PUNK FANZINE
PUNK FANZINE PHAM THI NHUNG
5/2017
FOREWORDS PAGE 1-2
C O N T E N T S
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
PUNK FANZINE - AN ORAL HISTORY
PAGE 3-26
INTRODUCTION METHODS OF RESEARCH
PAGE 26 - 44 “PUNK?” “HOW DID YOU START YOUR OWN ZINE?”
METHOD OF WRITING: ORAL HISTORY
“WHAT ARE THINGS MAKING YOUR ZINE SUCCESSFUL?”
MAPS/ CHARTS OF PUNK AND FANZINES
“WHO ARE YOUR READERS?”
CHARACTERS INTRODUCTION
“HOW DO YOU PUBLISH YOUR ZINE?”
MAP OF RELATIONSHIP AMONG CHARACTERS
“WHY DO YOU STOP PUBLISHING YOUR ZINES?” “DO YOU THINH PUNK AND ITS ZINES ARE DEAD?”
CHAPTER 2 VISUAL POETRY PAGE 44 - 48
VISUAL POETRY
CHAPTER 3
THE LOSERS - BAG COLLECTION PAGE 49 - 70 CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
PUNK FANZINE
NANNI BALESTRINI WITH HIS VISUAL POETRY ART VIKTOR & ROLF FW 2008
FINAL COLLECTION
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Contents
In the century of the vast digital and technology innovations, the methods of communication has dramatically changed into the different ways. However, mainly it ends up with visual communication and sharing, an indirect one. For examples, Instagram is launched according to the mass demands of sharing and communicating through images. Linked to the fashion industry, it is a long establishment that we could see the huge investment of fashion brands for its advertising using the visual tool – photography. As I mentioned about advertising published on-line or printed version, there is always one question which I has raised for the fashion publication in specific and for the publication in general: ‘How can the printed version of one publication survive when the e-publishing has existed and dramatically developed due to the electronic age?”. It is obvious that in the age of digital and internet of things, where digital publication is taking over the market, the printed magazine has been witnessed the shortage of print.
About Nhung Pham She is currently an accessories design student of the Istituto Marangoni, Milan, Italy. She gets interested in shoe and bag design, especially handcrafted leather goods. Her aim is globally promoting, in general, Vietnamese fashion brands and in particular, her own shoe and bag brand. In July, 2012, she got a Bachelor degree of Economics, specializing in Foreign Trade major, in the university of Economics in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Besides, Nhung Pham also completed the business course about Marketing, Selling and Sales Management PR Management at the Uptrend Business School, Hochiminh City, Vietnam in 2011-2012. Following her fascinating in Supply chain, from year 2012 to 2013, she spent one year working as a Project assistant in the Vietnam Supply Chain company which is a non-profit community whose job is supporting the current national supply chain industry and connecting it to the global supply chain network. At the end of the year 2012, she launched her own shop - ND Leather, selling leather goods, . The small brand was mostly operated through online chanel and had a small factory in Hochiminh city, Vietnam. In this brand, she contributed her skill as a designer and also a craftman.
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typefaces than the Punk zines which is clashing and obnoxious. (Hyndman, S., 2015) Fashion always reflects the current society, economics, and cultures. And it is not an exception for the Punk typography inspiration. There is one fashion collection in Japan, Mint Designs Fall Winter 2013 by designers Hokuto Katsui and Nao Yagi, dedicated to the spirit of Punk typography in particular and the Punk zine in general.
Alongside my research for Punk Subculture, I did focus on researching about the semiotics of being Punk. Apart from the style, music, cinema, events, bands, Punk fans contributed to the printed world a new form of communication, a Punk fanzine (Thompson, S., 2014). With this special communication by using its own language, a manner for Punk insiders communicate with their peers, Punk with their own sharing way has created a unique system with “visual signs and conveyance of a message of resistance” (Triggs, T., 2006). This kind of system is somehow, different from what I see nowadays. I am impressed by the amazing process of Punk zines in which they have strong contributed to the transforming of passive observers – its Punk fans, into active participants. Last year, I did researching on the theme Subculture and the ready-made work of art of Marcel Duchamp who was influenced by Dada and Futurism movement. I, personally, found some similar elements between them and the Punk Fanzine. Absolutely, both work of Marcel Duchamp and fanzine are ready-made in term of personal taste, which is the centre part of the DIY, do-it-yourself, spirit of Punk. They also went against the mainstream values. Furthermore, the Dada and Futurism have been considered as the very first zine and this zine gave is more aesthetically beautiful
Mint Designs, Fall Winter 2013 Collection. Source: http://www.irenebrination.typepad.com
F O R E W O R D S Introduction
I N T R O D U C T I O N 3
“The subculture was nothing if not consistent. There was a homological relation between the trashy cut-up clothes and spiky hair, the pogo and amphetamines, the spitting, the vomiting, the format of the fanzines, the insurrectionary poses and the ‘soulless’, frantically driven music.” - D. Hebdige (1979) As one of the most influenced subculture, Punk has played a vital role in the bottom-up effect in the fashion industry. Besides the unique styles and music, Punk with its Fanzines (short term called “zine”) has dramatically changed not only the way the Punk insiders communicate among the group, but also it has created the most interesting and unique version of the language of the graphic which delivers both information content and visual content in the same time. Punk and zines offered a cure for boredom of everything. Punk has given the message that no one has to be a genius to do it him/herself. Punk invented a whole new spectrum of do-it-yourself spirit for a generation. It offered an escape way for kids who weren’t allowed to participate within commercial culture. Instead of waiting for the next big thing in music to be excited about, anyone with this new sense of autonomy can make it happen themselves by forming a band. Instead of depending on this commercial media, from the big papers and television to New Musical Express and Rolling Stone, to tell them what they think and what to think, anyone can create a fanzine, paper, journal or comic book. With enough effort and group cooperation, they now can even publish and distribute it among their peers. Kids were eventually able to start their own record labels too. Such personal empowerment leads to other possibilities in self-employment and activism. At the begining, music fanzines started out as a way of putting forward the views of music lovers that the big music press didn’t recognise. Forty years on, Zines-ters are still busy writing and drawing, cutting and pasting, stapling and sticking their creations. Now we still use the name, however, some fanzines have very little to do with music, but adding new topics including arts and other ideas. The fact is that anybody with something to say or wanting some outlet for their art can start a ‘fanzine’, even if it’s only a one off consisting of two pages. Fanzine is not invented by Punk fans, yet itself has been existed since such a long time a go. To have a clear thought about zine, I have combined facts and datas to create the mindmap of zines timeline in the following next pages. Although this essay is mainly about the Punk Fanzine, it is neccessary to brieftly mention about Punk music bands who are the main topics of all fanzines. For these infomartion, we can find in the next couples of pages. Due to the short peek lifespan of Punk, I will focus only Punk music groups in 1970s and their fanzines in this period. Data and information used in this essay are including both primary and secondary database. Alongside my research, I found it interesting that all the popular Punk fanzines always had bands/musicians interview in their issue to have much precious information for their readers, their fans. These information were direct and honest and too much Punk. Besides, after reading the book “Please kill me: The uncensored oral history of Punk” (by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain), the format of the book - the oral history in which all characters are talking to tell their story, in a direct way. An oral history told by very important and influenced people to Punk fanzines should be interesting and straighfully understood. To understand Punk fanzine, there’s no better
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way than reading from the pages written by those who were there and created them. Therefore, for this essay , the oral history will be used to discuss about Punk fanzine. To make it understandable, it is mandatory to introduce about the characters who I would like to use their speech and discussion. We can find these introduction in the next some pages. Choosing characters is not an easy work. I have tried to find out the relationship between all of them. They are Punk fans, editors of popular fanzines, writers of Punk books, manager of Punk music bands, band musicians and in different countries where Punk developed. And all of them they are linked into the spirit of Punk music. For chapters, the essay will be presented in three chapters. Chapter I: Punk Fanzine - an oral history As mentioned above, the oral history format will be used to delivery the story of Punk fanzine. I have collected thousands of interviews which include also ones occured in the period of Punk and ones has been conducted recently. For these huge resources, I will devide them into seven questions which personally I think that it will help us who were not people from that period of Punk have a clear vision about Punk and Punk fanzines. They are these following questions. Punk? How did you start your own zine? What are things making your zine successful? Who are your readers? How do you publish your zine? Why do you stop publishing your zine? Do you think Punk and its zines are dead? Chapter II: Visual poetry Focusing on the typography of Punk fanzines, I have found out the term “visual poetry” in which the spirit of ‘do it yourself ’ and resistances of punk, for me, are strongly presented. Visual poetry is described simply as a poem composed or designed to be consciously seen. This stuff of language includes word, text, note, code, petroglyph, letter, phonic character, type, cipher, symbol, pictograph, sentence, number, hieroglyph, rhythm, iconograph, grammar, cluster, stroke, ideogram, density, pattern, diagram, logogram, accent, line, color, measure, etc. Visual poetry has crossed against the traditional form of poetry culture, therefore, it is obvious to see the resistance spirit of Punk fanzine on it. In this chapter, I will shortly explain the visual poetry in general history and then move to Italy, the place where the artist Nanni Balestrini shows his absolutely talent in this type of resistance i writing poems. Chapter III: Collection The final part should be dedicated to my collection in which both Punk fanzine and the visual poetry are reflected through sketches and bag designs.
