The Fanzine Podcast

For Episode 29, Tony's guests are Roual Galloway of Spinners, and Derek Steel of Razur Cuts, two of the more prominent among the many Litzines currently flourishing in the UK (and beyond).

Litzines – independent zines of literature from outside the mainstream – are surely among the oldest of all forms of fanzines. Depending on your historical perspective, you could even argue that they predate the concept of the fanzine itself, which as noted back on Episode 21, was a word first knowingly used in 1940.

Certainly, self-published zines of prose and poetry writing were an important part of the Beat culture on both US coasts through the 1950s and 1960s, have an anchor in the current vibrant world of perzines, and have been especially strong in the UK ever since the emergence of a new generation of poets in the early 1980s. These were people encouraged by the examples of cross-over artists like John Cooper Clarke and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and aided by the support of rock artists like The Jam’s Paul Weller, and they took to the pubs and small theaters of the UK to reclaim the form “for the people.” In the UK, the medium, in prose and short story form too, has also always had a close connection to the football terraces and others aspects of pop culture, and recent issues of Razur Cuts and Spinners, each weighing in at about 80 pages, readily demonstrate as much...

For more info, including photos, more words, and more links, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/the-flourishing-world-of-litzines

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The first issue of Mick Mercer’s fanzine Panache came out in January 1977, with Iggy Pop on the cover, perfectly poised for the punk/new wave/DIY revolution that was exploding across the UK. Mick kept the zine in print for a further 50+ issues, all the way to 1995, which makes it one of the longest-running, and arguably the most consistently prolific of all the original UK punk-inspired zines. In the decades since, Mick has carried on demonstrating his passion for indie music, comics, and cats, via blogging, radio shows, a Substack column, and his Cat Olympics. Oh, and he’s also written a few books over the years, for which he is rightly considered one of the gurus of Goth.

For more info on this episode, including images from various issues of Panache over the years, and direct links to Mick's radio shows and other creative outlets, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/the-fanzine-podcast-ep-28-mick-mercers

And please subscribe while you are there; it’s where Tony continues to exercise his own fanzine muscles by writing about underground and pop culture on a twice-weekly basis. If you enjoyed this episode and your podcast platform allows it, please hit the like button, consider leaving a review and, if you haven't yet, hit "subscribe" to ensure you don't miss the next monthly episode.

Mick Mercer can be found at https://mickmercer.substack.com/

The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is published by Omnibus Press.

'The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast Theme' is by Noel Fletcher.

The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast logo was designed by Greg Morton.

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Throughout the 1980s, Tim Anstaett ran The Offense, an influential, prolific, jam-packed fanzine out of Columbus, Ohio, where he still lives. In the 1990s, Jay Hinman began the underground zine Superdope fanzine out of Seattle, and after a hiatus, picked back up on zine publishing in the 2010s with Dynamite Hemorrhage, which set its stall with a 68-page debut issue. For the last few years, Jay has also been running the Fanzine Hemorrhage web site and newsletter, offering 200 reflective reviews (so far) of select music fanzines (and occasional magazines) from his enormous personal collection. The Offense is one of the few zines Jay has reviewed twice, writing that it “would have been my favorite mag in 1982 had I’d known it existed.” So for this episode of the Fanzine Podcast, podcast host Tony Fletcher brings the pair together for the first time.

Over a one-hour conversation, Tim and Jay talked about their early entry points into punk and fanzine culture, hand-written first issues, why they each abandoned advertisers and distributors, their love of 4AD Records in general and the Cocteau Twins in particular, Jay’s cult heroes the Flesheaters, their fave zines of all time, and the best letter they ever received.

Read more about this episode, and get links to various items discussed – from zine downloads to bands to TV shows and where to get Tim's books – at https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/midweek-update-51-the-american-in ... And please subscribe while you are there; it’s where Tony continues to exercise his own fanzine muscles by writing about underground and pop culture on a twice-weekly basis. If you enjoyed this episode and your podcast platform allows it, please hit the like button, consider leaving a review and, if you haven't yet, hit "subscribe" to ensure you don't miss the next monthly episode.

Jay Hinman can be found at https://fanzinehemorrhage.com

Tim Anstaett can be e-mailed via [email protected]

The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is published by Omnibus Press.

'The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast Theme' is by Noel Fletcher.

The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast logo was designed by Greg Morton.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For show notes, and to see images from Zerox Machine and other books discussed in this episode, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/zerox-machine-the-big-book-of-british

And, while there, please subscribe to receive regular updates on this and other Tony Fletcher podcasts and writings.

https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/subscribe

Matthew Worley is Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading, where he is gainfully employed studying punk and post-punk culture. (Yes, it’s a thing these days.) To this end he has just published an arguably definitive new book, the culmination of many years’ research, Zerox Machine: Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain, 1976-88.

Across almost 350 pages and approximately 140,000 words, Worley takes an unprecedented deep dive into the subculture of the British fanzine scene, drawing on access to an incredible number of publications – six pages’ worth are cited at the end - and direct communication with many of the editors. Most importantly, he straddles the thin line between an authoritative research project with the kind of thought-provoking analysis one would expect from a Professor of Modern History, with a book that you average Joe and Jane ex- or current- fanzine editor can read and relate to without reaching for a Thesaurus.

