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Review: Pills a Go Go : Fiendish Investigation into Pill Marketing, Art, History, and Consumption
by Jim Hogshire
The drug-appreciative likes of Hashish! (1998) and Opium get lighthearted companionship. Besides "the best tidbits" from the 'zine Pills-A-Go-Go, Hogshire showcases stuff about drug paraphernalia and "inspiring graphics" concerned with "the many taboo, absurd, ignored and forgotten ways pills continue to shape our lives." And then there are the instructional pieces. The kind of instruction offered is practical, especially for home labs, and includes "Making Hard Drugs Out of Mom's Codeine Pills" and "Hacking Valium" (i.e., making diazepam). If offering such information to library patrons seems dicey, think of it as just so many home-schooling science exercises. Mostly, this is a history of popular pills and an exploration of the pill-head lifestyle. The graphics are a treat. Juxtaposing images condemning pill-popping with contemporaneous ones marketing it, they rouse nostalgia for the consumer icons of the past. Later, in an appendix, they amount to a gallery of druggy paperback book cover art. Valuable resource or pop-culture conversation piece. I remember reading about the Pills-A-Go-Go zine a few years back in Chip Rowe's Book of Zines. The excerpt looked interesting, and the address for the zine was in the back of the book, so I sent my $2 cash in with a request for the latest copy and - guess what? - as it sometimes happens in the zine world, my copy of Pills-A-Go-Go never arrived. But I don't hold a grudge and $2 isn't a fortune, so I bought the book a few weeks ago from amazin' Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0... I wasn't disappointed! It's as good as the reviews say - one of the most interesting zine compilations I have read in a long time. The art alone is worth the price of the book (cover $16.95, Amazon $13.56). Great reproductions of ads for sedatives - featuring the stereotypical 1950s harried housewife. An interview with Jim Hogshire, zine editor, from The Book of Zines: http://www.zinebook.com/interv/pills.html Whether you're a Valley of the Dolls fan, or just a pop culture junkie like I am, you'll love this book!
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The copyright of the article Pills-A-Go-Go in Zines is owned by . Permission to republish Pills-A-Go-Go in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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