Introduction
Mindmap of key events related to zines 5
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Introduction
PUNK MUSIC
Punk Music band
Fanzine advertising for band activity
Punk Music Fan
Fanzine for personal music taste
Curators
Fanzine of other fanzines
I create this chart to clarify the type of fanzine in term of editors who have different reasons to publish their own zines.
1975
Punk (USA),
1976
48 T h rills, Anarchy in the U.K, Big hits, Bondage, Boston Groupie News, Cowabunga, New York Rocker, Panache, Ripped and Torn, Shy Talk, Skum, Sniff ’s Glue, Teenage Rampage Sideburns Plastered Press
1977
Auguste Pages, Aunt Helen, Big star Bored Stiff, Chainsaw, For Adophs Only, Futue, Gabba Gabba, T h e Good, Guilty of what, I wanna be your dog, In the city, International Anthem, Jamming Live Wire, Negative Reaction Oh Cardiff, Up Yours! Rotten to the core, Search & Destroy, Slash, Woof USA, Worcester Rock and Roll news; Young, Fast, and Scientific; Bombsite, Strangled, SSuicide Alley , Pulp
1978
999, Alternative Ulster, Biff!Bang!Pow!, Brain Wash, Fuggit!, Hard Korps, Private World, S’Punk Scotland, Syne
1979
109890, Allied Propaganda, Kill your Pet Puppy, Mouth of the Rat, Op, Radio Free Rock, Rockers, Touch and Go, Alternative Sounds, Anti Climax
1980
Allied Propaganda, Count Viglion’s Love & Flame, Necrology, New Beat, Ripper, Rising Free, Upbeat
List of 1970s Popular Punk Fanzine 7
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List of 1970s Popular Punk Music Bands Introduction
InGabba theGabba cityhey Chainsaw 48 Thrillls
Anarchy in the UK
Skum PanacheAnti Climax Shy Talk Ripped & TornBondage Sniffin’ Glue Bored Stiff Bombsite Jamming Sideburns
Negative Reaction Strangled Live WireAllied Propaganda Oh Cardiff, Up Yours! Rotten to the core Alternative Sounds Kill your pet puppy
London’s Outrage
PIG
For Adophs only Guilty of what S’Punk
Flipside Young, fast and scientific Worcester rock and roll news Search and destroy Touch and Go Woof The Good International Anthem Bostons groupie News Big Hits Cowabunga Brain Wash New York Rocker Fuggit Teenage Rampage Biff!Bang!Pow! Auguste Pages Hard Korps 109890 Syne Aunt Helen Big star Future
Slash I wanna be your dog
Alternative Ulster Private World
England
Scotland
Ireland
Punk America
Plastered Press Ssuicide Alley Pulp
Map of key popular Punk fanzines in 1970s around the world 9
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Introduction
CHARACTER 1
CHARACTER 2
MARK PERRY
City: London, England
Mark Perry was always the personification of the spirit of the first wave of UK punk. He firstly was a music fan who through writing the most well acclaimed punk fanzine - Sniffin’ Glue, then became the unelected spokesman of all things 1977-related. He then formed the seminal band Alternative TV and has remained active in music ever since. With Sniffin’ Glue, Mark P. (his short name) had inspired many later Punk fans to do their own fanzines.
John Holmstrom
City: New York Job: an American underground cartoonist and writer
John Holmstrom is the eidtor of Punk fanzine, the first official Punk fanzine. He was twenty one when launching the Punk fanzine. He is best known for illustrating the covers of the Ramones albums Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin. His work became the visual representation in the punk era.
Photo: Deptford Fun City Records - DCF 012 - 7”(1980)
http://www.punkmagazine.com
Sniffin’ Glue
Punk
Editors: John Holmstrom Place of Publication: New York Approximate years of publication: 1975
Editors: Mark Perry, Dany Baker supported Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1976
In the United States, Punk founded by John Holmstrom, combined punk and comics to ‘galvanize a movement’. Punk was resulted of the cooperation among cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn, and “resident punk” Legs McNeil in 1975. Punk published 15 issues between 1976 and 1979, as well as a special issue in 1981.
Named after The Ramones’ track “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”. The zine became incredibly popular. Recording the early days of punk through reviews, interviews and assorted features printed in its iconic typewritten or felt tip (including misspellings and crossings out...) cut and paste graphics in photocopied black and white tones. Sniffin’ Glue ran through August 1977, when Perry focused his energies on his band - Alternative TV, after 12 issues. Sniffin’ Glue has been always considered as the first Punk fanzines.
Photo: First issue of Sniffin’ Glue, 1976
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Photo: First issue of Punk, 1975
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 3
CHARACTER 4
Tony Drayton
City: Glasgow - London
City: Glasgow - London Job: artist and anarchist
Tony Drayton (Tony D.) was the main editor of the UK fanzine Ripped & Torn in 1976. Tony D. left R&T after 18 issues and began publishing KILL YOUR PET PUPPY, a fanzine in much the same vein.
Jamie Reid is the Croydon-born artist’s work has prodded and inflamed since the early 70s with graphic digs at consumerism – “Keep Warm This Winter — Make Trouble”, “Save Petrol — Burn Cars” – via work with the infamous Suburban Press. Jamie’s incendiary Sex Pistols artwork needs no introduction, while his current magical material, borne of an adherence to druidic tradition continues to inspire. He was editors of Anarchy in the UK zine.
Ripped & Torn
Editors: Tony Drayton Place of Publication: Glasgow - London Approximate years of publication: 1976
Photo: Tony Drayton and Val at Jo Brocklehurst’s exhibition
Ripped & Torn (1976-79), produced by Tony Drayton, ran for 18 issues, moving between Glasgow and London. For a while it was a serious competitor to Sniffin’ Glue. Often excluded from punk histories, this zine was at the time recognized by other producers as a front-runner, partly for its attempt to offer a broader understanding of punk’s political agenda. The title appeared with numerous variations (handwritten, gothic- type lettering, etc.), while covers invariably featured a photograph of the punk icon of the moment. The final issue consisted of a compilation of rants from other zinesters, including V. Vale, Mark Perry and Jon Savage
Kill your pet puppy
Anarchy in the UK Editors: Jamie Reid Place of Publication: London Appoximate years of publication: 1976
Editors: Tony Drayton and others Place of Publication: London Appoximate years of publication: 1979
Anarchy in the UL was A 12 page promotional fanzine for the Sex Pistols, their ill-fated “anarchy” tour of the UK and Vivienne Westwood’s clobber.
Kill your pet puppy was launched after Tony Drayton left his former zine Ripped & Torn. Its continual twelve writers from the joint group called ‘The Puppy Collective‘, whereas some of the members were; Alastair Livingstone, Kilty McGuire, Cory Spondence, Jeremy Gluck and Val Not-A-Puppy – nothing can be said better than by the man himself; Tony Drayton. The zine had six issues between 1979 and 1984. Photo: Issue 2 of fanzien Kill your pet puppy
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Jamie Reid
Photo: Issue 10 of Ripped & Torn zine
Photo: First issue of Sniffin’ Glue, 1976
Photo: First issue of Sniffin’ Glue, 1976
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 5
CHARACTER 6
CLINTON WALKER
Mick Mercer
Country: England Job: journalist and author
Country: Australia Job: writer
Mick Mercer ran one of the first punk fanzines, Panache, from 1976 to 1992. In 1978, he began writing for British music paper Record Mirror, then freelanced for ZigZag magazine, later becoming its editor until the magazine shut down in 1986.
Clinton Walker is an Australian writer, best known for his works on popular music but with a broader interest in social and cultural history and theory. The emerging sounds of punk rock and their underlying DIY ethic motivated him to print his very own first fanzine, SSuicide ALLey, in collaboration with (the late) Andrew McMillan, in Brisbane in 1977. SSuicide ALLey was Australia’s second punk fanzine, after Bruce Milne had got out the first, the first (and only) mimeographed issue of Plastered Press, possibly even as early as late ‘76. Later on in 1977, Clinton Walker and Bruce Milne coorporated to launch Pulp.
Photo: https://rushedblue.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/mmengl/
PULP
Panache
Editors: Clinton Walker - Bruce Milne Place of Publication: Australia Approximate years of publication: 1977
Editors: Mick Mercer Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1976
Pulp fanzines was a resulted of the cooperation of the two first fanzine in Australia, Plastered Press and SSuicide ALLey in 1977. This fanzine captured the Australia Punk scene in 1970s.
