Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC

The first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, DC’s highly influential punk community

DIY culture has always been at the heart of DC’s thriving punk community. As Washington, DC’s punk scene emerged in the mid-1970s, so did the ＂fanzines＂ that celebrated it. Before the rise of the internet, fanzines were a potent way for fans to communicate and to revel in the joy of fandom. More than just publications; they were a distillation of punk’s allure, connecting the city to the broader punk community. Fanzines remain a meaningful, tactile, creative medium for punk fans to connect with like-minded people outside the corporate-controlled world.

In Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the archivist and musician John R. Davis unveils the development of punk fanzines and their role in supporting DC’s hardcore and punk scene from the 1970s into the twenty-first century. He sheds new light on DC’s scene and highlights some of its key personalities, including many who are often left out of punk history, with high-quality images of rare zines and insights from numerous interviews with zine creators and musicians. This book vividly weaves together the origin of zines and their importance in underground communities.

For punk enthusiasts, zine creators, American studies scholars, and anyone who has ever felt like an outsider, Keep Your Ear to the Ground traces how the unique environment of Washington, DC, helped zines thrive.

John R. Davis, former drummer of Q and Not U, is the curator of special collections in the University of Maryland’s Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. He co-curated the Visualizing Fugazi exhibit at the Lost Origins Gallery. His articles and commentary appear in the Washington Post, NPR, Notes, The Journal of Popular Culture, Punk, and Post-Punk.