Today's post is a scan of a copy of the first issue Sandy Robertson's Patti Smith zine 'White Stuff'.. This is one that went for £369 on EBay and got me ranting recently.. Have a look and see if you think it's worth that.. print the PDF and have your own copy for free. (I think it was printed on light blue paper..if you want to be authentic!) My copy was photocopied for me by a friend and I've cleaned up the grey tone from the coloured paper.
Anyway, what you get is a nice zine... 7 pages on Patti, interestingly cut up and stuck together, plus a page on Lou Reed, a few singles review and a page on the Pistols Anarchy in the UK 45. Not sure it's worth £369 tho'!
I'd be interested to know what people think of the way punk artifacts are becoming museum pieces.. Who is forking out all the money for the old zines, posters, flyers and records these days? Is it old punks reclaiming their lost youth (something I'm occasionally guilty of!), younger fans who wish they'd been there, lottery winners?? Granted 1977 was a long time ago now and this stuff is pretty cool but I just feel photocopied fanzines were supposed to go against the whole priceless collectors item thing. Whatcha think?
First in my fight back against the madness.. here's a great issue of Cliche from the summer of '77. Gig reviews of the Clash at the Rainbow, the Ramones, the Jam, Heartbreakers, the Banshees plus singles reviews. It's brief but packed with quality and looks nice too.. By a guy called Tim in Harlow, Essex.
I'm just watching some EBay auctions for old White Stuff zines and it's madness.. I've not had any time to post zines but after watching EBay prices for old zines go through the ceiling it's definitely time to start posting them again. The posts will be brief as I'm still stretched for time but I'll stick some good stuff up. I hope in sharing my zines for free maybe I can stop a few crazies spending so much and pushing the prices up too far for the rest of us to ever afford to add to our collections.
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Not dead yet..
Been stupidly busy for the past few months but hope to get a few more posts up during the summer.. Just a few pics for now but I'll try to get some good zines and tunes up soon.
Nice old promo pic of Francoise Hardy from around 1965..
The great Spizz from his Spizz Oil days in '78.. they were awesome!
The great Fairies from 1965. I bought an old 'Stars in Their Eyes' annual just for this pic.
And finally.. I love these pics, taken at Eel Pie Island near Twickenham, London in 1960. The blond is Gillian Hills, who was in the film Beat Girl with Adam Faith as well as having some success in France as a singer. Love the grubby Beat look..
Check out here for more info on them, more photos and a fascinating trail of comments:
http:/www.nickelinthemachine.com/2010/02/sample-post.html/eel-pie-island/
To follow up my last post, here are some more obscure 80's sounds. There was a lot of interesting music coming out of Germany back then and these are some of my favourites. I came across this stuff via John Peel's shows, NME and some excellent Birthday Party gigs with Malaria! and Einstürzende Neubauten as support bands.
Einstürzende Neubauten
Featuring Blixa Bildegard, who later joined Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, these guys were stretching the boundries of music with the use of power tools, sledge hammers, etc as percussive intruments. Check out the pic from the back of their first LP below for their gear. I went to an amazing gig of theirs in August '83 at the Acklam Hall in west London, a small hall built under a motorway. I was right at the front getting showered in sparks and broken glass.. Marc Chung was digging holes in the wall behind the stage with the pneumatic drill... awesome stuff. The whole gig was filmed for the Channel 4 music show The Tube but only a minute or two was ever shown on tv. I'd love to know if the footage is still stored away somewhere.
Two tracks by them here, starting off with the first track off the Kollaps LP, 'Tanz Debil', followed by 'Thirsty Animal', a 9 minute track from a 12" release. Lydia Lunch does vocals on it with a voice like nails on a chalk board. (The other side of Thirsty Animal, 'Durstiges Tier' features a rythym track made by miking up Blixa's torso and Marc Chung thumping him.. not easy listening).
For a detailed chronology of the band's activities check out this link:
http://www.fromthearchives.com/en/chronology1.html
Abwarts
A four piece band closely linked to Einsturzende as two members joined them when Abwarts split in 1982. They recorded a couple of 45s and LP's in their time.. Never knew too much about them but I got their LP "Der Westen Ist Einsam" and this was my fave track from it.