Panache (1976-92), one of the longest-running punkzines in the United Kingdom. Panache was created by Mick Mercer as a 12-page, stapled and photocopied publication that flaunted its typographic mistakes, overcrowded pages and grainy photographic images. Its entertainingly claustrophobic style reflected a fan’s desire to pack in as much information as possible.
Photo: Fanzine Panache issue 13
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Photo: Pulp fanzine issue 3
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 7 Country: England
CHARACTER 8
Tony Moon
Charlie Chainsaw
Country: England
Tony Moon produced four to five issues of iconic fanzine Side Burns, a publication that epitomized the homegrown, do-it-yourself nature of punk rock. He called a generation of followers to action, presenting the seminal threechord diagram structure that defines punk music itself and reading: “This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. NOW FORM A BAND.” This chart was wrongly attributed to Mark Perry.
Charlie Chainsaw, former editor of Chainsaw fanzine. Charlie Chainsaw also has been in the super-obnoxious (and now defunct) band the Sexual Abominations. Editor Charlie Chainsaw is still very active in the London punk scene - running Wrench Records label and mailorder since 1988, and has been in Rancid Hell Spawn from 1988 to the present day.
Sideburns
Editors: Tony Moon Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1976
The first issue of Sideburns fanzine came out in 1976 and consists of six double-sided A4 pages stapled together in the top left corner. Photo: Three chords, by Tony Moon 1977
Charlie Chainsaw in West London, some time in the 1980s
Strangled
Chainsaw
Editors: Tony Moon Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1977
Editors: Charlie Chainsaw Place of Publication: Croydon Approximate years of publication: 1977
Interest in The Stranglers had grown to such proportions that Alan Edwards decided to assist Tony Moon and devote an entire fanzine to the band, and Strangled was born. The zine developed from a photocopied mish-mash of ideas into a glossy enthuzine, celebrating The Stranglers and their music, and also covering many other topics, often of a controversial nature, which the band themselves were interested in.
Chainsaw ran irregularly for 14 issues, with later examples experimenting with an innovative use of colour covers. It started out as a “Sniffin’ Glue” and “Ripped And Torn” clone, but quickly developed its own distinctive style, by concentrating on (then) totally unknown bands and featuring seriously sick cartoons, articles and newspaper cuttings. It also featured ugly but vivacious illustrations and cartoons by Michael J. Weller and Willie D. Also characteristic was the missing letter ’n’ from its typewritten text, which was filled in by hand.
Photo: First issue of Sniffin’ Glue, 1976
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Photo: First issue of Sniffin’ Glue, 1976
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 9
CHARACTER 10
Adrian Thrills
Country: England Job: journalist and writer
Country: England
Jon Savage is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his award-winning history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England’s Dreaming, published in 1991. He was editor of the english punk fanzine London’s Outrage, published in 1976.
Adrian Thrills is one of many rock journalists who started their career as a humble fanzine writer during the punk era.
London’s Outrage
48 Thrills Editors: Adrian Thrills
Editors: Jon Savage Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1976
Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1977
Jon Savage was apparently inspired to create this fanzine by Mark P’s call to action in the fifth issue of Sniffin’ Glue.
48 Thrills was first produced on a duplicator and its author, Adrian Thrills, presented it explicitly as an alternative to mainstream music magazines Sounds and NME (ironically he would later become a professional music journalist). The zines featured bands such as Sex Pistols, The Clash, Exter, and Subway Sect, The Clash, Generation X, The Jam ...
Photo: Fanzine 48 Thrills
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John Savage
Photo: Fanzine London’s Outrage
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 11 Country: England Job: Music Journalist
CHARACTER 12
Tony Fletcher
Tony Fletcher was inspired by the London punk rock movement and started a fanzine as a thirteen-year-old schoolboy which he named Jamming!.
Editors: Tony Fletcher Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1977
The book is written by Legs Mcneil and Gillian McCain, first published in 1996. Please Kill Me is the first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Malcom McLaren, Jim Carroll, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era.
Founded in 1977 the magazine began as a school-printed fanzine and in 1978, with the fifth issue, featuring interviews with Paul Weller, Adam Ant and John Peel, adopted professional printing and wider distribution. After 36 issues, the zine was shut down in 1986.
Photo: Fanzine Jamming issue 11
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Legs McNeil is an American music journalist. He is one of the three original founders of the Punk fanzine that gave the movement its name. He is the co-author (with Gillian McCain) of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, which is the number one Punk best seller of all time.
Please Kill Me: the uncensored oral history of Punk
Jamming!
21
LEGS MCNEIL
Country: America Job: Music Journalist
Photo: Cover page of Please Kill me: the uncensored oral history of Punk
Introduction of characters
CHARACTER 13
Shane MacGowan
Country: England Job: musician and writer
Shane MacGowan - then known as Shane O’Hooligan - was already a face in the emerging London punk scene when he created this DIY masterpiece. Two months earlier he had been photographed at a Clash gig after being cut in the side of his head with a broken bottle, and his picture appeared in the press next to alarmist headlines claiming that his ear had been bitten off.
Photo: Deptford Fun City Records - DCF 012 - 7�(1980)
Bondage
Editors: Shane MacGowan Place of Publication: London Approximate years of publication: 1976
Bondage was a punk fanzine created by Shane MacGowan in December 1976, and the first and only issue consists of six mainly hand-written pages photocopied one-sided onto six sheets of foolscap paper and stapled in the upper left corner.
Photo: Punk fanzine Bondage
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Introduction of characters
om e ba nds
all th e ban ds
PUNK MUSIC
Inter view
e was d e g a ond e of B u s s i ly h e on T
inte rvie
MICK MERCER Panache
vo ted
to t
he b
MARK PERRY Sniffin’ Glue
RAMONES P. ar M by
M an ag er
by Ma rk P err y
ry Mark Per enced by lu f in t o G De
nds he ba
d ce en flu in
SEX PISTOLS
TONY MOON Sideburns Strangled
all t with
THE CLASH
CLINTON WALKER
an d
THE STRANGLERS
bands
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r to
25
c re di
THE CLASH
t ar
Anarchy in the UK Suburban Press
flue nce d
TONY FLETCHER rview e Jamming int
all interviewed with
JAMIE REID
nd frie
interviewed with all bands
MALCOLM MCLAREN
Go t in
JOHN HOLMSTROM Punk Interviewed with all bands
THE STOOGES
Jon Savage writes history book about Se
Close Frien d
JON SAVAGE London’s Outrage
a u n ch t he f a nzi ne
x Pistols
LEGS MCNEIL
nd frie
by ine
48 Thrills
ny an D e slik Di
end ol fri
ADRIAN THRILLS
DANNY BAKER Sniffin’ Glue scho
Chainsaw
z do to
THE DAMNED
Kill your pet puppy
ed rag ou enc got
CHARLIE CHAINSAW
h e Jam T o t d dicate
TONY DRAYTON Ripped & Torn
SHANE MACGOWAN Bondage
THE JAM Ins pi r e d to l
ww
with
ith s
CRASS
Plastered Press Ssuicide Alley Pulp
Map of Fanzines - Characters - Music bands in relationship with Punk music Introduction
CHAPTER 1
PUNK FANZINE - AN ORAL HISTORY
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CHAPTER 1
Mark P.:
PUNK?
Nobody can define punk-rock, it’s all about rock in its lowest form - on the level of the streets. Kids jamming together in their dad’s garage, poor equipment, tight clothes, empty heads (nothing to do now you’ve left school) and model-shops. Punk-rock’s all those things
Legs McNeil:
All summer we had been listening to this album Go Girl Crazy by this unknown group called the Dictators, and it changed our lives. We’d just get drunk every night and lip-sync to it . . . I hated most rock ‘n’ roll, because it was about lame hippie stuff, and there really wasn’t anyone describing our lives — which was McDonald’s, beer, and TV reruns.” So I thought the magazine should be for other fuck-ups like us. Kids who grew up believing only in the Three Stooges. Kids that had parties when their parents were away and destroyed the house. You know, kids that stole cars and had fun. So I said, ‘Why don’t we call it Punk?” The word ‘punk’ seemed to sum up the threat that connected everything we liked — drunk, obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, funny, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side. Well, I think we broke the mould. There was only two ways to be before then: a hippie or a jock. But punk happened at the same time as all these other revolutions were happening. The gay revolution was happening, the women’s revolution was happening, the anti-war revolution finally ended. Up until then it had been very, very constricting because it was very fashionable to be politically correct and act a certain way. There were certain things that were kind of dictated to you growing up in the 60’s and the 70’s. Punk smashed all the rules and started all over again, which was good and bad. You had gay people being friends with straight people, and all this great communication happening. You really interacted with people and didn’t judge them. Everyone was interesting and fascinating and delightful, and there were all these great ideas being circulated. It was wonderful to be able to start over and say “This is what we want, this is what we like, and this is what we don’t like”. And, of course, the music was great. Punk was like a two to four year span where the music just busted out and it was really great. And then the crap came back. The crap always comes back. The next thing we did was go out and plaster the city with these little posters that said, “Watch out! PUNK is coming!” Everyone who saw them said, “Punk? What’s punk?” John and I were laughing. Wewere like, “Ohhh, you’ll find out.”
