Allison Wolfe Interviewed by John Davis Los Angeles, California June 15, 2017 0:00:00 to 0:38:33

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0:00:00

Davis: Today is June 15th, 2017. My name is John Davis. I’m the performing arts metadata archivist at the University of Maryland, speaking to Allison Wolfe.

Wolfe: Are you sure it’s the 15th?

Davis: Isn’t it? Yes, confirmed.

Wolfe: What!?

Davis: June 15th…

Wolfe: OK.

Davis: 2017.

Wolfe: Here I am…

Davis: Your plans for the rest of the day might have changed.

Wolfe: [laugh]

Davis: I’m doing research on fanzines, particularly D.C. fanzines. When I think of you and your connection to fanzines, I think of Girl Germs, which as far as I understand, you worked on before you moved to D.C. Is that correct?

Wolfe: Yeah. I think the way I started doing fanzines was when I was living in Oregon—in Eugene, Oregon—that’s where I went to undergrad, at least for the first two years. So I went off there like 1989-’90. And I was there also the year ’90-’91. Something like that. For two years.

And I met Molly Neuman in the dorms. She was my neighbor. And we later formed the band Bratmobile. But before we really had a band going, we actually started doing a fanzine. And even though I think we named the band Bratmobile as one of our earliest things, it just was a band in theory for a long time first. But we wanted to start being expressive about our opinions and having more of a voice for girls in music, or women in music, for ourselves, but also just for things that we were into.

I grew up in Olympia, Washington, so I knew about this kind of K Records scene that was super DIY, and there were some people doing fanzines. Like Donna Dresch did this zine, Chainsaw. Tobi Vail did a zine—I think she was already doing it then—called Jigsaw, that was kind of coming off of Donna’s Chainsaw. They were friends and stuff.

And so at some point when we started kind of agitating and doing stuff in Eugene, we would go up to Olympia a lot on weekends and stuff, and we would get together with Bikini Kill. Even though I don’t know if they were actually Bikini Kill yet. But anyways, with Tobi and Kathi and stuff, and hang out at the Martin Apartments.

And Tobi really encouraged us to start doing a fanzine. So I think that was kind of our first mode of alternative expression. So we started this fanzine, Girl Germs. So it was really in Eugene, Oregon, that we started it. And each issue, we would have a different feature interview. And we had five issues total, I believe. So probably we did like two a year or something like that. Not many. [laugh] But anyways, whatever, it seemed like a lot to us. So I think in our first issue, we had an interview with Calamity Jane, which was an all-girl band from Olympia that went to Evergreen.

0:03:00

I don’t know. So we were doing that before going back to D.C. Now Molly grew up in Washington D.C. I grew up in Olympia. But I started spending spring breaks and sometimes Christmas and summers in D.C. And then in 1994, I actually moved to D.C. full- time, and I lived there until like 2007 or 2008.

Davis: When you were first getting into punk, did fanzines play much of a role in that, or was it more of like the way punk came through the mainstream? How did it work for you? Did zines matter at the beginning?

Wolfe: I don’t know, because I started going to punk shows in the mid- eighties, and I don’t remember seeing a lot of zines then. But I do remember I got The Rocket, which was the weekly Seattle city paper. And then one of my mom’s friends, or maybe my mom, got me a subscription to Rolling Stone.

2 And even though I was sort of like, “Eh, it’s kind of mainstream,” but I still—I remember I would clip from these magazines, and the weekly paper—The Rocket—constantly. So I would just find images and things I thought were cool, and I’d clip out the picture and sometimes the words, and I would tape it to my bedroom wall. And that was through high school. And it was insane. I wish I had taken better photos of it, because every single inch of my walls, my bedroom walls, in high school, was covered with an image that came from either Rolling Stone magazine or The Rocket, or maybe something else. Posters, flyers, things like that. And so it was pretty insane. And I remember people would come over sometimes and just study my walls for hours.