DAF / Deutsch-Amerikanische-Freundschaft
These guys featured in NME quite regularly in the early 80's, with a live version of their first single, Kebabtraume, included on a NME Rough Trade cassette around '80/'81. They started out as a 5 piece but by 1981 were a two piece with Robert Gorl on drums and Gabi Delgado-López on vocals along with synthesiser backing tracks. I've got five tracks here. 'Kebatraume' and 'Gewalt' from their first 45 on Mute Records, 'Verschuende Deine Jugend' from their LP 'Gold Und Liebe' and lastly Robert Gorl's first solo single after they split in 1983, 'Mit Dir' b/w 'Beruhrt Verfuhrt'.
Malaria!
Malaria! were a 5 piece female band who formed in '81, released a few records between then and '83, supported the Birthday Party on a European tour (when I saw them a few times) and also made it over to the States. They looked awesome and were quite powerfull live but I never thought they came across too well on record. The below track, 'Thrash Me', comes closest for me.
I just watched a BBC documentary about UK bands in the US in the 80's and it brought back a lot of the disillusionment I felt during that post-punk period. Watching old favourite groups like the Ants, Banshees and Human League turning into 'new romantic' pop acts or just losing their edge was depressing. It did get me trying to remember what I did actually like in the 80's.. Apart from digging back as far as the 30's for interesting music I did still go to quite a few gigs and managed to dig up a bunch of old faves to cheer myself up..
Theatre of Hate.. they grew out of Kirk Brandon's punk band The Pack and expanded on his anthemic approach. I never managed to see The Pack so made sure I got to pretty much every London gig TOH did. They managed to keep enough of the punk edge while expanding their sound. Got their first 45, 'Original Sin' and flip side 'Legion' from 1980 and still sounding a bit like the Pack followed by a later single, 'The Hop'.
The other group I really liked back then was the Birthday Party, Nick Cave's early group who moved from Australia to London in the early 80's. I first caught them in mid '81 and tried to get to every gig I could after that.. Got their best 45, 'Release the Bats' b/w 'Blast Off' here from 1981, 'Bully Bones' from their second Peel session in '81 and 'Wild World' from the 'Bad Seed' EP in 1983.
Onto a different sound.. the friend who got me into the Birthday Party also hipped me to this single by jazz punk nutters Rip Rig & Panic, featuring a young Neneh Cherry. I never really got into them but always loved this one.. from 1981, crazy noise..
I'll finish this one a mellow note.. singer Carmel did some great jazzy/blues stuff as well as some poppier stuff. This is her first 45 from 1982, mostly just her voice and acoustic bass.. not like anything else I was hearing back then.
Got the first 45 by Jackie Ross here, on Sam Cooke's SAR records label from 1962 ('Jacki' on the label). Jackie went on to have a hit with Selfish One on Chess after this and released some other great 45's but never saw too much success. I think 'Hard Times' is the best side, a slow, cool number written by Jackie. 'Hold Me' is more of a popcorn/bubblegum number but nice enough (the sort of tune Sam Cooke turned out for fun).
More Reggae today.. 4 classic 45's by Big Youth here. I never really went for the deejay stuff in a big way back in the 70's but Big Youth makes it work. His delivery just rolls with the music. I could have put up a dozen tracks easily.. he worked with most of the best producers in Jamiaca and cut great tracks right through the 70's. I've pick my 4 favourites..
First up is Ace 90 Skank, an early hit, produced by Keith Hudson on the Mafia label.
Next up is a two sider.. Foreman vs Frazier, a topical hit for Big Youth after the Foreman vs Frazier "Sunshine Showdown" world heavy weight title fight in Kingston, JA in January '73. Not sure how many boxing records there are but this has to be the best ever.. "biff baff boom..George batter him down".. you can feel those blows!
Reggae time here.. An old rock steady tune from 1967 by vocal group The Diplomats on the great Caltone label. I know nothing about the group apart from that they did at least 3 sides on Caltone around '67-'68. I love the raw, slightly chaotic playing on it, one of those tunes where it's imperfections make it perfect..
More tunes to come.. I've had a few days off work so have been delving into my old record boxes plus picked up a few nice old 45's recently so will be posting 2-3 tunes a day to get them all out there.
