Filler!

No. 7 $2.00
by Nik Rainey

Damn, but these Canucks really turn my gills a jealous shade of three-week-old-back-bacon green. Not only are they responsible for more funny people per capita than any country on the planet and have the cleanest big cities in North America, but it seems that they can knock off a nifty ‘zine without even upsetting their toques. Filler!, the product of a University of Waterloo (didn’t Napoleon go there? Or was that ABBA?) student by the name of Dave Fisher, is a nifty, compact little organ that traverses some of the better waves of the underground sea without the snippy pretension and uppity attitude that over-ballasts other, lesser mini-mags. Issue #7 namechecks a number of subterranean figures worth knowing, like legendary photog Glen E. Friedman, Sonic Youth drummer and Smells Like Records chief Steve Shelley, and classic surf combo the Tornadoes. But the more eccentric facets of the mag are the real draw, like the feature on the world’s biggest Stranglers fan, a smart exegesis of Superchunk, and Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce on their efforts to make the Guiness Book of World Records as “The World’s Highest Band” (and not the way you might think). And heck, any guy who recognizes that Patti Rocks and Stalag 17 are far more appropriate Christmas films than that over-played Frank Capra piece of schmaltz is a man after my own ventricles.
(PO Box 111, Student Life Postal Outlet, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G0)