Mark P.:
To be honest, summing up what is described as punk now is quite embarrassing, I find. It’s all booze and drugs, and all ‘up yours’, and it’s not. To me, punk was much more positive than that. It was more creative. It wasn’t about getting pissed. It wasn’t that you’ve gotta wear the uniform. You know, the Dr Martens and your leather jacket, with your dyed hair. That wasn‘t what it was about originally, to me anyway. It was about being different than the norm, doing something on your own. So I’m very proud of the fact that Sniffin’ Glue was the first punk fanzine. Yeah, there was other fanzines after Sniffin’ Glue started being successful and selling a few hundred copies. I did try to encourage people because a lot of other people came to me and said, ‘Oh, we wanna write for Sniffin’ Glue, can we write something?’ and my response was always ‘no’. I told them, ‘You can’t write for Sniffin’ Glue. What you should do is go out and start your own fanzine,’ and a lot of those people did. So you had great fanzines like Ripped and Torn, Fear and Loathing, Rapid Eye... There were literally hundreds. Ripped and Torn was always my favourite because they came after (Sniffin’ Glue). That was the second punk fanzine after mine and I felt they really encapsulated the punk feeling even more than we did. Tony Drayton did Ripped and Torn and he was actually from Glasgow. So he wasn’t at the centre of things in London, like me, but he very much captured the punk spirit. He was a regular kid that just felt he needed to say something about the music he loved, which is what it was about.
Jamie Reid:
Punk was never about big master plans and it was always much more collective than Malcolm McLaren and John Lydon would ever admit. It was about finding yourself in a situation, reacting and then moving on, and that’s what I do now.”
Legs McNeil:
Punk was like, this is new, this is now, the apotheosis, powerful. But it wasn’t political. I mean, maybe that is political. I mean the great thing about punk was that it had no political agenda. It was about real freedom, personal freedom. It was also about doing anything that’s gonna o endagrown-up.Justbeingaso ensiveaspossible. Whichseemeddelightful, just euphoric. Be the real people we are. You know? I just loved it.
Jon Savage:
Being a pop fan from the year dot: I was a teenager at the height of the mid-sixties pop explosion. Wanting to rock and there being no rock. The countdown to punk was very simple: Nuggets (1972) and Hard Up Heroes (1973) rekindled interest in the hard, mutated sixties pop that you could buy in Rock On [Ted Carroll’s record shop] in 73-75 (ie Yardbirds, Kinks, Who, Them etc). Patti Smith’s Horses. Charles Shaar Murray’s article about the Ramones (November 75). The Ramones’ first album (April 76). Television’s Little Johnny Jewel. Punk was wild, outcast, vicious and protective at the same time. It wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t straight (I don’t mean this just in terms of sexuality, but in a perceptual sense). It did not, initally, reinforce the dominant values. So if you’re pissed off, you might pick up some tips. You might find a bunch of outcasts coming together curiously uplifting.
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No. I
“Punk?”
Legs MCNeil:
“How did you start your own punk zine?”
And they both started laughing hysterically. Ged and John were both like four years older than me. And I think half the reason they hung out with me was because I was always getting drunk and into trouble and Holmstrom found it constantly amusing. So it was decided I would be a living cartoon character, like Alfred E. Neuman was to Mad Magazine. And Holmstrom changed my name from Eddie to Legs . . . It’s funny, but we had no idea if anybody besides the Dictators were out there. We had no idea about CBGB’s and what was going on, but I don’t think we cared. We just liked the idea of Punk magazine. And that was all that really mattered.
Mark P.:
I’d never had any aspirations to be a writer, but I was a big music fan. I wasn’t content with just being in the audience, I wanted to give it a go. . I just wanted to be involved. I discovered no-one was writing about punk over here, so I thought I’d do my own magazine. Well, it was pre-internet and all that. The only voice young people had in the 70s was through music, unless you were lucky enough to be a DJ or writer or something like that. So starting your own fanzine was a way of getting that alternative opinion across. Because all the major music papers were owned by big publishing companies – for example, NME (was run) by IPC, a big publishing house at the time. So by doing your own fanzine, it meant that you could have your say, basically. You could have that alternative viewpoint. And quite quickly after my fanzine came out lots of others, all around the country, started (up) in the same way and had that alternative viewpoint. The music papers at the time were pretty good, NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, they were good magazines but because the journalists were older they weren’t really talking about new music, you know? So with Sniffin’ Glue we felt like the voice of the street because we were nearer the age of the people in the groups, so our point of view was that we were more authentic
Mick Mercer: The original typed transcript of the interview with Mark and Dennis Burns for Jamming! 6, 1978
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Panache was my fanzine, but I honestly can’t remember where the name came from!
Clinton Walker: When John Holmstrom and Legs McNeill started publishing Punk out of New York in late 1975, and similarly
when Mark P started publishing Sniffin’ Glue out of London the following year, these for me were heard-about but not seen. It wasn’t till the import stores - which in those days for me largely meant Rocking Horse in Brisbane - started getting in more of this ephemera that I started actually seeing any of it. But the principle was simple enough anyway: Write up some stuff, lay it out on a page, print and staple together a few copies, and sell them through the record stores. Inspired by Mark P and Dee Dee Ramone, I took the pen-name Cee Walker, which some people still occasionally call me (and I quite like it!). We printed up the first issue of SSuicide Alley (in foolscap format; that’s how naive I was) and in April 1977 - just after the Saints had left Brisbane for Sydney on their way to London - I took the train south. In Sydney, where I crashed at the Saints’ doss-house along with my old mate from Brisbane Jeffrey Wegener, I fronted up in the record shops - most notably White Light, whose handbills were like broadsides themselves - and traded copies of the zine for new singles. I went and saw Radio Birdman (for the one and only time) at the Royal Easter Show, and I saw
No. I
“How did you start your own punk zine?”
a few gigs at their venue the Oxford Funhouse (including one by Johnny Dole and the Scabs - review below). Moving on to Melbourne, I sold copies of SSA to Keith Glass at Archie & Jugheads (just before it was renamed Missing Link), and the first three people I met there were Bruce Milne, Rowland Howard and Ollie Olsen. Bruce I’d already connected with by answering an ad in RAM selling Plastered Press; Rowland was his friend from school who’d helped on the zine and was trying to get a band together; and Ollie was in a new band called the Reals. I didn’t see the Reals on that visit to Melbourne, nor the other two new bands on the scene - NEWS and the Boys Next Door - but I connected in a way I didn’t in Sydney, which seemed old and hoary by comparison, and a link was forged that became the virtual foundation of a synergy that the exhibition “Melbourne><Brisbane: Punk, Art and After” at the Ian Potter Gallery in Melbourne in 2010 all too conspicuously overlooked. When I got back to Brisbane in May 1977 and Andrew McMillan announced he was leaving for Sydney to take up a staff job at RAM, I got straight back onto Bruce in Melbourne and suggested we kill off our respective erstwhile zines and join forces to create Pulp, the name I recall Bruce must have come up with.
going again. The people down Ladbroke Grove had no idea of my reduced circumstances, and I let them believe I was biding my time, irons in the fire etc but cash flow meant I couldn’t get going. On one of my trips to Rough Trade Joly from Better Badges was in there and took me for a meal at the Mountain Grill cafe on Portobello Road. Good man, Joly, he could see I needed a hot meal. Whilst I stuffed my face Joly offered me a deal that he would pay for the print coasts of any magazine I wanted to put out, so long as he could distribute as many as he wanted through his mail-order business. Any copies of the mag I wanted to sell myself I could buy off him at a trade price (I think it was 10p per copy). Basically this meant I could publish for free. On the way home I bought a typewriter in a second hand shop for £6 (a days wages at the leafleting job we did!) and back in the room I told the other people the news. “We’re going to write a new fanzine from this very room”, I declaimed, “and it’s going to be called ‘Fuck Your Mother’!” The people in that room would be the first FYM collective. So I guess they came first.
Tony Moon:
In the lunch hour, I sit on the bog attacking bits of paper with Pritt glue in a very real fever - got to do it now, now. ‘It’ is a fanzine. I need to give voice to those explosions in my head. Cut-up bits of the NME, 60s pop annuals, Wilhelm Reich and ‘Prostitution’ handbills, are slashed together around a long improvised piece about violence, fascism, Thatcher and the impending apocalypse. London’s Outrage was done at the end of November 1976: went to see The Clash, saw The Sex Pistols, and did it in two days. I was highly influenced by Sniffin’ Glue, Who Put The Bomp, Bam Balam, and, on the visual side, Claude Pelieu and John Heartfield.
