1  

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The Judas Goat Press presents:

Staple Guns For Hire

A Study into Fanzines and their role in fostering counter cultures.

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The Fanzine is a longstanding bastion of self-publishing. It’s been

sticking two-fingers up at mainstream media for over eight

decades. It’s never hacked any mobile phones; but it has left

disrespectful messages on behalf of nascent counter-cultures.

The producers of fanzines are often the author, editor, designer and

publisher. They are an intrinsic part of the culture they comment

upon. In some cases, the experience is that of a dictation from the

middle of discordant dancefloor.

But the scope of topics and interests covered in fanzines extends

way beyond music and football into the realms of agitprop literature,

the mundanity of temp work, the pleasures of subversive cross-

stitching, and the daily concerns of asexual vegans. Fanzines

communicate intimate details of a subject to a community of like-

minded individuals. They can be deadly serious about irreverence

and are litterd with bstard spolling spalling spelling mistkes. And

profanities.

At their heart-of-the-moment best, fanzines can make commercial

magazines look like cultural speeding tickets. They are the

exclamatory placards for the turning points in youth culture, objects

of cultish affectation, stuck together with some sell-o-tape over a cup

of tea and a nice biscuit. They are forever for the ‘in the know’, and

they occupy a sui generis position in the history of communication,

design, journalism, publishing and popular culture; fanzines ‘exist as

genuine human voices outside of all mass manipulation’1.

In this studyzine I will look at the ever-evolving nature of fanzines

and their distinct graphical language, and celebrate the DIY ethos

that has fostered - and linked - alternative communities everywhere;

long before the days of digital went viral.

                                                                                                               1 Fredrick Wertham, the World of Fanzines, 1972.

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Definitions

The freedom that self-publishing provides inevitably leads to the

establishing of several fanzine sub-genres. Additionally, titles released

by the Underground Press Syndicate of America occasionally blur the

line between self-produced fanzines and small publishing houses2.

Therefore it is sensible to define a meaning for the term fanzines:

A fanzine is lo-fi and often self-distributed. A fanzine is anything that is

published on a non-commercial small-scale basis, a publication that is

‘dependent on their independence’3. A fanzine is a vital part of the DIY

counter-culture communities it fosters and promotes. When view

retrospectively, fanzines are an essential piece of folk history. The term

‘fanzine’ and ‘zine’ are transposable and both will be used throughout

this study.

A ‘zinester’ is a creator of zines.

A ‘genzine’ is a self-publication that focuses only on one genre, or

producer of work in said genre, and ignores the ancillary social aspects.

A ‘perzine’ is an autobiographical publication.

A ‘e-zine’ is a fanzine in digital form.

                                                                                                               2  Oz, the Situationists IT publication, Spare Rib and Frendz all fall into this category.  3  Fredrick Wertham, the World of Fanzines, 1972.  

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1. A Time Before Staple Guns Roamed the Earth.

Self-publishing has had a twinned history with radical social criticism

since Thomas Paine’s document for American independence ‘Common

Sense’ in 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789 though to the Mai 68

riots.

The arts have also played a major role in providing reasons to self-

publish. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence came out in 1789 complete

with ornate engravings to accompany the poetry. The Germ ran from

January to May 1850, when it acted as a backdrop for discussions

between Britain’s pre-Raphaelite artists and poets. Other early

examples of literature self-published or edited by include works by Ezra

Pound (Poetry: A Magazine of Verse) and James Joyce (The Little

Review).

Regardless of the century - it is from within this combustible mix of art

& politick that fanzines find their most potent and mobilising voices.

However, the roots of what we recognise as fanzines today started in

America with the formation of the amateur press association (APA)4.

Amateur journalist Howard Scott produced The Rambler, a title that

speculated about scientific developments and fan conventions. This

spirit fed directly into the arrival of science-fiction clubs in the 1930’s,

for which writers would publish in a ‘distinct medium’ to share ‘science-

fiction stories and critical commentary’5. These included the works of

Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke6.

The Comet is the first example of an established fanzine and was a part

of the Chicago Science Correspondence club. But it was the prozine

Amazing Stories that first printed writer’s letters and addresses, thus

providing the original stimulus for fan communities7.

