Posted on: May 20, 2008Posted by: JamesComments: 0
Planet Verge #4 ($2, Planet Verge, 15 Albert Terrace, Bloomfield, NJ 07003) This zine is laid out to high heaven. I don’t know if they use QuarkXpress or Adobe Pagemaker or Illustrator or what, but everything looks very sharp. The pieces in Planet Verge really go all over the place, from the Beverly Hills 90210 Brainteaser to famous actors who have not won an Oscar to a bunch of interviews with bands that are on Planet Verge Promotions. All the pieces are done by different people, which really do add a differing flavor to the zine, which still has a do-it-yourself groove to it even though it is professionally laid out. While each piece has something for different groups of people, I still get the feeling that the individual writers could have spent a little more time at the desk before releasing this issue. There are weak graphics that were obviously edited in with Photoshop (such as the box behind Pete’s name in the Pete article), and some of the questions asked in the interviews strike me as ones that are standard-issue (I.E. the interviewer doesn’t know much about the band). Still, the pictures are by far the sharpest I’ve ever seen in an independent magazine, the spontaneity of some of these pieces just delight me. The interplay between the coverage that Planet Verge gives to major label acts (such as The All-American Rejects, Alkaline Trio, and Wakefield), and lesser known acts such as Fixer , Pete, Superspecs, and Trouble Is really shows that there is more to music than a major vs. independent argument.