Davis: [laugh]

Wolfe: Stare at them. So I guess I kind of was really into this kind of clipping and collaging thing already, but just on my wall. And I guess also I was fortunate that I had bands like the Melvins playing, and Nirvana actually playing, when I was still in high school. And they were playing very small shows and house parties, things like that.

There were also a lot of other fun kind of local bands. Like there was The Go Team and Beat Happening and there was a band called Lush, which wasn’t the British Lush, but Slim Moon from Kill Rock Stars was in this band, Lush. Anyways, whatever. So I really got into it more through the house parties and then seeing bands and stuff. But I was really into that clipping and collaging.

Davis: So was it something like Chainsaw or Jigsaw that sort of made you think, “Well, let’s do this too,” or there wasn’t really much before that, that zine-wise was motivating for you?

Wolfe: It did make me feel like I could do it too. I definitely would read Chainsaw and think about it. And Tobi, again, was really encouraging of us as girls to have a voice and to make a fanzine. So she was just like, “You guys should do it!”

0:06:00

We didn’t know how to do it, but we were like, “Well, we like to clip and cut and paste, and do things.” So yeah. So I think it was just mostly that. It wasn’t by seeing a whole lot of other zines. It was mostly, yeah, like Donna, Tobi, Chainsaw. Also I think K Records had this like—really it was their catalog, but it looked more like a fanzine, kind of.

Davis: Hmm!

3 Wolfe: It was like an 8.5 x 11 shape, kind of, and it was folded anyways, from a bigger thing. It could fold out into a poster, I guess. I don’t know. So I’d kind of look at that and stuff, too. But yeah, I think really at first it was the easiest form of expression, because we didn’t know how to play instruments yet. But we knew how to cut and paste and draw and write and stuff like that. [laugh]

Davis: What was the layout process like, when you had never done that before? What was that like to have to plan a magazine and how you wanted to organize your thoughts and all those things? Did it even matter? Were you just kind of going with it?

Wolfe: Well, looking back on that issue, it looks like it didn’t matter too much. [laugh] It was pretty sloppy. But yeah, I don’t know. It was really fun. I mean, it’s just fun to do, and it’s so exciting when you photocopy it and cut them and staple them, and you have this product, you know? This thing that you can touch.

Davis: Yeah, yeah.

Wolfe: So yeah, I don’t know. I think we were just having fun with it, and we weren’t—I guess it was cool to be sloppy and that was punk and whatever. So we didn’t think too much about making it neat and nice. Of course there’s things you have to try to remember later that are like, “OK, don’t put things too close to the edges, because it’ll get cut off in the photocopy machine.”

But I know that Molly did most of our Xeroxing, because her dad worked for a congressman and—or she actually worked for a congressman. She had been an intern, actually. And her dad was a PR guy for Democrats, just around in D.C., so he had an office. So whenever she would go home to visit, she would run off a bunch of zines and stuff like that for us.

Davis: That feels like a very common D.C. story, of someone who had a parent who had some sort of political connection, and they would go in and use those copy machines [laugh] to make the early issues of their fanzines. That’s not the first time I’ve heard of that.

Wolfe: Really? [laugh]

Davis: How many copies would you normally make when you would do an issue?

Wolfe: Oh, gosh. Probably 100 at first or something. Because also you don’t want to use the machine too much, because you don’t want to make it look like you were there, [laugh] or something, or wear out the ink toner or whatever. And then of course, after a while,

4 you'd learn about how to rip off Kinkos. So it was like, you know, they had those blocks.

Davis: Was this the copy card era, or was this before that?

0:09:00

Wolfe: Was it before or after the copy card era when they had those weird blocks that you would stick in the machine? I can’t remember…

Davis: I don’t think I ever saw those.

