Posted on: June 13, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0


Rated Rookie (Vol.2, #4, 562 Park Place, #3, Brooklyn, NY 11238)

Can you say white space? I’m sure you all can, and I especially know that the editors of Rated Rookie are very familiar with the concept. Where many zines will stick background images or textures to break up the tedium of the whiteness, Rated Rookie is bold in the sense that they don’t let anything besides very-sharp pictures detract from the article. Rated Rookie is another zine that only tangentially relates itself to the punk music scene or any other typical topics cover by large-print run zines. For example, pieces are inserted mainly to be humorous; “How the West Wasn’t Porn” details two hucksters trying to make a quick buck by reviewing porn videos, and “Anatomy of an Infestation” reads more like a recently unearthed lost episode of Joe’s Apartment. This issue of Rated Rookie’s only intrusion into the field of music comes in an pseudo-documentary style of writing detailing the feud The Human Oddities had with Marilyn Manson during the earliest days of the 1990’s, down in south Florida. By far, the interview with Bob Burns (the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the cover story, is the weakest in the entire zine. This does not mean necessarily the same thing as what a weak piece would mean in a normal magazine, but simply that it is slightly below the high quality of the zine.

Rating : 7.9/10

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