Dead Templeton Issue 1
Ellen and Gideon
www.deadtempleton.bigcartel.com
www.deadtempletonzines.etsy.com
I don’t often review music/music-related zines because I feel like I’ll be out of my depth. (Unless someone has a Punk 101 zine out there.) Thankfully, zines are very good at shattering my assumptions about what they’ll be about, almost always a pleasant shattering.
Dead Templeton Issue 1 is the most ‘cut n’ paste’ zine I’ve seen in a while, filled with all sorts of goodness to look at as well as read.
The very beginning of this zine made me smile because it’s such a great reason the make a zine:
Zines are something that seem to be missing from our area, and we always thought they were super cool and important for whatever scene was going on. So we figured,
“Hey, punk rock is dead here, let’s have some fun. Let’s make a zine.”
Opening up with a piece about the music in the show Daria and the complications involving the music in the show vs what they were able to put on the DVD. Double win for Daria and for immediately bucking my expectations of what would be in the zine. That the next piece was a ‘non-piece’ that was and wasn’t about goats…
If you want variety, then this zine has it. Along with the aforementioned piece, there is an interview, an album review, show reviews… It’s a music zine with side salads of humour and human interest.
I’ve mentioned before how I love the little things that move the zine experience into more than experiencing what’s in your hand. Well this zine comes with a Spotify playlist. I don’t have Spotify, so I wasn’t able to check it out (yet), but I still think it’s a pretty cool add on in a world where including a cassette or CD could shoot postage out of budget. Not only that, they say they’re going to make a playlist for every issue.
I have one nitpick in that some of the type is tiny – I mean really tiny – and even my near-sightedness didn’t help me out. Making that small text white on black makes it a smiggle harder to read again. At least, by lamp light, like I was trying to. That being said, this is a first zine, and it can take a while for people to find their zine layout groove.
When I traded for this zine months back, Punkrawkdewd said that the second one was nearly done and looked even cooler than this one. I hope I can get my hands on a copy.