SONIC IGUANA MAGAZINE - Issue #1

SONIC IGUANA MAGAZINE Issue #1 pdf 1997
In 1999, Jeff Dahl established his own irreverent fan magazine called "Sonic Iguana". Published three times a year by Jeff Dahl/Ultra Underground, the fanzine covered areas of music such as punk, trash, powerpop, glam, garage, rockabilly, and blues. He does direct-mail orders to stores by himself, and hired a distributor to make "Sonic Iguana" available internationally in Japan, Australia, Israel, South Africa, Malaysia, Tahiti, and all over Europe and the United States. "I have offers for bigger distribution and people interested in upping the circulation. But I want to keep it at this level," Dahl, who used to read "Rolling Stone" and "Creem" when those publications were still underground ventures, revealed to Smith. "This underground is like a real word-of-mouth thing, too. The thing I like about it is that it is not at all casual music fans. It is people to whom music still means something." Source
"Ya just gotta like this RnR zine that's edited and published by Jeff Dahl. It has a bad attitued and a firm policy on "NO fucking poetry" that make it a great read. Issue #1 contains an excellent artice on Johnny Thunders written by Nikki Sudden. Issue #2 has an interview with Cheetah Chrome by Jeff Dahl where he asks all the right questions. There are also informed and intelligent interviews with Donita Sparks of L7, Bebe Buell, Kim Shattuck of The Muffs and Cherie Currie of The Runaways, among others. Hey, there's even a poster drawing of Suzi Quatro! (in fact it's Joan Jett!)
It's a music zine so there's music reviews but only for discs that Jeff likes well enough to talk about. (It's his zine so he does what he fucking well wants.) Both issues also contain 'Short An' Sweet' reviews that tell you what you wanna know quickly. I've noticed that he mentions a couple of local faves 'The Viletones' and 'Teenage Head' which puts him in my good books.
These first two issues are great and set a standard that will be hard to match. I can only hope that future issues can keep up the quality..." Source
DON'T MISS "Reflections on Johnny Thunders" by Nikki Sudden !!!