When we first saw ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ (ground breaking punk fanzine), we thought ‘we can do that’. I’d always liked writing things so we decided to do a fanzine too. We did interviews with the bands and that’s how we first met The Stranglers. We phoned up Albion and went down to the management’s offices in Putney Bridge Road and I interviewed Jet. It gave us a lot of confidence and it felt great. We put them on the cover, we actually gave them their first ever front cover!
Mark P.:
The first I heard about the punk rock movement is reading about the New York scene. That’s where I remember, especially in NME through Nick Kent, hearing about CBGB’s and the Ramones. It sounded very exciting, talking about things in a new way. There was connections to Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground- that was interesting. Patti Smith, her stuff about her lyrics and the French existentialists. Then the Ramones album come out, first album and it was on import. Nick Kent reviewed it and it sounded interesting. I went and bought the import copy before it came out in Britian. I was just blown away. It was like... fucking hell, what an exciting album! They had the edge over Doctor Feelgood for me. This was something special, their whole attitude. Yeah, that was it really. It was the Ramones coming over was why I decided to do the fanzine. They came over supporting the Flamin’ Groovies who were doing the ‘Shake Some Action’ tour and they were on Sire as well. They played the Roundhouse. It was damn rock and roll, feet on the monitors. Fantastic! Within a week, I got the fanzine out.
Mick Mercer:
Panache was integrated into my personal worldview. It was what kick started my brain, which lay dormant at school.
Tony Drayton:
What’s in it for me? My excuse for this self-indulgent esca-pade ... it’s the only way to read my views on punk. In the autumn of 1979, I was still making trips from our squat in West Hampstead to Rough Trade in Ladbroke Grove to collect mail for Ripped & Torn fanzine. I was always being asked about when I was going to get Ripped & Torn
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Jon Savage:
Adrian Thrills: feel.
I do the mag because it’s enjoyable writing, gives me a feeling of involvement and a chance to say exactly what I
Tony Fletcher:
The inspiration was a Jon Savage feature in Sounds about the fanzine culture. I totally remember we’d get the music papers and swap them around and read them in school. I remember thinking: this looks a lot more fun than doing maths right now. So the initial notion was something as pure as that. Going back a bit, I came from a musical family – Mum was an English teacher, Dad was a music professor – and much of the early part of the book is about coming from a middle class background and not knowing if you’re meant to be aspiring upwards to university and what your parents want for you, or down towards rock ‘n’ roll where your heart is. Before punk I think I’d been aspiring upwards. Then when punk came along in that summer of ’77 – I remember we went back to school in the September and the whole music world had changed. Everything had changed. The fanzine seemed like a way to be involved in that. In those first four issues, Jamming is all over the place. But the thing about keeping it going – it’s funny you mention that because I did have that kind of personality of starting something, being really into it, dropping it and forgetting about it – I think I just realised that I quite enjoyed it. There was good stuff going on in music and it wasn’t enough to do it quite badly at school. I had the chance to do it better. I think once I got that letter from Paul Weller – he just wrote straight back and really kind of befriended me, there was no reason to look back.
No. I
“How did you start your own punk zine?”
“What are things making your zine successful?” Mick Mercer:
The punk attitude prevailed, in so much as the editorial tone was always, if you’re not enjoying this there’s something wrong with you.
Teal Triggs: In the case of Chainsaw the punctuation marks appear darker (as if double strikes) from the main body of
text, which is uneven in weight but also in line, thereby reflecting the type of pressure that was used to hit individual keys. In addition, the typewriter he used from Issue 5 had dropped the letter ‘n’ throughout.
Charlie Chainsaw: ‘the missing “N” was filled in by hand—a laborious pro- cess!’ Malcolm McLaren:
Anarchy in the UK” is a statement of self-rule, of ultimate independence, of do-it-yourself
Tony Moon:
As far as I was concerned, it was still ‘Sideburns’. The band had no editorial control over it and no one ever told us what to do. The way we looked at it, because we liked the Stranglers, and we had access to them, we would always have an interview with them in each issue. It couldn’t be all about one band or it would become like a fanclub magazine and I never wanted to do that. That seemed a bit crass to me, I wanted it to be part of the scene.
John Holmstrom:
We were also going for minimalism and simplicity at Punk magazine. Lou Reed totally understood what we were going for when I first met with him after he appeared on the cover of the first issue. He complimented us on our use of grainy, high-contrast photos, the attention to layout and visual attraction, the hand-lettering, the black and white printing and encouraged me to stick with it. (Unfortunately it wasn’t always easy to capture this every issue, but Punk paid more attention to the visuals—rock magazines are usually started by writers so that the layouts are secondary to the text-heavy page layout.) I think we, and other bands/artists at any time, succeeded when we did the best with what we had. We couldn’t afford four-color printing or expensive typesetting, so we didn’t mind if a page looked handmade, or if the lettering looked like a demented criminal had scrawled on a page. What I always tried to do was express a concept. If we couldn’t get around budget limitations, we’d throw it out and think of something else.
Pages inside the Fanzine Anarchy in the UK, 1976 35
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No. I
“What are things making your zine successful?”
“How do you publish your zine?” Tony Moon:
This a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band.
Shane MacGowan:
This whole thing was put together… with the help of a box of safety pins. All the photos are ripped out of other mags.
Mick Mercer:
Tony Moon: When the printers delivered the first issue to my house, we thought ‘what do we do now?’ On my day off, I would go around all the London record shops like Rock On & Rough Trade and they would all take some copies to sell. We also sold them outside gigs. One night, outside The Nashville, we were selling the first issue (shown right) and JJ came along on his way back from TW (Studios). He hadn’t seen the fanzine and he was there on the cover. That made us feel like we were doing the right thing. It was really exciting.
Mark P.: At the time there were four established music magazines in Britain: you had the NME, Sounds, Melody Maker and
Jon Savage:
It was exciting enough to eventually learn about reduced type on a photocopier!! I always kept it simple but tried to cram each issue full. Type it up, reduce it, loads of cut-outs (relevant to a theme) and as many photos as possible.
Record Mirror, and basically, they wrote about the more established rock music. But when the punk scene started in 1976 in the UK, I just felt there was a need to have a magazine that was devoted to punk rock, so I had the idea to start my own fanzine. That’s why it was important at the time, because it was the first UK fanzine to write about punk rock. That’s why it was so significant. One day I tried to find out where Eno lived. I was a big Roxy fan an’ it said, I dunno where, the NME or something, it said what street he lived in so I went up Portobello Road this particular Saturday and tried to find Eno’s house. I end up finding his house and waiting outside his door for about two hours, knocked at the door, and there was no sign of him, so then I got a Wimpy and went home, like, but, ha ha. What I’m saying is when I was young I used London in that way an’ I guess I wouldn’t have found out about punk if it hadn’t been for that, really cos it was obviously it was being uptown a lot and knowing a few record shops uptown is when I first, y’know read about the Ramones and started meetin’ people like in, as I said they used a have a stall, Rock On, a stall in Soho, Newport Court. There was Roger [Carroll] and Ted [Armstrong] [who also ran Chiswick Records - Gibbon] and they used to have a shop, but they owned the whole thing. But the guys who run the stall in, er, Soho were Stan Brennan and a guy called Phil [Gaston]. Stan and Phil, they later on formed Soho Records that put out Nipple Erectors records. I knew Roger and Ted later but first of all I knew the guys from Soho. I didn’t go to Camden much in those days, I later on did, yaknowhattimean, but they were the guys, I said “Look, I’ve done this fanzine, y’know”. I sorta asked about a punk fanzine, they said there isn’t a punk fanzine and I said “I’ve done this fanzine” and they were the first ones who took it, yaknowhattimean, and put it on sale for me. In conversation I said about, “Is there any magazine?” and they said “there’s no punk magazine, you’ll have to do one yourself ”!in general conversation, it wasn’t exactly “do one yourself ”, “yes I will boss!”. But yeah they did, sort of, like, y’know, they probably said as a joke, y’know, “You’ll have do one yourself, then, won’t you, mate!?” Sniffin’ Glue. And that was it, they were really encouraging. I knew them cos I was a bit adventurous, yaknowhattimean, going up there and havin’
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a look ‘round London. The whole of that first issue was what I could do at that time with what I had in my bedroom. I had a children’s typewriter plus a felt-tip pen, so that’s why the first issue is how it is. I just thought it would be a one-off. I knew when I took it to the shop there was a good chance they’d laugh at me, but instead they said, How many have you got? I think my girlfriend had done 20 on the photocopier at her work and they bought the lot off me. Then they advanced me some money to get more printed.(Mark Perry quoted in Q Magazine April 2002)
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50 copies xeroxed. 1000 copies printed. Distributed through Rough Trade -- the first one, I might add. All sold. London’s Outrage 2 (all photos and montage set in Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grave and Notting Dale) -- only 50 copies xeroxed and sold Mick Mercer: It was pretty rough and ready and was me typing things up on sheets of paper as columns. Then you would cut the columns out and lay them out on a page with photos or illustrations and you make your master page, then you take those to a printer to get them printed. You staple the printed pages together and sell it at gigs.
