I read about the Soul Asylum on Twitter. They did an unplugged show (in Minneapolis, like the record would suggest) and Bandbox was there selling preorders of that night's show on vinyl. More people that got hosed by BB, basically.
The zine is a big part of the appeal for me. That said, I love the album-specific ones and am less interested in the career retrospective ones they do when they issue a few albums by the same artist and use the same zine for all.