This Musician’s Zine is a Chronicle of a Life in the Crowd

The Creators Project is hosting a digital zine making competition called The Offensive. From now through August 17, you can enter by creating a zine and tagging it #TCPOffensive using the all-new zine-making platform, Zean.it. For more information, click here. 

From awkward encounters with indie idols of the late ‘90s, to struggling to find oneself while on stage in front of hundreds, The Fanboy Memoirs zine paints a charmingly honest picture of a life in music. Kevin Alvir, singer/songwriter/producer behind The Hairs (and formerly of twee pop staples The Lil’ Hospital and Knight School) has been documenting his music-filled past. While his new album While I Hated Life, Barbarian just debuted via Old Flame Records (and made BK Mag’s list of the "best Brooklyn albums of the year"), Alvir’s focusing on illustration and design. With the second volume of The Fanboy Memoirs soon to be released, Alvir talks creating the zine and the nostalgia of a youth spent obsessed with music.

The idea for The Fanboy Memoirs all started when Alvir was “drawing pictures for my Instagram, and on a whim I did this drawing of me going to see Cat Power back in the day when she was just starting out. And I wrote a little blurb about how I talked to her and got the setlist from her, and people really responded to that piece. And it inspired me to draw more memories. I was really into meeting band members and people who wrote songs.”

Alvir explains his history with making music as starting out as a diehard fan, “and after a certain point the whole process seemed a little more doable for me.” So little by little he began to create more music, and the process is documented in The Fanboy Memoirs. But does Alvir consider this zine a comic? Or something closer to a “perzine” or personal, diaristic zine? “The line’s kind of blurry. Sometimes they can go into comic territory, and tell more of a story, but I think of them as little visual vignettes that talk about my experience.”

Taking this trip down memory lane has been insightful for Alvir, and it made him think about musicians on a more personal level. “I look at somebody else that does music and I don’t know what it’s like for them, but I can’t imagine that it’s a totally perfect ride where it all comes at the right time and they feel amazing and great all through the process. They all must be going through things that are complicated. Just because your music might get attention, it doesn’t fix everything. I feel like I’ve had a lot of questioning as to what my role in music is these days, and I wanted to look back to a somewhat simpler time when I had an unstoppable love of music.”

Alvir knows there’s a risk to putting himself out there with these zines and other illustrations, but he’s resolved to continue making personal work. “I want to focus on my own coming of age. It’s just about me understanding myself better by looking at how I conducted myself back then, and the music I listened to. It’s just giving me a better picture of who I am. I know that it makes me really vulnerable to judgement, but for me it’s a way to get a better idea of who I am. Moments like those, I catch glimpses of myself.”

To catch glimpses of Kevin Alvir yourself, visit his illustration site and follow him on Instagram.

Like zines? Check out Zean.it, a new platform for zine-making. Make your own zine, tag it #TCPOffensive, and you'll be in the running to get printed and included as an insert inside the September Issue of VICE Magazine. Click here for more information. 

Related:

Submit Your Work to Our DIY Zine-Making Competition

Submit Your Art to This Crowd-Sourced Zine Time Capsule

Prison Zine 'Tenacious' Offers Female Prisoners a Chance to Speak Out