I'm back.. been letting myself be ground down by work for the past month or so but trying to get back on track again. I'll try to get a decent old fanzine posted later this weekend but for now I'm all into comic books...! I got the Kick Ass and Iron Man 2 dvd's for my birthday recently plus discovered the recent series of DC's Detective Comics features a very cool new Batwoman. The art is superb, the story lines aren't bad and she's a redhead.. perfect. I've gone back to being a 12 year old comic geek all over again! Check them out if you've ever been into the superhero stuff.. they're excellent. A new one off issue, Batwoman #0 is due out next month..
Also been listening to a bit of old early 70's stuff.. LP tracks by some of the less obvious glam bands.. Here's a cool Mott the Hoople track, Violence, from their 1973 LP Mott.
My last post got me digging around for more old Banshees stuff. I was totally obsessed about them around '78-'79 but hadn't really listened to much of their stuff for years. I found a couple of old pics, one a '77 promo pic and the other from a gig in Guildford in late '78 from the tour to promote 'The Scream'. I had a tape of the gig and got the photo from the guy who recorded the gig.. no idea where the tape is, shame as it was good recording. I also scanned an old Roxy poster from the 100 Nights at the Roxy book (back in '78 I tore the page out and stuck it on my wall!)
Here's an old ticket stub from the Banshees last gig as an unsigned band, at the Roundhouse in July '78. One of the best gigs I've been to, the Banshees were amazing, opening with a storming version of Staircase, I think the first time they'd played it live. Plus Spizz Oil were awesome in support..totally different from anything else I'd at the time. Just Spizz and Pete Petrol with guitars and a kazoo..
And lastly, here's a great version of Love in a Void from the '78 bootleg LP which had the Peel Sessions plus 3 early demo recordings. This is the demo version of Love in a Void.. possibly Pete Fenton on guitar? It definitely sounds different from John McKay's playing.
Haven't had time to do any posting for the last month with one thing and another.. finally got time to stick a few bits up here.. This is a great issue of Tony D's Ripped & Torn from the summer of 1978. Siouxsie and the Banshees on the cover and there's an interview with Siouxsie and Steve Severin, an interesting interview with David Bowie's manager from 1966-70, Ken Pitts, giving some insights into Bowie's early days and a Stiff Little Fingers article. There are also the usual gig and record reviews.. all good stuff. I'd just started going to gigs regularly around this time and had just seen the Banshees a couple of times and thought they were the best thing ever so this issue has always been a fave of mine. This came out around the time the Banshees signed with Polydor.. back when the only way to hear them was live or tapes of gigs or the classic first two Peel sessions. I've dug out a couple of old photos I've picked up over the years too, one a promo pic with the early '77 lineup including Pete Fenton, the other of Siouxsie is, I think, from '79. Saw Siouxsie recently in the BBC series "I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band" and she is still as amazing as ever..
The very excellent Derek's Daily 45 had the original version of this by Frankie Valli a couple of weeks back.. Derek's Daily 45 - Franki Valli - You're Ready Now
(I didn't even know there was an earlier version of this!) which prompted me to dig this out. A nice bit of punk/glam from the Manchester band. They'd been dumped by Decca at this point and were signed to DJM records for this one. Got to wonder how they came across the tune.. maybe a crossover from the Northern Soul scene? Still sounds good.. from 1979.
Here's a fairly obscure west London fanzine from mid 1977.. Put together by Derek Gibbs, John Ellis, Alan Dearling and a few others, it's a hand written effort, illustrated with drawings but with nice collage front and back covers. It starts with an article on the trouble s between punks and teds at the time, a Vibrators interview, Mink Deville and generation X gig reviews, record reviews plus some funny mini interviews in a section called 'How to Annoy Pop Stars' (Kid Reed of the Boys says Mick Jones was briefly in the Hollywood Brats, Derek asks Mick who denies it,.. I'll have to dig into that one..).
Derek got his photo on the cover of Phonogram's 1977 punk compilation 'New Wave', gobbing beer at the photographer as we did back then.. nice. He was later lead singer of west London group The Satellites in around 1978-80.. a great live band. I'll try to get their 45 Urban Guerilla posted up here some time soon..
