Chinmusic #6 / $4 / Full Size / 52 Pages / http://www.chinmusic.net / PO Box 225029, San Francisco, CA 94122 / Reviewed 22 February 2004
Baseball baseball baseball punk talking about baseball. That is what Chinmusic is (obviously) about, and it really is a challenge for someone to fill up over fifty full-sized pages of material that pretty much stays on topic. Chinmusic’s editors go a little far in this aspect, as some of the pieces really jump across the line from interesting to annoying. For example, a piece that is about the best baseball movies having “Field of Dreams†being one of the worst baseball movies of all time is right next to another piece about how the aforementioned movie is one of the worst movies ever (but it is written by Ben Weasel, so one kinda has to run it). The bands that Chinmusic interviews in this issue are nothing less than amazing – The Weirdos and the Rubber City Rebels both sit down with staff writers, and crack out interesting and short interviews. To finish up the magazine, an interview with major league pitcher Tim Spooneybarger and a mass of longer reviews are snuck in, making this zine on the verge of being great. However, Chinmusic has some minor issues that make the zine a little weak, and they include the last of CDs reviewed for the amount of zine space that the section is given; 5 or 6 reviews per page rendered in a font that is much too wasteful of space. Also, a half-baked (and overly long) interview with Michael Zagaris really falls on its face. A magazine that has a lot of things going for it, but also is one that still needs to fix some minor errors.
Rating : 6.0/10