Interviewer: Heather Velez

Interviewee: Michael Gaughan

1:19:51 HV: So, where to begin, why don't you talk about where you're from, just give a general background about your life, the early years...

1:19:33 MG: I grew up in a place called Angola, New York, which is 45 minutes west of Buffalo. It's a really small country town. My mother was a librarian for the elementary school and my father was a lawyer. He was the town judge for a while and then went to work in the court system in Buffalo. He worked as a confidential legal clerk in Buffalo. I was brought up in this small, hick country town, everyone was into sports and football and stuff. But I really wasn't. I was one of those reading kids. My mom was a librarian so by the time I was fifteen I was reading all the hippie beat stuff, and going to used bookstores. So that's when I really discovered the underground press, and that there was such a thing. And from there I just continued reading, as I got older.

1:18:35 HV: Your initial interest in the underground press started when you were a teenager?

1:18:30 MG: Yea, when I was fourteen or fifteen. I used to go to the used bookstores all the time and back in those days you could get all the Abbie Hoffman books and stuff and the Kerouac books. You could get those in used bookstores, first editions of them and things. At the same time I started getting into punk rock. And I used to get the Alternative Tentacles catalog, which was a record company. So back then that was like, one of those things my mother would get in the mail and kinda look at it and think "what the fuck are you reading?'" Cause it had those pictures, the meatmen pictures, really kinda outsider art stuff in it. She never took them from me, 'cause she never really banned me from reading anything, but she did sort of eyeball it all the time and be like, what is this? 1:17:39 HV: What bands were on that label?

1:17:38 MG: The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys were the big band on that label. And it was their catalog that they put out, it was just like photocopied fliers I would get like four times a year and it would have 7" records, some zines and t-shirts, and I started ordering stuff through them. So I started getting Dead Kennedys stuff in the mail. And I found it just really set people's buttons off. My father being a democrat politician, the last thing he wanted to see on my chest was the Dead Kennedys. I worked for Ted Kennedy in 1980. I always had political jobs. So I worked for Ted Kennedy in 1980, and my parents just hated the whole Dead Kennedys thing, which made me just, want to wear it more.

1:16:52 . HV: Right...

1:16:51 MG: From there, when I was like seventeen or sixteen, junior, senior year of high school, my friends and I started an underground newspaper at the school. And you know, it was just picking on jocks and picking on the pretty girls and picking on teachers and stuff. But that's when I sort of decided I wanted to get a degree in journalism. So I ended up going to school to get a degree in journalism. I have an undergraduate in journalism and then I have a graduate degree in creative writing and English. It's just kind of one of those things, where I always wanted to run something but I never thought that I could.

1:16:11 HV: How many people were involved in your high school publication?

1:16:08 MG: There were, it got handed down to me and my friend, there were two older guys that used to do it before us. And when they got ready to graduate they handed it down to me and another guy. So it was just the two of us and it was pretty, it was kind of like Footloose. When I was in high school it was just so archaic, we would give copies to girls to hand out and I had stolen a set of janitor's keys, so we would go into the bathrooms, after sports practice, at 6 o'clock at night, and put copies in the bathroom. And they would call us down to the office and threaten to expel us and all this stuff and they could never do anything 'cause they could never prove anything. We were using their own ditto machine in the office to run them off.

1:15:24 HV: It was pretty low-tech?

1:15:21 MG: Yea it was a one page, both sides kind of thing. That's all it was. Maybe three or four articles written under pseudonyms, pretty juvenile but we were getting away with it. So that got me hooked in the whole 'you can publish stuff it you want.' I always sort of read fanzines, picked up that stuff at record stores.

1:15:00 HV: It was all musically oriented fanzines that you were...

I: 14:57 MG: Sometimes. I didn't mind reading stuff, back before the Internet, stuff like Crap Pound and Thrift Store, some of that outsider stuff, I didn't mind reading it. But a lot of it was music related somehow, it was always somehow music related. Back in those days, the flyers and stuff. .. there was those first amendment cases where the Dead Kennedys artists got in trouble, that just made me want to hang that poster on my wall. That kind of stuff encouraged me a little bit, to know that, if] really wanted to I could just photocopy some shit and put it out. When I was in grad school I had a full-time job managing a photocopy store. And kids were in there constantly, and I would let the band kids just run off copies of their flyers and stuff. I tried to help them out. But they made me remember I could do that kind of crap, so when I ended up in Providence... it was '93 or '94, right after Kurt Cobain died, I think it was '94 that I ended up here. I couldn't get a job anywhere. And I finally got a job at the Holiday Inn parking lot. So I had a Master's degree yet I'm working in the Holiday Inn parking lot. I worked tTom 7 to 2, so I was on the clock, I got a decent paycheck, and I realized that I was parking all these buses all day long. Fishbone would show up, I had this list of... George Clinton's coming today with two buses and four cars. There were all these bands in and out of there. Providence had so many clubs, there was always people there, so I figured there's gotta be a way if] just start bringing a camera and recorder to work, I could start doing interviews, take some pictures, or whatever, and farm stuff to the Phoenix or the New Paper. And every time I tried to farm them stuff they didn't want it. I:

13: 10 HV: What was the New Paper?

1:13:08 MG: The New Paper was another alternative weekly.

I:13:03 HV: Is that still around or. . .

1:13:02 MG: Nope, it's defunct. It was... the Phoenix before it was this mega empire, was this alternative newspaper and there was another alternative newspaper that was called the New Paper in Providence. It had these two competing against each other. The New Paper I think was more radical than the Phoenix. The Phoenix, you know, is now FNX's advertising medium, basically. It was a little more underground and in touch with what was going on. But I think it was printed by the same people, somehow. But I never got anywhere with either of them or with the Providence Journal. I could never, you know, they didn't want interviews tTom bands that had played last week. The Journal prints very few music concert reviews, usually it's of a bigger band or at the Dunkin Donuts center or whatever. So I found that I could never do anything with that and out oftTustration was when we started the magazine. So I think it was my wife, she worked at a PR company in Boston and there was a guy there that was a mend of ours, who did really great cartoons, political cartoons. So I decided to start a fanzine and with his help and her help, the three of us just started throwing this thing together.

1:11:38 HV: When did you start?

1:11:37 MG: I think the first issue was '94. And we started; it was called Whatever Magazine, the zine for Good people with Bad jobs. We had this slant where we would tell bad job stories or stuff like that, and that's what we initially thought our slant would be. It looks like (referring to ftrst issue ofzine), did I date this thing? ... It's gotta be '94. That's about when we started; it would have been '94, maybe '95. I can look and see, it's so abstract to try and remember.

1:10:56 HV: Why did you initially think, let's have a zine about people with bad jobs, so that they could rant about it?

1:1 0:50 MG: 'Cause we were all Generation X kids. We all knew that there was no way to get a job unless your daddy got it for you. There wasn't really a lot of opportunities out there. I knew all these people with advanced degrees who were working these crappy jobs in restaurants and stuff. It was kind of out of that tTustration that we decided that could be our slant on things. We could do, initially I thought, I could do bootleg reviews for music reviews. The bootleg scene in Providence was pretty good. The record stores were selling a lot of European made bootlegs. I thought I could do a column on that, and we'll do these bad job stories where people rant about their bad job, and we'll do these little cut out things that you could send to your boss to make fun of him or something. And I had a degree in journalism. And the guy that was all about Kurt and Courtney being a conspiracy, the investigator, he started contacting me.