Anyway, this is a great fanzine.. hope you enjoy it..
Going back a bit further for this one.. This issue of the old hippy mag Oz is a bit harder edged than most, looking mainly at the Vietnam war and discussing the politics of the time, protests against the war as well as a bit of usual hippy weirdness.. It's from March 1968, so presumably came out before the big anti Vietnam war protests in London, notably the Grosvenor Square protest of 28th March '68. It's a fascinating glimpse of the mood of the time.. and of course alot of what the articles are complaining about still applies in Iraq and Afghanistan..
I came across this recently, had totally forgotten how good it was. I saw these guys live a few times in '79 around the time this came out and I vaguely remember one of them working at the old Vinyl Solution record shop in Westbourne Grove for a while.. (or possibly they just hung out there alot.. memory is a bit hazy around then!). I also have vague memories of seeing them carrying a surf board though Kings Cross tube station as a publicity stunt..? Formed by Canadian Jeremy Gluck and ex-Unwanted guitarist Robin Wills , along with Nick Turner on drums and David Buckley on bass they went off in their own direction about the time the punk scene started to splinter and became London's only surf band. They signed to EMI after this came out and had a few minor hits and carried on till the mid -80's when the band split due to lack of success / musical differences, etc.. This has a rawer sound than most of their EMI stuff.. great double sider.
A classic bit of roots reggae here from the Mighty Diamonds on the Impact! label from 1975. This is the Diamonds at their best..great song, cracking production.. superb! Bizzarely I don't think this one is available on CD or MP3 anywhere.. I spent ages looking for it after hearing the dub version on a Pressure Sounds compilation with no luck a couple of years back so eventually tracked down an original US copy.. a few crackles but well worth the effort. (It was originally released in JA on the Well Charge label)
New Pose was an excellent fanzine, put together by a guy called Martin from Leeds. It looks great, nicely laid out, good photos and well printed. This issue is all hand written ..(apparently his typist quit after #3.. maybe northern men don't type?! ) but he's got hand writing abit like the guy who did Rock Family Trees so it all looks good.. There were 5 issues of New Pose.. I'll get all of them posted at some point..
Anyway, this issue is from Sept 77..great stuff in this one, a Cortinas gig review, Elvis Costello and Generation X gig review, a superb write up of the Pistols gig at Doncaster and an Adverts interview plus records reviews.
..cos she looked amazing and I haven't got time to do more tonight..
Hopefully I'll get a zine or two and some tunes up in the next few days.. Off to a beer festival tomorrow so will either post nothing or lots of drunken nonsense..!
This was a great fanzine and this is one of my favourite issues of it.. Produced by Alan Anger and Walt Davidson, this one's from late '77. It's got a Dee Generate (ex-of Eater by then) photo spread, bits about the Boys, an interview with Captain Sensible and great editorial by Paul Weller with his views on the UK scene at the time and Alan's response to it. Quality stuff..
Just fancied posting this track.. it's the b-side of The Groover from 1973 but I haven't seen it on any of the T Rex compilations I've come across.. sure it's on some somewhere but who cares. I love this track, louder the better! I picked this up in 1979 when I was starting to get bored with punk and looking back a bit further. This has to be the best bit of glam metal out there.. wish Marc had done more of this, rocking out and with no bloody backing vocals ruining it!
Here's Trash 77 #3, which as far as I know was the final issue of this Glaswegian fanzine. Craig Campbell has a bit of moan on the first page about the hassles of getting the zine out and not being able to afford to do more pages so I guess he packed it in after this one. Most of the content actually seems to have been done by other contributors with Craig just putting it all together.. It's got some great stuff in it though, as well as excellent photos and nicely printed too. There's a Lurkers interview, Joe Strummer interview (sort of), Clash gig review, Jolt and Exile gig review, a Ramones gig review and some LP reviews.
Not sure what happened to July but it's whizzed right by.. too much work, not enough time to do any posting.. Anyway, back to it.. My scanner has been coaxed back to life and I should have more free time for the next month or so, so hopefully will be posting more regularly..
