If we were to draw a pie chart, it would seem that most …



Dave Roche is a modest hero among men. When he comes over to your house your dishes are miraculously washed, your cat’s litter is changed, and you are still laughing at his jokes. He typically doesn’t ask anything of you and more so he still believes in punk as he approaches 35. He is the author of On Subbing, the zine turned book about being a punk teacher and more recently About My Disappearance, about having Crohn’s disease. MRR Agents got word that Dave has written other zines but he denies this fervently. Interview and introduction by Joe Biel.

If we were to draw a pie chart, it would seem that most people who publish zines seem to be teenagers - who publish heavily in a short period and burn out. You started to publish zines pretty late in your life - 2001 or so? Do you think that has anything to do with your sticking with it?

I think so.  I got into punk relatively late and zines even later.  I think in your mid twenties you hit a kind of punk life crisis.  Up to that point you can still quit punk, you can get your MBA and play it straight in society.  But if you take it any further than that, you're stuck being punk for the rest of your life, whether you want to be or not.  Teenagers can afford to get jaded or bored and move on to something else; they still have all these options to explore.  At my age, quitting punk would be more than just putting my Naked Raygun records on E-bay.  I wouldn't know how to develop a whole new set of ethics.  My choice is either stay punk or turn into a Sean Hannity-loving, reactionary malcontent.

Can you talk about your motivations to do zines at that time and maybe how the response differed from what you expected?

So I started subbing and I was really into it.  I was telling all my friends about my experiences and writing about it in letters, and then I got worried that I was boring everybody.  For the most part telling people about your job is like telling them about your dreams.  No one cares.  And I worried that I was repeating my stories to people.  So I figured I'd write them all down, copy them, and give them to my friends.  If they weren't interested, they could just throw it out.  I wish I had something more meaningful for you, some political point, like I wanted to leave a document for future historians to see there was some resistance, not everyone was OK with Fox News and the wars and American Idol, or that I was trying to prove that the stories of ordinary people were more interesting and worthwhile than the new Michael Crichton book or whatever, but the truth was I didn't want to bore my friends.  I was a way to avoid hearing, "not again!?!"  But it didn't work, I still bore my friends by repeating my stories.  I mean, how many times have I told you about when I was on vacation with my family and someone stole our van and shit in it?

I was pretty amazed at the response.   I had only expected to give them to a handful of friends.   I was shocked that anybody else cared.  I've gotten some amazing letters from people all over the English speaking parts of the world, and I'm so grateful for that.

Can you talk about the dynamic differences you've experienced with your zines, in the world of punk; as compared to those of a comparably popular band?

Zines definitely have a shorter shelf life than bands.  I won't live to see the day when people stop talking about His Hero Is Gone,  but no one remembers an awesome zine like Sweet Olive anymore.  On the plus side, there seems to be less of an audience/artist dichotomy with zines than with bands.  Trading and writing letters is pretty common with zines and I think when someone reads a zine they can relate to, they're more likely to write and try to connect with the writer.  I think Ted Leo's amazing and I've loved his bands for years, but I would never send him a letter like the one I sent to the girl who wrote the zine Trees. 

And zines can reach a more diverse group of people than a punk band can.  My mom sent my zine to David Sedaris, which is both totally awesome and incredibly embarrassing, and he wrote back to her and said he read it.  I don't think he would have listened to my emo band's demo.

Being that your zines seem to comprise very personal snippets of your life - How do you decide what is worth publishing and sharing with the outside world from your bedroom? Where does that motivation come from?

I wanted to share stories that I thought were entertaining or moments that really affected me.  With my zine about having Crohns Disease, I felt more of a need to explain myself.  I dropped out of sight for a few months and came back with a whole new set of concerns.  If something like that happened to one of my friends, I'd want to know what happened.  And I didn't want to gloss over it.  A lot of people have high ideals for our community, and one of those is looking after each other and tending to each other's needs.  But the flip side of that is that you need to make your needs known.  About My Disappearance was my way of explaining what kind of help I may need in the future.  Because people were concerned about me, but concern without knowing what's wrong or what to do is just pity and I didn't want that.

So there are about 7,000 copies of your book floating around in the world as well as thousands of copies of your zines. I'm going to predict that this is more of a response than you ever expected from your writing. How does that make you feel? What about the people reading those who would have vastly different experiences from your own or would never understand your worldview without your writing?

Yeah, that's way more than I expected.   When I made the first batch of my first zine I made 60 copies, and I thought, "What am I going to do with all these?  I only have four friends."  It's kind of weird to think there are people I'll never meet who know about important pieces of my life, but on the whole, I'm really excited about it.  I don't know how to answer this without sounding boastful or like I'm being falsely modest, but it kind of blows my mind that so many people seem to like it and can relate to it and then share it with their friends.  I'm particularly proud that a lot of people have given my book to their moms.  I'd like to think it's helping those moms gain a better understanding of where their kids are coming from.

You have Crohn's Disease. As a person who has a lifestyle limited by this, can you talk about your response from the punk scene? It seems that, due in part to being a youth based subculture, punks have a harder time dealing with such things and interacting with their peers who aren't as able bodied. Can you talk about your experiences?

The first time I went to a show after getting diagnosed with Crohn's, I remember feeling so jealous of everyone else and really bitter and alienated.  And that's nobody else's fault; I'll take responsibility for those feelings, but like I mentioned earlier, I have a whole new set of concerns now and I don't think people fully appreciate that.  I'm not saying I want things catered to me, just cut me some slack.  I knew a kid who wore the same pair of pants for over a year, I've seen kids eat stuff from a dumpster that really ought to have stayed there, and it's totally cool to pierce your ears or nose with a dirty safety pin, but I let slip one Crohn's fart at a basement show and I'm a pariah.  You know, I'm not over Food Not Bombs, I just have to be careful about what I eat.  Sometimes I'm too preoccupied with the pain in my gut to talk about direct action.  My health takes precedence over a lot of things now.  I can't live the chaos.