Wolfe: Oh, they were these big blocks that were counters. And so they would give you one. You'd stick it in the machine and bring it back and pay for that. Now, of course, if you got two counters, you could—if there were two people, you could just do all of them on one counter and then just do a few towards the end, and then just pay for the smaller one, and you just ditch the one that’s full. Or we also learned that a really strong magnet would set those counters back to zero.

Davis: Wow.

Wolfe: So if you just brought a magnet, that would be cool. Also with copy cards, I guess—that’s where you have credit on the card, right?

Davis: Yeah.

Wolfe: So that’s a little bit harder to rip off. But we knew people who worked at Kinkos who would give us cards and things. So yeah, there was a lot of scams like that. Or just knowing someone who worked at Kinkos. But then every now and then, that person would get in trouble.

Davis: So you have all these zines. How are you distributing them?

Wolfe: We would just hand them out at shows and stuff like that. I think we tried to sell them for maybe a dollar? But I’m sure we gave most of them away. Because of course you want to give them to all the cool people. I think at some point though we did have our zine reviewed—oh yeah, it was in Sassy magazine. It was like zine of the month.

So I think it was maybe not my first but my second time out to D.C. with Molly, and that was when we actually got together with Erin, who is from Bethesda, who played guitar—Erin Smith played guitar in Bratmobile. So when we started jamming with her, it was

5 spring break—gosh, what year? I guess ’91. Spring break. And it was our spring break but not hers. But anyways, [laugh] and I think it was then that we had our zine, or a copy of our zine. And Beat Happening was out there touring with Nation of Ulysses, and they went up and played at Bard College with Chia Pet, which was the girls from Sassy magazine’s band.

Davis: Oh, OK.

Wolfe: Jane Pratt and Christina Kelly and some people. Karen Catchpole. I don’t know. And so I think we had stolen Molly’s dad’s car, lied about where we were, and drove up to Bard, and followed Ulysses and Beat Happening around to these shows. And so we met the girls from Sassy and we gave them our zine, and then they featured it as zine of the month in maybe the next issue or whatever of Sassy.

And every time they’d do that, they’d list an address where you could mail away to get it. And I’m sure they were like, “Well how much is your zine?” We probably said, “One dollar.” So for years after that, of course, people were writing away with sending stamps and maybe a dollar [laugh] and asking for our zine.

0:12:00

I mean, it was impossible to keep up.

Davis: How many of those requests do you think you got?

Wolfe: Oh, hundreds, for sure. At least. And then I think that that address, our P.O Box, just kept getting reprinted, in various other magazines and stuff, as riot grrrl kind of gained traction in the media. And I think this happened to a lot of zine makers in that whole riot grrrl era is that we were getting all these never-ending requests for our zines and at amounts we couldn't keep up with, but also prices that we couldn't really afford.

I remember when I moved to D.C., I had a suitcase filled with requests that I just brought to D.C. with me. I was like, “I’ll deal with this someday.” I never dealt with it. But I do remember about ten years later, finding that suitcase in the back of some closet, and being like, “Ohhh! I bet there’s a bunch of dollars in here, and stamps.” And I remember opening it and going, “Oh yeah!” and grabbing all the dollars and the stamps which were way old at that point.

Davis: Right. Nineteen-cent stamps.

6 Wolfe: Yeah. They weren’t the right amounts, but you could still add it all up. I don’t know how many dollars—probably $40 in there, but I remember it being like, “Yay!” [laugh] And feeling like kind of a jerk, because I never sent someone their zine. But it’s funny when you see—like one of the people who requested a zine was Tamra Davis, the filmmaker. [laugh] So, I never sent her a zine.

Davis: Oh, you didn’t send her one?

Wolfe: And I stole her dollar, and her stamps! [laugh]

Davis: So you said each issue was one interview type of thing? Like band interviews usually in them?

Wolfe: Yeah. So the first one had Calamity Jane. The second issue I think had 7 Year Bitch, which was great. Or was that the third?

Davis: There’s a Jawbox interview.