Today's old punk zine is Trash 77 #1.. written by Craig Campbell and a few friends in Glasgow. Good Damned and Clash articles and solid punk attitude.. a top read. It's an odd size and printed on shiney paper, almost like fax paper.. can't remember what this type of printing was called but luckily they switched to regular paper from issue 2.. I've scanned #3 and will post that soon.. it's probably the best of the three issues.
Been a bit over loaded at work so not had time or energy to do any posting lately but think I can manage to squeeze on fanzine post out...
This ones a cool '77 zine by Lucy Toothpaste (Whitman) who went on to write for feminist mag Spare Rib and Rock Against Racism paper Temporary Hoarding. Jolt #2 came out in March 77, has a Slits interview by Lucy, a Slits gig review by another contributor, Sharon Dunham (who thought they were rubbish!), and an interview with the owners of one of the first punk clothing shops, Pollock's, including a guy called Nick Cash, who was a college friend of Glen Matlock's, (but not the 'Nick Cash' from 999, real name Keith Lucas..who apparently met Nick Cash of Pollock's in early '77 and decided to 'borrow' his name!) . A nice little slice of punk history..
I just finished reading an excellent book last week.. Joe Boyd - Making Music in the Sixties.. It was odd as a music book in that I'm not really into most of the music he's writing about but he manages to write in such a natural, modest way that you just get pulled in to his stories.. there's no ego getting in the way.
He managed to be around so many key events of the 60's, the 1965 Newport Folk Fetsival where Dylan 'went electric', he ran the legendary UFO club in London in 1966-67 and briefly managed Pink Floyd, he was at Woodstock with the Incredible String Band but at the same time was never really successfull with any of them.. He seemed to have a knack for avoiding fame and fortune (he even 'discovered' Abba when they were a minor Swedish pop act but never signed and returned the contract they offered him!) but more than made up for it by the sheer wealth of experiances he's had.
I found a couple of cool clips from the UFO club on YouTube...
Soft Machine at the UFO club, doing a musical poem protesting at the jailing of John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, one of the organisers on the scene, after a drugs bust.:
More UFO footage with Pink Floyd (from German documetary)
There are a few times in the book where he describes details of recording methods, microphone placements and ways to manage accoustics in whatever sort of rooms he was recording that were fascinating... All pre-digital recording obviously so it was a lot more hands on then.
The first part of the book describes how he got into the music business by tracking down old retired blues singers and getting them to do college gigs. Got me thinking, these days the equivilant of him finding old blues artists would be me tracking down some old ex-hippy in Ladbroke Grove who used to play in some obscure folk rock / prog group who released a couple of albums on Vertigo in 69/70 and then vanished... doesn't really appeal to me! (Funnily enough though, Joe Boyd did more or less do that.. there was a concert at the Barbican last year with bands from his old production company Witchseason..)
Anyway, it's a great read about some sides of the sixties that aren't often mentioned in histories of the period.
(Just ordered a nice stack of music books from Amazon so more reviews coming up.. hopefully better written than this one.. gotta get into practice.)
A couple of weeks into this and my scanner decides to pack it in..! Probably me scanning 10 zines in one stint that finished it off, so at least I've got 6 more zines to post over the next few weeks but there may be a break after that while I try to get the cash together for a new scanner. I'll still be posting but more random stuff.. music, book reviews, what ever..
Here's another copy of Sideburns, this one with more Lew Lewis, a great Vibrators interview, Gorillas and Cortinas pics and some gig reviews.. another great read.
Another great old punk fanzine, from Glasgow in May '77. Put together by a guy called Craig with articles from a few other contributors..it's a good view of the punk scene from north of the border. It's got a review of the Scottish punk bands , the Jolt, Johnnie & the Self-Abusers and a bunch of other bands that had only just been formed (or just disbanded..) it was a small scene back then! An interesting bit is Criag's report on a trip down to London and a visit to the Roxy on the first night after Andy Czezowski stopped running it. He's not impressed with the Roxy, "..a really sickening place, someone should drop a bomb on it.." He's gone there with Alan Thunder of Live Wire fanzine, gets to see the Drones and XTC, neither of which he likes, and ends up getting attacked by a Drones roadie to round off a bad evening! He did also manage a good gig at the Hope and Anchor to see Wayne County and Chelsea and the Adverts at a Rock Against Racism gig at the Roundhouse so it wasn't all bad in London for him. There's also a detailed 2 page history of Iggy and the Stooges and some great record and gig reviews, including a detailed run through the first Clash LP. Unfortunately the print is a bit faint on some pages but it's well worth the effort to read it. Enjoy..