Here's Heat #4 as promised. Another great issue of the classic Irish zine from Oct/Nov '77. This one has 6 pages of the Clash, interviews with the Adverts, 999 and young Irish band the Kamikaze Kids, articles on John Cale and Richard Hell and a review of the Pistols Spunk bootleg plus the usual excellent random news, reviews and bits. All hand written and pasted together and thoroughly entertaining.
I also came across an interesting blog called Last Rockers with a nice pdf of Heat #1. I only have a black and white photocopy of it so won't be posting it myself.. check it out if you're after a copy. Link to Heat #1 download
Due to popular demand (one comment .. (thanks!) and a lot of 'silent' hits), here's another issue of the great Irish fanzine, Heat. This is issue 3, from Sept 1977. Another mad mix of punk news and reviews from Ireland and London with features on the Radiators from Space and Boomtown Rats (aka Rads and Rats), a great review of a very early Undertones gig when their set was mostly Stooges and MC5 covers and it sounds Fergel Sharkey was doing his best Iggy impersonation (a long way from 'My Perfect Cousin'..), a picture of a very happy DeeGenerate and a rather naughty young woman and loads more.. check it out.
I've been in a bit of Iggy phase lately.. not sure what kicked it off.. I think ITunes was playing in artist order and hit me with a few hours of Iggy a couple of weeks back.. (or possibly it was the car insurance ads he's done that are all over London... they are weird!) Whatever, it's inspired me to dig out some stuff and get a post in honour of the Iggster.. a hero of mine if I ever had one. Here are a few old bits.. in chronological order..
First off.. a cool press release for the first LP which came with the above photo.. A nice short biog of the group at that stage..
I found this next bit in Rock magazine.. a New York weekly music tabloid. This is an interesting Iggy interview from the Nov 22 1971 issue.. The Stooges had been dropped by Elektra and had split up and Iggy had hooked up with James Willaimson but not sure what was next.. One odd thing here is he mentions wanting to go to England and I didn't think he met Bowie till 1972.. maybe there had been contact between them earlier? (I just scanned the two Iggy pages.. apologies for the messy joins.. I had to do two scans for each page.)
Of course Iggy got the Stooges together again for one more studio LP.. Raw Power. here's the original UK mix of Search and Destroy from the 1973 release. I believe the mix on this track is different from the better known Bowie mix used on the US '73 issue and the '77 UK re-issue..
Search & Destroy (1973 UK LP mix)
To round things off for this post.. a superb issue of Creem magazine from April 1974. There was so much good stuff in this issue that I scanned the whole thing. Apart from Iggy on the cover and an in depth Stooges feature with great pics there's also a couple of New York Dolls pages, Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople plus other cool stuff (and random other old 70's hippy stuff, always good to put the Stooges in context!)
Download Creem April 1974
That's it for now.. I'll do another Iggy post in the near future once I have time to dig out and scan some more from the archives. Hope you like this lot..
I posted an earlier issue of this back in August last year and thought it was about time to get another issue up here.. This zine was published in Leeds by a guy called Martin and Steve Dixon, who did all the photos, and is superb. Every issue looks great..all hand written but nicely laid out and great photos. This issue has an illustrated review of an Iggy gig, Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, the Clash at Leeds Uni,the Marc Bolan tv show, Leeds band S.O.S., a cartoon history of the Damned and backpage 'pin-up' of Pauline from Penetration. I don't have an original copy of this but the scan is from a quality photocopy (thanks to Martin, Mick or Alex..can't remember who I got this one from!).
Download New Pose #5
I also found this video on YouTube about the early 80's Goth / post Punk scene which was done by a Steve Dixon..presumably the same guy from New Pose? I couldn't find any other info about him
Here's a great Irish fanzine from the summer of '77. Heat was absolutely crammed with stuff, all hand written and not taking things too seriously. It covers the Irish punk scene plus the English and US bands.. This issue has features on Irish bands the Vipers and the Radiators from Space, Johnny Moped, Generation X, a Ramones meet the Incredible Hulk comic book spoof, a review of the Ramones at the Roundhouse, a very brief interview with the Undertones plus various rants, reviews and other bits. All good stuff and a fun read.. They kept Heat going till '79 and every issue I've seen is quality. If you like this one let me know and I'll post some more.