Shance MacGowan:
Well, I wrote and published Bondage which was the first graphic fanzine. In other words it wasn’t typewritten, it was written out by hand. And then it was covered in graphics. like, each page was covered in safety pins and chains ans stuff... real ones, yeah? And I photocopied it like that, for the original copy. I took the whole thing down with the chains and stuff on it, to the photocopying machine at Oxford Circus, and photocopied it once. Then I got the money to publish it by going around places like Compendium and Rock On and saying, “I’’ll give you a certain amount of copies if you give me the money upfront to get it printed.”And they would give it to me.
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“How do you publish your zine?”
“Why did you stop publishing your zine?” Legs McNeil:
It’s funny, but now “punk” was being used to describe something the world thought of as English. When we first started the magazine, we had subscribed to a newspaper clipping service that sent us a clipping every time the term “punk” was used in an article or newspaper story-so we had watched as the name had grown into this phenomenon. Four years earlier, we had pasted the Bowery with bumper stickers that said “Watch Out! Punk Is Coming!” Now that it was here, I didn’t want any part of it. Overnight, punk had become as stupid as everything else. This wonderful vital force that was articulated by the music was really about corrupting every form-it was about advocating kids to not wait to be told what to do, but make life up for themselves, it was about trying to get people to use their imaginations again, it was about not being perfect, it was about saying it was okay to be amateurish and funny, that real creativity came out of making a mess, it was about working with what you got in front ofyou and tu ing everything embarrassing, awful, and stupid in your life to your advantage. But after the Sex Pistols tour, I had no interest in doing Punk magazine. It just felt like this phony media thing. Punk wasn’t ours anymore. It had become eve thing we hated. It seemed like it had become everything we had started the magazine to rage against. So Holmstrom found a new resident punk. I was replaced. But I didn’t care. It was over.
Mick Mercer:
No legacy, no. There were many great fanzines around. I stopped it in the early 90’s. It just wasn’t needed any more. I now do something similar as a free pdf magazine.
Mark P.:
I’m really glad Sniffin’ Glue ended, but it didn’t have to end. I’ve always done things for what I call the right reason, and so there was no way I was gonna cash in on the magazine, or anything in that kind of way. It’s one of the things that’s been built in me, that I don’t like it when things get diluted. I’d rather go out on a high than stick around too long. I mean the reason it’s a legend, and the reason Sniffin’ Glue is the #1 punk fanzine, is because it was only 12 issues! If it had gone on until issue 30 or 40, and into the early 80s, someone probably would’ve tapped us on the shoulder and said: “Hey, you’re not saying anything anymore. Look, it’s rubbish now!”
Shane MacGowan: I could’ve, yeah. I never got it together. I was just too lazy to get it together to do a second issue. Typical me, you know.
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No. I
“Why did you stop publishing your zine?”
“Do you think Punk – Punk fanzines are dead?” Mark Perry:
But I think people put too much on it, they sort of build it all up as though it’s fucking Beethoven, like CBGB is the fucking Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s not, it’s just a club. CBGB to me started going downhill when they started making more money, selling t-shirts and mugs and fucking mouse mats, rather than putting on bands. That was the beginning of the end. Thank god The Roxy [a nightclub known for hosting the British punk scene in its infancy] didn’t last, because the same thing would be happening there. I don’t know why people are getting all worked up about it. It’s like when John Lydon did the butter adverts, and people say: “oh [this advert is] the death of punk!” Why?! People are ridiculous. What are you talking about - the “death of punk”? Punk died to me the day the Clash signed with CBS, I didn’t have to wait 40 years to know that. I don’t know about zines today. I think that what happens and what’s always a problem—and it’s a disappointment really—is when you have too much of something you end up with too many voices, all speaking. What went wrong in the 70s and 80s with zines, is there was too much of it. Where before you could have gone to five, ten, or 20 different zines like Sniffin’ Glue, Ripped & Torn and what have you, all of a sudden you had hundreds of them. I can imagine what happens now in the internet era is even worse. The people that are making the zines, probably have their own blogs. And the people reading those blogs are probably reviewing that blog and writing about them in their own zines. They’re all screwing each other a bit. So I don’t know if there’s a chance zines can have a purpose or survive nowadays. It can’t possibly have the same impact, because it’s not one voice out there anymore. When there’s one or even a couple rebellious voices out there, it’s almost louder, you know? Well, it’s different today because you’ve got the internet. If we want to have our say on anything we can go straight online to our blog, our Facebook page, our Twitter. But remember, in the 70s there wasn’t any of that. If you wanted to get your voice out there, you had to actually do something. When you started a fanzine in the old days, you had to actually cut and paste. You used felt-tip pen and cow gum to physically cut and paste it together. And then you’d go down the local photocopying shop. In those days, nobody had their own photocopiers. I mean, nowadays most printers can photocopy and in those days, you had to get up off your bum and go down the photocopying shop. It was more of a hands-on process. I don’t think there’s any need for fanzines, in the same way, these days because people can just start blogs and that, can’t they? You can put it all on YouTube. There are more ways of getting your voice out there nowadays and in the 70s there wasn’t, so you had to go and start a fanzine. Mark P.: Summing up what is described as punk now is quite embarrassing, I find. It’s all booze and drugs, and all ‘up yours’, and it’s not. To me, punk was much more positive than that. It was more creative Zines today can’t possibly have the same impact, because it’s not one voice out there anymore. When there’s one or even a couple of rebellious voices, it’s louder, you know? When you have newspapers telling you something and you’re in a city where the establishment rules everything and all that, suddenly you have someone shouting out on the street: “Look at me, Sniffin’ Glue, up yours!“ You’re gonna go: “Wait a minute, what’s that? Hold on!” But when you’ve got two thousand or more people saying: “Look at me! Up yours!”, you end up with this big garble of something that doesn’t mean anything anymore, and you might as well just keep listening to Radio 4, for fuck’s sake.
Legs McNeil:
Does any of the spirit of the great rock and roll from the 60’s or late 50’s remain? Nope, but the music does. You can’t tell me that ‘Judy is a Punk’ hasn’t lasted. I think in the end, that’s all that remains, and that’s what excites people to do it again. People are trying, but everybody is so interconnected and internet-oriented that whatever it’s gonna be is gonna be complete-
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ly different. I think there will be a period again when people will start making really great music – it just seems to come in spurts.
John Holmstrom:
I feel like our culture has been sterilized. Nothing interesting is being allowed to develop. It’s not an accident that “culture” refers to both the growth of bacteria in a petri dish, as well as art and music. The world is becoming so sterile; it’s difficult to see how true “culture” can evolve. Maybe overseas, in Iraq or someplace. But I hear the same complaint from punk rock fans from almost all western countries. The influence punk has had on film, art, fashion and everything else in our culture–good and bad–is beyond my ability to comprehend. Although I hoped, as a teenager, to create this kind of thing, I never expected that something I contributed to would become this pervasive–especially years after I left it. (Punk magazine folded in 1979.) At this point I am concerned that it’s some kind of “last word.” I was always hoping I’d see the next art or music movement that would wipe out “punk” the way we destroyed hippie culture. I wanted to see something more interesting and outrageous than punk rock take over the world and introduce new ideas and make punk seem like an outdated concept. But it hasn’t happened yet. The ability of the punk scene to remain alive and well has been a source of constant amazement to me. When I was a kid, there was a 1950s “rock-n-roll-revival” scene, but it was sort of campy. Sha Na Na was poking fun at how ancient the old 1950s rock scene seemed to us in the modern 1970s. On the other hand, bands like the Ramones were able to use that revival to create something new. The CBGB’s bands drew from many influences to forge a new music scene. To me, “punk rock” is what we had to start calling real rock ‘n’ roll—the stuff that pisses off your parents—because bands like Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt and Billy Joel were suddenly being lumped in with real rock ‘n’ roll such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and the Stooges. In the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll defined teen rebellion, juvenile delinquency, drugs, sleazy comic books and forbidden sex. In the 1970s, rock ‘n’ roll had to be redefined. And that’s my proudest accomplishment—that we helped keep the true spirit alive for a new generation. CBGB’s has done the same, providing a venue for bands like the Beastie Boys, White Zombie, They Might Be Giants, Living Colour and many others. Sadly, the world is too big for a new movement like the original punk movement, and kids are too smart to take the stupid chances we took back then. Also, the economy isn’t bad enough for people to risk everything by doing nothing, or trying something completely new.