I finally found time to do a bit of scanning so there should be new fanzine on here every couple of days for the next few weeks. Today's is Sideburns #2, from early '77. It was produced by TM and P Jac, two guys from south east London. They didn't have much time for the posier side of punk and were as much into pub rock as punk. This issue has in interview with Lew Lewis and another with Jess Hector of the Gorillas as well as a couple of gig reviews and a page of single reviews. All good stuff.. (I'll be posting #3 soon if you like this...)
Turbo Fruits - Mamma's Mad Cos I Fried My Brain
This track from their LP Echo Kid. A bit of glam/punk feel to this one .. This group grew out of Be Your Own Pet, very young, loads of energy and loud fun stuff. This is their second LP.. (I haven't got hold of the first one yet but will be..) The whole LP is worth checking out..
Haven't had any time to get anything together this week so thought I'd just stick up a couple of cool new(ish) tunes I came across on EMusic recently.. (It seems I can't post two tunes on the same page so check out today's other post for more.. )
Viva L'American Death Ray Music - The New Age
This is taken from their LP 'A New Commotion, A Different Tension'. They're an American band...four guys who've been around in various bands since the 90's playing mostly rough grunge/thrash/country/punk sort of stuff..('68 Comeback and The Limes are a couple of their old bands..) Not much of it appealed to me but this one works for me.. sort of drunken American rockers play the Buzzcocks! The LP is all good stuff..
Hard to know what to start with for my first posting, so I'm throwing a few things in..
The Punk bit:
I'm going to try and post at least one old punk fanzine each week.. It seems so wrong to have to pay silly money on EBay for them.. sort of goes against the old punk ideals. I'll be digging out old zines and sharing one or two a week.. let me know if there are any particular zines you'd like to see.
Here's a classic old fanzine, one of the first I bought back in 1978 from Compendium in Camden Town.. Skum #1 came out in early 1977 and has an interview with Sid Vicious in his pre-Sex Pistol days with his band, the Flowers of Romance. It was produced by Mark Schlossberg and Paul Brooks. I met Mark once a couple of years later and he claimed to have a recording of them rehearsing that he made when he interviewed them.. wonder if that's still hidden away somewhere? Skum lasted till #6, (though I've never seen a copy of #2.. if anyone has it please let me know.. and let me have a copy!)
Mark S went on to do very different zine called 'All the Poets' with new poetry and graphics.. I've got two issues of that.. not sure if there were more.
A Hippie bit..! I've been reading a fair bit about the early days of hippiedom recently... started with the amazing looking book Hippie by Barry Miles.. The thing is a true work of art.. loads of great pictures, nicely laid out, the text is a bit brief, often just a page or two per topic but full of cool anecdotes. Check it out.. I think it's out of print but it's still easy to get hold of.
That lead me to dig around online where I first came a across an defunct site with scans of most of the old (UK) Oz magazines.. Some cool stuff here but unfortunately the site has been archived and a lot of the links to pages are broken (and it's become incredibly slow recently...)
Next up I came across an amazing site.. http://www.internationaltimes.it/ which has high res scans of EVERY issue of International Times, from 1966 to 1994. The 60's issues are a historical treasure trove for music, social history, politics, etc.... fascinating / depressing to read about environmentalism, anti Vietnam war articles, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, etc from over 40 years ago and realise how little progress has been made since then.. Of course there are also lots of other insane ranting articles about total rubbish, usefull druggy info and IT girls with not much on.. heh heh!
In honour of old school hippies.. here's Mick Farren's band , the Deviants from their second lp (and b-side of the single from it..)
Let's Loot the Supermarket.. dig it man, from 1968
And some cool 1967 psychedelia.. Tintern Abbey's Vacuum Cleaner. which was advertised heavily in IT in late 67/early 68.. one of my all time faves
This week's respect to:
The Gaza flotilla, the Palestinians and all who support them..