1:09:51 HV: Wow, after you published the...

1:09:48 MG: No, before I even published the first zine. I forget how I initially made contact with him, but he started sending me stuff in the mail. Being a journalist, I used the freedom of information act and I went and got his police file. And I started just randomly calling people, like their lawyers, Kurt and Courtney's lawyers, and saying, 'could you confirm any of this crap this guy is going on about?' So I did, we did, for the first issue an investigative report; we tried to do an actual news story. In the end I wimped out and just said I can't figure out if this guy has anything going on or not, 'cause nobody will answer questions. But we tried and.we had at that point what we thought was something cool. We had the original suicide note, the handwritten version.

1:09:04 HV: Which is so cool...

1:09:03 MG: Yea, which hadn't been published at that point and I don't think it has, as far as I know, we're the only ones that really ever published just a photocopy of it. I never seen it really in a magazine or anywhere. We thought that we could use that to get a foothold, so we did and it turned out - it worked out. I had another iTiend who was iTom Cincinnati. Is that where Nine Inch Nails is from? Cleveland.

1:08:33 HV: Cleveland.

1:08:32 MG: He's from Cleveland. His father was investing money for Trent Revnor somehow for the record company, some kind of financial manager. He managed to get me a photo pass to Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie, and coupled with that he also got me access to Manson when he played at Babyhead. All of a sudden, I'm like the photojournalist. I don't know anything about how to take pictures but I'm getting access, because of my mend. So I got some decent shots, we end up throwing it all together for our next issue. Once we started doing actual photographs then things started to happen where the...it was the early days of the Internet, so we were on the Internet and we were printing it as well. I would go to CVS, CVS developed all of my film, so the next day I could post up to the Internet which people thought was amazing. So we got a lot of record companies to give me access.

1:07:40 HV: At the beginning, you were both on the Internet and paper print?

1:07:37 MG: Yea. We were on the Internet really quickly because my wife pretty quickly stopped working at the PR company and worked in Providence at an ISP. So she was working at an ISP, so we got space, and she knew how to do all the pages. Lizzy did all of that Internet stuff. She's always done all the Internet stuff. I've always just done the writing and pictures. And what it ended up being is, over the years, because it was really only three of us, four of us sometimes, it turned into whatever - it should have been called "Whatever concert Mike wants to go to." 'Cause that's what it turned into. It turned into me covering stuff that I liked and trying to go to stuff that I liked, and just putting it on the Internet, and trying to get it out there. We never had a business plan. We never sold ads. We never tried to get a distribution deal. I would give copies to In Your Ear and Armageddon, some of those places. They would do those consignment deals; I would never go back and get the money for them. I didn't care, I didn't want it. We were printing off tTee copies at the offices we worked at, and at night we would blow off five thousand copies on their photocopier and staple them together. It was all tTee so, I never really wanted to go the real zine route and try to make a real magazine out of it. It would have been, as far as I was concerned, it would have been more work than it would be fun. So I tried to stay away from that. Over the years it just turned into, we got less and less away tTom the job stuff as we got better jobs, the focus of the magazine seem to just switch more to concert reviews and live pictures. It became, this thing, I could go in and get pictures, have them up on the Internet in a day. I think the PR people liked that. And for a while, when that big explosion of grunge stuff, there were six or seven big agencies that did the majority of the acts. So having a mend at...

1:05:37 MG: ... anyone of those places, they would call me up, because Providence was between Boston and New York. We had Lupo's, The Strand, Babyhead, the Living Room. Everybody stopped here. Now it's a little different where stuff isn't stopping in as much because we don't have the clubs. But because we were, no one really in Providence covers this stuff, they would call me, because the Phoenix didn't care, the Journal didn't care. If I was in Boston or New York I would have to compete against normal, more legitimate press people or better fanzines. But here I didn't have to. I found it was really easy to get access and sometimes for stuff, you know, the Civic Center kind of stuff, nobody wants to cover it so send Mike to do Bush at the Civic Center. I've always enjoyed concerts. I've always loved concerts. I never knew how to take pictures though. I have a Nikon camera. I use 1600 speed film. I just point it and start firing.

1:04:44 HV: It's always hit or miss; just take as many as you can...

1:04:40 MG: That's all I do. You know, you show up with five rolls of film, two of it black and white 3200 speed, the other two or three 1600 speed color film. Load it and shoot.

1:04:30 HV: Something good'll happen.

1:04:29 MG: Yea. I've tried once and a while to learn a little bit about it. The lights and stuff it's such a hassle to deal with. I found that it was always just easier to rely on the Nikon. There are other people that take "real" serious photos. Once and a while I'd see them - I came to determine it was all about the equipment. If you want to take really good concert photos you need to have one of those really long lenses, that's what it's all about, if you have that lens you can take perfect pictures of Steven Tyler. If you want to take punk rock pictures, stand in the pit and try and keep straight. I always liked that; I always liked the whole "I'm not a real journalist" thing. It was always ok for me.

1:03:46 HV: How would you identify as, so you're not a real journalist but you're an underground.. .

1:03 :39 MG: Well, its weird, 'cause I've been thinking all weekend, it's kinda funny to think about history when it wasn't really that long ago. But I don't think I was really ever underground because if you look at the bands we covered - they were all tied to a label. While I can see publishing a zine as an underground action, the stuff we covered wasn't really that far underground. It was at Lupo's, it was at Babyhead. It wasn't Fort Thunder parties. It '99 wasn't warehouse parties up in Olneyville or house punk parties. It was more mainstream. While I can understand... it's all about perception, I guess... to me going to see the Lords of Acid with this kind of bondage stuff isn't that far underground. But I'm sure to middle America it's like "holy shit, look at those crazy freaks." You know, as what happens at the warehouses, even ten times further out than that. It's weird I always thought of myself as kind of not really a documentarian even. I wasn't a real journalist 'cause I wasn't really writing these stories in a journalistic style. It was more that I was just trying to create some kind of a record of what happened, for these different concerts. The style that I took I never tried to write the normal sort of you know, "Nine Inch Nails came in support of their new album" kind of review. I always tried to throw in stuff that happened. The Lemonheads, you know these girls were begging me for my film because I had pictures of Evan Dando. That to me was better than a list of what songs they played. It was funnier to just tell the stories back then.

1:01:56 HV: Maybe more like a blogging...

1:01:54 MG: It was more of a personal zine kind of thing. But I was trying to cover concerts. I was trying to give that broad painted spectrum, but on the other hand, it was so personal, it was kind of like a personal zine. It is kind of like that, a lot of it. Especially... I got passes to Woodstock '99. That wasn't really stories about Woodstock '99 in a general sense it was more "this is what Mike did" first day, second day, third day.

1:01:25 HV: Was that the one with all the fires?