Zerox Machine is published in the UK by Reaktion Books:

And in the US by University of Chicago Press: 

For show notes, and to see images from Zerox Machine and other books discussed in this episode, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/zerox-machine-the-big-book-of-british

And, while there, please subscribe to receive regular updates on this and other Tony Fletcher podcasts and writings.

https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/subscribe

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With Andy Lyons (WSC), Mike Harrison (City Gent), Kevin Whitcher (The Gooner.) For links to and pictures of these fanzines, to post comments, and to read more related writings and podcasts, visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/the-fanzine-podcast-ep-25-40-years

For over 40 years now, football fanzines have run parallel to music fanzines in the UK, growing out of the same alternative pop culture as did the punk and new wave zines of the 1970s, as evidenced perhaps by the fact that the best known and longest-running of the non-denominational zines, When Saturday Comes, took its name from a song by the Northern Irish new wave band, The Undertones. At their peak in the late 1980s, it’s estimated there were at least 300 such football zines publishing regularly in the UK. 

Where the football zines differ from the music ones is in loyalty. If When Saturday Comes is like an alternative to the glossy football magazines the same way that a long-running music fanzine like The Big Takeover, which was featured on Episode 21, can be seen as a more authentically independent voice than a Spin or Mojo, the majority of zines serve more like alternatives to their stated club’s official program. In this context, the Arsenal fanzine The Gooner, whose Kevin Whitcher joins us on this episode, is like a Taylor Swift fanzine, economically removed from the subject it is writing about but passionate about it all the same, while Bradford City’s City Gent, whose Mike Harrison, also featured in this episode, would be more comparable to a zine dedicated to a cult band that refuses to go away – Guided By Voices or Teenage Fan Club, perhaps. Even as football fan culture moves largely online, to YouTube channels and podcasts, there will always remain a dedicated, if “discerning” audience, that is willing to read articles and opinion pieces that bring the banter of what we once knew as the football “terraces” in print.

Kevin and Mike are joined here by When Saturday Comes’ co-founder and ongoing editor, Andy Lyons, for a conversation that discusses the various zines’ origins, their rise to influence and prominence, their engagement and effect on the game they support, and how they keep going after four decades and several hundred episodes a piece in the face of the younger fans migration online.

The episode also discusses the tragic fire that took place at Bradford City’s ground in May 1985, at which City Gent editor Mike Harrison was in attendance. While we don’t get into any horrific detail, I do want to let listeners be prepared.

Thanks to Richard Edwards and Peter Mountford.

Sign up for Tony Fletcher’s weekly newsletter, long weekend read, and for exclusive access to archived interviews, including those from his Keith Moon biography, at tonyfletcher.substack.com.

Theme music by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.

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Please visit (and subscribe to) tonyfletcher.substack.com for more writings on zines and beyond.

In this episode, Tony offers a short update on the Fanzine Podcast's future episodes and some of the activities around the zine scene before using the opportunity of being in the UK for a while to revisit the debut episode of what was then called The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast, "From Classroom To Clubs." The episode was summarised at the time as follows:

For this debut episode of The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast, Tony Fletcher connects with three old friends who all played an important part in the Jamming! school days, and each of whom wrote an introductory piece for The Best of Jamming! book. They are Richard Heard, Jeni de Haart and John Matthews, and over the course of a lively group call, they discuss

• the onset of punk,
• the birth of Jamming and why John Matthews declined a role
• first gigs at The Marquee on Wardour Street
• a shared love of The Jam
• Jamming's eclectic tastes - including The Fall, Scritti Politti, Killing Joke and more
• attending the Setting Sons recording sessions
• Apocalypse
• selling fanzines at gigs
• being taught 'Teenage Kicks' on guitar by The Undertones
• the violence surrounding the tribalism of the late 1970s
• the influence of John Peel
• fave gig memories
• and why those years mattered so much and why they are all still friends

The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is published by Omnibus Press and available from all good book shops.on Sep 23 in the UK/EU, and Dec 2 in the rest of the world.

More information and online purchasing options available at:

TonyFletcher.net

OmnibusPress.com

Meantime, if you're a former fanzine editor interested in contributing to the Guest Ex-Editor project, "The concept is to bring various zine scene alumni out of retirement for one or two pages. Contributors might use their page(s) to revisit memories of their old zine, re-evaluate it, resurrect it (maybe with a modern twist to reflect where life has taken them since), or pilot a brand-new zine idea." Write to Alison via [email protected]

Zerox Machine: Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain 1976-88 available now in the UK from Reaktion Books https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/zerox-machine

Matthew Worley's Facebook group Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change

https://www.facebook.com/groups/267152449995279

'The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast Theme' is by Noel Fletcher. Copyright reserved.

The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast logo was designed by Greg Morton, who also assisted with editing.

The Best of Jamming! book cover was designed by Martin Stiff.

