In one week I’ll be sitting behind a table at the Portland Zine Symposium. One week from today I’ll also be playing a show with our impromptu zine band, The Copy Scams. What was I thinking? Planning a national zine tour? Organizing a huge zine event? AND starting a band in a month that will only play one show? At least most of the tour planning is done and this year all of the zine symposium organizers are extremely competent so I’m not too concerned with that as much as I have been in the past.
So, The Copy Scams is really going to play a show. So far we have 3 songs with catchy sing-a-long chorused that get stuck in my head. The weird thing is that the music is something I would want to listen to. Steve knows me well!
The first song is like a zine intro full of excused about why the band.zine is late with a chorus of
“No one cares. No one cares. No one cares about your stupid zines”
The Second is a song about stealing copies with lyrics of
“Put the counter in part wayThe honor system was meant to be broken. But my favorite scam of all was the factory default. My favorite scam of all was ONE-ONE-ONE-ONE.”
The third song is a list of likes and dislikes. The likes include things like puppy cats, dinosaurs, craft brewed beer, trading zines and long arm staplers. The dislikes includes Budweiser, Jugaloes, skinheads and Rush Limbaugh. The chorus is ridiculously catchy and gets stuck in my head:
“This is a list of stuff and things and the things I like. (x4) Stuff and things. Things I like.” (x2)
The 4th song is going to be the Phoenix Lights song that Paul and I did acoustically at my Powell’s reading for Smallpressapalooza. We haven’t practiced it yet as a band but I still know the words from before so it should be easy. I’m not sure what the 5th song will be but we only have a week to write it. It should probably be an outro song!
I just realized the other day that I could make a zine of the lyrics and use it as a prop in case I forget! I should work on that soon but right now I have buttons to make.
Alex Wrekk 