Wolfe: There’s a Jawbox—you're right. Maybe Jawbox was the second, and 7 Year Bitch was the third. That’s probably right. The fifth one—who was in that? Hmm, I don’t know. Fourth, fifth? I don’t know. I’m missing some.

Davis: Do you remember much about interviewing these people? Like what the interviews were like? I assume that was something that was pretty new to you at that point.

Wolfe: Yeah. Well, I do remember that when we interviewed Calamity Jane, when I transcribed it, I kept every single “um,” “like,” or “whatever” that they said in there. Because I thought that was being super real.

Davis: Yeah, I did that too. Yeah.

Wolfe: And I remember my mom reading it when I gave her the first issue of Girl Germs, and her going like, “Wow, you make these girls sound really stupid.” [laugh] And I remember just being like, “Aw, shit, that wasn’t my purpose.” And I really felt bad about that and thought, “OK, I’m going to edit next time.” [laugh]

So I think it got better after a while. I think the 7 Year Bitch one was good. But I do remember I told them they could see it before it went to print. And I did somehow send it to them or give it—I don’t know how I did that. Maybe I mailed it. And I remember them calling and begging me to take something out of there that mentioned some guy from some other band.

7 0:15:06

And I was like, “Oh, OK.” I never, ever found out what the controversy was. But I remember always being curious about that. Which I did take it out. So I don’t know. And then we’d have like little scene reports that were kind of ridiculous.

I think one time I wrote—I think I drew—we had a picture of Guy [Picciotto of Fugazi], and I drew his eyebrows together and said something about a monobrow which isn’t very nice. I don’t know why I said that. I thought it was funny. [laugh] I mean, I liked Fugazi. [laugh] And I don’t know.

But I think as time went on, I was interested in having stuff that was more politicized, so I also was—I think I wasn’t very confident in my own writing. And I think that I would write things that were just kind of sensational or whatever, and that later, I’d go, “Oh, that’s so stupid.”

So I think after a while, I saw my position as more of an editor and a curator for the zine, and I was more interested in having or featuring the work of people who I thought were either great writers or did great illustrations or graphics or something, that had a message in it, to put in the zine.

So by the time I got to issue #5, I actually think that was mostly my thing, and Molly had kind of dropped out a bit, and I just had all these different guest writers and things in it.

Davis: And so that was the last issue…?

Wolfe: Yeah.

Davis: And then you stopped because the band was busy or…?

Wolfe: I think things were just really falling apart by then. I think that Molly and I weren’t getting along anymore by then. Probably the whole band wasn’t getting along. And then the band broke up. I think it all just kind of was coming to an end. Riot grrrl was eating itself. Whatever. Like people weren’t getting along.

Also I think more and more I really felt like I was put in a position to be a spokesperson for riot grrrl or for my band or whatever. And I didn’t really feel necessarily mature enough or like [laugh] smart enough to do that. [laugh] I don’t know. And I didn’t feel like it should all just—all the pressure or all the whatever, confidence, should be put in just the singers of the riot grrrl bands or whatever.

8 I mean, it’s true that maybe we were the most serious politically, and our bands or whatever—like me and Kathleen [Hanna of Bikini Kill] and Corin [Tucker of Heavens to Betsy] or something. But I still don’t really feel confident in being some kind of spokesperson for something. I mean, I have no problem talking about whatever, but I didn’t need to be representing a whole lot of other people.

Davis: So when you were in D.C., were you paying much attention to the fanzine scene at that time? Were there other zines that stood out while you were in D.C.?

0:18:00

Wolfe: Yeah. Well, Ulysses Speaks was probably the first D.C. zine that I saw, and I loved it. They were so thin and little, and filled with smarty pants like [laugh]—whatever. I probably couldn't even understand most of it, but I thought it looked cool, and I liked that it was politicized, or at least pseudo-politicized. And you could tell that Ian was really smart, and he wrote it all. And I liked a lot of the symbolism and stuff going on in that. So I think that was a big influence on us as well.

