True story. I came very close to intentionally misspelling the tab you’ll see in orange at the top of this post. It was almost “Kool Thangs,” in honor of the zine that evolved into Kreature Comforts Lowlife Guide to Memphis. And to be honest, I can’t remember why I decided to let accuracy triumph over awesomeness, but here we are.
Zines were the micro-published (often photocopied) rock-and-art fan magazines from the pre/practically useless-Internet era. They were, essentially, blogs before there was such a thing. And Memphis had several excellent examples in the 80’s and 90’s.
A multi-part history of zines at Hilobrow.com features some great images and gives a lot of love to Sherman WIlmott‘s Kool Thangs (which, if memory serves, once attempted to create rankings for Memphis-area strippers), and Wipe Out, which was published by Eric Oblivian.
Whether you were a zine collector on not, this is a fun browse.
