#cometbus 55

[wearepioneerspress]

Back in stock! The new issue of Cometbus!

Order Cometbus #55 from Pioneers Press

[side45x]

Cometbus #55: He would have seen The Fugs

In the latest edition of long-running Berkeley 'zine Cometbus by local artist and punk figurehead Aaron Cometbus, the print's primary author gets nostalgic and reminisces about a few rock shows that made his decade worth it--with mention of one he would trade his birthright in for. "It wasn't that I wished I'd been born at a different time," reflects Cometbus in Chapter 5 of his 55th issue (titled Pen-Pals.) "Who in their right mind would trade Minor Threat at the Tool and Die for Country Joe and the Fish at the Fillmore?"

It's a rhetorical question only meant to incite a resounding, "Uh, not me." It's also luck that shouldn't not burn you up from websurfing to sift through your latest 7-inches/mp3s/CDs in a fit of desperation to find the now's prolific, mobilizing band on tour making waves enough for you to say, 'I didn't miss that,' in a similar vein. And it's easily that feeling of lust for contact with musical greats, or a yearning to get present and make your time here worth it (if not just to sheerly enjoy your day), that drove our band virtuoso to be a part of the good things happening in his town, conquering his unrest to get at something more.

And more's the word, unless coulda, shoulda, woulda: Cometbus ends his thought by conceding in parentheses, "Though the Fugs at UC Berkeley in '65 was one gig I was sorry to have missed."

Us too, man. 

Aaron Cometbus is the pen name and general persona of the Bay Area punk historian and scene drummer, whose given name is Aaron Elliot. He's been zine-ing since '81, the year Cometbus commenced amidst the fanzines he'd kickstarted with partner and musician friend Jesse Michaels of Operation Ivy. Cometbus the publication was less devoted to doting on heroes and closer to a diary with band reviews a la his passion for music. Cometbus went on hiatus for a while at the start of the millennium, and was revived again in 2006 with its 50th anniversary issue.  The latest February 2013 issue, which Side45 is still slowly devouring so to savor the newest never-boring story offered so rarely, focuses on the funny friendship between Aaron and his opinionated, Ukrainian sidekick Yula, and the long-term relationship they sustained through letters.

[dakotafloyd]

I got this in the mail a couple weeks ago and read it all in one sitting.

Cometbus 55: Penpals

I always get really, really excited when I hear that a new Cometbus zine is coming out.  There's something about Aaron's writing that really gets me; even the mundane stuff becomes interesting through his scope.  This zine was no different.

Recently Aaron has been writing longer pieces as opposed to having columns and shorter works make up Cometbus.  Penpals started off a little slow for me, but wound up being a really solid read.  It's definitely a bit of a bummer at times, but hey, it's honest.

If you're a fan of Cometbus, it's his best stuff in a few years.  Get into it.

[dakotafloyd]

But we all hail from somewhere, and the further we flee, the more qualities of where we were raised define us and set us apart, if only for how hard we strive to bury them without a trace.

Aaron Cometbus, "Cometbus 55: Pen Pals"

[wearepioneerspress]

Glamour shots!

Cometbus #55! You can get this beauty right here at Pioneers Press (ex Microcosm)

[wearepioneerspress]

“And so it was that in books I began to find the wise elders I’d been searching for my whole life.

“I wrote to them all, at whatever addresses I could find, to let them know their words were still finding fresh eyes. I made a wide sweep, passing a little praise to anyone whose work I admired, who might feel that their message to the world had been forgotten or ignored.” -Cometbus #55, page 25, right here at Pioneers Press (ex Microcosm)

[wearepioneerspress]

“The writing was fiction, but more real than what passed locally for truth. Call Huey Newton a thug in print, and you’d have to go into hiding. Break the silence on the Black Muslims’ corruption? The journalist who tried was promptly shot dead!

But change a few names and you’d be safe. Fiction afforded Berkeley authors free rein, while giving them a chance to reminisce about their own gun-running and cop-killing days without fear of the Grand Jury reconvening an old case.” -Cometbus  #55, page 24, available here at Pioneers Press!

[wearepioneerspress]

We asked this giraffe chair to write about the new Cometbus for us and HE SAID YES!

Here's a picture of baby Liam's giraffe chair with the new Cometbus, available here from Pioneers Press (the zine, not the chair). The giraffe (which oddly enough DOESN'T HAVE A NECK) wrote the following website blurb for us. And, thus, another big mystery solved: The eternal question you ask kids, pondered by everyone from Rudy Huxtable to us, "What does the giraffe say?" It says:

Aaron Cometbus' #55 issue is a “story about pen-pals” but, like any well-rounded work, it's a lot more than that. It's a story concerned with expectations and growing up; it's about fear of failure (and the future) and the (oft-times surprising) architecture of the things we withhold. It's also about a friendship—two young people (Aaron and Yula), very much the same in some ways but as different as can be; one reaching out for community and seeking acceptance, the other courting (what at first glance seems to be) a private world.

From page 26: “Yula preferred to be detached, while I yearned to be accepted. She was the one who really needed the P.O. box and the non de plume. The anonymity and isolation of a writer would have suited her better than it did me.

“We should have just traded our different ways then and there—but you can’t become the person you want to be while there’s someone already filling that role. We had to move apart before we could take on the qualities in each other that we admired most.”

This quiet, graceful 72-pager covers a lot of ground—both in terms of time and inner-geography. What you're left with is a very satisfying magnum-essay that doesn't compartmentalize or necessarily say "What Is." Like anything true, there are more questions here than there are answers and if you're at all like us, the questions posed will resonate and cycle back for quite some time. This one hit the Pioneers Press homestead pretty hard. His best work yet.