In Nashville, Tennessee in 1993, a small group of musicians and artists began to map out a collaborative creative organization that became Braincase Collective, with an initial focus on producing one of the staples of DIY punk underground culture: zines! Many of these artists found each other prior to easy access to the internet via the local BBS scene and its subsequent gatherings and parties. In order to facilitate production of these budding zinesters, someone on "the inside" was needed: a person willing to work the graveyard shift at a corporate copy shop, allowing for reduced production costs.
In 1995, when a trio of Braincase Collective artists made the trek to Olympia, WA, known for its own active zine community, the same strategy was applied to aid the local community of zinesters and bands there with a modest discount. The rather stuffy corporate retail atmosphere was transformed after midnight into a bustling print shop for punks, who were exploring collage and pre-risograph copy machine peculiarities, creatively "misusing" office equipment for the purposes of pure artistic exuberance. Then, as the sky began to lighten once again, a fresh batch of zines was shipped out and the copiers would get a brief cooldown before once again being relegated to reproducing dry business documents.
Due to the demands of being a member of a touring band, the person on "the inside" eventually had to leave the post in 1997, having served an honorable (if somewhat sneaky) tour of duty in the corporate retail trenches, and subsequently Braincase Collective flipped the hustle legit and had to shell out full price for zines from then on.
Click on the thumbnails to read the zines.