1:01:22 MG: Yea, my mend and I...I had a friend who had a little too much to drink that afternoon and was starting to suffer tTom alcohol poisoning as the place was going up in flames. During Megadeath, on the B stage, it was before the Red Hot Chili Peppers came out, it was sort of in between they did this really cheesy Jimi Hendrix remembrance thing and they started to light everything on fire. Garbage cans started to get on fire. I dragged him out of there; because he was just... he had alcohol poisoning. He was fucked up, and it was pretty bad. But we got out of there just in time. I feel bad that I left because I would have loved taking pictures of those kids rioting. But I feel good that I left because I didn't have to deal with it. In a weird way that's kind of the way it always is. I'm not there to do the real story/history/of this is what happened- I'm just there as an observer. The pictures and the stuff that I write are there to document what happened, in a general sense. It's kind of weird 'cause I never had a lofty idea about starting a repository of Providence's live music or anything like that. I didn't know what to do as far as - create it. I didn't know to do- I've always had these square jobs, really boring. Something creative like that has helped me. Now I blog. We just turned the magazine into a blog. The older I've gotten the less I've gone out. I was sick last year I had cancer. I stopped. I used to go out three or four times a week, now I just go out once or twice a month. And I don't push to get photo passes anymore. It's so difficult now, compared to when I was doing it because now they really want you to be legitimate. Everybody's got a website now. It used to be in the early, late 90s, mid 90s... people would die when "oh, you've got a website? Oh my god, great, what's the address?" I would tell them whatevermagazine.com and they were like, "oh that's a great name!" they would look at it, pictures of this and that, and be like "ok great, why don't you come to the show?" Nowadays, you have to fill stuff out and sign writers and all that kind of stuff. I think I got lucky and managed to capture that wave of grungy stuff that was happening in the mid 90s before clear channel really took over everything over and started squashing all the independents. It's not really underground stuff but it was an underground act to cover it and publish it the way I did.

58:38 HV: Do you consider, I mean I think it was part of the do-it-yourself movement, it could fall underneath that?

58:32 MG: Yea, it definitely does. We did photocopy ourselves, my friend he did all the cartoons for them. He used to draw us really nice cartoons. We did have a lot of that DIY ethic to it, it was like we would cut all the stuffup and tape it all down to the paper. It was very ground level; we were stealing photocopies from work...The website is hosted on Rhode Island's oldest BBS. I've never even met the man that owns it. My wife knows him, or something, I think we send him some beer every Christmas. But its kind of, that's at the underground level, it's just this weird old BBS that's existed in Rhode Island and for eight years he's had our website up there. It's strange, there are a lot of artists in Rhode Island that do stuff just to do it and this guy just runs this old internet server, just 'cause he can. So it's weird.

57:34 HV: I was going to ask, looking at some of the bands on the list; I wouldn't consider Seven Year Bitch or L 7 to be mainstream bands

57:22 MG: Right, right. Stuff like Nashville Pussy. It's strange how stuff turns over like that sometimes, like the Donnas. I was a huge Donnas fan when they first came out 'cause I love chick punk and now they've morphed into this sort of pop kind of weirdness. I loved them when they were just wearing their Chuck Taylors and singing songs about sucking face in the backseat of a car and smoking pot. Now they're trying to hard. But other stuff that's never gODDa go, like L7 and Nashville Pussy, they're never gonna be mainstream. But there is something about the music that they make that's really good. I've always enjoyed it. I don't mind it. I don't like noise punk. I steer away iTom that more arty stuff that tends to happen here in Providence. There's a lot of that with the RISD kids and the Olneyville scene. Its just, maybe I'm too old to be eating ecstasy or something, I just don't see myself at those things.

57:25 HV: Right, so you don't really identify with the Providence scene anymore?

57:20 MG: I never really did. Because I was alone and just doing this whatever thing- in a way it empowered me to continue to go out at night and not make mends 'cause I had something to do- I was taking pictures or I was taking notes. Everybody else would go with somebody. And the older I got the more tired I got of trying to call my mends who were starting to have kids and stuff and try to get them to go out. When you get record company passes it's always you plus one. I never had a plus one, which was a great thing for the record companies. They loved me, 'cause they were like "no plus one, right?" Yea, that's right, me, no plus one. So I never really felt part of the scene. I made friends with Cardoso very early on. He and I met at the Donnas in '98. He was selling poster for two dollars and I bought like six. And I was like, dude, next time, ten dollars a poster. I tried to support him. Over the years, since we see each other all the time, we're kind of friends. Same with Uncle Pete, I see them at shows, but socially I don't hang out with any of them...

55:20 MG: ... I don't really hang out with anybody socially. I don't hang out with people in the Providence scene. I guess during this time, in the late 90s, when the Amazing Crowns were the Providence scene, I could identify with being part of that scene. 'cause I did cover them a lot. I interviewed Jason, I went to the Providence payback every year and took pictures of it. I did participate in that kind of a scene but as far as being a scenester, having people really know my name- I don't think people really did. There are very few people. Most people know me as that tall guy with the camera. I didn't talk to very many people. I used having to take pictures as a buffer. It was a way to be like, oh excuse me, I have to stand up here and take a picture, I'll be gone in a minute. Click click, thanks, bye. Rich Lupo still has no idea who I am. Every time he meets me, he's like, you're who? Oh yea, yea, do you have pictures? It's funny. The bar managers know who I am. Karen, who used to manage the bar at Lupos, knows who I am. But like me, she's at work during this thing, so I would say hi to her, chat for a couple minutes, she would have the bartender get me a beer and that was it. it's odd I never really felt part of the scene. I did throw up flyers all over town, put stickers up to advertise the website but we never really took contributions or played a part in any kind of dialectic of the scene. I've always felt like I was a little to the one side.

53:54 HV: As an active observer, tTom the outside, how would you describe the scene while you were doing all this?

53:46 MG: I would say that during the time I was doing this, Providence had a great scene. The live music scene in Providence was really good. It was a combination of the grunge sort of movement forcing that and all the sort of artistic stuff that came out of that. We got all those bands here and because there were all of those clubs, there was competition. There was one night when Sonic Youth was playing over at Lupo' s and the Barenaked Ladies were playing at the Strand. The Barenaked Ladies were my wife's favorite band at the time, they've since cheesed out and I loved Sonic Youth. We were torn! And that doesn't happen anymore in Providence. It's very rare that you're like, are we going to the Strand or are we going over here, because the Living Room's got a great show tonight too. There aren't two great shows happening in Providence, but back then on any Friday night there could be any number of stuff, with the Met Cafe having stuff like the Muffs or that kind of lower level punk stuff that's still really good. Less of a draw, but I think Providence had a pretty tight scene. Its partially Rich Lupo and its partially what those guys were doing at Fort Thunder. Out of Fort Thunder came Hidden Agenda and the Hidden Agenda promotions. The combination of Stephen Wright and Rich Lupo and Hidden Agenda all booking stuff into clubs at that time meant that we had a great thing going. We were really sitting on the teat of the hog here 'cause everybody came and played here. I remember when there was one year, Bush, Alanis Morrissette and Marilyn Manson all played at Babyhead just before they broke. It's amazing to think you saw Bush a month before their album went huge in some shitty little club in Rhode Island.

52:03 HV: What's Babyhead, I've never heard of it?

