people do like one issue a year, because they take so much time. I was like, “I want to do Shining Life.”

And that’s why I made the jump—if anyone listening knows about Shining Life, all the layouts are done on a computer. Which it kind of like pains me, but it was a necessary step, and I still think it looks good, and it has a consistent aesthetic. But it’s definitely like that was a switch, but it allowed me to put out stuff more.

7 And like now, I’m constantly interviewing people, thinking about ideas for fanzines, and I’m able to—the frequency of releases is way higher. And that was kind of what I wanted to do. I feel like a lot of people within music, they try to focus on—they want to do a book about punk rock from like 1980 to 1990, which is way too broad. I want to focus in on like one show, or one band, or like one year of a band, or like very, very, very, very focused content. Because I’m obsessive, and that’s just—it’s interesting when people do that.

So with Shining Life, I wanted to have the focus for each issue be one particular thing, and so far it has been mostly a band, but there’s some coming out that are focused on toys, like skateboarding, like just other subculture stuff that I’ve always been interested in. And I just want to put out a lot.

Davis: And you've mixed it up. It has been interesting. So you have mostly contemporary bands, but then there will be these sort of retrospective—like the one that you did on Swiz, or something like that.

0:18:07

I assume you plan more of that. You mentioned to me before the interview trying to do something maybe with Damnation. Or are there other sort of older bands that you're interested in doing ones on?

Scharbach: There’s tons of older bands I’m interested in, but that was—I didn’t want to just do—because I think there’s a lot of—like punk and hardcore is kind of being put in a box where it existed at this time and now everything is about the past. I wanted to do stuff about old bands, because it’s inspiring, and new bands are also inspiring. And you kind of like document the current scene as it’s going on.

But yeah, I want to—there’s stuff on like—like a dream project would be like Gravity Records in San Diego in like 1987 to 1993 or something like that. Four Walls Falling is another band that I really, really want to document. Fugazi. Minor Threat. All the Dischord stuff that everyone loves and I also love. But then also like the newer hardcore bands. Like kids are doing interesting stuff, and I’ll never not be interested in that.

Davis: What is some of the new stuff that you like?

Scharbach: I like this band United Right from Florida, Line of Sight from D.C., Protester from D.C., Red Death from D.C. There’s a lot of

8 stuff from D.C. that’s interesting. I think what I mentioned right before this interview—I think it would be really cool to have a zine about the different like punk houses that existed—have existed in D.C. since the late ‘70s. Like Dischord House, the Jawbreaker House, the Q and Not U House, the Pirate House, The Embassy, Corpse Fortress, Newton House. Now Second Street, where a lot of the current hardcore bands, they're coming out of that house in Takoma Park.

Davis: Were you picturing that as like a fanzine series, or as like a book, or what did you...?

Scharbach: I would say a fanzine series. Like I always—I picture everything as a book, but I feel like I get ahead of myself too much, and I don’t know how much content that could yield. But a fanzine would be—I feel like that would be a cool idea. Because just—I think like two weeks ago, I was driving by a house in Silver Spring, and my friend said, “Yeah, when I was growing up, everyone told me that was the Jawbreaker House.” And I just kind of looked...

Davis: Jawbox?

Scharbach: Or Jawbox. Yeah, sorry. The Jawbox House. And that just like blew my mind. It was like this house that I drive by every day, that I live a mile from. It was like, this was the Jawbox House? That’s just interesting and cool to me.

Davis: Yeah. I wanted to ask about other zines that—because we also briefly talked about how maybe there weren’t as many music fanzines in the last 10, 15 years out of D.C. Are there ones that you remember, in your time living here, that were focused on music, that you can think of?

Scharbach: In D.C.?

Davis: Mmhmm, that were specifically from here.

0:21:01

Scharbach: Not really. I feel like I don’t associate fanzines with D.C. that much. There isn’t like a strong association. I think in like the ‘80s, there was a few fanzines, like a few good ones. And then the ‘90s, it kind of—there’s like magazines, the more magazine style. But like 2000s, there isn’t a zine from D.C. where I can be like, “Oh, that’s a D.C. zine that like...” That didn’t really exist, I don’t think. Or at least I’m not aware of it.

9 Davis: So when you're doing the layout for your own—yeah, it has shifted in the last couple years; the last year, really, even—in what Shining Life looks like. Where did you learn those skills to be able to do that? Does that come from your time working on album artwork and flyers, or were you trained at all? How do you do it?

Scharbach: No training. It was just kind of obsessing and looking over flyers and record layouts as a kid. Understanding the placement of things and what you liked and what you didn’t like. And like with Photoshop, it’s very user friendly. And once you kind of figure it out, you just apply what’s in your head to the screen, I guess.

But yeah, it’s just being a kid and obsessing over toys, records … all that crap. And I don’t know; I guess for any creative person, they don’t know why or how they do something. They just do it. And to me, I feel like any dude or girl or person or whatever could walk up the street and do whatever we're doing. But I have come to realize like they can’t, and for some reason—I don’t know.

It’s just interesting—like the way that a Shining Life issue looks like to me, I feel like is so easy and basic. But I don’t see anyone else doing it, or making it look like how I would like it to look, so I don’t know; maybe it’s hard. I don’t know.

Davis: Where did the name come from?

Scharbach: Just popped in my mind. There is no origin or anything to the story.

