Scan from _Mirror_, december 9 to decembre 16 1993, Montreal
Serial connector logo in center (/zines/run/images/serial.gif)
NetWORKS written vertically, to the left of the logo and text

NETWORKS
--------

            The rave scene
            moves quickly.
            Locations are kept
            secret to the last
            minute; ravers rely on
            word-of-mouth to
announce upcoming bashes, and they
have to call a carefully guarded
phone number 24 hours in advance
of the event for the details about
when and where. The attraction of
the rave scene resides partly in its
underground roots, but it also gets
its cachet from the state-of-the-art
technology in both the music and the
drugs, and ultimately from the
unhibited party itself. Which of
course makes the rave scene an ideal
inhabitant of the Net.

  Francois Dion, a 23-year-old radio
show host at l'Universite de
Montreal, figured this out when he
launched R.U.N. in january. Raving
Up North is a billingual e-zine about
the techno/rave scene in eastern
Canada. The electronic magazine is
the companion to Dion's Friday-night
show, Branche au monde [sic], on the
university radio station, CISM (89.3
FM, Friday at 9 p.m.). The show
features techno music, French rap
and other upbeat music, as well as
talk about the latest technology.
R.U.N. does much the same. It
includes salient details about
upcoming raves in Ontario, Quebec,
the Maritimes and even New
England. The requisite rave-line
phone numbers are there, as is info
about bus tours to raves in other
cities. Dion said he only includes the
American raves if local DJs are
scheduled to appear at them;
otherwise, he concentrates on the
Canadian scene. There are also CD
reviews, as well as the occasional
commentary on the rave scene.

  Dion makes a living as a multi-
media and telecommunications
consultant. He writes R.U.N. with
the help of contributors in other
cities. It's a labour of love; in the true
spirit of the net, Dion doesn't make a
cent off his "hobby". And R.U.N. is
one of the few e-zines in Montreal
that is cultural instead of techie.

  To get on the R.U.N. mailing list,
send an email request to
dionf@ere.umontreal.ca. If you're
not on the net but have a fax, you
can receive R.U.N. every week by
snail-mailing your fax number to
Raving Up North, Box 312, St-
Lambert, Qc, J4P 3P8.

***

How do you spell "email"? The New
York Times spells it E-mail; others
write e-mail. We decided to spell it
"email" because that's where the
word is headed. Compound words
generally start as two words, turn
into a hyphenated word and then
evolve into a single, unhyphenated
spelling. Why wait to evolve? This
begs the question of why we
bothered to hyphenate e-zine. Maybe
it's because "zine" isn't a word (but it
will be eventually, right?). Hyphens
are a journey into a paper's soul

Peter Scowen