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FANZINE REVIEW! OWN THE WHOLE WORLD #17 (edited by Robert Forward, available via 200 W. Hermosa Dr., Tempe AZ 85282 USA)

Sheesh, what gives with this cover anyway? It was taken STRAIGHT off the front of the infamous (and I should know, even  I own one!) Beatles/Rolling Stones bootleg SING THIS ALL TOGETHER which features a wide variety of once-rare efforts all done up in fabulously flat sound. But I can't find a single thing about the Beatles, Stones or bootlegs for that matter on the inside! Sheesh, whatever happened to fanzines that you could judge by looking at the covers like with DENIM DELINQUENT and BACK DOOR MAN, mags where you KNEW what you were in store for with one mere glance of the visage of one Iggy or Ray Davies. (Well, the earliest issue of HYPERION I possess woulda fooled one what with the abstract almost Von Lmo-ish drawing more akin to a science fiction fanzine but I digress.)

Still it is strange seeing a real honest-to-goodness fanzine in the here and now. I do come across a scant few which capture the spirit of the GOLDEN AGE OF ROCK SCREEDING in the seventies, and OWN THE WHOLE WORLD might just be one of these welcome wonders. It has a long history (back to Akron Ohio during the prehistoric eighties even!) and the issues I own were pretty good---can't say about the ones I don't. Well, not as engrossing as any hot seventies-era rag when it was on full blast, but better'n the usual prissy fodder that is more emblematic of the energy crisis in rockist attitude one has come across these past fortysome years.

Highlight of the issue...a LOOOOONG letter from Tin Huey brainkiddie Harvey Gold in what was supposed to have been a Q&A interview but turned into an article in itself. The letter is better as it really gives you an idea of where the Tin Huey mindset was planted especially during those days before even they succumbed to the new unto gnu wave credo! Man I sure would like to hear their should be infamous medley of the Stooges into "It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" into "We Did It Again" which I think would work a whole lot better'n some of you curmudgeons might think! This piece makes for a perfect addendum to the Akron underground rock history I blabbed on about last week.

I also dig the off-the-top prattling of current personalist faves (the infamous Crummy Fags make the list!) as well as the hotcha book review (THE GHOUL!!!!!) and ME TV huzzahs (I remember THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN being one of the few late-seventies tune-ins I liked eyeballing!). Big letdown...a buncha free jazz album reviews by some doofus who doesn't know his "pffffft" from his "pffffft" as my cyster would say. Sheesh, where do you dig up these guys who have to go around making their ignorance known in print Bob???

Otherwise a fine effort even if I really can't stand that post-seventies slap on layout (which I used for my own crudzine many a time...not that I'm exactly PROUD of it!).