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Fast ‘n’ Bulbous’ Ten Year Anniversary

October 30, 2005 by A.S. Van Dorston
Barby, Me, Professor Beefheart, Mr. Bulbous

Memory is a weird thing. Without anchors, it tends to drift away. Life-changing events that happen in high school and college stay more vividly in my memory than the years immediately after. For me, photographs, old emails, mix tapes and radio show tapes are good anchors. But the early ’90s were kind of a black hole. I didn’t have an email account or a radio show, but I did have writer’s block, a boring job and a stagnating relationship. Oh yes, there were the lists. Since I was a kid, I kept lists of movies I watched and books I read, but only sporadically. Music, however, was different. Every year I somehow managed to hear more albums than the year before, and I couldn’t stop adding to the list if I tried. It had it’s own energy, compelling me to update it at least once a week, to shift the order of albums to keep them ranked in a rough order of preference. At least I’d always remember what I was listening to.

1995 was more memorable. After two years in a new city (I moved with a girlfriend from Minneapolis to Chicago in ’92), I finally had a large-ish group of new friends I met after moving out into my own place the previous year. I started a new relationship and ended the boring job. Happily unemployed, I used my new free time to finally check out this World Wide Web I’d been hearing about. I got hooked up with a neighborhood ISP and entered a new world. Looking at the early, primitive sites, I got excited. I immediately knew just what I wanted to do — make an online fanzine. I had barely flirted with “Xerox culture,” making comics in grade school and writing music reviews in high school. But it was still expensive to photocopy, so I never had my own ‘zine. In college I wrote for and edited the newspaper and contributed to various journals, and submitted a few reviews to indie publications such as Your Flesh, but I never had anything of my own. Now I could.It was certainly a more appealing alternative than writing for established magazines where incompetent editors might mangle my words, or clueless editors force me to write about things I could care less about. It would have a simple, rough cut-and-paste punk aesthetic. It would pay homage to Captain Beefheart and Dr. Fester, the muse/patron behind my old radio show, Uncle Fester’s Bucket O’ Nasties. And of course it would have lists. Up the wazoo.

With renewed energy, I bought a book on html, and within a week I created a site based on my lists and a new feature called “Funkadelic: The Afro-Alien Diaspora”. I also tossed up “A History Of Punk”that I wrote in college for good measure. And voila, Fast ‘n’ Bulbous debuted just before Halloween, October 1995. There wasn’t a ton of music-related content back then, so my humble site got a good amount of attention. I received emails from around the world, making me feel connected to a music community for the first time since college when I hosted an email newsgroup called “Underground.” Soon, LiP Magazine would publish my Funkadelic tribute in print, and I would be meeting some of my new Web friends on my first trip to Europe.

It was a pretty good year musically. 1995 continued to shake itself off from the early 90s alternative rock doldrums, when every mediochre band was signed in hopes of finding the next Nirvana (or Pearl Jam). Since the web was not yet a reliable place to find out about music yet (though allmusic.com was getting a good start), I was devouring The Wire every month. That’s where I first read about Tricky, whose debut album Maxinquaye turned out to be my favorite album of the 90s (see sidebar). Unclassifiable, it was later wedged in with Massive Attack and Portishead as “trip hop,” a subgenre that died a quick death and had its bones sucked dry by many bands of lesser talent. “Post-rock,” coined famously by Simon Reynolds, was still going strong after 1994’s peak with Disco Inferno’s DI Go Pop. The Dirty Three, Labradford, Techno Animal, Pram, Flying Saucer Attack, Main and Ui all incorporated influences from beyond rock, while Oval and Mouse on Mars pushed the boundaries of electronica. I was especially excited about international artists that created vital work that was more distinct than normal new age hippie global mush — Asian Dub Foundation (Brits using Asian classical), Cornelius (Japan), Chico Science & Nação Zumbi (Brazil), and Natacha Atlas (Egypt via Brussels and London). PJ Harvey, Bjork and Radiohead all released major career-defining albums.

Show highlights included Baaba Maal, Brice-Glase, U.S. Maple, Seam, Scissor Girls, Elastica, John Cale, Unwound, Toots & the Maytals, The Grifters, Jeff Buckley, PJ Harvey, Femi Kuti, Shellac, Massive Attack, Laika, The Skatalites, Stereolab, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Mercury Rev, Fugazi and NoMeansNo. I don’t keep track of movies officially, but Living In Oblivion, Before Sunrise, Usual Suspects, Nadja, Crumb, Exotica, Tank Girl and Seven were standouts.

When the dot com bubble was inflating, many asked me if I’d consider making Fast ‘n’ Bulbous a more commercial, slicker venture with advertising, professional design, and a stable of writers. I never had much enthusiasm for the idea for several reasons. Although a few excellent writers have volunteered to write for me, no one would really follow through because promos but no pay is not enough incentive to meet deadlines. I feel my vision is personal and quirky enough that it would be difficult to fit other writers’ tastes into my lists and rating system. And I didn’t really see much commercial potential, figuring my tastes appealed to a relatively small audience. Ryan Schreiber, with whom I had corresponded with a few times in the early days, proved me wrong. He made the transition from a print fanzine to web with Turntable Magazine a short time later in 1996. It eventually became Pitchfork. Things really blew up for them, I think, at the peak of Napster — suddenly the audience for a wider variety of music expanded like a supernova. Schreiber was driven enough to make Pitchfork the leading music webzine, and today exerts an amazing amount of influence. I don’t regret not taking that path, however, because I’d rather not have my labor of love become a job. I have ideas for a more commercial magazine that may or may not come to fruition someday. While other great music zines have filled the need for instant-gratification reviews such as Stylus and Drowned In Sound, for now, I’m grateful to have had an outlet for my lists, reviews and rants that, in hindsight, are more like a glorified blog.

Which isn’t to say it hasn’t evolved some. I hope to continue to refine and evolve the site’s character. An instrumental part of that are some very talented artist friends, who are helping me experiment with different logos and interpretations of Dr. Fester and friends. My friend and former associate at Alien Syndicate, Aaron Schmidt, did some great drawings of Dr. Fester, and helped me toy with ideas for a logo (see Gallery). As a talented animation artist and figurine sculptor, I may still talk him into doing more in those areas if he ever gets time before he gets too famous and too rich to be enticed with music mixes. Did I mention he’s brilliant and his company Xen Interactive Media does amazing work? Yes, I’m buttering him up like a greased pig. Amy M. Ahlstrom is another up and coming artist who helped inspire me. A great drawing she did encouraged me to finally disclose the full, formerly secret history of Dr. Fester. First known for her MoistSticky Crawler and Skull Baby comics, she currently specializes in urban quilts (signs and graffitti creatively rendered in fabric). I’m honored that she’s taken the mighty endeavor of reawakening her bitch goddess comic art muse to bring images of Dr. Fester, Baron Beefheart and Mr. Bulbous to life. As soon as her quilts are available online, I’ll post a link. The logo that’s currently being featured on the front page is by a young, talented artist named David A. Jensen. Other logos were contributed by Michelle Reyes and Amanda Jensen. I may showcase other logos on the front page until I decide which one to stay with, which will then end up on a T-shirt with Amy’s drawing. This will hopefully happen by January.

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