Hub City Zine Review

Hello there! I'm sitting on my parent's back porch in North Jersey and its raining a little bit. We played two awesome shows in the last two days. June 1 was in Montclair at a great practice space/ venue called '8 Underground.' We went on last and the crowd of mainly 18-25 year olds was generally pretty buzzed and ready to rock. It was hot as hell. I normally play with my eyes closed most of the time but I really had to keep them closed this time. The sweat running off my forehead was burning the crap out of my eyes. June 2 was in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Fancy pants area for sure. It looks like what Hollywood thinks a city should look like. Diverse and beautiful people everywhere. 3 story buildings lining the street. Stoops just asking to be sat on. Trees shading the side streets. The bass drum kept running away from me the whole set. God do I hate using other people's drums. Call me a picky brat if you want but I always play subpar on anyone's stuff other than my own. Man in Gray played a killer set minus some tech difficulties. There is little to do in Pequannock, NJ. I've been watching a lot of baseball.

The magazine that has defined punk rock for more than 2 decades, Maximum Rock N Roll, gave Hub City: Out of the Basement #1 an amazing review!!! This is the zine dedicated to New Brunswick, NJ music and art that Marissa and I have been running.

"Very cool little zine, the expressed purpose of which is to cover the New Brunswick, NJ scene. While it would be easy for a zine with an exclusively local focus to be totally irrelevant to an outsider, Hub City deals with issues in such a way that any punk can relate. Laid out in a simple cut 'n' paste style, this debut issue has artwork, photos, brief show reviews, writing on venues being closed and a corrupt NJ development corporation - but the majority of the zine is a long and very well done interview with New Brunswick's premier pop punk band The Ergs. Well worth picking up." - Chris Hubbard

Sweet! Chris Hubbard is the head of MRR (or Zine Coordinator to be PC). Razorcake also did a review that was good but small minded in my opinion. While Chris was able to tap into exactly what I was going for, Razorcake missed it. Media that is interested in the New York scene or the LA scene is not considered irrelevant to outsiders. Interesting art happens everywhere. The issues we deal with in our everyday lives are issues that people all over the world deal with. Limiting your scope allows artists to speak about something that they know a lot about. This heartfelt outpooring is something that is than easier to connect to in a universal manner. I'm really honored that MRR and its head coordinator picked that up.

-Jarrett D