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..
