Carbon 14 #23($6, PO Box 29247, Phila. PA 19125)
120 pages that will have you at the magazine for at least six hours. Carbon 14 straddles the line between film and music coverage, with reviews of both film (Adult, Independent, and larger market movies) and music (Mainly much older bands – the editors of this magazine are husband/wife, and are considerably older than many of their readers). The pieces in this issue of Carbon 14 are literally all over the map, from Detroit (The Stooges review, The MC5 movie interview), India (Omir Returns to India), Arkansas (Interview with Jim Dandy Mangrum), and Europe (Bondage, Death, and Chocolates). The vibe given off by Carbon 14 is dependent on the writer and the topic they are writing upon – only a sharp sense of humor governs these pieces, and even then, some pieces are just straight-forward. However, an ancillary theme in the magazine has to be a very liberated sexuality – as evidenced by the numerous porn reviews, the article about “Maxâ€, a very off-the-wall pornographer, and the female-heavy artists Armando Huerta and Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co. The color elements of the magazine are very well chosen and not just printed in color because it is the “cool†thing to do. Still, I cant shake the feeling that Carbon 14 is a zine by older zinemakers for older punks and musicophiles. Pretty much all the bands that are given any sort of coverage (aside from reviews) are acts that have been around for 20-40 years (The Antiseen, The Rolling Stones, MC5, The Stooges, Black Oak Arkansas), and I wonder if more attention couldn’t be given to up and coming acts. Still, the magazine is absolutely huge, and the 7 inch that the zine comes with does much to rectify that problem.