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To win a copy of the compendium, Sniffin’ Glue and Other Rock’n’Roll Habits, published by Omnibus Press, as mentioned on this episode, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/midweek-update-32-sniffin-glue-and - and don't forget to subscribe to the Substack account if you haven't already. Competition ends March 19.

Back in 1976, given that there was no other publication dedicated to covering the Ramones or the new bands popping up around London, Mark Perry founded Sniffin’ Glue, the original British punk zine. Barely a year later, after a dozen issues that saw circulation rise from 10 – as in ten, total - to 20,000 copies, Mark walked away from it, partly because he was disillusioned with punk, but also to focus on his group, Alternative TV.

Now, in 2024, copies of early Sniffin’ Glues go for ridiculous sums of money, but they have also been gathered up for a new edition of the compendium, Sniffin’ Glue and Other Rock’n’Roll Habits, published by Omnibus Press. The Sniffin’ Glue compendium gathers up every single page of that zine's 12 (and a half) issues, including all the ads, and has an extended intro written by Mark, along with various photographs from back in the day.

On this episode, we discuss how Sniffin' Glue started, what the scene was like in London at the time, what was good about the zine, how it became so successful, and why Mark walked away from it after only a year.

Mark Perry, Sniffin' Glue and Alternative TV can all be found at https://sniffinglue.co.uk/. Mark Perry can also be found on Facebook.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do the usual like-review-subscribe, and check out previous episodes if you haven't already.

Theme tune by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton. Tony Fletcher takes credit and blame for everything else.

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Liz Mason and Billy McCall are two of the more prominent U.S. “publishers” of what are affectionately called “perzines,” fanzines as expression of self. Liz publishes or co-publishes Caboose, Cul-de-Sac, Awesome Things and The Most Unwanted Zine and works as manager at Quimby’s bookstore in Chicago, which actively sells ‘zines. Billy puts out Proof I Exist, Behind the Zines, The Difference Between, has published at least three different pocket-sized memoirs, distributes fanzines online, and designed and initially produced the Zine Game. On this episode of The Fanzine Podcast, they join Tony Fletcher to explain the how, why, when, what, and where behind their phenomenal output, and dive deep into the thriving world of contemporary zine culture.

You can read much more about Billy and Liz, and see pictures of their zines and the conversation we had, at tonyfletcher.substack.com/

Billy is at www.iknowbilly.com and https://behind-the-zines.com/

Liz is at LizMasonIsAwesome.com and instagram.com/caboosezine.

The Best Of Jamming!: Selections & Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up, 1977-86 can be found here and signed copies are available in the USA direct from https://tonyfletcherauthor.bandcamp.com/merch/

Theme music by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.

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The Fanzine Podcast finally gets across the Atlantic, and talks to two of the mainstays of the New York 'zine scene.

Ira Robbins started Trouser Press in 1974 as "hopefully the first consumer-oriented, ( inter }national rock fanzine" and went on to produce 96 issues that got up to a 60,000 circulation before calling it a day after exactly 10 years; Trouser Press continued life as a record buyer's guide, a website, and now as a publishing imprint too.

Jack Rabid started The Big Takeover in 1980 as a one-page broadsheet devoted to New York punk band The Stimulators before gradually turning into an reputable zine that has been publishing twice a year for four decades now, circulation peaking at 30,000. The Big Takeover also has a website and a radio show.

Between them, Trouser Press and The Big Takeover have published 181 issues, and counting.

As well as discussing how and why they started out, how their zines turned into magazines, and why they have persisted in the world of small publishing all this time, Ira and Jack discuss their best and worst interviews, the bands that turned them on and some of those that did not. Acts discussed in this episode include: The Planets, Bad Brains, The Who, Pink Faeries, Even Worse, John Lydon, The La's, The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Mumps, Rory Gallagher, The Mad, The Stimulators, and many many more.

The Trouser Press Archives are here. The ongoing Trouser Press website is here. Trouser Press books is here.

The Big Takeover web site/magazine is here. The Big Takeover Radio is here.

The Best Of Jamming!: Selections & Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up, 1977-86 can be found here and signed copies are available in the USA direct from https://tonyfletcherauthor.bandcamp.com/merch/

SIgn up for Tony Fletcher’s weekly newsletter, long weekend read, and for exclusive access to archived interviews, including those from his Keith Moon biography, at tonyfletcher.substack.com.

Theme music by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.

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When was it published? In what country? What did it write about? Where can I find it? When was the word fanzine coined? By who? Where does it come from? What is a Gestetner? Or a Roneo? Where can I get one? Actually, why should I care?

To help answer these questions, I am joined on Episode 20 of my show The Fanzine Podcast by: Hamish Ironside, fanzine editor, book publisher, and co-author of We Peaked At Paper: An Oral History of British Zines; and by Rob Hansen, fanzine editor, archivist, and author of multiple books including Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK 1930-1980.

Please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/what-was-the-first-ever-fanzine for more information, including visuals of the first ever fanzines, and links to Rob and Hamish's various publications. While there, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter.

https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/what-was-the-first-ever-fanzine

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