Davis: And when you make new issues, how many do you typically print?

Scharbach: Like a hundred? Maybe over. Depends on—we'll go higher if we know the band is popular. If the subject matter is going to be more desired.

Davis: Where do you get them out to people?

Scharbach: We sell them online, and then like distros, like through Revelation Records, Death Wish, other friends of ours. Like we have a friend Ola who lives in the UK. She does Quality Control Records. Documents—a ton of current hardcore bands in England go through her. Just there’s ton of channels, through just friends that do hardcore distros and stuff.

Davis: And I assume this is something you see yourself just continuing to do in some form or another, whether it is through getting more into books or continuing to do zines? I assume this is something you intend to stick with?

10 0:24:12

Scharbach: Right now, yes. But I will tell you, literally every single day, there’s like an internal dialogue where I’m like, “Man, everything I’m doing sucks. I’m just going to stop doing it. It’s so shitty. I’m not going to do this anymore.” Like literally every day. But then I’m like, “What else do I have to do?”

Davis: Are there other creative outlets that you're interested in exploring?

Scharbach: I would love to do like one of everything. I would love to write a book. I’d love to make a video game. I’m not that good of a writer. Also with Shining Life, I don’t ever write anything, because I’m not confident in my writing and I think it’s boring and not good. So I don’t ever do that.

So it’s kind of like—what’s the limit to me being able to make like publications and periodicals and books and whatnot without having to write a word? And so I’ll see how far I can get with that. If I can convince myself to keep doing it, then yeah. And also, I’m in a band too. Music is a huge creative outlet.

Davis: Well, I don’t have any other questions. Is there anything you think I’ve missed that you’d like to talk about?

Scharbach: No. I’m just—off the top of your head, what are like classic D.C. fanzines from the ‘90s?

Davis: From the ‘90s? Yeah, well that’s an interesting period, because it does shift, and you mentioned correctly—there was almost a more magazine sort of look to them. So the ones that I think are really representative would be like Uno Mas, which I don’t know if you ever read that one.

Scharbach: Yeah.

Davis: And Uno Mas kind of continued the aesthetic and intellectual aspects of Greed, which was Kurt Sayenga’s zine from the mid- ‘80s into the very late-‘80s. And I think Jim Saah, who did Uno Mas, and Kurt, I think even might have collaborated somewhat. I think Kurt wrote something even in the first issue of Uno Mas. So it’s sort of like the follower of Greed. It looks great. It’s really smart. It’s well written. Has interesting interviews with good bands that I cared about reading. And I read it as a teenager, and I’ve since gone back to those issues now, and it still holds up. So I would consider Uno Mas to be definitely a good one.

11 A lot of the ones that I like a lot from that time, I don’t know if it’s just because they're important to me, because I was reading them at 15, 16 years old, and they were shaping the person that I have become.

0:27:00

There was one called Who Cares, which was a kid who went to my high school. But he was really quite involved in documenting the local scene in the early ‘90s, and I just loved the look of it, the aesthetics. I loved the attitude that he had in his writing and in his record reviews. So to me it’s a must, but it just hasn’t even really been established that there is like a canon of fanzines.

Scharbach: Was Slug & Lettuce from Virginia?

Davis: Slug & Lettuce was from New York, I thought.

Scharbach: New York? OK.

Davis: I always associate with that—I mean, it has like a Richmond vibe to it...

Scharbach: I thought it was from Richmond, for some reason.

Davis: Maybe it was, but I always associated that with New York and like the kind of ‘90s ABC No Rio sort of scene. But I didn’t read it that much, so I could be wrong.

Scharbach: That’s another thing is I always go back and forth with myself on is—at my age, should I be even doing fanzines? Because fanzines kind of have like a youthful quality to them, and I’m like, “Shouldn’t I be on to like books or other avenues of documentation?” Fanzines seem so juvenile. But them I’m like— they're just—they're fun to make.

Davis: Maybe historically, it might have been people younger than you who were doing them or whatever, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true when you—certainly you think of people who have been doing magazines for a long time, like Big Takeover, which is 35 years or whatever that he has been doing that. Or Suburban Voice or any of these ones, or Ugly Things, which we were talking about earlier.

Any of these zines—I don’t think there’s anything that’s sort of inherent to being 16 about it, other than that there’s a sense of wonder when you're first getting into punk, and a fanzine is a great forum to express that and kind of build it up. And people do kind

12 of sort of peter out, and that happens. But if you can maintain that enthusiasm and excitement about music which—like you're a lifer, right? Why wouldn't a fanzine continue to be an interesting and relevant forum for you to do it? I don’t see any reason to limit yourself based on that.

Scharbach: Yeah, I guess it’s just a perception that I have or that I think other people have of fanzines.

Davis: Hmm!

Scharbach: And I’m kind of always wondering, like, when am I going to stop being so obsessive? I don’t know if that will ever go away.

Davis: You just gotta do what you can do, man! But especially since—I think the fanzines that you're putting out now are like—it’s continuing to be steps forward. You're continuing to develop aesthetically. You're doing something kind of different than from what you've done before. I hope you keep doing fanzines, because I like them. [laugh] But you should also do books too, because I think that that will be good too.

Scharbach: You know I’m trying to do that, so...

0:30:00

Davis: Yeah. Well, I don’t have any other questions so thanks for your time.

[End of recording]

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