                                                                                                               4 Harry Warner, Sr, All Our Yesterdays: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties, 1969 5 Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics and Alternative Culture, Stephen Duncombe, 1997 6 Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2010 7 Ibid.    

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The visual template of subsequent fanzines is more of a European affair.

The cut and paste aesthetic was born post-World War I, from the

Dadaist and Surrealist movements, and further influenced by the

Situationists and the Mai’ 68 riots in Paris. This will be further

explained in chapter 7.

The term ‘fanzine’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.

‘Punk’s’ first usage as ‘young hoodlum’ is found in 1917 in E.E.

Cummings’ ‘Letters’

‘Humanity will not be happy until the day when the last bureaucrat

has been hanged with the intestines of the last capitalist’

Monday, May 13th 1968, the Sorbonne, on a painting by André Devambez in the stateroom.

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2. From Deep Space to Rough Trade.

If you’re planning a rebellion: don’t forget to the book the band.

Rock and Roll provided a valuable conduit for the next generation of

fanzines, and they built directly on the foundations that science

fiction self-publishing had provided. Years later, the zeitgeist that

catapulted Punk’s DIY ethics into the wider consciousness took the

fanzine phenomena to previously unprecedented levels.

In 1966 Crawdaddy! and Mojo Navigator burst onto the American

underground music scene, and were produced by Paul Williams and

Greg Shaw respectively. Both Williams and Shaw had been actively

involved in the science fiction scene, yet it was Shaw’s second music

fanzine that gave a direct link on to the folk history of zines in

Britain.

In 1970, central to the growth of fanzine culture in the UK were

independent record stores, and none more so than Rough Trade in

west London. Geoff Travis, whom I interviewed in December 2011,

ran the shop during this period, before setting up the record label of

the same name in 1978. No stranger to counter-culture publishing8,

Travis recounted the first time he was given Greg Shaw’s second

fanzine ‘Who Put the Bomp!’ at a concert at London’s Roundhouse.

Performing on that evening were The Flaming Groovies9, a west-

coast band that had bought some copies over with them. ‘Who Put

the Bomp!’ was among the first zines to feature a new breed of proto-

punk artists that included Iggy and the Stooges, The Mc5 and The

Ramones.

Working as assistant editor and art director of ‘Who Put the Bomp!’ at that time was John Ingham. Ingham moved to London later in

                                                                                                               8 Travis went to school with Vivian Berger, whom at 15 produced the Rupert Bear imagery for the School Kids issue of Oz, which subsequently ended up as evidence in the famous obscenity trial at Old Bailey in June 1971. 9 Supporting the Ramones on their first UK tour, June, 1976  

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1976, and completed the trans-Atlantic link by starting the punk

fanzine London’s Burning in 1977.

Ingham is also credited with writing the first mainstream review of a

Sex Pistols gig for Sounds magazine in 1976. Another influential

zine Bam Balam10 was published quarterly in East Lothian, Scotland

by Brian Hogg. Jon Savage, author of the definitive book on the punk

explosion ‘England’s Dreaming’ also worked on the zine.

Rough Trade was the go-to store for new music from the fledgling

English bands, but Travis also went to great lengths to import the

best records and zines from America. The first shop at 202

Kensington Park Road acted as an unofficial HQ for the growing

fanbase. As well as being one of the few places you could get your

hands on Punk, the New York zine produced by Legs McNeil widely

credited naming the genre – the shop had a photocopier out the back:

this proved essential11. Visiting Musicians, scenesters and zinesters

all congregated at the shop. Travis notes that the availably and

subsequent amount of zines ‘gave the movement a rallying point’,

and that the producers of the early titles were ‘all mavericks and

long way from normal’.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the homologous

relationship between punk and fanzines in 1970’s Britain, and the

tipping point that this provided. The DIY mindsets of both

converged, and then indicated just how far apart the state and

mainstream media were from the next generation. Ted Heath was

floundering in office as unemployment reached a new post-war

record. 5.4% of the population were out of work; this included at

least 350,000 teenagers, for whom no work experience scheme was

in place12.

                                                                                                               10 Bam Balam ran from 1974 – 1980, almost lifetime in fanzine terms. 11 Photocopiers are the unsung hero’s of punk fanzines. Their increased availability helped facilitate the upswing in production that defines this period as the heyday of fanzine history. 12 The Times, June – July, 1976

  9  

Punk’s wholesale distrust of authority provided a catalyst for direct

action. It was a hardcore artistic explosion with a clearly identifiable

rhetoric and its typeface of choice came from ransom notes:

*This wasn’t a section of society that would sit and wait for progress*

Malcolm McLaren proclaimed that the Sex Pistols war cry ‘Anarchy

in the UK’ was a statement of self-rule, and ultimate independence13.

In the House of Commons on July 7th, the next conservative Prime

Minister, Margret Thatcher declared that ‘socialist equality is the

equality of the dole cue’14.

No future indeed. Sniffin’ Glue was perhaps the best way to spend an

afternoon in a record shop whilst listening to loud music. The

fanzine, produced by Mark Perry, took its name from a Ramones

song entitled ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’. It has perhaps the most

enduring legacy of British punk zines.

A more detailed depiction of the magazine is given overleaf.

Mark Perry with issue No. 5 in 1976.

                                                                                                               13 Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2010  14 The Times, July 9th, 1976  

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The content of Sniffin’ Glue mirrored the urgency of the scene. Perry was the epitome of

my earlier quote: ‘an intrinsic part of the culture they comment upon’. A regular a gigs

and a font of knowledge on the scene in general, he did his best to disguise this by

making the magazine as illegible as possible; and by employing Danny Baker as a staff

writer. This irreverent approach did everything to enhance its popularity, and he implored

with his readership to create new fanzines in each of the 14 issues. Reliable circulation

figures for the majority of fanzines are almost impossible to recount without using the

phrase ‘ball-park’, but it is widely reported that it reached at peak of 15,000 copies per

issue before Perry shut the magazine in 1977, famously citing ‘Punk died the day The

Clash signed to CBS’.

“The sale of fanzines, which often cost a few pence and had tiny print runs when they originally appeared, is now more likely to be done on auction sites like eBay than it is outside gigs or in local record shops, with nostalgic collectors willing to pay four-figures sums for copies of pioneering titles like punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue.”15 Prof. Chris Atton, Napier University, Edinburgh.

                                                                                                               15 BBC Scotland Interview, 25th Feb. 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7908705.stm

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3. Acid Huse and the Dominatrix at No. 1 .

The punk lexicon had become a mainstay of fanzines in the 1980’s

and their politics became more radical within the anarcho-punk

movement. Zines became places of ‘cultural resistance’16 and the

band Crass were a force of incubation with their International

Anthem: Nihilist Newspaper for the Living publication17.

The political atmosphere of the time provided an interesting

paradox for fanzines. On one hand, the ‘free-market’ purported to

support the DIY ethic of the small business. However, it came with a

much larger ‘greed is good’ culture on the other. This Beadlesque

disproportion gave the fanzine writers something to aim at on both

sides of the Atlantic. Ronald Reagan embraced the ‘free-market’

doctrine of Thatcher and this ‘special relationship’ wasn’t exclusive

to politicians. Towards the end of the decade, Profane Existence18

provided a large US readership with anarcho-punk views.

Building upon the work of Edward Bernays19, the voice of

advertising agencies became increasingly confident during the

1980s. The concept of being sold ‘a lifestyle’ crept into UK houses

nationwide wearing the slippers of conspicuous consumption. A one-

time zine that translated this ‘lifestyle’ ethos was ‘style bible’ i-D.

i-D (and commercially printed peer The Face) was the cultural

underpass between post-punk and the new youth sub-culture of

Rave. The burgeoning rave scene was built upon a new music and

fashion aesthetic. And drugs.

                                                                                                               16 Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2010  17 1977 18 1989-2008 19 Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, used his uncle’s theories about human subconscious desires to originate many tenets of the modern advertising industry. He is widely considered to be the man that made women smoke. For further information on this, watch the Adam Curtis documentary ‘the Century of Self’.

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Geographically akin to the first science fiction zines, the music of

rave has roots in the windy city. The ‘house’ music genre derived its

name from a nightclub in downtown Chicago called The Warehouse.

The first raves in the UK where also held in warehouses and this

cemented the etymological connection. What started life as ‘acid house’ watered down and eventually

became ‘club-culture’. The scene was born out of different economic

and employment circumstances to punk – and the editorial

sensibilities of zines reflected this. On the whole rave replaced

politics with smiley faced narcotics, ecstasy in particular. With a few

notable exceptions, this was a few and far between scene for fanzine

production: it’s hard to type when your eyes are rolling20. But the scene did receive some worthy documentation. Representing

the north of England was The Herb Garden and The Ace of Clubs,

produced by David Gill and Gareth Jones respectively. The Herb

Garden was essential Private Eye for pill heads. Strong on satire (it’s

first edition was parody of i-D) it made a mockery of the new cultural

elite of DJs and club promoter, and did what zines do best: document

a scene from the perspective of its participants. Forever irreverent

about his own publication, Gill quipped ‘we have this Apple Mac

programme called ‘Fanzine Check’; when you finish an article you

put it through and it adds 30 spelling mistake and 20 swearwords’21.

The Ace of Clubs took many of its cues from the London centric Boy’s

Own fanzine, which is looked at in more detail overleaf.

‘Apart from Boy’s Own, there was next to no fanzine documentation of

the scene as it happened. People were too busy having fun’.

Simon Reynolds22.

                                                                                                               20 Old Rave proverb. 21 Sharkey, ‘My Hero the Editor’, accessed on-line 22 Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, 1999.

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Inspired by notable Liverpool fanzine ‘The End’23, Boy’s Own ‘was the siren on top of

the speeding (acid house) vehicle’24 driven by five mates from Slough and Windsor25 in

1988. A group that all jacked in their ‘proper’ jobs to plough the dance music furrow

together. Boy’s Own celebrated the Southern working class culture of the day,

featuring an editorial mix of ‘funk, footie, politics and fashion’26. Not to mention piss

taking and wordplay of the highest / lowest order. This was a zine that defined itself by

its tastes and who they - vigorously - stood against. Ironically, they eventually became

the clubland elite that they set out to knock-off their podiums. Whilst the covers were of iconic design (courtesy of Dave Little), the inside featured

the same cut and paste ethos of Sniffin’ Glue et al. Features ranged from to Thatcher

bashing ‘electing her was a historic act of collective stupidity’, South African

apartheid, and the chronicles of office pet ‘Millwall the Dog’. The 12 issues ran from

1986 – 1992 and provide much of the documentation from the scene during that

period.

The zine spawned a record label that signed the Chemical Brothers and Underworld.

Underworld are the providers of the official music to this years Olympic Games.

                                                                                                               23 Brainchild of Peter Hooton from seminal Scouse band The Farm 24 Frank Broughton & Bill Brewster, Boy’s Own: the Complete Fanzines, 2009  25 DJ’s Terry Farley & Andrew Weatherall, club promoter Cymon Eckel, music manager Steve Hall and ‘lad about town’ Steve Mays. 26 Ibid.

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The extreme special-measures the state will take to restrict any

embarrassment in the form of anti-government protest will linger well

past the end of the Games. The Olympic legacy for London will be felt on

the shoulders of working-class people for years to come, in the form of

an increased perceived legitimacy for stop-and-search powers, anti-

dissent laws and further empowerment to the state apparatus.

DETERRITORIAL SUPPORT GROUP. 2012.

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4. Take it Personal.

In the 1990s, the agenda of fanzines gained more of a personal

perspective. Whilst the wider political landscape was referenced, it

became of secondary concern. At the dawn of the individualist

decade: personal became political. Punk, however, still provided the

incitiment.

Inspired by the music of 1970’s English all-girl punk groups The

Raincoats and The Slits, and imbued with the spirit of second-wave

feminist magazine Spare Rib - The Riot Grrrl movement was born in

Washington DC. The resulting zines conveyed an empowering

female-centric rhetoric, frequently using personal diaries and first

person narratives. Corin Tucker from seminal band Sleater-Kinney

encapsulated this approach in her Channel Seven zine, saying ‘I

choose to write about my life for myself because I think there is

something to be learned from most people’s personal experiences’.

The scene remains a prolific producer of fanzines, both in print and

on-line, but perhaps its most famous titles are Bikini Kill (early

1990s), Girl Germs (1990-92) and Riot Grrrl (1991).

The term Riot Grrrl is reported to have originated in Jigsaw fanzine,

and first coined by the zines publisher and Bratmobile drummer Tobi

Vail27. The moniker looks as lively as it sounds, and it is an attempt

to reclaim the term girl and the notion of being girly. Riot Girrrls

were both empowered to be feminists and had the choice to be

feminine28. Vail is also the co-founder of Bikini Kill.

The theme of reclamation continues at the corresponding ‘Ladyfest’

conventions, the first of which took place in Olympia, Washington in

2000. Now in their tenth year, Ladyfest conventions happen around

the world, the first British event took place in Glasgow, 2001.

                                                                                                               27 Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2010  28 Ibid.  

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Showcasing the best in female bands and providing a place for creative

and personal dialogue alike, the events are primarily organised by a

dedicated army of volunteers. One of the event organizers, Lee Beattie,

explains ‘The whole ethos surrounding Ladyfest was to take the ideas

away and make them relevant where you live . . . Ladyfest does inspire

you to start changing things, no matter what the size or scale’29. A bona

fide punk statement: go grrrl indeed.

                                                                                                               29 Glasgow Ladyfest fanzine programme, p19, 2001.

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Less of a collective gender statement, and more of a ‘man on a mission’

title is Temp Slave! The brainchild of and produced by Jeff Kelly – who’s

quote about publishing being a ‘pain in the ass’ starts this studyzine.

Temp Slave! is the fruits of malpractice in the work place. The

inaugural issue was produced in 1993 after Kelly had the offer of full-

time work rescinded with the notification that he’d be out of work in two

weeks.

As a parting gift, he produced the zine that chronicled the unstable

nature of temp work, had his friend Clay Butler illustrate it, and used

the soon-to-be ex-employers Xerox photocopier. He handed the zine out

to all the full-timers on his last day, and was still at it four years later

with distribution secured across America and Europe 30.

                                                                                                               30 Interview with Zinebook.com, accessed on-line, January 2012.

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The Riot Grrrl ethos of reclaiming is key to the most recent spike in zine

production: that of the craft movement. Craft has moved out of the

domestic sphere, where it increasingly came to be seen as a hipster

‘creative expression’31. Craftivism (craft + activism) is a direct response

to the blatant consumerism of recent times; influential crafter Betsy

Greer first coined the term in 2003. The movement embraces DIY

principles and aims to ‘disrupt the codes of mass consumerism’32 by

inspiring a social cohesion of like-minded individuals.

At the 2006 London Zine Symposium, author of ‘Fanzines’ Teal Triggs

was taken aback to see a group of young men and women sitting in a

circle knitting. The event organiser observed ‘that it’s totally punk rock

and just goes to show the sexism behind common gendering of hobbies’.

However, the tactility of these mediums and their links to zines has

failed to stop the migration of zines to primarily digital entities. The

fanzines of craftivism are few and far between, and closer in relation to

art books when they do appear in individually numbered, limited

edition physical format. Perhaps this is the future for zines? The new

breed of ‘professionally handmade’ and often screen-printed zines are

stocked in specialist art bookstores such as Magma and Walter-Koenig.

Few are stocked in record stores, not least because there’s few

independent record stores left to stock them.

Or will fanzines, like vinyl, be crowned with a resurgent popularity?33

One thing is for sure: in 2012 the physical nature of traditional fanzines

is under threat, and at odds with the white noise of web 2.0.

                                                                                                               31 Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2010 32  Besty Greer, Kniting for Good, 2006.  33  Vinyl sales went up 40% in 2011    

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5. Molotov Motif: the visual code of dissent.

The union between punk zine design and its content straddles two

opposing critical theorems of the day.

In ‘The Death of the Author’ 1968 Roland Barthes declared that ‘a

text’s unity lies in not its origin but its destination’. This reader

empowering statement suited the zeitgeist. Although the notion of

‘authorial ownership’ over a text has been subject to flux over the

centuries, the prevailing sentiment of literary criticism at the time had

been that author = authority. Punk had a deep distrust of authority.

Yet as literary theory was moving away from the position of the

capitalised Author, the 1960s and 70s graphic design theories were

moving in the other. In his 1996 essay ‘The Designer as Author’;

Michael Rock acknowledged the periods search for recognition in a

profession ‘traditionally associated more with the communication than

the origination of messages’.

When viewed from these opposing perspectives, the entity of a punk

fanzine sits in a typically contrary place. There is an undeniable

commonality of design amongst the majority of the zines from this

period. It is easily identifiable, at once stylised yet authorless. It does

not adhere to the Crystal Goblet metaphor: i.e. that the design (the

glass) should be as transparent a vehicle for the transmission of the

content (the wine) as possible34. By rejecting the principles of

typography and rigid form, punk’s freeform graphical approach spoke

to the reader.

It said ‘go on mate - have a go yourself – this is our thing’.

This was the design rhetoric of Sniffin’ Glue, and the rallying

communiqué of its founder Mark Perry. Yet he is not credited with ‘sole

author’ status and nor did he want it. If the history of punk requires a

dominant aesthetic creator, it will be attributed to Jamie Read.

                                                                                                               34 Michael Rock, Fuck Content, 2005.

  20  

Jamie Reid, designer of the Sex Pistols35 artwork and co-founder of the

Suburban Press36, is responsible for many of era’s defining images. The

Queen with the safety pin in her nose and swastikas eyes, the ripped up

union jack, the Pretty Vacant sleeve: all his.

Born in 1946, Reid was raised in Croydon by a politically active family.

His father was the city editor of London newspaper ‘The Daily Sketch’,

his great-uncle head of a Druidic order that stood for Scottish

parliament, whilst his grandfather died gunrunning for the Chinese in

the Boxer rebellion. Three years after his brother left for Russia to

become a ‘Spy for Peace’, Reid designed his first magazine front cover

for the Situationist linked magazine ‘Heatwave’ in 1966. Reid’s work

translated the Situationist’s often-complex texts into iconic images

more readily understood by the proletariat kids he wanted to influence.

The Sex Pistols became the ultimate vehicle for this decoding.

As previously noted, punk’s use of collage and found objects have roots

in Dadaism. Evidence of Reid’s inspiration is clear in the Dadaist

typography of Kurt Schwitters. The principles of both Punk and Dada

share a spirit of rebellion37 that found a home in zine culture. This

graphical link is still present in today’s e-zines, despite the fact that it’s

much harder to replicate the cut-and-paste design in an HTML world.

                                                                                                               35 Reid met Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren at Croydon art school where they studied and plotted together. In response to the student riots of May 1968, the pair took part in a sit in there on June 5th. 36 The Suburban Press (1970) produced magazines for the squatting, feminist, and black movements of the period. 37  ‘The self-published journals of Duchamp et al generated an ‘aesthetic of rebellion’ that matched the Dadaists contempt for (the) bourgeois sensibilities (of the day)’. Teal Triggs, Fanzines, 2011  

  21  

6. End notes.

When choosing the subject of fanzines for this assignment, one question

was of interest to me: are Zines the first blogs?

The answer to it is no. The reason for this is primarily distribution

based; more specifically how distribution can act as both patronage and

editorship.

Fanzines require the support of like-minded stockists to survive and

this process ensures a physical presence in the producer / retailer

relationship. This act of external endorsement gave weight to the

publication, and became a filtration system of its own making. It

fostered both the message and the community that the zine itself

promoted.

The arrival of Web 2.0 has been of paradoxical benefit to creative

endeavours. Web 2.0 demonstrated that millions of people are creative,

and that they can produce creative work. Yet without a filtration

system, the sheer volume of material that it enabled has forced the

medium to become ineffective. The artificial intelligence of current

internet filtration systems of google & co is just that: artificial. It can

only judge by key words, not the standards of a work.

Microsoft computer scientist Jason Lanier points out that the

community of Web 2.0 inventors were so excited by the ideology behind

‘free and open’ access that they were blind to its diluting effects. He

argues that ‘this mediocre mush of content’ is responsible for ‘the loss of

identities’, ‘people become pseudonyms – they have no investment not

consequence for what they do’38.

There are, of course, exceptions to this and some fanzines still exist

with both a physical and on line presence. The digital version acts as a

‘teaser’ for the printed issue, whilst out of print copies can be viewed by

a wider audience than paper issues ever could.

                                                                                                               38  ‘The  Failure  of  Web  2.0’,  Jason  Lanier  in  conversation  with  Aleks  Krotoski,  accessed  on-­‐line  10th  January.    

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I returned to the Rough Trade record shop to interview Nigel House

and Sean Forbes who work there. When I enquired to the state of

fanzines, they both replied ‘in a state and there’s not enough of

them’. What has filled their void?

Is Simon Cowell the new Malcolm McLaren? Was the Daily Mail

right last year when it termed the naming of Ryan Giggs on

twitter ‘one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience of modern

times’?

Of course not: they’re both shit pedlars to those that wish to be

peddled shit. The DIY spirit of fanzines hasn’t split-up over musical

differences. The problems of the physical fanzine are the problems

of creative industries everywhere. It’s hard being heard within the

noise of instantaneous culture. It’s hard to make cash-money when

and the nature ‘open access’ often works against building a lasting

audience.

But maybe I’m a Meldrewian pessimist with one foot in the rave.

Perhaps it’s from a within mixture of reduction in print, and a

digital elaboration that the best example of protest publishing can

be found today. The Deterritorial Support Group look like they’re

onto something. An influential voice in the Occupy movement, they

have used social media and its lexicon to spread their message and

their own iconic posters.

At a time of rising youth unemployment, their imagery has roots in

the posters of Mai ’68 - one of the major influences on the punk

ethos. It’s fitting that they should have the last word, and that you

should visit their website to read all about.

http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com

Click the shit out of it.

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Deterritorial Support Group

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References.

Books.

Fredrick Wertham, The World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communtication (Carbondal, III., Southern Illlinos University Press, 1973). Harry Warner, Sr, All Our Yesterdays: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties (Chicago, Advent Publishers, 1969). Teal Trigs, Fanzines, (London, Thames and Hudson, 2010). Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics and Alternative Culture (London, Verso, 1997). Johan Kugelberg with Philippe Vermès, Beauty in the Street: A Visual Record of the May ’68 Uprising (London, Four Corners Books, 2011). John Savage, England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (London, Faber, 1991). Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, (London, Routledge, 1999). Frank Broughton & Bill Brewster, Boy’s Own: the Complete Fanzines (London, DJ History, 2009). Betsy Greer, Knitting for Good (London, Trumpeter Books, 2008). . Julian Bourg, From Revelution to Ethics, May 1968 and Contempory French

Thought (Canada, McGill-Queens University Press 2007)

ALSO:

All the information you could ever needed to produce your fanzine but were afraid to ask for: http://www.zinebook.com/directory/fanzine-help.html

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Web References.

Interview with Prof. Chris Atton, BBC1 Scotland, 25th Feb. 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7908705.stm Adam Cutis, The Century of the Self, BBC Four, 2002 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM Interview with Jeff Kelly of Temp Slave! Zinebook http://www.zinebook.com/interv/temp.html Michael Rock ‘Designer as Author’, Eye Magazine, 2001. PDF available here: http://rasmusbroennum.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/the-designer-as-author-michael-rock-2001.pdf Michael Rock ‘Fuck Content’ http://rasmusbroennum.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/fuck-content-michael-rock/ Jamie Reid, various. http://www.jamiereid.org/ http://www.snakebeings.co.nz/words/jamiereid.html http://www.furious.com/perfect/situationism.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DETPfA8brVw Jason Lanier, the Guardian, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIwikI7IVYs Deterritorial Support Group ‘Ikea Anarchists’, the Guaridan http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/ikea-anarchists-derritorial-support-group