52:00 MG: Club Babyhead was Club Hell. It's now Club Hell with nicely painted walls and carpeting. Babyhead was the dive, like the Rat in Boston. It was "your feet stick to the floor cause there's beer and puke all over the place the ceiling is too low the sound system sucks the walls are all spray painted" but you know, GG Allen's playing here, NOFX is playing here, the Muffs, Lunachicks. They booked more punk. It's kind oflike what the Safari is. You had a little bit more of a stage scene to it than the Safari but it was kind of place where my friends would be like oh, you're going there, really? Aren't they all junkies in there?

51:18 HV: Was it only the first floor?

51:17 MG: Yea.

51:15 HV: That's such a small place...

51:14 MG: It was this little small space. The Goo Goo Dolls played there and it was just tiny but because Providence had that scene...I think Babyhead before I moved up here was called the Rocket and it was the same kind of club. Low-level, dive, punk stuff. They did a great job of booking, stuff that was big like NOFX or Bad Religion. I think Nirvana played at Babyhead in '91. it was like the Met, not gODDa drawn 1.000 people but I could get 400 people here to see this. It was interesting because it wasn't owned by Rich it wasn't owned by the Strand, it was just itself. There were four decent independent promoters booking stuff in town. I really thought we had a great thing going. It's sad what happened. The way they forced Rich out, the Strand got closed 'cause of taxes, Babyhead couldn't keep itself going as a punk-schlocky club so they sold out to the dance revolution.

50:04 HV: When do you think the denouement of the club scene started?

49:59 MG: Like 2000,2001. Rich has been closed for a year. Lupo's has been closed for a year now that was 2003. Babyhead probably went away in '99. That's also when the boy band thing, really the underground scene went away. Record companies are now owned by four huge conglomerates, its all changing, the business is so different. It really did change a lot when they consolidated all those record companies. Now even Sub Pop is a major distribution, it's essentially part of Sony or Polygram. The independent spirit has gone away. A lot of those indie labels have dried up. What Load is doing now- that's got a chance. I saw them in Spin magazine this month, Brian Chippendale and Lightning Bolt have another good little story about them. They mentioned Load a bit. Maybe the noise thing will take off. It's hard for me to say because I feel like I'm never gonna be a part of that. My days of being able to stand in a room and listen to noise for an hour are just gone. But I understand fTom what people tell me that Chippendale is amazing to watch, Lightning Bolt is actually a great band to go see. 48:26 HV: Especially with a couple beers first...

48:24 MG: I wouldn't mind checking it out. I've just always felt like- I'm older, I'm square looking, I have no tattoos, no piercings, short hair. Showing up at those things I've always felt like, eeeeeh... I never really wanted to go and do it. I'm kind of shy. Being like "Where's the party" isn't, I'm not one of those guys. I've always stayed away. I keep an eye on things. I go to Fast Forward Records or Armageddon and keep my eye to the street that way. I don't participate in that new art scene. I still go out and go to punk shows, it's just limited now. It's strange, I don't know if I'll be in the clubs for the next wave of bands. Like the last wave of punk, this Good Charlotte and Sum 41 kind of punk that really turned a lot of us old punks off. It didn't even happen in clubs. Sum 41 opened for the Bosstones in Waterplace Park and the next year they were the top record act, they were the headliners. That kind of punk isn't happening on the streets anymore. That kind of real let's make something new and something great, that's happening more at the Olneyville mills. It's not happening through record companies. It's not something that I'm going to see, its probably happening on mp3s and CDs that younger people are trading, download sites. If you're not part of that network, I'm now old enough that'll pass me by. I've been able to hang out and watch, stick around the scene in clubs but that's going away now with Clear channel owning everything and promoting everything. It's depressing. It's sad what they did to the music business. There were a lot of those bands out there that toured and made a lot of money and nobody said anything, they let them be, like the Descendents. Bands that could draw, clubs always knew

46:26 MG: they could get 800 or 1000 people to show up for it, so they had these decent sort of lives out of doing that. I don't think you can do that anymore. I think that that's gone. It's kind of sad.

46:15 HV: What do you think about the role of the zine now in 2004, do you think it still has a role?

46:06 MG: I think it does. I think young art kids, young design kids that put together these little two dollar things that you can buy in record stores, I think it still serves a purpose for them. I think it helps them to grow, and to center them, help them figure out what direction to take their stuff in. it allows them to make little bits of money here and there. Fact Sheet Five is dead, that used to be the fanzine bible. It was this magazine where I could read about all the other fanzines and it told me where to mail away and get them. That's gone now so the fanzine thing is now more ofan Internet thing. I'm able to find everything on the Internet. I still read Maxim Rock & Roll, I don't know why, I'm not going to buy it, I just read it. it does help some political stuff, some of the ideas, I guess that's why I still read it. some of the ideals those kids have I still enjoy reading about. As far as what they're purpose is these days its really hard to tell. I think something like Maxim that's been out there forever is still serving the purpose of bringing new punk rock to people. But other magazines? I don't think there are any. Everything is on the Internet, a lot of got switched over to electronic media. I don't know if kids print zines anymore. I see very few of them. There are a few, like No Depression, Noise - is still around. Small publishers that have a lot of local bar ads in them, the Noise has a lot of that. They do some local interviews and stuff- but that's not a fanzine, it's a local magazine. One of those freebies. A real fanzine I always thought was something you picked up in a record store or some alternative kind of store. I think for the most part they've gone away. Except for the occasional one offer

44:06 MG: type of thing. I don't think anyone's publishing any of them or trying to make a new fanzine. Some many of them flip side, fizz, they all died. I don't know ifit was the ad money that dried up or if it was the consolidation of record companies but somehow or another it just seemed to dry up. Even I ended up ending it, 'cause I think I just got bored and older. It wasn't a monetary thing for us. It wasn't an ideal change, its just we got older.

43:46 HV: Did you stop in 2001? 43:33 MG: I think we stopped in 2000 doing paper print. I don't think we ever printed the last two issues on paper at all.

43:25 HV: And they were just on the web?

43:24 MG: Yea I think those were only on the web. Lizzy may have a master sheet for the last issue, ten, for the stuff we never just printed out, that we just have. I think she may have compiled it at one point. 43:12 HV: Do you think you were maybe one of the first publishers on the web of the zine form? Did you know of other zines being published...

43:02 MG: There were a few. Very quickly, everybody switched over. At first, I do think I was there pretty early because of all the record companies loved that we had a website and I got such a positive reaction out of them. We were very early on the Internet. my wife was working at the ISP when most people still didn't have AOL accounts. I think we were pretty early on the Internet.

42:39 HV: That's really interesting that the record companies would be, did they, the legal issues of. .