Mark P.:
To me, the spirit of punk only really came from the spirit of rock music. And what does that even mean then, when a good part of rock music is only about selling records? You know, funny enough, the other week someone who was probably just as influential in the rock scene as Bowie died, [The Bee Gees and Cream manager] Robert Stigwood. He’s interesting because, we talk about the influence of people like Bowie and Johnny Rotten and The Clash and all that, but people like him—and Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin’s manager— they ruled the world. They actually opened their wallets and paid for the stuff. They’re the ones that took rock music out of places like the Marquee club and into stadiums; they put together The Creams, and later on produced films like Saturday Night Fever and all that. They’re the guys that took rock music to the masses, and it’s because of them that we now have this massive, monotonous money-making machine. You can’t reverse all that. You can’t go back to David Bowie playing the Roundhouse or David Bowie playing some shithole club, you know what I mean? Everything moved on, and everything’s changed. Whatever’s happening now, whether it’s in the spirit of rock or in the spirit of punk, it’s happening in a different environment than when it started.
No. I
“Do you think Punk – Punk fanzines are dead?”
Bostons groupie News
Oh Cardiff, Up Yours!
Anarchy in the UK TONY MOONBombsite Panache
Flipside
FRANCIS DRAKE Live Wire Strangled Shy Talk In the cityAllied Propaganda
MALCOLM MCLAREN
Gabba Gabba hey Bored Stiff Kill your pet puppy
LEGS MCNEIL
THERipped CLASH & Torn
Negative Reaction Alternative Sounds
THE JAM Rotten to the core
Anti Climax
CRASS THE DAMNED48 Thrillls ADRIAN THRILLS Slash New York RockerMARK PERRY I wanna be your dog For Adophs only
PIG
S’Punk
Woof Search and destroy Touch and Go
109890 Teenage Rampage
IGGY POP
Worcester rock and roll news Big Hits Cowabunga The Good Big star International Anthem Brain Wash Hard Korps Biff!Bang!Pow! Fuggit Syne Future
Young, fast and scientific
Punk England
Private World
Ireland
Jamming
THE STRANGLERS
SEX PISTOLS America PUNK MUSIC Sniffin’ Glue THE STOOGES Bondage Scotland
Aunt Helen
Guilty of what
CLINTON WALKER
Auguste Pages
Plastered Press
Ssuicide Alley Pulp
CHARLIE CHAINSAW
Alternative Ulster 43
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RAMONES London’s Outrage Sideburns
TONY DRAYTON Skum
MICK MERCER
JON SAVAGE
JOHN HOLMSTROM
Chainsaw
DANNY BAKER No. I
CHAPTER 2 VISUAL POETRY
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No. II
Visual Poetry
VISUAL POETRY
NANNI BALESTRINI ART WORKS
A visual poetry may be defined simply as a poem composed or designed to be consciously seen. This modern visual poem nowadays is generally composed with disassembled language material including word, text, note, code, petroglyph, letter, phonic character, type, cipher, symbol, pictograph, sentence, number, hieroglyph, rhythm, iconograph, grammar, cluster, stroke, ideogram, density, pattern, diagram, logogram, accent, line, color, measure, etc.. Treating the poem as an object, artists combined language and visual imagery directly influenced by Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism, FLUXUS and the readymade. By crossing art form boundaries of the traditional poem form, the visual poet composes in a field of multimedia or borderblur or intermedia in term of visual language art.
VISUAL POETRY IN ITALY Visual Poetry - Poesia Visiva in Italian language, during the 1960s and 1970s, became a neo-avant-garde movement spanning the visual arts. Italian visual poets create artworks which mainly derived from literary sources, sought to challenge the conventional art work by dematerialising and publishing the art object. Basically, they combine and employ all different types of materials such as calligraphy, collage, typeface, braille, photography, and other visual and textual elements. Visual poetry is a ‘fusion of word and image’. An artwork has an amalgamation of linguistic and pictorial expression. For visual poet Lamberto Pignotti, “Poesia Visiva returns to the tradition of interactions between words and images, but it does so in terms of a discourse on communications in our modern world.” Undeniably, Italian visual artists during this period not only revolutionised the traditional notion of literature and aesthetics but transformed text and image into political, socio-economic and cultural statements.
Nanni Balestrini, Centrato n. 8, 1964 Nanni Balestrini, Colonne Verbali exhibition in Florence
NANNI BALESTRINI “By breaking up sentences, and words too, and putting them together in apparently arbitrary ways, I want to bring forth deeper, irrational meanings, something that generates cerebral emotions, like music and painting do, rather than mental processes...” Nanni Balestrini Nanni Balestrini, was born 2 July 1935, is an Italian experimental poet, author and visual artist of the Neoavanguardia movement. He has had a profound influence on the development of Italian art and literature over the last fifty years. Furthermore, he is one of the most innovative writers - artists of the post-war period in Italy. In 1961, he started to use computer to create works of poetry. He has written poetry and various novels on the protest movements of the 1970s. He is also a prolific visual artist, as documented in the monograph, Con gli occhi del linguaggio.
Nanni Balestrini, Questo è l’uomo, 2014
Book: Nanni Balestrini: paesaggi verbali. Front Cover 47
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Visual Poetry
FEEL WHITE III FEEL FEEL WHITE WHITE
II FEEL GREY I FEEL FEEL GREY GREY
FEEL PINK PINK III FEEL FEEL PINK
II FEEL BLUE I FEEL FEEL BLUE BLUE
II FEEL GREEN I FEEL FEEL GREEN GREEN
CHAPTER 3 THE LOSERS - BAG COLLECTION
I FEEL PURPLE FEEL PURPLE PURPLE II FEEL
II FEEL YELLOW I FEEL FEEL YELLOW YELLOW
FEEL BLACK BLACK III FEEL FEEL BLACK
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RESISTANCE
ART
#
FREEDOM 51
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H_16
This collection has been dedicated to Punk subculture. Punk is freedom. Punk followers have shown their Punk by expressing resistance in all aspects of society. Besides, Punk is also a form of art.
NO metal frame
Key words: RESISTANCE - ART - FREEDOM
A collection has been inspired by three main topics. They are Punk and its Fanzines - The work of Nanni Balestrini, Visual Poetry - The fall winter 2008/2009 collection by Viktor & Rolf BEING PUNK - DOING FANZINE
H_10
# Strap holder 1
The collection color is fully in black color and have some strong constrasting colors such as white, green, purple, pink, blue, yellow. The black color is mostly used in leather, and in some bags with lighter colors, black is applied at the edges. The other constrasting colors are chosen from the popular colors used in the Punk era. The purpose of using these contrasting effect is to show the aggressive and catching-eye effect.
H_12
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Name of the collection - The Losers. Subcultures have been always considered as the culture for whom are out of the mainstream - losers. By creating their own tool of communication, Punk fanzines have strong contributed to the transforming of passive observers – its Punk fans, into active participants. Therefore, to me, they are no longer the inactive losers. That is why I name my collection as The Losers, crossing the losers. Material of this collection is mainly using leather and metal hardware. Leather material with the matte and rubber finishing applied on the surface is giving the sense of being ignored. To be Punk, one of the most being-punk semiotics is metal. Metal is prepresentative for being aggressive, resistant, violent, and evil. I do not use metal chains or safety pins to present the Punk feeling. As soon as I used these items, I would destroy the spirit of Punk fanzine “Stop consuming others, create your own”. Punk is being different, not similar and it should not have the obvious similarity. Using the Punk language, the collection has turned it into the chain of hardware components.
H_18
No Lock
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Zipper slider 2
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# Strap holder 2
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# Lock
Metal hardware and some details in this collection are abstracted from fanzines characteristics. They are sentences/words published on fanzines such as No - No Fun - Losers - Punk is dead. Besides, particular icons of fanzines layout are also used to create the harware parts, including the icon “#”, “No.” The mandatory tool in the making fanzine process, especially for the cutting step, the scissors are also abstracted to be a bag lock and buckle hardware and the strap holders.
