Torpedo magazine
Issue #1
Feb/March 2002
For more information, visit Torpedomag.com.
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While watching TV last night or this morning before work, you might have heard about another single-digit body count of US soldiers in Iraq, or another holy bombing somewhere in Syria/Lebanon/Jerusalem, or a stuffed bag of steroids who used to jockey his modified body on a stage of muscle and near-nakedness and who now looks like he'll become the next governor of California. Well, your world is about to get weirder. The unnamed powers that be are not merely able to make a mass-mediated public believe that acts of haphazard warfare are morally necessary and tuck bureaucratic flowcharts back into themselves until most civil processes play out like Kafka's The Trial; they've successfully suspended time in an effort to gain immortality. Your rogue calendar may be flipped to October, 2003, but ours is firmly glued on "Feb/March 2002" -- the date printed on the cover of Rochester, NY-based Torpedo's first issue, coincidentally enough. Technically, it's now October, 2003 and "Feb/March 2002" at the same time. No questions. Watch your TV. You may eventually learn the fine art of doublespeak.
As a first issue, Torpedo is buoyed by healthy, first-issue energy, but spread thin with first-issue content that can either be casually enlightening or downright self-indulgent. Never mind the fact that unsanctioned reports suggest Torpedo has made it to its eighth issue while the mighty Splendid has been wrestling with the hands of time. "Feb./March 2002" is now, and now Torpedo's interviewers might take too much of a couch-bum stance in their rapport with an assortment of indie/punk rockers, yielding either half-baked but pleasant dialogs about touring vans or ninth-grade-level come-ons to a Birkenstock babe named Ashley Cox. Dream-poppers Longwave get the first jocular, buddy-buddy interview treatment, revealing predictable bits about touring ("touring... can be measured on a basis of smells"), label-searching, famous people and life before RCA picked them up and shook a second full-length out of them in the non-existent future of this year. More questions about recently played festivals, touring experiences, random (but usually unimaginative) you-could-play-with-your-favorite-band scenarios and political positions are fielded by Pro Solar Mechanics, Libertine, Visionstain and Ashley Cox. Of the four, Libertine's glam-punk frontman Belvy K. navigates some of the more banal questions with the most verve, turning in a few eyebrow-raising stories about meeting Joe Strummer and surviving the departure of Libertines guitarist/co-songwriter Jamie Coville in the process. (Query: Aren't they "The Libertines"?)
The rest of the mag freeloads with a lot of last-minute filler -- some of it passable, some of it yawn-inducing, and all of it badly edited (like indie zine readers care, right?) (They should -- Ed.). A borrowed article from Dave's Anarchist Library (available on the web) gives a few paranoid pointers on dealing with cops. The magazine's nameless jokester applies the "Prison Bitch Name Generator" to a handful of celebrities and does a Top 11 Best Ways to Kill Yourself List, both of which score some genuine chuckles ("Michael 'Who's The White Guy' Jackson" and "Suicide #5: Drown in a toilet" are my faves). On the other hand, a fake article linking "creative people" with "auto-sexual pleasure" and a Polish translation exercise might have seemed funny or even insightful at 4:00 a.m. during an all-night deadline quasher, but on page they're tedious and indulgent.
After this, Torpedo #1 officially enters the twilight zone of back-features, book columns, fiction samples, squeezed-in comic strips and capsule reviews that give even zines with bad mid-issue doldrums a second wind. Editor Lincoln Neal rips out a fine day-in-the-life short story set in 1994 New York that makes up for its self-conscious grittiness with an unexpectedly natural ending. Someone named Al stands on a Victorian soapbox and dishes out Ben Franklin-isms with a stone-straight face. A piece of pulp anarchy, Red London by Stewart Home, is reviewed by someone named Josh with pulp highbrow clunkiness. There's also a non-fiction piece about driving Greyhound buses, a photo collage on the secret lives of bellhops and an essay about why we should eat our dead -- all before those small-print capsule reviews (here, Dufus, Hot Snakes, Hot Water Music, Landspeedrecord!, among others) that close out any respectable music mag.
From the look of it, Torpedo already has the format, organization and dedication required to pound out a respectable zine in the future/present. Remember: looking at later issues is impossible because they haven't been issued yet. If you think otherwise, you're disagreeing with the Party, but don't let that stop you from admiring just how far Torpedo might have come since this, their first trip to the printer.
-- Matt Pierce
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