The East Village Inky #48
by Ayun Halliday
It's the first-ever East Village Inky music issue! In these 40 pages we get essays about influences and awakenings, an ode to Rickie Lee Jones, and directions for an "illegal download" mixtape featuring bands like The Mekons and The Buzzcocks. It's a packed issue as our humble host Ayun Halliday (author of the SATW Foundation Lowell Thomas Journalism Awards winning Zinester's Guide to NYC) takes us on a wild dash through her life and how it connects to auditory enjoyables. Other noteable topics, musical landmarks, and sweet-ass heroes you'll find in these pages: a great drawing of Todd Rundgren; Jimi Hendrix; Tegan and Sara; French music; tunes from films; Greg Kotis' "Secrets of Lyric-writing REVEALED!"; and a profile of local Brooklyn teens and what they're listening to (e.g., Annie, age 14, says, "I can't stand the luke-warmity of modern hipster rock. It seems so 1/2 hearted and undercooked to me, really unappetizing." Amen, little sister.) We say this every time, and it's always true, BEST ISSUE YET!
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One-time member of the Chicago Neo-Futurists theatre company, Northwestern grad, writer of several books, zinester and native Hoosier, Ayun Halliday is now the proud publisher of forty-eight issues of The East Village Inky. EVI was begun when Ayun and husband Greg Kotis (Urinetown, look it up!) lived in an East Village apartment. Now in Brooklyn with two children, she continues to produce this hand drawn, handwritten and hand-laid-out zine. This is my first encounter with EVI and just my luck, it’s also the first ever music issue, and I like music. In this forty page mini, Ayun recounts tales of her musical listening history touching upon early influences from grade school through high school, college and beyond. I must admit, I do not have much in common with Ayun as far as musical tastes (Todd Rundgren is the zine’s centerfold for example), but I won’t dwell on that. What I can relate to is the joy of making and receiving mix tapes and I agree that movie soundtracks are good ways to discover new music that is often old music. I enjoyed the section in which a smattering of “hip” Brooklyn teens are interviewed about what they're listening to. They seem to have pretty developed musical tastes, which is either due to living in Brooklyn, their parents, the accessibility of music on the Internet or all three—the perfect storm for "hip" in this modern age, I suppose.
EVI reads like a conversation you're having with a friend you haven’t seen in a while and you only have a short time to talk. A lot gets crammed in, topics change quickly and sometimes you lose the thread of the converation for awhile but your friend is so happy to fill you in that you really don't care.