I think most people, punk or not, don't really know how to deal with people who are sick.  It's not like a fever or a broken bone where you bring me some soup or some DVDs and in a few days or a few weeks I'll be all better.  My needs are more complicated and long term.  I owe Jenna, Isaac, and Shannon a huge amount of gratitude for helping me out a lot before I had to ask for it.  It's not easy to know when I need help when I look underweight but more or less ok.

I think I have a pretty mild case of Crohn's and to be honest, it doesn't limit me as much as I expected, or as much as it may in the future.  The big thing is that plans for anything more than a few weeks away have to be tentative.  I hope to go on tour in a few months, but a flare-up will cancel that.  But otherwise, I'm still vegan and I still get around primarily by bike.

 

You go on extensive tours with your zines and book. Can you talk about your motivations for doing these and what kind of responses and reactions you get? How have your thoughts and reactions to these experiences changed over time? What do you hope to get out of it in the future?

The main reason I do them is because they're incredibly fun and every time I've toured it's been with people I love to be with.  Beyond that, it's really amazing to get to meet people all over the place and talk and trade ideas.  I feel like ideally zines should be the start of a dialogue, and going on tour is a way to continue it with people face to face.  Even bad days on tour are pretty amazing.  The fact that people will go out of there way to put on a show for you, someone will put you up, and most times people will show you around their city, or that people even show up and support you (I'm under no delusion that people think, "Sweet, Dave Roche is coming to town" – I think people are there to support the idea of what we're doing) -- it's incredible.  The punk scene needs to work on itself in a lot of areas and it's easy to get jaded, but I think going on tour you get to see the best parts of it.  And the response has been good.  At every show people want to talk about something they have in common.

I realize I'm in a privileged position to be doing this and I don't want to take that for granted.  I hope that the tours inspire people to give their talents the credit they deserve, not to wait for someone else's approval.  And in the future I would like to make myself and my ideas a little more vulnerable and get other people's ideas about stuff I haven't fully figured out yet.  I have this half-formed idea about how the way people treat people who are sick is rooted in patriarchy and needs to be examined.  I'd like to get input on that on the next tour.  Maybe it makes no sense at all.

So I was cruising around on my favorite website - the other day and I couldn't help but notice a dozen or so people who listed your book as their favorite. How does this make you feel? How do you feel about myspace in general? Can you sound off about your feelings about internet communication, drama, and shit-talking?

I guess my first thought was, if On Subbing is your favorite book, you really need to read more.  I mean, I'm proud of my book, but it's no literary masterpiece.  I don't know, I guess I'm uncomfortable with it.  I'm glad that people think highly of my book, but I think a lot of people are just kind of name dropping it to prove they like indie books.  It kind of strikes me like yelling for the B-side of an obscure 7-inch when a band asks if there are any requests.

I used to talk shit about cell phones and now I have one, so I'm not going to say anything negative about myspace.  I'll just say I guess I don't get it.  I guess it's useful for booking tours.  And I hope it's pulling people who write bad, vague prose-poetry about their crushes away from zines.  That was kind of shit talky, huh?  Whoops.

In a recent interview in Maximum Rock and Roll, Crimes Against Humanity Records laid out a very strong anti-vinyl, pro-CD argument. I hear that you also believe in this immediately obsolete digital medium. Why would you believe in such hogwash? Download any good MP3s lately?

I love records, but CDs are just more convenient.  You can fit more music on them.  They're easier to move and cheaper to ship (having made two long distance moves and two intercity moves in the past two years, this is important to me).  Also, I've been told that manufacturing compact discs releases less pollution and gross chemicals than manufacturing record, but I don't have any facts to back that up.  I know records sound better, but my hearing is shit anyway so that doesn't matter so much to me.

And yes, I have downloaded some good mp3s lately.  I think Soulseek has ruined my love of music.  When you have access to everything; nothing is that special.  However, it lets me hear things I would never buy, like Katia Ricciarelli.  And Aida comes up in crosswords all the time, now I've finally heard it.

What's hot on your reading list? What your favorite books of all time?

I read a book of short stories by James Ngugi called Secret Lives that I really enjoyed.  Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion is pretty amazing.  It almost made me want to move back to Los Angeles.  There were a couple stories in  I, Etcetera by Susan Sontag that I thought were incredible.  As for all time favorites As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin are up there.  And I recently read Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age by Kenzaburo Oe and it blew me away.  It almost seemed like a perzine taken to it's literary extreme.

When are we finally going to get another book out of you? What are you working on at the present? What's formulating on the back burners?

Soon…maybe.  The goal is to finish a novel by the time I'm 35, but I'm realizing I'm not good at making things up.  I guess I don't have much of an imagination.  I'm working on another zine about having Crohn's.  I want this one to be more about how I want people to treat me.

What do you want to see out of the world of zines in the future?

I want Travis Fristoe to write a book.  Consider this my pre-order.  And I want more people doing zine tours.

How would you most like to see the punk change in the future?

I wish people would stop thinking GG Allin was good.

Anything else? How do people reach you? Where's ?

There's no , but my brother and I might do a website with our dumb drawings.  He draws bats and aliens with naked human asses and I draw one panel comic strips that attempt to be less funny than Ziggy.  I'll keep you posted.  I can be reached at poodrow@.  And hopefully a Canadian tour will be happening soon, so Canadians, please get in touch.

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