Journalsong #6

journal song makes me feel sad that i live in australia but atleast i got to find a copy at sticky, take it home with me and imagine buying goya rice and cooking it up, having someone to enjoy it with. i read it to all my friends and now i am writing a review on it for a literature project.
The drawings were real nice but the whole package was this secret description of places i know nothing about, it was like a lil portal into some place else. some place that isn't melbourne.

yeah, i guess the journally zine is done and done again but i just like the idea of having some junkyard piano teaching neighbours and imagining all that stuff happened and while that stuff was happening, i was doing something else.
dontchya think thats neat?

If you are capable of removing what prejudices you have about the format Steve has chosen ie. the "SO over done personal zine", [and I would contend that the SO cynical critic format is a bit tired.] you'd probably find a good writer being as honest as he's able. Steve, your zine is good. Please resist the temptation of becoming too cool to feel.

I found some of the observations to be finely written, and enjoyed them the way I would enjoy a character's quirks in an excellent novel. Generally, [Steve] is pretty hard on himself in the entries, so it's not a particularly uplifting read, but the dark days he describes are ones we've all experienced. These entries are short discussions about aspects of his life, such as the letter his ex-girlfriend sent him 10 years ago and how he keeps it to remind himself that he can be a jerk.

I've been hearing about the fabled Journalsong zine for years, so I couldn't wait to finally pick up an issue. Journalsong is a personal zine written by Steve of Portland, OR, and contains all the elements of such—accounts from Steve's life, his thoughts and ramblings—but not too much more. In this issue, Steve treats the reader to a 10-year-old letter from an ex-girlfriend, an account of his first zine and why he still creates them, a description of his neighborhood, the story of a band tour he went on, an explanation of how he lives without an address to call his own, an ode to whiskey, and the tale of a failed dalliance with a girl. In my opinion, the most interesting thing included in this zine was a tidbit about the history of Goya products and how the brand can't be found on the West Coast. This would have been quite helpful to know prior to last summer when I visited my friend in Oakland, CA, and made him take me to three different supermarkets trying to find Goya rice. I'll give you that the writing's good. I like Steve's style of just jumping into stories in which there are no great revelations to be found. Oooh! I almost forgot to add that there are great drawing found throughout the zine by Nicole Georges of Invincible Summer fame.

When every moment has meaning, every line is poignant with gravitas, and every second is more important than the last five, I wonder about these people. They find inner conflict in the most trivial of topics, leading to self-indulgent ranting about everything and nothing. Great for a tediously boring read.

This is the most journal zine looking journal zine you'll ever experience. And the writer, Steve, is aware that he is a zine vet who has moved forward, yet lost the energy from his zine youth. This looks great, with all typewritten text, expert xerography that makes everything look raw and DIY, yet is extremely clear and easy to read. My favorite part is the brief history of the Goya bean and rice company.

The text was done on a shaky old typewriter and cut and pasted on each page. The whole package throughout is hand done and put together with care and thoughts and is a little more personal.

This completely typewritten zine with fancy acetate cover is about nothing and everything. First of all, props must be given to anyone who is willing to spell out their weaknesses (from the viewpoint of an ex, no less) within the first few pages. There's a bit about trying to remain sober, but Steve wraps up with an ode to whiskey (nobody said it was easy). A fast, painless, inspiring read.

A tried and true personal zine from the Microcosm zine empire [sic?] in Portland, Oregon. Definite Burn Collector parallels, so if Al Burian style travel writings and life musings appeal to you I would advise getting in on this. I found this really hard to write about because while I don't dislike this per se, and the writer seems like a really cool kid and it's not "bad", it just didn't didn't seduce. From Goya instant rice to uncomfortable break ups, the random and the painful and so on.

A personal zine done by a man named Steve from Portland with short stories on various topics, from tour stories to relationships, to drinking at the bar. He even has a poem about Whiskey.

The ever-popular personal zine is a steaming pile comparable to Mt. Everest in that everyone has done one at some time and has contributed nothing to originality because it’s the same old musings over failed relationships and blaming everyone except yourself. Well, for starters, leave the house once in awhile, stop wearing scarves in the summertime and get over yourself. Thankfully, a few take on the same old issues but write them in a way that invokes a little more thought than usual, and prose that is a bit more interesting to read and contextualize. The author has a lot of the same old hang-up’s of lost love and a pretty heavy drinking problem, which in part, I can grasp. But on the other hand, I also don’t necessarily care. It’s the little things- the attachments he makes to other concepts through misery, neighbors, postcards, moving, playing music, and making zines… not to mention a fascination with Goya food products- that make this an entertaining read.