We love ‘zines here at Rock Star Journalist. We’re especially fond of the half-sheet sized ones, where it’s essentially a sheaf of printer paper folded in half and stapled in the middle. It’s the perfect size for the material inside, and it’s the sort of thing you can jam in the back pocket of your jeans and carry around with you.
Scion (the Toyota offshoot) does a fantastic job in putting on these free metal and garage shows. The Garage Fest here in Lawrence last September was some of the most fun I’ve had in this town, and their series of garage split 7-inches are amazing collections of exclusive tracks.
That being said, the new zine they’ve put out is a tad horrendous. Layout’s bad, the interviews are short and perfunctory, the font choice is poorly thought-out, and it just looks cheesy and forced. When Jerk Store is done by ONE GUY and looks great, you’d think something with the funding of a car company behind it could do better. Amateur doesn’t mean shitty, guys. I have zines in a box from the mid-’90s that smoke this in terms of layout, and they were done on Macintoshes that had half the processing power of your average smart phone.
Thankfully, it’s free, so you can check it out for yourself without putting a dent in your wallet: view the Scion Garage Zine online.
could you do better?