42:35 MG: They didn't care. It wasn't untiL..ninety percent of the pictures I've never had to sign a release form. It wasn't until Manson got bigger that I had to start signing releases. I've only had to sign releases for the Beastie Boys, Manson and Pearl Jam, and the Lemonheads. They were the only four bands that ever made me sign a release. It wasn't until Manson was much bigger that they made me start signing releases. Pearl Jam had me sign a release in '98 when they played. The Beastie Boys it was the same year, like in 2000, whenever they played up in Worcester, they had me sign a release. I think very early on the record companies were very psyched to see it on the Internet they were really happy to see anything on the Internet about their band because they could tell somebody to go check it out on another website. For them, I think they could go into their bosses and say "Hey I got this guy, he's going to put pictures of Less than Jake up tomorrow." And they really liked that. For a long time I rode on that, the fact that they loved that we could get pictures and some kind of review, even if it was a half-assed goofY story about waiting on the merch line for two hours, up on the Internet quickly. I think they knew that I wasn't very underground but I was edgy enough so that they could use me. They could say, look here's this guy who's not the Boston Globe and is writing about it and wants to go. I think it worked to their advantage as well as to mine. We used each other, I used them to get into stuff for tTee and they used me for publicity. I never really trashed anybody in a review. I always tried to go to stuff that I wanted to see. 40:45 HV: Do you have any idea about who was reading your zine or did you have one of those counters? 40:38 MG: We had hit counters. We used to get a lot of hits but I really have no idea. At first, we were in Fact Sheet Five. Do you know what Fact Sheet Five was? Fact Sheet Five was a magazine that listed all the fanzines. It was literally an encyclopedia offanzines. They would print little blurb reviews about your fanzine, and then your address and where people could send away for it and if you wanted to get trades. The Fact Sheet Five people, I used to get mail once and a while, whenever a new Fact Sheet Five would come out, five or six letters tTom people that would say "hey I read about you in Fact Sheet Five could you send me your zine." Sometimes, I would wait inside the barricades to take pictures, so I'm leaning against the stage and there's a row of kids and they would ask me, who you taking pictures for? And I would give them the Whatever magazine flyer and tell them to go look on the website in a couple of days. But I never really got much feedback tTom anybody I really don't have a clue how many people read it. I don't know. No record company ever said you trashed or you said nice things about us. I never really got feedback at all, except tTom Lizzy my wife. She would give me feedback and I would give her feedback about how the web stuff was. I did feel a lot like I was just doing it for myself. 38:58 HV: Just like you said, the art kids now are making them for themselves, so do you see it as kind of something you had to do for yourself?

38:51 MG: I think so, in a lot of ways it was. I was tTustrated that I couldn't get the kind of job that I wanted. And I wanted to do something creative. I've always been sort of creative and I've always loved concerts. To me going out and going to concerts and taking pictures and writing a review didn't seem like work. It was a way to do fun things and get away with it. it really was something, I think, I did 'cause I wanted to. In the end, it was mostly about I want to keep doing this.

38:20 HV: Like the success story of Reality Bites in a way?

38:16 MG: Yea. I didn't really want to become a successful magazine 'cause I didn't want to turn it into a business. It got hard enough going to concerts. It did turn into a drag after tltree or four years. Hauling your ass out to go stand for four hours and wait so you can take pictures for two songs of some band that you only kind of half like cause the PR people want you to. It did turn into kind of a drag sometimes but I got through it, it was never really that big of a deal.

37:46 HV: Did you have a favorite band that you got to review? Or a couple favorite bands that you got to review?

37:38 MG: the thing I always liked was I could say I saw them in a club before other people did. I loved the Donnas when they first came out when Marilyn Manson first came out it wasn't that I loved the music but I was like you gotta watch this freakin' guy, he's amazing. He's captivating somehow and he's gonna be big. I loved the Lords of Acid, meeting them was a lot of fun. They are really fun people. I've never really hung out with many of them. The Amazing Crowns are all really nice guys. Local guys. I know them and the Colonel and some of the guys that are in the local scene. I like talking to them, they're more my age. As far as the touring people, you have these surface conversations with them backstage-like where's the nearest dry cleaner and how's this town? I never really felt like I got to know any of them. I did talk to the guys from Lords of Acid for a long time. they were French and I spoke French and I had lived in France so I knew kind of their scene. I was able to talk to them and they were really nice. But I've never really had too many super good or super bad experiences backstage. I've only been booted from backstage once. I asked the guy from Everclear to autograph a picture and they just threw me out.

36:18 HV: They were just like go away...

36:15 MG: Yea, they were like what the fuck? What? Eh? EEEEER. And the guy just sort of turned me around and walked me out. It's not anything I hold against him or anything. I asked him the wrong question at the wrong time rock and roll people are strange. I feel bad for them 'cause I know they're on the road and I know they're just like, what the fuck town am I in and what am I going to do for the next three hours? When I worked at the Holiday Inn I used to always give them directions on how to get to strip clubs or the nearest dry cleaner. Overall I think band people are ok but I was never really friends with any of them except very surface level.

35:34 HV: Do you have any favorite stories from a concert you went to?

35:29 MG: At Manson Babyhead...Babyhead was so small that there was no barricade. There was a barricade but it was actually nailed to the stage so there was no place for me to stand in between where I could take pictures up front. They made me kneel down in front of where the monitors are. I'm kneeling in front of the monitors, in front of the guitar player. It's very crowded and really hot and Manson leans over and hocks a lougey on me. He just (clears throat) and PUHHH! Fires one at me. I was like, what the fuck? And he runs to the other side of the stage, and he's running around and he comes back and he starts to (clearing throat) snort to get another one up and I hocked one at him. Then he's like, he kind of gives me this "uhhh" look and then he leans over and hocked it on the security guard instead. He kept hocking them on the security guard instead of me. When I got up I had to, you're only allowed to take pictures for three songs... so after the third song I half stood up and he looked at me and he shook his head no. He knew I was going to go for the staircase and he pointed- you gotta jump. I had to jump, crowd surf. I had to jump. That was fun. It was an interesting thing. I didn't really jump. I remember it was more like a flop because I had cameras on me. I had tucked them inside my leather jacket.

34:01 HV: Did you interact with him afterwards?

33:58 MG: No, no. They were very strange, they were giving out like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and it was the day before Halloween so every dressed up freakazoid in the world had come out of the woodwork- I was obviously pretty square looking, wasn't wearing any face paint. I didn't know what to make of them. I got my pictures and went. I didn't want to wait around and see. At the Beastie Boys, I was supposed to have a photo pass and I get there and its up in Worcester, at the Centrum. I got there two hours early when I'm supposed to be there and I'm not on the list. The guy that is holding the list is this eighty-year old man. The guy is like come back in two hours, but then he's like you're still not on the list. The old man looks at me and goes, you know what? The Boston Globe was supposed to be here hours ago, fuck them! Take their pass. And he gives me their pass. Then they walk me backstage and introduce me to the Beastie Boys. I was like wow! I just said hi to them, I didn't ask to take pictures, I didn't ask to interview them- they were getting ready to be interviewed on BCN, or something. I was just very quickly - I'm going out to where I'm supposed to be. So I scammed into that one. I've had lots of fun. Rage Against the Machine up in Fitchburg. They played, it was like June or July, and it was about 120 degrees inside this hockey rink with no air conditioning, no ventilation. By the time Jesus Lizard, the opening band, was done there were two inches of water on the ground. Everybody was just sweating all over the place. I couldn't even take pictures of Rage because my face and my hands were sweating so much. I got a couple decent pictures, but it was so hot and so sweaty. But the concerts they were two of the most amazing shows I've ever seen. We stomped around in the freakin sweat and goo. It was really a lot of fun. I think there's something to be said the first time you see a band. . .

31:58 MG: ... The first time I saw Less than Jake, I was like- wow, ska, hey somebody that just doesn't hate ska, someone who isn't doing this tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes when you see stuff like that you're like- wow, this is good. Nashville Pussy was that way. The first time I saw them I thought, that's cool!

