Anne Elizabeth Moore (zinester, writer, former Punk Planet editor)
SPB: What do you miss about running a zine? What has changed the most in music since Punk Planet ceased publication?
Moore: For folks who've followed my work, they'll realize that since we folded Punk Planet in the middle of 2007 very little has changed about what I do except it has become WAY more exciting. I basically started doing self-publishing work in Cambodia, where I didn't manage a single long-running title like PP, but instead taught the first generation of young women to attend college as a group in the history of the country how to make their own zines. Considering the poverty and literacy rates in the country, it wasn't an easy sell at first, and once we made our zines we of course also had to invent a distribution mode, and find readers, and figure out all the other stuff about zne-making that we take for granted in the US because we have a semi-functioning media dissemination system. There, we invented it. It was really amazing and rewarding work, and the subject of my two recent books Cambodian Grrrl (2011) and New Girl Law (2013), both of which have been getting great awards and international attention, which makes me really happy. It's important to me that this work is not just for the white, male, American underground that was most visible back in the PP days, but that the important and useful stuff about self-publishing and freedom of expression can travel across boundaries of race and class and gender.
So, to your second question (which is a trick, because it really is two questions), I'd say that what's changed in music that I've been excited about is stuff like The Messenger Band, a group of former garment factory workers who tour around Cambodia singing songs about the international garment trade. Once you've roadied for folks like that—a gig I wrote about here—house shows don't have quite the same appeal, you know?
