The 4th issue came out January 1, 1991.
Click here to see the full issue.
January – brr cold. Not a lot of bands tour in January!
COVER & INTERVIEW
Einstürzende Neubauten! (pronounced ine-SHTOORTZ-en-duh NOY-bow-ten) I’ll shorten to E/N for sanity.
For me, getting this interview was a huge deal. I’m realizing now that not a lot of people, in the States anyway, knew about E/N. Even those in my alternative circles.
I discovered them when traveling around the former West Germany in 1987. West Germany had a great record store chain in several of the major cities: WOM World of Music (pronounced with a fabulous German accent: “VOHM: VAIRLD uff MOO-zeek).
WOM was a regular stop of mine when visiting friends in Munich who were studying there that year. Early summer of 1987, I remember walking past WOM on the main pedestrian shopping street near the train station in Munich and seeing this intriguing-looking poster in the window – intriguing enough that it inspired me to go inside and buy the album.
Einstürzende Neubauten! (pronounced ine-SHTOORTZ-en-duh NOY-bow-ten) I’ll shorten to E/N for sanity.
For me, getting this interview was a huge deal. I’m realizing now that not a lot of people, in the States anyway, knew about E/N. Even those in my alternative circles.
I discovered them when traveling around the former West Germany in 1987. West Germany had a great record store chain in several of the major cities: WOM World of Music (pronounced with a fabulous German accent: “VOHM: VAIRLD uff MOO-zeek).
WOM was a regular stop of mine when visiting friends in Munich who were studying there that year. Early summer of 1987, I remember walking past WOM on the main pedestrian shopping street near the train station in Munich and seeing this intriguing-looking poster in the window – intriguing enough that it inspired me to go inside and buy the album.
I had never heard of E/N before. I was taking a total chance. And I liked it! A lot! E/N is considered an industrial noise band. I’m not much of a fan of industrial noise. But these guys were noisy in a Bauhaus (the band) sort of way, and some of it was even funny, in a subtle German sort of way.
I particularly liked the songs “Ich bin’s” (which translates to “It’s Me”) and “MoDiMiDoFrSaSo” (which translates to "MonTueWedThuFriSatSun").
This was the only album of theirs I got into. I tried the other ones but there was way too much cacophony going on for my delicate tastes.
Interestingly, I just read on trouserpress.com that this particular album that I love so much is considered “shockingly low-key... A whole plethora of instruments (or whatever) are plunked, strummed and smashed way down in the mix, almost as though Neubauten was trying not to wake up the old lady next door. [Its] quiet intensity leaves one waiting for noise which never comes.” Not me! It was just the right amount of noise and perfectly fit my level of youthful angst that summer of 1987.
One of the promotors I worked with doing RATW lived down in San Francisco and was able to get the interview.
I remember having to completely redo his interview. It wasn’t badly written; it just didn’t have coherence. Which maybe was the point, given the subject matter! I remember taking the disparate pieces of writing he provided and tying them together into a narrative that worked (for me, anyway). That was my first experience with editing another's work.
So happy to have gotten this interview. (Thanks, Dave Leland, wherever you are!)
I’m proud to see a live review of The Guttersluts, an all-women band from the San Francisco Bay Area. I never saw them live nor really knew their music but loved what I knew about them. If I’m remembering correctly, I think one of the Sluts worked as an aide at my brother’s school for autistic people. Or maybe one her best friends did? It’s all a blur.
I have a big Guttersluts bumper sticker on the back of my accounting binder for RATW so I must’ve had some connection with them – I think through the main Slut, Suzanne Von Slut. I must share the names of the other Sluts because they're beautiful: Alison Wonderslam Slut, Jillstone Starchylde Slut, Jessica Madonna de la Slut, and Tami Teener McSlut.
Ah, to be young and slutty…
Click here to read the live reviews.
LETTERS & POSTCARDS
“This is the mag I’ve been looking for for a long time (years!) . . . A friend of mine was missing a Jawbox show by going to CA for spring break. She was really pissed, but I got this mag and told her about 4! Jawbox shows in CA she can see. She extends her thanks and appreciation that someone finally made a decent concert info mag!" – Mike N, Valparaiso, IN
“You people are the absolute most Beloved Fucking People in the world. . . Your zine just blew me away! Praises to Rock Around the World.” – David B, Albany, NY
And this cool one:
“Dear Sharon. I just saw a copy of RATW and I really liked it. I travel a lot so it’s very useful to me. I mentioned it in my column this week so I hope some other people subscribe. Best of luck.” – Gina Arnold, Berkeley, CA
Gina Arnold! Gina was a music critic down in the San Francisco Bay Area, at that time writing a column called “Fools Rush in”. She sent me a copy of what she wrote in the East Bay Express from Jan 11, 1991:
"All Over . . . the World
I picked up a really useful fanzine the other day called Rock Around the World, which features long lists of touring bands, both by band name and by city. It’s fab, especially if you have a propensity to follow bands and/or wind up in strange cities all of a sudden–or if you’re a frequent flier or a spendthrift. You never know when you might want to run away from home, and with RATW, you at least know where to run to. I had no idea Soul Asylum was playing at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on the 22nd of this month, for instance. . . hmmm. It’s good to know, anyway. I also really enjoyed the live reviews of shows like Jane’s Additction, Lush, Living Colour, and the Lemonheads, received from venues around the country. It’s lots of fun to see which songs the bands played the same as here and which were different, and the reviews seem surprisingly trustworthy. You can subscribe to Rock Around the World ($2 for next month’s issue, or $12 for six months’ worth) by mailing a check to PO Box 40684, Portland, Oregon, 97240. "
So super nice of her! I wrote her a thank you note but didn’t connect much beyond that.
A couple of years after I closed down RATW, I ended up having another connection with Gina Arnold – or several, in one place, actually. She wrote a really great book called “Route 666: Road to Nirvana” which captures the history of everything that led up to Nirvana and then the aftermath (through 1993, at least). She beautifully captured the time and place of my magazine and all the bands that we loved back then.
The main connection to the book was not through RATW but through my then-husband. He provided a bunch of telephone poll posters that she used in the margins of each chapter. She had sent him a copy of the book as a thank you. That’s how I got my hands on it.
The book was great fun for me to read because it illustrated other connections. She talked about growing up in the town next to mine. Even though she was a couple years older, our paths probably crossed when we were kids. (Winter Lodge, anyone? New Varsity Theater, perhaps?)
I also personally knew almost everyone she interviewed in the book – at least all the owners of record labels – because I had hit them up every month for advertising! And I had become friends-ish with several of the ones she mentioned during the time of producing RATW.
I still have the book but haven’t read it since it came out. Picking it up just now for the sake of this writing, I randomly open to an early chapter and I find her talking about my friend Richard’s sister, Jean Caffeine. Small world!
Now I want to re-read it.
I did save this quote from her book:
"So I was a Nirvana fan? So were millions of people across the face of this planet. In the past couple of weeks it had become an entirely meaningless distinction, entitling me to nothing, rendering me, in fact, suspect to the people I once knew. "
I love that. It sums up beautifully my and so many people's eventual experience with "our scene".
Gina Arnold is known for one other thing that I never quite understood: “Kill Gina Arnold” t-shirts and graffiti!
I saved this torn-out photo from some magazine that I can't remember of the Breeders with Kelly Deal wearing said shirt.
What’s the deal with that??
Sheesh, people, get over yourselves!
Save your trolling for the invention of the internet...
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