Thumb no. twelve zine
[hand sticched heart]
This zine is a half page sized zine that bares some full color art on the front cover that makes this issue a very attractive zine. It’s nice thick book with interviews with Mouse on Mars, B. Fleischmann, Harald "sack" Ziegler, Wechel Garland, Vote Robot, Mumbleboy, Arovane, Inkblot, Momus, MuM, and Isan. A well packed zine layed out and printed quite nicely. There’s even enough room for some reviews at the end. Good deal. Well judging from their taste with whom they interviewed you can tell this is going to be some good reading, and it is! This is one of those kind of zines you can look through, put it down, come back to it later and find stuff you didn’t notice or read. It’s a fun little zine easy to roll and stick in your pocket to carry around and read on the bus or something. The only problem, is they don’t put these out frequent enough. We want more Thumb! We want more Thumb. I guess that says it all! - John Kale

 

LEAD STORY
Willamette Week
Monday, July 24, 2000

Best Of Portland
BEST 'ZINES FOR INDUCING BAFFLEMENT AND AWE

The great thing about 'zines has always been their knack for cracking open the hermetic world views of their self-publishing creators. Unfortunately, the aftermath of the mid-'90s 'zine revolution has seen the advent of entirely too many gooey, navel-gazing ruminations on boyfriends, girlfriends, the secret mysteries of love, etc. Fortunately, a few determined trainspotters continue to document the depths of their own obsessions for a small but grateful public. To wit, a pair of Portland 'zines, Thumb and The Journal of Ride Theory, enlighten on subjects you may not have known existed. Thumb, the project of hump-busting experimental soundsmith Eric Mast, has devoted entire issues to home-built instruments and, most recently, painfully obscure electronic musicians. JORT, meanwhile, continues its inquiry into the metaphysics of amusement park rides (other forms of motion are covered too, but mostly amusement park rides) with its most recent issue. Tracing the theme "Bad Ideas," Dan Howland's 'zine chronicles a number of half-baked notions in automated transport and amusement, and also savages the Disney empire. Cool, eh? Thumb is available at Ozone Records, while you can hit up the good people of Reading Frenzy for a copy of JORT.