31:42 HV: I've never heard of Nashville Pussy

31:40 MG: Nashville Pussy is... like rock n' roll. It's two guys and two girls. In the initial band, the bass player was a woman named Cherokee Parks, her brother plays professional basketball. She's 6"5' and she's got "eat me princess" tattooed across her stomach and six inches high, and she spits fire. She was 6"4', then she put on the heeled boots and a ten gallon hat, she looked like she was 6 feet 9. Its kind of like Motorhead- loud rock (guuuh) and the guitar player is a girl. She's married to the lead singer and she strips off her top all the time. She's half naked and he's pouring beer down her cleavage, letting the kids drink out of it. The two girls make out at one point during the show. It's just this loud sweaty rock n' roll scene. My wife, who hates everything, went. Lizzy is not really a fan of this kind of music. I stopped trying to get her to go to stuff but once and a while when I had really good passes at something like the Centrum she'd go. Nashville Pussy opened for Manson in Worcester and we had backstage passes so she went. Even she was like, Nashville Pussy was good! There's just something about them. It's kind of like AC/DC and Motorhead and Lynard Syknard all had a bastard baby. It's fast, loud, sweaty and sort of southern. But because of their name, you're never going to see them on the TV, like he titty fucks her with a beer bottle, its pretty base level but its fun. I've always liked seeing that, discovering a new band and finding something that's really good. Like the Reverend Horton Heat, that guy is a trooper! Hank Williams III is unbelievable. . .

29:40 MG: ... and nobody knows about him. This man has got a tremendous traveling band and he puts on a fine show, but good luck finding him in the newspaper. That's one thing I've always enjoyed- finding new different bands, bands that people don't know about and seeing them before other people.

29:19 HV: Then you get to publish them

29:17 MG: Yea, I got to publish them. I got to talk about them, and that was cool. Like, I know who the Dropkick Murphys are...it was a lot of fun getting to go to stuff and learning about stuff before other people. I had a good time. It was mostly me. My wife did some of it, for a while we were doing a lot of top ten lists, and she used to do a lot of the lists. All the concert stuff was me, out with the camera.... Nashville Pussy is kind of raucous

28:41 HV: But exciting. I feel like there's not as much performance in performance anymore

28:33 MG: Yea, it is all very scheduled. Even the new punk bands that play at Lupo's bring their own soundboard with them now. When you see that kind of stuff, you're like, uhh.... There is a lot less spontaneity to it. A lot less.... there used to be bands who would tour that did alright, like the Bombouras.

28:11 HV: We're talking about your wife's involvement in

28:07 MG: Yea, my wife, Lizzy Love, at the beginning she helped come up with the idea. I knew I wanted to do something. We had this cartoonist that wanted to do something. Lizzy helped come up with ideas and we used to write stories that we pretended other people sent us but really they didn't, we just made them ourselves. She would help me with the layout. Then she got a job at this Internet service provider, so she started doing all the web stuff. She has always done all of the web stuff. She's always been the trooper, behind the scenes. Like at Woodstock '99, I was calling her on the phone from the site and feeding her updates that she was then typing into the web and putting up right away. She's always been my one- person support staff. She's always been in charge over what the website looks like and helped me figure out what photos are the best. She'll tell me when my stories are really bad, she'll let me go most of the time but if I write something horrible she would tell me. She'll fix it up. I'm a horrible speller and sometimes I ramble on about things nonsensically. Basically so she pulls me back. She made sure...back in the day, you could get these web awards, you know the net guide site of the day... she made sure that if we could get that stuff she would try to get it. We were site of the day once. The Boston Globe had some silly thing "what's your favorite website" so of course we entered our own name. Lizzy has always mainly been my support. Telling me its ok to do this...

26:07 MG: ... and allowing me to do it. A big part of it is her willingness to let me continue to go out to concerts. As well as her doing all of the web pages. She's my support staff. My one-woman support team. She props me up and tells me what I'm doing is ok and it's ok to go out and tells me to be safe, and then makes me a nice web page.

25:41 HV: Now the zine is a blog, what do you blog about?

25:36 MG: Mostly about, I got a puppy this year. Its very random, we don't blog much about anything. I don't run it as a personal blog. I don't blog daily about my feelings about my job or anything like that. I think the last thing I posted about was ODB Rest in Peace. We randomly blog stuff up there. I use it more or less as a way to post pictures. I can tell my mother that there's a new picture of me and the dog at the beach. I do it now to... do something. I stopped taking pictures about a year and a half ago. I don't bring my camera to shows anymore. We got a digital camera about a year ago, now I take pictures of the flowers I grow and the vegetables, random silly things. I try not to have any kind of a point. I didn't give my blog a name. I don't blog about a specific thing. I don't know there's too much blogging going on right now!

24:24 HV: Right, now there's political blogs...

24:22 MG: I have three relatives with blogs. The kid that interned here is blogging about being in law school. Everybody is running a personal blog now. I'm just using it as a way to upload pictures of the puppy and show it to my mother. Once and a while Lizzy or I will post something that's a link to a story but really its just personal stuff now. Mostly puppy pictures

23:53 HV: Do you think your participation in the music scene is slowly dropping off in terms of publishing?

23:42 MG: Yea, in the publishing, definitely. My involvement, in terms of going to shows, I still go out. But I'm older now I don't go out nearly as much as I would. I don't take chances as much as I used to. I've been trying to figure it out, whether its me or it's the scene. The Met Cafe isn't around anymore. It's hard; it's harder for me to go out now 'cause the clubs I'm used to are gone. I think as far as publishing I'm done. As far as participating in the scene, as this point, I like to think of myself as the patron saint of the Petes (Pete Cardoso and Uncle Pete). I try to buy all of their posters whenever I can. I try to support their artistic venture. I try to give those guys a leg up, 'cause I've always secondarily collected posters. I go to these art openings that they have and buy their books. As far as being a player in the scene I think I'm over.

22:35 HV: I think there's more of a uniform look now for people that are involved in the scene

22:31 MG: There is...

22:30 HV: I do know what you're talking about, with the tattoos, piercings...

22:28 MG: Absolutely and for me, you know, I'm a little gray on the sides. I have short hair. I go up to Olneyville and its like oh my god- it's a narc! There is a look to it, which is funny, because old punks like me understand that the plaid pants, the mohawk, that's a uniform the same as the preppy kids. I have mends, that I still hang out, like me they're older guys who go to punk stuff, they don't have kids but we're old enough now that we're unimpressed but also not willing to take the risks you have to take to see new stuff. My friend Matt and I we go to everything together. You can't shake us. If you start throwing beer around we don't care. As far as, us driving a new band and helping to make them famous, I don't think its gonna happen. If I wear a patch on my jacket its more of an ad to a little kid not to buy it then to buy it. I would be like the anti-ad if I was wearing at-shirt.

21:14 HV: That's funny.

21:10 MG: It's true though. I go to Fast Forward Records or Armageddon, I go in there and I'm dressed like this, button down and corduroy Dockers, and clearly you can see them looking at me like, what the fuck does this kid want? What is this guy doing? The guys at Armageddon they're really nice. I've never had anyone say to me- get out of here, you yuppie! They're not that bad about it but I know that I could never be part of their scene. I'm not gonna be able to look at that guy and ask, hey what's going on Friday night? And have him give me a straight answer. I know he's not going to tell me about his house party that he's having- it's just not going to happen. I don't really feel too bad about it. The time, its definitely a young people's game and I think it's a way that young people make their mark and try to stand up and say something. It is a younger person's game, punk rock stuff. Older guys like me we understand. .. we get it. It's all levels anyway. I don't worry about selling out. I was always willing to sell out. Just pay me!

19:55 HV: Were you paid to take these photos?

19:53 MG: Nope. Never. I think I probably flushed $15,000 dollars down the drain trying to do this magazine. It probably cost us five grand a year, maybe less. It's hard to say, I've definitely spent a large amount at CVS developing film over the past ten years. I'm so glad everything is digital now, so I don't have to go there and pay for 36 photos and only 8 of them really worked. It's strange, I didn't mind losing the money. It was totally ok with me. It was something that I wanted to do, it was worth it. I do think it helped overall, helped me figure out what to do, although I haven't done anything. I think a lot of times these things are just- you do them because its that time in your life and whether or not you do something with it afterwards, I don't think most people do. I think a lot of people are like me, they do it, then they get older and it becomes something they did when they were younger. You walk away with it, you learn a lot of stuff, and you walk way with a different perspective on the world than other people. I don't know if making a zine is actually going to prepare you for your later life. It gives you the endurance to stand for a really long periods of time, drink beer...

18:25 HV: Yea and hock a lougey back at Marilyn Manson

18:22 MG: Yea. Weird stuff like that...

18:17 HV: Strategy

18:15 MG: It helps you; it keeps you with the streets starts. You definitely get some street smarts hanging out at clubs all the time but whether or not it really prepares you for anything, I don't know. I do think that the whole punk rock movement does try to help say something, it gives me a platform. I've always tried to support underground music. I don't mind going out and spending money at shows 'cause as a older yuppie that's what I can do to support it. That's what I do now, buy at-shirt.

17:42 HV: Or buy a poster...

17:40 MG: A CD, a poster. Try to support the artist. Its hard now, these days you just don't know. I try to support them when I know them. But some people it's hard to tell who's a record company band and who's not. All that is just so bad. It used to be that you know that the merch guy was on the bus with them selling these ten-dollar shirts they were screening in the hotel room. Nowadays its like, did they get those printed up and carrying them on the bus 'cause the guy that's selling them is tTom the club and he's making a cut. I find it hard to discern sometimes what is a major label deal and what's not. You gotta go with what you want, what feels alright. 16:56 HV: What are you going to do with all the binders of photos? 16:53 MG: I don't know. I think for the past two years I've been talking about putting together some kind of a book. A book either of Whatever magazine, the Big Bad Whatever book, or a book of photos that I took. I'm really not sure what to do and I just keep kicking it around. I'm not sure if I'lI ever do anything. My latest idea was to take the magazine stuff, the pictures and the reviews and try to find the poster and the bootleg and put it all together in a book. But, that, I'll never be able to do that. For me it would be an encyclopedia of concerts I went to, but I would like to do that for myself But I could never publish anything that was like, insert Liz Phair bootleg here. I couldn't do that. I talked with the two Petes about maybe there's a way we could take some of my pictures and your posters and do like a Providence thing. And I think that's may be where I'm going now. 'Cause with The Art of Modem Rock it glosses over what happened at Fort Thunder. And I'm realizing that even what I know is much more than what's in here (points to book), and I know very little. Maybe there's a way to do some sort of local publication of, here is Providence's poster history. And I can start at Fort Thunder and talk about all the guys and where they went from there and maybe there's a way to do that.

15:23 HV: That would be really exciting...

15:21 MG: Yea, because this book ignores Jim Draper and somewhere or another at Fort Thunder they were making stuff and they doing stuff, doing all their own little things but Draper showed up as a concert promoter and an artist. He started Hidden Agenda. Hidden Agenda was concert promotion and there was Renegade printing. He's promoting as Hidden Agenda and printing posters as Renegade and he got all the Fort Thunder guys to do posters for Renegade printing. Somewhere they mixed there, they come together and out of that coming together then comes Cardoso and Uncle Pete. Cardoso is mends with Draper and mends with Old Big Giant guy. He was doing flyers for the Strand, so he starts up. There's a piece that the Art of Modem Rock is missing and that's that after or somewhere during Fort Thunder's time, somebody started an actual printing business up there. That was more than Brian Chippendale and Ian and Jim Drain pasting stuff around town. It was something more than that. I think an actual business. And he still prints now, if you see at Tom's Tracks they sell those boxing style posters that say "Rancid at the Strand," it's just a printing, that's Renegade printing. Somehow he's still running the printing. . .

13:58 HV: Draper is still around?

13:56 MG: ... he is running off reproductions of those old concerts. He's around here somewhere. I met him a couple years ago at Gallery Agno, she had done a silkscreen show and he had done a Beck poster. It was the first time I think I met him. But that piece of the history is missing. Maybe I could do a combination of my stuff and their stuff and tell that story somehow. I would like to do that; I'm not mends enough with Draper or any of those people up at Fort Thunder to know whether or not I could get permission to use their artwork. I think the two Petes would let me use their artwork. It would be a mendly thing. I don't think I could get the other guys to do it. I know I couldn't get Brian Chippendale to tell me a story, he's such a mystery and I think he likes that. He likes being elusive. Maybe I could get Ian or Drain or some of those guys to tell the story. Either for myself or for everybody, at some point, I would like to do that. Because even I don't understand it. I'm hoping that this professor (Paul Buhle) can help and you guys are interviewing some of these guys. I don't know 'cause I didn't grow up here. I wasn't ever really that close to the scene. I just know from poster collecting how its changed and from going to all the shows, how its changed.

12:39 HV: You've been collecting posters since you got to Providence?

12:36 MG: Yea. And when I first came up here I met Ian up at Fort Thunder. He was doing posters and I forget, they had a website, Hidden Agenda had a website with poster links. They were doing Foo Fighters, Marilyn Manson, Sonic Youth posters. I went up there once and bought a couple for ten dollars, I think I went up there two or three times so I've got like six or seven of them but they all say Renegade printing on them. I know that there is some kind of a difference there. And while The Art of Modern Rock is telling me that Fort Thunder came and went and that was it I know that there was something else there. I'll figure it out someday.

11:52 HV : You could do another investigative report

11:50 MG: Exactly or maybe, I've been talking to these guys; maybe there is a way to publish a small vanity book of Providence posters. Mad Peck is still alive, he's here and he's broke. Maybe there's a way he would let us use his images and then get the other stuff. There's a huge gap between the late sixties and late eighties. I don't know what anybody did for twenty years. I really don't have a clue. I have some of the junk I had as a kid in Buffalo, those kinds of flyers, the Black Flag flyers that were are very famous now, and that was the art form. I don't know what happened up here for those twenty years. I would just like to do the period I was here, late nineties, as Fort Thunder is dying. It's strange, 'cause you know; Cardoso is not in here (the book) as much as he should be. Its not really focused towards us. So there are huge gaps in it, and that's what I think I could do. Maybe there's someway to combine the photography, the concert reviews and the posters into something that would be more marketable in the local area. Maybe I'll start working on that.

