The Garden - now on dvd.

Just picked up this dvd the other day. Great film, makes you angry and inspired to get out there and do it. Fight the power and garden.

Crass-ical collection

The CRASS-ical collection - direct from the Southern Records crew: The Crassical Collection is finally here, and the first release is the newly remastered The Feeding of the Five Thousand. After several years of being out of print, this legendary album has been been restored from the original analogue studio tapes, repackaged and bolstered by rare and unreleased tracks, and stunning new artwork from Gee Vaucher, who has lovingly created what could only be considered a real artefact. Included in this package is a 64-page booklet featuring all lyrics along with extensive liner notes from band members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant, which shed light on the making of the record. Also included is CD-sized recreation of the iconic original fold-out poster sleeve.

“We were setting out as purists: hard, uncompromising and utterly bemused.”

The Feeding of the 5000 is the first album by Crass, released in 1978. The record came to be made when Pete Stennett, owner of Small Wonder Records, heard a demo that the band had recorded. Impressed by all of the material, he decided that rather than release a conventional single by the band, he would put all of their set onto an 18 track 12 inch EP.

“Easy listening? You ain't heard nothing yet.”

AmeriKKK@ Off Line!

Photocopy and destroy. The mission. shake shit up, tell it like it is, don't kiss the bosses ass, rage against the machine... that is if that's your choice for a zine. Or keep up with the Kardashians, the latest powder puff pop punk tart rock radio tedium. Your choice. In the world of xerox zinedom you're putting your money where you mouth is.
The biggest obstacles I faced in the years of publishing (besides being horrible with deadlines, a self depricating, over-analytical humdrum) was having enough money to maintain my computer system to keep everything up and running.
Before the whole world went to the web, i had a h/p printer, corel draw, some bad pagemaker knock off, an electric typewritter, glue, paste and access to a xerox machine that was able to enlarge and/or reduce [very revolutionary function] in it's day. I added a scsi xerox machine which caused all sorts of hardware headaches which I'm not going to get into. Since they could've been resolved knowing the right people, but most of my peers were all about gaming systems rather than computers.
Other things that made my primitive system complete was the fact that i had a fairly large font library. I was able to do some layout for cassette demos that took a million years to print out. Then I'd head over to the new Kinkos and run off the cards on decent stock paper.
BUT wait, I was writing about not having enough money to keep my system up to date. Nowadays there are awesome alternatives to the expensive software that I was using. The biggest reason I would say why you should publish a zine these days is probably more narcissitic in the sense that it documents YOUR existence. Plus it's semi permanent. Most of the shit that I posted online in "blogs" and or geocities no longer exists. Dead files and they don't even show up on archive.org's wayback machine.
So where do I start? A great program for word processing and a sweet alternative to MS Office is Open Office. It's free and beats having to use a commodore 64 and an old electric typewriter. I can't say enough good things about this program, it's compatible with your major file types.
To set up/layout your zine I recommend scribnus . If you've ever heard people talk about pagemaker or quark this is certainly up to par with those programs if you're using it to make a zine.
If you have photos that you're going to use in your zine, GIMP will be useful to manipulate them in the same manner that photoshop would help you out. If you're looking for a nifty program that will also help you with tweaking photos and incorporating graphics into your zine, you can use Inkscape which is right up there with corel draw and illustrator. If you need fonts to jazz up your lay out check out dafont.com .

Free Software for Free Systems!!!

article here
You say you want a revolution? While it's safe to be cynical about the present and be nostalgic about the past, there are genuine movements of movers and shakers that may unknowingly have embraced the philosophies of the old guard. Which in turn have helped past ideals and concepts to remain relevant.
Free software foundation is a great place to start if you're looking for the untelevised revolution. Rather than reiterate their mission statements and ideas. I'm going to be a lazy bastard and include a link which you'll find up above. Having a limited amount of funds and really can't afford to buy all these updates for the latest top of the pops software, it's great to see programmers and developers who are genuinely not "doing evil" or trying to candy coatin' their strange new (oppressive regime) bedfellows as just consulting adults behaving naughty. Stand up for our future, support FSF and the endeavors they are presenting.

ABC NO RIO - ZINE LIBRARY

Perusing the youtube for something other than the latest poptard video and the accompanying commentary I stumbled on this year old clip featuring the zine library at ABC NO RIO.
If you're unfamiliar with ABC and don't live in the nearby NYC tri-state area I suggest finding a copy of 156 Rivington. It's a nifty documentary. Neil from Tribal War also had a vhs featuring the bands that played at ABC. Worth seeing if you can get it.

Ace Spade and the Whores Of Babylon

Post Loiterers Ian Nihilate reemerges in an Arkansas meth lab as Ace Spade. A bizarre twist on the Swamp Thing tale I suppose. Anyway... here is the new band with a catchy ditty - ICE CRYSTALS.

Food Not Bombs

a nifty animated "ad":

Food Not Bombs