And of course Nation of Ulysses was a big influence on Bratmobile and Bikini Kill and stuff too, as I believe that we were influential on them. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess when I started coming to D.C., we did start doing a fanzine there called Riot Grrrl, at some point. That was I guess the first summer we spent in D.C., which would have been the summer of ’91, and we all decided to kind of live there.

Well, Molly and I were just spending the summer there. Erin already lived there. And I know Bikini Kill had toured across the country with Nation of Ulysses, and then decided to just park it there and just live there. And so we all were like, “OK, well here we are.” And yeah, all these guys like Ulysses and Fugazi have their whole scene, and that’s cool and everything, but we just sort of felt like well, in Olympia, the girls absolutely ran the scene. Guys were so secondary [laugh] at least in our minds. And so it was weird to kind of all of a sudden be in this scene that was pretty male-dominated.

I’m not saying like it was really sexist and macho or anything. It wasn’t like that. But it was just sort of different for us, and bigger and whatever. And so I think that we just were like, “We want to reach out and get to know more of the women in town and see what are they doing” and stuff like that.

9 Now clearly there were already a lot of women on the scene who were doing cool things. Like you had Cynthia Connolly who was a photographer and made books and did all these things. And you had Melissa Klein who also did really intricate fanzines and cool stuff. Jen Smith who started playing music but also I think did a lot of writing and was very intellectual. And you had Autoclave and Christina Billotte and stuff like that.

So there was a lot going on, but I think we just didn’t always necessarily know how to connect to the women there. And I think some of the women in D.C. saw us as kind of showing up and taking over. It was like, “They think nothing was here before them?” [laugh] And maybe we did kind of think that? I don’t know.

Davis: Do you think that is the issue as to why there may have been that lack of connection? Were you viewed as outsiders, I suppose?

0:21:06

Wolfe: Maybe, a bit. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I think that there’s sort of some truth to some of it, and then some non-truth to it. I think that yeah, we just kind of stormed in and it was like, “Hey, we're here!” And it was probably kind of obnoxious and maybe some people couldn't relate to that.

But also I think that there was to a certain extent a history of the men kind of running things in the scene in D.C. Even though maybe there weren’t as many women in bands it seemed like in the D.C. scene at the time, maybe they just weren’t—I don’t know. Maybe they just weren’t getting as—we felt like they weren’t getting as much props or dues or something like that. But for whatever reason, we just wanted to connect with women in the scene there.

So we did. We kind of made this folded one-page fanzine called Riot Grrrl, and really I think it was just saying like, “Hey, let’s have a meeting at Positive Force House on this date. Of course, this is all pre-internet and pre-smartphone and everything. So we were passing it out at shows. And then all these women and girls showed up to the Positive Force House in Arlington and had this meeting.

And it was cool to just meet people and talk. I think a lot of girls formed bands out of that, and started doing projects together. People had different things with riot grrrl with what they wanted to

10 do. Like maybe it’s more of a support group to talk about really serious issues or things that are really personal.

Davis: And the making of that zine was sort of similar in process—as far as literally creating—probably was the same as Girl Germs?

Wolfe: Well, I don’t know. I think the Riot Grrrl zines, of which I think there are only four—yeah, like four weeks out of the summer being there all together—I think that those were really made much more quickly. They would be made in one night, maybe one day or two days, and we would go to Molly’s dad’s office in the middle of the night and just crank them out, and then pass them out at the next show or something.

And they were made—yeah, one a week. And different people would just kind of contribute, and write one little thing that was only one quarter of a page, of an 8.5 x 11. So you'd write one little thing like that. Some people wrote more. Like Kathleen was always a really good writer, and she would write stories and do more.

