Interview by Chinese Water Torture zine
c/o Gerbal 53 Chesnut St. Marlborg, MA 01752-2161
How did you start your empire?
Bad judgment and credit cards. Actually,
I'm very proud of most of my zines and record releases, but without being able
to run up my credit cards $5,000 to 10,000 at a time it would have never happened.
There was hard work involved too because I had to work long hours at my jobs
to keep up on the huge interest payments for as long as I did. At the same time
I went with out sleep to keep up on The Probe side of things. The two years
I lived in the city I didn’t own a bed, have cable, or take a vacation. I was
only focussed on doing the zine and record label.
Is It Easy?
The actual work that goes into putting together
an issue is a huge pain in the ass. I’m especially inept on the business side
of things. When I see lesser zines with smaller circulation and bad print quality
attract more advertising than The Probe I wonder what I’m doing wrong. Then
there is the distro factor, is some places a single store will order 50 copies
of a new issue, even in Germany. Then there are major cities where you can't
even find a single copy. I enjoy putting the thing together, but I lack the
"business savvy" to promote it.
Have you ever dated models?
I can’t remember ever meeting a "model".
Do you mean Probe models? None of them considered themselves "models."
Most of them are friends of mine that just posed for The Probe for fun, no one
has ever been paid for it. None of the girls had a modeling career to promote
or anything like that. Some of them got a thrill out of it and other girls did
it just because they were friends of mine and the thought of being seen naked
in a magazine didn't bother them.
Is there a secret to getting them naked?
No. Usually the girls bring it up themselves.
They’ll make an offhand comment like, "I would do it." I’ll just follow
up on that. The last three featured Probe girls were fans of the zine who wrote
me letters. I write a lot about sex. About one out of every four orders I get
for The Probe is from a female. I think this is because girls enjoy reading
and writing about sex where as guys prefer photos. If you look at other zines
you'll notice that 9 out every 10 columns that deal with sex are written by
females. Women are more likely to pick up book of erotic fiction where as guys
will buy a Penthouse or something.
Have you seen imitators of your zine?
No. I’m kind of surprised by that to
tell you the truth. I¹m getting old, 32, so someone needs to take my place and
put out a real nudey/sex punk zine. However, sex in general is much more prevalent
in zines than it was 7 or 8 years ago.
Sex drugs and rock n’roll?
Sex and Rock n’ roll. I'm not much into
drugs - other than alcohol.
Are there any bands that have impressed
you?
THE BANANAS are the most underrated band
on the planet right now. I fucking LOVE their CD. HICKEY is my favorite band
of all time.
Have you become jaded yet?
No, I'm not jaded on punk rock, but I
am jaded on the punk scene and this is why. A much higher percentage of "punk"
is crap than it was several years ago. The labels that make money are the ones
that market to 14 year olds. The internet has changed things too. Kids don't
look to MRR for new punk music the way they used to. Just as an example, when
I put out the Screeching Weasel picture disc on Probe Records I advertised it
in zines like MRR and Hit List for $4ppd and I got about 20 orders total. Most
kids bought it through Interpunk.com who sold about 800 of them for $7.50 each.
Kids had to buy it off the internet because the distros Probe has don't get
into Hot Topic and other mall stores. Punk kids don’t read zines. They don't
go to small shows. The new generation of punk kids is much larger, but basically
clueless. They like MTV, Nitro, Lookout and shows with $15 door prices and $20
T-shirts. The large scale punk scene is no different than metal was in the'80s.
Metal kids in the ‘80s wore Led Zepellin and Black Sabbath T-shirts along with
their Scorpions and Judas Priest. Punk kids today wear Sex Pistols and Dead
Kennedys shirts along with their Rancid and Offspring.