(Click on Image for More Photos)
| Fanzines played an important part in the Ulster punk scene by keeping the hordes up to date with all the happenings on the local scene, real zine-age depression! Inspired by the likes of Mark Perry’s ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ and ‘Ripped And Torn’ fanzine from Scotland, and fuelled on the DIY punk ethic, many budding journalists were encouraged to put pen to paper and produce their own ‘home made’ magazine. A lack of coverage of the punk scene in the established music weeklies and local press only added fuel to the fire. The fanzine relayed information, gossip and opinion to the local punk scene and was an invaluable tool for many local acts that were totally ignored by the mainland music press. Alwyn Greer’s ‘Private World’ was the first of the Belfast fanzines. Alwyn was a young punk from the Suffolk area of the city who was bored by the national music papers continuing coverage of rock dinosaurs such as Rainbow and Led Zeppelin, so he decided to produce his own fanzine. Alwyn, always keen to further the punk cause, decided one night to decorate a boring blank wall of a nearby shop by spraying on it the legend ‘Sex Pistols - Destroy’. This didn’t go down too well and Alwyn received a nasty beating from a gang of local ‘spides’ for his efforts. Alywn recalls his time doing the fanzine fondly “When I did Private World (taken from the title of a New York Dolls song) I remember cutting up pictures and sticking them together on an A4 sheet and putting together the fanzine like that. I was inspired by Sniffing Glue from London and it really was a punk thing to do. There was no production other than what was in my head at the time. I was no journalist, just a fan of punk. I remember going round the newsagents in Belfast's city centre. In Gardiner's on Botanic Avenue they looked at me as if I was mad - there I was in Black motorcycle jacket covered in badges, a t-shirt with handwritten names of bands on it, suede winkle pickers which I got from the Albertbridge Road, yellow trousers with two different coloured day-glo socks on. But, fair play to them, they took me on as a sale or return item and the first 3 issues sold out within days. There was no-one else doing it at the time so I had a captive market for about 6 or 9 months. I sold hundreds of copies and was delighted. I got Morrissey on Board for issue 4 (the New York Dolls special) and he supplied all the pictures for that issue. I thought that it was important that people (punks) learned the roots of the scene so that's why I did the special issue but it didn't sell too well. Other fanzines started to come on the scene and I got more and more into photography so Private World only lasted 6 issues. I had a great time doing the fanzine and collaborating with other people on it but in the true spirit of punk, it burned up and died at a young age. Better to burn out than fade away to quote an ageing rocker but it was true. It had a short life span but was glorious in what it was”. ‘Alternative Ulster’ is probably the best-known fanzine from these shores. Founded by Gavin Martin and ably assisted by Dave ‘Angry’ McCullough, the fanzine set the bench mark for others to follow. Gavin Martin recalls the fanzine fondly “I’d been reading NME since I was 11 and was as often as not into the writing as I was into the music. I remember a 15 year old Belfast girl, slightly older than me, won their competition for a jukebox filled with the greatest 100 singles of all time, which I had entered. But a Belfast girl winning it made me think maybe something; some sort of handle on a musical culture community was in reach, round the corner. Then punk came along and there was a chance for everyone to express themselves with music or clothes or fanzines. Mark P’s Glue was key, but seeing and hearing about Alwyn’s fanzine made it imperative that I do one of my own.I loved all kinds of music, always had since I’d sung Beatles songs pre school in the front garden to the older kids (5 and up) coming home from Ballyholme Primary. Alternative Ulster would give me a chance to write about punk of course but Dylan and Motown too. I was never a musician but I could write a bit, graffiti for sure - and it turned out to be invaluable in getting the fanzine off the ground. I did a great piece on a local shelter wall in Ballyholme – Bangors Burning With Boredom and subsequently met Dave McCullough (Angry) through writing graffiti on a desk that we shared in a fearful paedophile-harbouring school called Bangor Grammar. I was a wee bit scared when McCullough approached me as he was a prefect and though I sussed him as a punky waver who had been adding Pistols and Damned slogans to my Clash and Hot Rods I wasn’t about to show my cards first. My dad was going to print the first issue for us at his office in Belfast, my dad would have done anything