I wrote really dumb stuff in there that it was just so dumb. But anyways, but I think that disposable nature of it is what’s really interesting. It was just made to kind of be quick, make it, fold it up, hand it out, and then the next week there’s something new. So I guess part of me thinks about the archiving of all that kind of stuff and how that kind of somehow, I don’t know, erases the disposable nature of these things?

0:24:05

Davis: And how do you feel about that?

Wolfe: I don’t like it. [laugh]

Davis: Yeah. That’s something I was going to ask you about, was sort of about—a lot of these zines were created with sort of a small audience in mind. No one was making these zines thinking anyone in the world can see this. You know what I mean?

Wolfe: Yeah.

Davis: Particularly some of the more personal stories that people were telling in these. And this is this new kind of issue that’s—so it’s not even necessarily archiving like we have it in a box. That’s even one thing. But then especially the digitizing of these things. So you are on record as saying you are not comfortable with that.

11 Wolfe: Well, it depends. There’s definitely some really cool stuff that I’m glad is out there, and there were some great writers and artists and stuff whose work I think should be reproduced, and it’s cool to see it, and I guess for people to research and be able to see it and to have this tangible thing. I certainly would never throw any of that stuff away. But look at me, I’m a pack rat.

But I don’t think it was meant for mass consumption, and it really needed to exist within the context of that week, or that summer, or those times. And it doesn't really make sense outside of that context. And maybe some of the stuff has a longer shelf life, but I feel that most of the stuff that I wrote or said or did was very much written by a very immature twenty-something-year-old. And so it’s like that’s where it was meant to stay.

And so I don’t feel like it should be put out there and be like, “Look at this super political feminist thing that this person…” You know, it’s like no, it was just something dumb I thought of that day or whatever. But I think it was important to have the freedom to kind of do that, and to just learn to create and make stuff. But I don’t feel like you should be held to some dumb little thing you did in a passing moment in 1991 or whatever, necessarily.

Davis: Because these were ephemeral in nature, really at the time. It was sort of about like, “I’m going to hand you this paper to express this idea now,” and not to preserve or document this idea for 50 years or something like that.

Wolfe: Right. And for discussion. Because you might change your opinion by the next week, after discussing something. So I don’t know. So that’s a little weird, I think. Yeah. All I can say is thank god we didn’t have social media or the internet back then. Because you'd never hear the end of it! [laugh] Oh my god.

Davis: That time that you're talking about—that’s the early nineties, and in D.C. and all that, I think of as such a turning point, almost from like “fanzines” to “zines.” Even more personal zines before the nineties, I still felt that there would still be music coverage or something like that, whereas I think coming out of D.C. and related to riot grrrl were these more just sort of zines as not really about music so much.

0:27:10

It’s like, yes, that’s our shared culture. It felt like a new thing to me. Some of the stuff, like the riot grrrl press things that were coming out…

12 Wolfe: Like more about issues? Like political, or…?

Davis: They looked like fanzines, but they were just a little different. They were the first things coming out that were less about documenting music or opinions about music, and more about sort of personal things. And again, there was certainly personal columns and people talking about personal issues in zines up through the ‘80s, but that just seemed like a turning point to me. I guess that’s maybe not a question as much as an observation.

Wolfe: Yeah, maybe you're right. I think just because I didn’t read a whole lot of actual fanzines from the ‘80s or whatever, or before, so it’s not like I really knew what came before so much. I just was sort of like, “Oh, I’ll just make this thing.” And we learned as we went along.

But I think there’s definitely a sense of urgency to what we were kind of cranking out. And now, especially, I see zines—like we'll go to the L.A. Zine Fest, or I was just asked to contribute to a zine recently that was called Can You Deal?, I think, and it was about— the girls from the band Bleached put out this zine.

And it was cool. And they asked all these different women and bands to write about kind of what does it mean to be a girl in a band, or how are you treated as a girl in a band or something like that. Or how do you respond to that categorization. Which I think was really interesting. It was really great. But it was funny how I wasn’t really sure what was expected of me, or what I was supposed to write.

