Joshua Plague
Joshua Plague is a prolific zine editor and musician from the Northwest U.S.
Joshua's real name is Joshua Ploeg. He began to call himself "Plague" as a play on the mispronunciations of his real last name "Ploeg" and it stuck throughout his career.
Joshua is the creator of over thirty different zines. He is perhaps best known as the author of the Now I... series of zines. These include the titles Now I Devour You, Now I Don the Mask of Melancholy and Now I Write A Dictionary. He is also the creator of other zines such as More Garbage On Paper and Picture Book: Computer Art and Words of Wisdom.
Joshua is also well known as the lead singer for the hardcore punk bands Mukilteo Fairies; Behead The Prophet No Lord Shall Live; Lords of Lightspeed; The Special Friend; and as the drummer for the band Kiss Me Kill Me. All of his bands were known for their Do-It-Yourself ethics, setting up their own shows, and recording for independent record labels such as Outpunk, K Records, Sound Pollution, Yoyo Records and Kill Rock Stars, and for their involvement with zine culture such as Lords of Lightspeed appearance on the compilation CD in protest of the G8 summit meetings released by Speed Demon zine.
In 2004, the hardcore band Limp Wrist released the song "Ode" on their Complete Discography CD, which is a tribute to Plague, as well as Gary Floyd of the band The Dicks and Randy Turner of Big Boys, for being pioneering queer hardcore musicians who paved the way for bands such as Limp Wrist. More recently Joshua has performed solo, or with Joshua Plague's Sanctuary Of Sound, also known as Sanctuary Sounds, at events such as Bands Against Bush and released several cassette tapes of his various solo musical projects. He was a featured guest on Hoodwinked's album StabStabStab and his song "Take My Airs" has been covered by the band Western Graves.
In 2006, Joshua released the zine Archivision #1/Now Let's Put On A Show #6, subtitled A Torrid Tale of Collected Art, Tales and Recitations and which is described on the cover as "A torrid tome of collected flyer art, flyers, amusing tales and dull recitations from various and sundry shows, mostly from the 90's."
Plague is also the author of a number of Vegan cookbooks and in recent years has made a name for himself outside of the zine and music world as a chef. He's done a number of US cooking tours hosting vegan dinners in various cities.
Selected Zines
- Archivision/Now Let's Put On A Show
- Fire and Ice
- More Garbage On Paper
- Now I Don the Mask of Melancholy
- Now I Devour You
- Now I Write A Dictionary
- Picture Book: Computer Art and Words of Wisdom