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Metal Hardware for the collection
No. III
Collection
LAYOUT GRAPHIC DESIGN STYLE For Sniffin’ Glue, Mark Perry used his own writing and his own broken typing machine to create the ‘zine, but now it is easy to go online and automatically filter your slogan through a punk typeset. Therefore, we’re not really inventing anything extremely innovative at the moment, but we’re reusing and recycling old ideas in new ways. Using the concept of a magazine, I create the cover for my collection as the cover page of a fanzine and playing with cutting and pasting. The result, for me, I would call it the fanzine, computer version. For the concept page, I play with the visual poetry of Nanni and the semiotics of Do-it-yourself spirit, the scissors and the skillful hands, and addding the graphic design of the words LOSERS. PLAYING WITH WORDS INSPIRED BY NANNI BALESTRINI I has found the common element between the Punk fanzine and the visual poetry which was strongly developed in 1960s and 1970s in Italy. That is to use the visual signs and written language to create art. Nanni Balestrini - an Italian experimental poet, author and visual artist, are among the best artists in this field. As Nanni Balestrini has used sentences, words in a creative way to create his talented works of art, I want to use these types of single word to delivery the freedom and resistance of language of Punk. No - No Fun - The Losers - Punk is dead. These words are playing to become the hand straps, the lock, the metal or 3D decorations. The collection have applications with the words inside and constrasting background to emphasize the feeling of cutting words and pasting on specific background. “NO” INSPIRED BY VIKTOR & ROLF FALL WINTER 2008 “We love fashion, but it’s going so fast. We wanted to say ‘No’ this season.” said Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren in the interview for their fall winter 2008. That fall collection show was a precise gray trench, the word “No” popping out from its chest in 3-D, and ended with a strapless black tulle dress gathered below the knee and embroidered with the phrase “Dream on.” It blew up the stage with the Punk spirit. Using the same words “No” in my collection, yet, it is another story to tell. “No” is resistance, as usual. Punk guys say No to everything that normal and mainstream. They want differences. In my collection, No is turned into the metal buckle and bag lock or metal decorations. Similar to Viktor and Rolf collection, I want to use the 3-D effect, together with the constrasting color combination, creating the catching-eye effect, the resistance to being normal.
Viktor & Rolf FW 2008 (Vogue.com)
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No. II
Visual Poetry
This collection has been dedicated to Punk subculture. Punk is freedom. Punk followers have shown their Punk by expressing resistance in all aspects of society. Besides, Punk is also a form of art.
I has found the common element between the
Punk fanzine and the visual poetry which was strongly developed in 1960s and 1970s in Italy. That is to use the visual signs and written language to create art. Nanni Balestrini - an Italian experimental poet, author and visual
Apart from the style, music, cinema, events, bands, Punk fans contributed to the printed world a new form of communication, a Punk fanzine. With this special communication, its own language and a manner for Punk insiders communicate with their peers, Punk has created a unique system with “visual signs and conveyance of a message of resistance” . Punk fanzines are language of graphic resistance. Subcultures have been alwasy considered as the culture for whom are out of the mainstream losers. By creating their
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“The Losers”collection has played around with the contrasting of metal and leather material; black and other
artist, are among the best artists in this field.
own tool of communication, Punk
colors. Using the Punk language, the collection has turned it into the chain of hardware components
fanzines have strong contributed to the t r a n s forming of passive observers – its Punk fans, into active participants.
No. III
Collection
24 cm
FRONT
SIDE
33 cm
14 cm
BACK
Double zip tote bag: 33 x 24 x 14 cm (WxHxD) - Calfskin leather with rubber finishing - Double top handles, 22 cm drop. Handle with metal - leather letter strap - Zip and snap closure - One center zip compartment - Two inside zip pockets - Three inside open pockets - One outside open pocket together with NO leather frame, impressing the look - Nappa leather for lining
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M_01
H_03
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C01 H_04
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Collection
15.5 cm 6.5 cm
26 cm
Shoulder bag: 26 x 15.5 x 6.5 cm (WxHxD) - Calfskin leather with nappa finishing - Shoulder strap with metal - leather letter detail - One inside open pocket - Two inside contains with flap closing - Flap with the No. embossed leather with 1 cm in height - # lock - Nappa leather for lining
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No. III
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SIDE 1
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SIDE 2
21 cm
FRONT
7c m
23 cm
BOTTOM
Handle bag: 21 x 23 x 7 cm (HxWxD) - Calf leather with nappa finishing for the flap detail - Suede leather for the faces - Sides with one piece leather together with the bottom. Applying the embossed leather - PUNK IS DEAD along side the piece. - One inside zip pocket - Handle strap holder with the metal part having the shape of the # symbol - Metal lock abstracting from the head of the scissors and NO word
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OVERVIEW COLLECTION 65
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PROTOTYPE 67
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 1.
BOOKS
bgs-isnt-the-fucking-notre-dam-cathedral-punk-died-long-before-then [Accessed: 15th March, 2017] - Noise, G. (2002), Please Kill me: interview with Legs McNeil, [Online] Available from: http://gloriousnoise.com/2002/please_kill_me_interview_ with [Accessed: 16th March, 2017]
- Dines M. and Worley M. (2016), The Aesthetic of our anger: Anarcho – Punk, Politics and Music, New York: Minor Compositions
- Pink, J. (2016), Tracing the beginnings of the punk fanzine, [Online] Available from: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/30999/1/
- Dunn, K. (2016), Global Punk: Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing
mark-perry-tracing-the-beginnings-of-the-punk-fanzine [Accessed: 15th March, 2017]
- Duncome, S. (2008), Notes from underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, Second Edition, Portland: Microcosm Publishing
- Punkygibbon, Mark P. Interview, [Online] Available from: http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/a/alternativetv_interview.html [Accessed: 15th
- Endeacott, R. (2014), Peaches: A Chronicle Of The Stranglers 1974-1990, London: Soundcheck Books
March, 2017]
- Hebdige, D. (1979), Subculture: the meaning of style, London – New York: Routledge
- Punk Journey, Fanzines, [Online] Available from: http://www.punkjourney.com/fanzines.php [Accessed: 16th March, 2017]
- Hyndman, S. (2015), Why fonts matter, London: Ebury Publishing
- Punk 77, Punk history, [Online] Available from: http://www.punk77.co.uk [Accessed: 29th April 2017]
- Glasper, I. (2014), Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980–1984, California: PM Press
- Storm, G., Punk and New Music Fanzines – Late 1970s to Early 1980s, [Online] Available from: https://garystormsongs.com/punk-and-new-mu-
- Marko, P. (2007), The Roxy London Wc2: A Punk History, London: Punk 77 Books - McNeil L. and McCain G. (2016), Please kill me: the
sic-fanzines-late-1970s-to-early-1980s/ [Accessed: 31th March, 2017]
uncensored oral history of Punk, Twentieth edition, New York: Grove Press
- Xulucomics, Strangled, [Online] Available from: http://www.xulucomics.com/strangled.html [Accessed: 29th April 2017]
- Patrick Williams J. (2011), Subcultural Theory: Traditions and concepts, Cambridge: Polity Press
- Walker, C., Fanzines, [Online] Available from: http://www.clintonwalker.com.au/fanzines-1970s.html [Accessed: 29th April 2017]
- Piano, D. (2003), Resisting subjects: DIY Feminism and the Politics of Style in Subcultural Productions. In Muggleton, D. & Weinzierl R., The
- Wrench, Chainsaw Fanzine, [Online] Available from: http://www.wrench.org/chainsaw.htm [Accessed: 29th April 2017]
Post Subcultures Reader, New York: Berg - Poynor R. (2003), No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism, London: Laurence King Publishing
4.
VIDEOS
- Thompson, S. (2014), Punk Productions: unfinished business, NY: State University of New York Press
- MomoeKaitenMokuba. (2013) Danny Baker c.1977, [Online] [Accessed on 1st May, 2017] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdtKynT_d60
- Triggs, T. (2010), Fanzines, London: Thames & Hudson
- Scott Crawford, (2012), SALAD DAYS: The Birth of Punk in the Nation’s Capital, [Online] [Accessed on 29th April, 2017] https://www.youtube.
- Mary Clarke, V. , MacGowan, S. (2012), A Drink with Shane MacGowan, London: Pan Books
com/watch?v=QNB_sSlrvyo - TEDx Talks, (2014), Wake up & Smell the fonts, [Online] [Accessed on 5th December, 2016] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc-VZ4Vw-
2. ARTICLES
bo
- Triggs, T. (2006), Scissors Glue: Punk Fanzines and the creation of a DIY aesthetic, Journal of Design History Vol.19 No.1, Oxford University Press - Worley, M. (2015), Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976-84: “While the world was dying, did you wonder why?”, Oxford University Press
3.
WEBSITES
- 3ammagazine, London’s outrage: an interview with Jon Savage, [Online] Available from: http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_jun/ interview_jon_savage.html [Accessed: 16th March, 2017] - Bond, M. (2005) Legs McNeil, Resident Punk, [Online] Available from: http://gothamist.com/2005/07/20/legs_mcneil_resident_punk.php [Accessed: 16th March, 2017] - Heller, S. (2005), Putting the Punk in DIY: An Interview with John Holmstrom [Online] Available from: http://www.aiga.org/putting-the-punk-indiy-an-interview-with-john-holmstrom [Accessed: 27th May 2017] - Jamming e-zine, The iJAMMING! ‘chat’: Mark Perry, visited 15th March, 2017, <http://www.ijamming.net/Music/MarkPerry1.html> - Noisey, CBGB Isn’t “The Fucking Notre Dame,” Punk Died Long Before Then, [Online] Available from: https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/cg-
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No. I
“Do you think Punk – Punk fanzines are dead?”