And I realized later that I was like, “God, I’m really out of practice.” And I still am not really happy with what I wrote. And almost like, “Aw, but everybody else wrote this other thing.” But I think everyone wrote really different things.

But it’s funny how slick the thing looks. And they had some pretty—definitely more famous people in it. And I was just like, “Is that what a zine’s supposed to be?” Like slick, with famous people writing in it? So I was kind of like [laugh] I wasn’t coming at it from that angle, you know? But I also was just kind of like summarizing some theories I had and some ideas I had about—I think I was assuming that everyone was going to reject the idea of girl band label, and I was like, “Well, actually I identify with that and here’s why.”

So anyways, but I was just kind of thinking about how precious a lot of these things are today that are called zines, and how

13 beautifully made, and on nice paper, and how extremely thought out, and I feel like what we were doing was not in that vein. It wasn’t in the precious, beautiful vein, or like nice materials vein, or “let’s make sure this looks perfect” vein. And maybe we just weren’t very skilled. [laugh]

0:30:00

I feel like a lot more thought goes into zines I’ve seen today than what we were putting in.

Davis: And that your stuff is sort of less about craft…

Wolfe: Yeah.

Davis: …and kind of more about urgency, or…?

Wolfe: Yeah. [laugh]

Davis: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that—like, did you think zines were still relevant. And it sounds like you would say…

Wolfe: I think they are, but I really haven't made a zine in a long time. I contribute to zines every now and then. After 9/11 actually, me and Michael Cotterman made a zine together that had a [laugh]—it had a French name. I can’t even remember what it was called.

We did a little bit of writing. I think we each wrote one page of how we were feeling about the political climate. But in general, we were collecting alternative takes on 9/11 from people like Michael Moore or whatever, or Noam Chomsky, or Ralph Nader, or whatever, and various places, because we felt such a complete lack of representation of anything other than extreme jingoism right- wing BS everywhere.

And we were both working at The Washington Post at the time. And we were just like, “Wow, the media drank the Kool-Aid, a hundred percent, and no one is challenging Bush or the administration.” And they didn’t for years. And we just felt like it was really important to kind of put out this alternative media and articles.

And so we just compiled them into a zine, even though they were out there somewhere, but I felt like people just weren’t acknowledging them or reading them or talking about them. And so we would leave the zines anonymously, mostly around the newsroom at The Washington Post, and be like, “Hey assholes,

14 take a look. There are other things to be said about this than waving your American flag.”

Davis: But you don’t remember what it was called?

Wolfe: I can’t remember. Ask Michael. Maybe he remembers. I know I have one somewhere.

Davis: He has never mentioned it to me, which…

Wolfe: He might not remember it. I wonder—yeah. It might have been something where I was like, “Michael, we're doing this, and you're ‘we’!” [laugh] I probably roped him into it because I…

Davis: Do you still have a copy somewhere?

Wolfe: I do.

Davis: All right!

Wolfe: I do. I’ll look and see. I know somewhere behind that couch, there’s some zines. But yeah, what was it? Anyways. So that was the last thing I really did, and then I’ve done a little bit of writing for other people’s zines. Actually, the last band I was in, Sex Stains, we're not around anymore, but we made a little fanzine that we handed out at early shows that just had mostly lyrics printed up in it, and some images.

Davis: Yeah. So I mean the riot grrrl thing kind of changed, whenever that was, ’92? ’93?

Wolfe: Early nineties. I’d say it died by ’95.

0:33:00

Davis: But it shifted as it became this huge thing. And for you, as far as creating a publication—and you mentioned the one you just worked on sort of post-9/11, but while you were in D.C. in the ‘90s, were there other people whose zines you were contributing to?

Wolfe: I don’t think so, but there were zines that I really loved. Well, Ulysses Speaks was a zine that I really loved. Very consistent. I loved the kind of old school political imagery of it, and the big words and all that was pretty great.

I really loved this fanzine called Double Bill, and it was made by the women from Fifth Column, that band in Toronto. Like G.B.

15 Jones and stuff. And all those women were this kind of collective. They all lived in some squat together, and they were like in a band together and made zines. Also made Super 8 films together. Really like this kind of feminist, queer group of women and some guys— Bruce LaBruce was kind of at some point in their group. And they would just crank out all this great politicized material.

But Double Bill fanzine was this Bill Burroughs-hating, Bill Conrad-loving fanzine. And so they would have—it was brilliant. I really loved those concept fanzines. So it was like every page you'd open, one side would be how horrible Bill Burroughs was, and then the other side would be an identical in theme kind of article, but how wonderful Bill Conrad was. And it would just go through, step by step, the whole zine like that, with these kind of mirrored pages, but one was good and one was bad. Super awesome.

So that was one of my favorite zines. They also had other zines. Did they have a J.D.s actual zine? Juvenile Delinquents? They probably did have a zine called J.D.s. Everything they do is great, brilliant. Really, really smart. And funny, really funny. So it was like a funny political satire.

Davis: There’s also that element in Ulysses Speaks for sure. Just the humor. Or the, “Are they kidding?” That element was sort of part of the appeal of that. The overflowing, the intelligence, the ideas. Just, like, the creativity.

Wolfe: And ridiculous.

Davis: And yes, the absurdity. Like, all the different references they're making were part of… it’s uncommon.

Wolfe: And Jigsaw fanzine that Tobi Vail has done over the years, it’s always really thick. It’s like a book. And she is just a brilliant mind, and a brilliant writer. And so I just have always loved reading her take on everything. So her zines are pretty great. Jigsaw. And Donna Dresch of course—Chainsaw. There was also this other woman named Laura [McDougall], who is friends with Tobi and Donna and stuff, and she did a zine called Sister Nobody that was really cool.

0:36:09

Joe Preston used to do a fanzine that was kind of a real fanzine, like a Melvins kind of fanzine—like as a fan of the Melvins— called Matt Lukin’s Legs. But then he actually ended up being in the Melvins, and then I think Justin from Unwound started doing a

16 zine called Joe Preston’s Legs. And just stuff like that. Like that kind of self-referential nature of zines too, was really funny to me.

And I’m trying to think—there was other really cool stuff. Like Josh Plague, he was an Olympia guy, and he lives here now I think. Queer musician and singer in hardcore bands and stuff, like Behead the Prophet and all these different bands like that. And he would make these great zines. Really brilliant, funny guy.

And he’s also a vegan chef now. So now he kind of makes like chef zines and things. But he made a zine that was like rating all of the lakes. Like he would rate all the lakes he had fished at with his father, I think, in Idaho and Washington and Oregon and whatever. [laugh] And it was really great, actually. He’s such a great writer.

He also wrote a fanzine that was about when he took his first, like, chef tour on the road, by Greyhound Bus, and all the crazy things that he encountered on the Greyhound.

Davis: That side of zines to me is still going pretty strong. When you talk about going to a zine fest or a zine fair, I do feel like I still see a lot of that side of things—the more personal, the funny, and the more unique things. Whereas just the music zines, I don’t see as much of anymore, for obvious reasons, with the internet. It’s interesting how that has changed. So you were interviewed in Razorcake, it looks like?

Wolfe: Yeah. [laugh] It was fun. They're cool.

Davis: What was that experience like?

Wolfe: It was really good. Todd is really awesome. They're really cool. And they had actually these other women there too who were part of the whole Razorcake scene. And so there were three or four different people interviewing me. And they did it also kind of for a podcast thing that I think they're starting as well. So yeah, it was fun. It was cool. And the way it appears and everything is kind of like Maximum or something, you know? It’s Flipside-y. Thrasher- y. [laugh]

[End of recording]

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