Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Zoo World
Posted by s woods on February 12, 2013
Not that obscure, really. I know my brother had a copy or two, and Richard Meltzer mentioned it (somewhat mockingly) in my interview with him. But it’s more or less forgotten, and I’ve no idea if it was any good or not. (My guess is that, like a lot of ‘zines from the period, it had some decent contributers but a limited budget and/or no clear aesthetic differentiation from the big kids on the block — Creem, Rolling Stone, Circus, and Crawdaddy. But who am I to say?)
Richard Riegel said
Zoo World was published in Florida, Miami I believe. It had a Rolling Stone-like tabloid format, while its editorial personality was probably closer to the post-Paul Williams Crawdaddy, as I recall.
I do have one weird Zoo World experience in my own resume. In the summer of 1973, when I was intent on getting published in CREEM, I wrote a completely fictional profile of some dire country-rock band I’d made up, with lots of satire of that scene, and sent it off to Lester Bangs. He returned it to me with a note that he found it funny, but too “obvious” a parody to run in CREEM. So I shipped the ms. off to new player Zoo World, and before long got a request from an editor there, wanting to know more about the band I’d profiled, as they sounded interesting and might be worthy of a full feature in Zoo World(!) I still recall sneaking out of my welfare job to a phone booth (q.v.) on 6th St. in downtown Cincy and calling said editor down in Miami, to break it to him gently that the band existed only in my head.
Zoo World and I avoided each other after that incident, but I was sure to let Lester know what had happened and that “obvious” was definitely in the eye of the beholder!
s woods said
Too bad, in a way, they didn’t print it first! Though probably better for you. I’m assuming ZW stuck it out for a year or two?
Steven Ward said
I think a guy named Arthur Levy was the editor. I remember him doing liner notes to the Workshop of the Telescopes BOC compilation.