2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Orbit magazine, the irreverent rag — created by one Jerry Vile — that poked fun at everything while at the same time featuring local talent long before the rest of the mainstream media would.
Author Rob St. Mary (currently based in Aspen, Colorado but a Detroit area native) has been working on a coffee table book titled Re-Entry: The Orbit Anthology, due on Wayne State University Press in Fall 2015. The book takes a look at the history of Orbit, along with other Jerry Vile productions like Fun and White Noise, in addition to the other alt-weeklies in town. (Full disclosure: At St. Mary's request, we've been digging through the MT archives for content to contribute to the book.)
Per a statement released by the Re-Entry team:
Orbit (1990-1999) was a magazine that showed Detroiters how cool the place really was years before the New York Times, French filmmakers, or others were telling anyone about the city. Readers will witness the evolution of great performers in music and art starting out here before they became internationally known: Jack White and the White Stripes, Kid Rock, ICP, Electric Six (then, the Wildbunch), His Name is Alive, the Gories, techno innovators like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, and more.
A Patronicity crowdfunding campaign for the book has launched today, which features a variety of (tax-deductable!) donation levels with prizes that include an "Orby" T-shirt (as sported by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction), drinks with Orbit food writers Jimmy Doom or Chris Kassel, dinner with Jerry Vile, every single back issue of Fun, or even an original Niagara painting.
Check out a trailer below:
