The Fanzine Podcast

• Ep. 34: Kill Your Pet Puppy with Tony D.

  In early 1979, Tony D(rayton) ceased publication of his trailblazing punk fanzine Ripped & Torn, having experienced a seismic shift in his values by the emergence of anarcho-punks Crass on the scene. After nine months traversing Europe and rethinking his “decadence,” he came back to London and started a new fanzine, Kill Your Pet Puppy. Like its predecessor, KYPP proved highly influential, and at times equally controversial, gradually moving away from music coverage over the course of its six issues to become something more…In this, his second appearance on The Fanzine Podcast (check Episode 13 for the Ripped & Torn story), Tony D. talks about his conversion to the Crass way of living, his sojourns in Europe, falling out with Adam Ant, falling in with a new squat scene, why Kill Your Pet Puppy initially had a far more shocking title, gaining the printing patronage of Joly MacFie at Better Badges, testing the boundaries of what a punk zine could achieve and represent, the attraction of the new ‘Positive Punk’ groups like Alien Sex Fiend, Southern Death Cult and Sex Gang Children, why he launched KYPP with an attack on host Tony Fletcher’s Jamming! fanzine, and why he eventuallyran off to join the circus. Literally.For the full unedited interview with Tony D., and for more about fanzine culture in general, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/kill-your-pet-puppy-and-other-popThe Kill Your Pet Puppy archives are at https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/the-complete-set-of-kill-your-pet-puppy-fanzines/The Fanzine Podcast Theme is by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.The Best of Jamming! Selections & Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is available from Omnibus Press and other online retailers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Ep. 33: What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen with Chris Coleman

  For the 33rd installment of the Fanzine Podcast, we welcome Chris Coleman, former editor of at least two important ‘zines from the 1980s post-punk UK Midlands: Stringent Measures and What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen. The first of these zines straddled a vibrant local indie scene that included the likes of Eyeless In Gaza, In Embrace, Attrition, and the Glass Records label (about which Chris put together a special edition) along with Chris’s evident excitement for early U2. What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen, while maintaining the fanzine format, declared itself musically with a first issue featuring interviews with The Waterboys, The Alarm - and Johnny Thunders, to whom it later dedicated a special issue (as it did Marc Bolan). WANWTTS also put out physical vinyl – EP’s and albums alike - that included the likes of The Jazz Butcher, Jasmine Minks, The Membranes, Mike Scott and Nikki Sudden, and which therefore continued to place the zine at the heart of the mid-80s indie music scene. To this day, Chris continues to release records of lost archived recordings on his Seventeen label.Chris spent a Friday night indoors chatting with podcast host Tony Fletcher about his fanzine experiences back in the day. Other fanzines mentioned in this episode include Bucketful Of Brains, Alternative Sounds and Adventures In Reality, and the conversation also diverges into the likes of R.E.M. and The Smiths. We get to hear how Chris’s parents once collated and stapled and distributed zines for him while he was on holiday, and we find out which of the aforementioned musicians once commented to him, “You have great veins.” (Hint: it should be obvious.)Visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/what-a-nice-way-to-turn-seventeen for images of some vintage What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen, to find similar posts and pages dedicated to earlier Fanzine Podcasts, and for Tony’s twice-weekly writings.Thanks to Noel Fletcher for the theme music, and Greg Morton at Omnibus Press for the logo template.The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is available from here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Ep. 32: Search & Destroy

  It’s time for a new episode of The Fanzine Podcast, and we start 2025 off with one of the pioneers from the explosion of punk zines in 1977: V. Vale, editor and publisher of San Francisco’s legendary Search & Destroy along with its successor, RE/Search Publications.Now in his late 70s, Vale – who grew up in foster homes in the Midwest and found refuge in public libraries – has been active in the U.S. counterculture pretty much all his life. He attended U.C. Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65, was active on the city’s hippy scene, worked at the equally legendary City Lights book/magazine shop, and was on hand when San Francisco’s first punk bands – Crime, Nuns, The Avengers, Sleepers, Negative Trend among others – emerged in 1977, at which point he decided to document the culture. Basing Search & Destroy on the format of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (founded in 1969), Vale’s preferred newspaper print and unadulterated Q&A format combined with the energy of those interviews and the explosive visuals of its layout to make Search & Destroy a must-read zine far beyond the city’s borders. This was just as well given that Vale reckons it took two years to get 200 people on board the SF punk scene but that he printed 5000 copies of that debut issue, helped by donations from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. ...To read on, to see examples of Search & Destroy and RE/Search, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/search-and-destroyTo order from RE/Search Pubs, visit researchpubs.comThanks to Noel Fletcher for the theme music, and Greg Morton at Omnibus Press for the logo template.The Best of Jamming! is available via https://omnibuspress.com/products/the-best-of-jamming-published-on-23rd-september-2021 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Ep. 31: Restarting an old Zine

  For more information, pictures, how to contact the zine editors, and zine updates, visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/relaunching-your-fanzine Most fanzines are not designed to be permanent: their editors grow up, get "proper" jobs, start families, or just grow bored and want to move on. But occasionally, years down the line, fanzine editors come back around and decide to have another go at it. For this episode, we welcome back from Episode 17 Alison B, whose Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor, dedicated to exorcising the addictive demons created through her original zine Bubblegum Slut, has resulted in a Guest Ex-Editor 'zine, for which she cajoled and convinced 14 other ex-editors to resurrect their zines, if only for 2-3 pages. Two of those ex-editors, Jøsh Saitz of Negative Capability, and Clint Evans of Peppermint Iguana, are now at work on new print issue after years away, and they join Alison, and host Tony Fletcher, in discussing why they would want to go through it all over again. Listen on to learn what an Adult Activity Book looks like, why Jøsh named his son Damon, why Clint was going off to Turkey the day after our interview, and whether Alison puts fake fur on her back covers (hint: she does).Other zines mentioned: Black Velvet, Abaxis, Artcore, Lunchtime For Wild Youth, Meal Deal Zine, Festival A, Golf Sale, Pretty But Schizo, Adventures In Reality, Pint Sized Punk, Myth & Lore, Mondo Grebo,.Please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/relaunching-your-fanzine for way more content.Thanks to Noel Fletcher for the theme music, and Greg Morton at Omnibus Press for the logo template. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Ep. 30: Adventures in Eurock and Neumusik

  In 1973, a Californian by the name of Archie Patterson became so enthused by all the interesting underground European experimental/electronic music he was hearing that he started up a fanzine dedicated to it, called Eurock. It lasted 40 issues, through 1990. In 1979, a Brit by the name of David Elliott felt much the same way and, in part inspired by Eurock and also by post-punk DIY culture, started his own zine Neumusik. While it only lasted 6 issues, until 1982, during that time it grew to over 70 pages and set David off exploring Europe to interview many of the important artists in person.What kind of artists are we talking about? Some of them you may know, like Can, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Nektar, Neu!, Heldon, Chrome, or Urban Sax.. Others you may never have heard of, like Guru Guru, Asmus Tietchens, Atem, Art Zoyd III, Gunter Schickert, or Shub Niggurath. All of them were at the forefront of musical creativity towards the end of the 20th Century, and Eurock and Neumusik were at the forefront of the fanzines writing about them, interviewing them, and cataloguing their culture. Patterson grew a distribution service and began publishing books; he still posts twice-weekly about the music on his Facebook. Elliot started a “band,” a cassette label, and recently wrote an extensive book on the British pop music of 1984.For more information about their zines, their culture, and where to get copies of their books, please head on over to https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/adventures-in-neumusik-and-eurock Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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