10:37 HV: That would be exciting

10:36 MG: Yea, I just started to gather up the best pictures I have and the passes. When Lupo's closed last year, Rich asked me to give him a CD of stuff' cause he had no idea- Green Day played here? So he asked me to make him a CD of pictures and I told him I would. I never gave it to him but I did it. I went through my pictures and made a bunch of it. I'll call him soon and get that to him. I have a list in my head of what pictures I have that are pretty decent because so many of them are really bad. They were ok to print and put in a fanzine but as far as to publish in a real book, I don't know. A lot of times I feel like so much of it is crap. I don't know if it's good enough to publish in a real book. Maybe the way history is nowadays, everything is getting written very quickly, maybe there is a place for it.

9:43 HV: And maybe there is something about a bad photograph but coming from an era of zines and do-it-yourself, it would seem appropriate

9:31 MG: Yea, it might fit into that whole scene. And it may be marketable. I noticed now the Beasties Boys and Pearl Jam both have black and white photography books out, done by their guys that follow them on tour. Maybe there's way to do a grungy sort of Providence book about the punky grungy stuff that happened here. I don't think I have... there are a lot of other people in this town that are serious photographers. There are two girls that I see at everything who have going to shows here since the eighties. They, I'm sure, have a wider range of stuff. Mine is pretty small and I'm missing a lot of stuff. I cant' tell the whole story but I could tell my part of it or maybe get away with something that was marketable. It's so hard to do you know I keep, literally, kicking it around. Part of it is I don't want to go back and rewrite the bad reviews I wrote. I always stayed away from saying bad things but wrote them down in my notebook. I have all these notes about what really happened. Maybe I'll do that. Most of what really happened was that I just wasn't on the list and I was supposed to be on the list and I had to bitch about it for an hour until somebody found the fucking manager and let me inside. There's very little history that I actually saw. I didn't go to Green Day when they played the Halfshell. Anything that's talked about as a historical moment I don't know if I was there. Maybe those Rage shows, maybe those Pearl Jam shows but that's not very punk. I don't know if I witnessed too much history. As far as memorable history moments that should be written about.

7:45 HV: But like, the zines and the web publishing is historical or it's on its way, in the transition between the present and the past present?

7:32 MG: Yea, it is. It's the past present that's being nostalgically thought about, even now. It's funny 'cause it's so soon after. I always thought with Pete's posters, I would be an old and gray man before any of those things were worth a hundred dollars. That's the way it worked with the hippy posters. But now ten years later, the Pearl Jam posters are selling for eight grand. That's ridiculous! People are spending house money on Phish posters. History is being written very quickly. It was weird to think all weekend about what my place was in history. 'Cause I knew I was doing this so all weekend I was walking and like- Lizzy, I wasn't really part of the underground, was I? It was middle /ground more than anything. I wasn't really underground, covering stuff that wasn't talked about, pretty much all the stuff we did was connected to a record label. Some of the local stuff not but most of the stuff that we covered was somehow or another on a record label. I was a little weary about this because I don't really know if I was that underground. In a way, though, just publishing a zine

6:22 HV: Just publishing a zine

6:21 MG: Yea, is a sort of underground thing. I can understand that. It's very strange to try and think about your place in history when it's only like five years ago. But, in a place like Rhode Island, stuff like this does alright. Rhode Island is small enough that everybody remembers everything and everyone knows everybody up here. That first exhibit you guys did was really interesting 'cause I was able... I know that guy! He's still around town. Those Philip and Jorge guys, they've been in every crazy band and been doing art up here for years. There are a lot of players up here, in such a small town. Its kind of a nice town to be in, there are enough artists up here that people let you get away with this kind of stuff. I think was always pretty well received. Like- oh look, there's the fanzine guy. Nobody ever gave me crap. Everybody was always happy to see him, hey that's that guy he's doing his thing. Let it be. Anything else I could help you with?

4:59 HV: Well, why did you chose the zine, just because in high school

4:52 MG: Well because I had a degree in journalism so I knew how to do paste up sort of and I knew that would be easy. I couldn't put stuff out on Cds or records, I wasn't visual enough. The photocopy fanzine was definitely the way to go. We never, I think, we printed a variety of numbers of them. The first couple there were only probably a hundred and then we got up in the three four hundred range when we were blowing' em out on the work stuff. Mostly they went to record companies. I never had any serious subscribers. I would have the occasional person that would send me the two dollars in an envelope and write- I heard about you, send me stuff. I had a PO box in Wayland Square for a long time but then they changed the laws so you had to have your really name on the PO box, so all the fake names we were using, the Reverend McStretchy, we couldn't use it anymore. I stopped having the box 'cause I couldn't use pseudonyms anymore to subscribe to the 700 Club stuff and get wacky- I used to get gun catalogs and stuff from the wingnuts. I liked the PO box for its anonymity but then they took it away. I had to get rid of the PO box, which was kind of a bummer.

3:24 HV: Any final comments on Providence music? Zine?

3:19 MG: I think Providence is a fine little town. Providence is a great second-market town. I think that overall the support that local kids get is pretty good. I think whatever scene you're a part of, whoever your mends are; they do turn up at these shows. Artist, music, or otherwise, are pretty well supported in Providence. They do get the shit shaft from the city about, they make all this to do about art free zone that never happened. In a way I could see how the bigger government of Rhode Island isn't supportive of our scene 'cause our clubs are going away. But the people of Rhode Island support it. There are so many people tied in with RISD and Brown that are used to young people venting and getting this stuff out, they get away with it and they support it. I think Providence is a good town; it could be better as far as the support, the real support that it got from the city government and state government. What happened after the fire at that club I didn't really like I saw every promoter, every club owner, on television saying you've never seen a fire in my club. When I have in fact see a fire in every single one of their clubs. I've seen somebody light a piano on fire or a drum cymbal, or spit fire in the air. I've seen it happen so for them to go on TV and say, oh no, not in my club. I felt was disingenuous. They should have said, god that was a bad safety snap and it's a horrible thing. They should have tried to support that guy. By not supporting him they just screwed themselves so then it was much easier for Lupo's to get booted out and much easier for them to put the clamp on the Strand. Now they're clamping down and taking licenses away because guys are getting knifed up outside of the dance clubs. That's a bad sort of political environment. Its bad. This town is a huge art town with RISD, with what happens with all those kids, this could be a great town but it's not because some of the political stuff. I think if they let those kids go and gave them more a venue space... I would love to see them get a performance space, the RISD space. Kids put on shows; they let the RISD people do it. Give them that Hefferneffer museum; make a space out of it. It was bad, it's a shame that they took Fort Thunder away from them the way they did. 'Cause they were running something that was cool. I understand working in a law office that there were risk factors and insurance factors and all that shit but somehow or another you have to let those people create if you want them to be around. I think the city is a better place when you support the artists. By not supporting them you just make it into a worst place. Now everybody has gone to Pawtucket. Providence doesn't have a lot of stuff. I don't know what's going on in the clubs so I don't know if there's much music starting up out there but I don't know. I don't think they're getting much support from the city though, Mayor Cicilline. Buddy talked a good game with his art zone but never really got it off the ground. It's just a shame that they haven't supported it the way they intended to.