for me (God bless his atheist communist soul!) but I knew it was too much to do the 50 of however many pages there were in the first Alternative Ulster – Number 7. The numbering scheme was hacky, providential, if you put them all together now in the right order and pick the right 6, on the right week on the right night they are the winning lottery numbers. That was the idea, I’d originally worked the numbers out with a protractor on a Belfast Telegraph Spot the Ball coupon, adding some additional knowledge I gained from studying my dad’s football pools (Zetters only NEVER Littlewoods). So the first Alternative Ulster was printed by The Buzzcocks, I hit on them because Manchester was nearer than London, they seemed more approachable than the London sorts and Spiral Scratch was the epitome of independence. When I got the copies back I had a purpose to go up to Belfast again for the first time other than to see a concert. I’d had a ‘what foot do you kick with’ interrogation at Ulster 71 and was always a bit wobbly about Belfast after that. Punk helped knock that shit into touch. I’d never heard of Good Vibrations but Kyle at Caroline directed me there after taking a few copies. Of course Hooley didn’t just take a few copies - he introduced me to Dave at Just Books and we immediately had a publisher much closer to home. I guess it was Dave who had come up with the Alternative Ulster name. Jake Burns obviously liked it but I was a bolshy wee fucker (still can be, I guess, but I’m working on it ) so I turned down the chance to have the SLF song inspired by the fanzine given away free as a flexi disc. Had to laugh (or cry, not sure which) when Henry Cluney claimed in an SLF book that I subsequently slagged the band off because Dave (“my best mate”!!) had been thrown out of their dressing room in London. We were never best friends - Dave and I always had a testy relationship, it was your classic marriage of convenience and we had an angry parting of the ways at the Glenmachon one night in 79 - drinks, tears, handbags at dawn. That was it The End of Alternative Ulster. It had been a success, though, turned a profit selling at several outlets all over the UK (Dave being at college in London obviously helped). I used to correspond with a girl who bought the mag in Golders Green and she said to call if I was ever in London. When I came to London in summer 78, with Rudi we did call. But she wasn’t in, probably just as well. Later Dave got in touch and she was in and at some not too distant point I understood they got married and Dave McCullough went off the music biz radar. No one I’ve ever come in contact with ever heard of them again. People still asked me what happened to Dave though...maybe he was the Reggie Perrin of Punk. I have not got one copy of any edition of Alternative Ulster now. I’m not even sure I could tell you how many copies there were (fucked by my own surreal numerological scheme). I do get quite a thrill whenever I see one, or even a chance to leaf through one. My memory is full of holes, see, but when I hold a copy of Alternative Ulster a lost world, various hopes, happiness’s and, even, sadness’s come to life. In 2002 I was contacted by a representative of a magazine called Alternative Ulster about to print their first issue wanting me to give their new project my blessing. I thought it was a bit naff and a bit of a cheek using the name of the fanzine I had started, though it was explained the name was taken from the Stiff’s song. There has been a rewriting of history on wiki where any attempt to point out that THIS Alternative Ulster is not related to THAT Alternative Ulster is immediately removed. Feel free to try it! So Alternative Ulster, the original Alternative Ulster is IN NO WAY RELATED TO THE MAGAZINE THAT TOOK ITS NAME and has latterly adopted its acronym. Eh You! Leave my zine alone...And getcher own name... So much of Ulster in the 70s scared and tormented me but Alternative Ulster was like a little freedom train that helped take me out of it, now it can take me back there. Choo Choo.
R.I.P Gavin Martin - 10th Dec 1961 - 10th March 2022
‘Laughing
Gravy’ fanzine was also from Bangor. Robert Scott recounts
its origins “Sometime in ’77 or ’78 I was
invited to join the fledgling Alternative Ulster team. For reasons
now unknown and lost in the mists of time I declined and decided
to start ‘Laughing Gravy’ with Adrian Maddox instead.
Fuck knows why. Anyway, Laughing Gravy (named after the dog
in a Laurel & Hardy film of the same name) briefly became
a consuming passion with us and ran for about 3 or 4 issues.
It’s hard to tell exactly how many issues as I think we
had a habit of re-editing it, adding new articles and re-issuing
if any free printing opportunities or gigs to sell at presented
themselves. We even produced a bootleg issue of one issue! You
have to remember that back then photocopiers were pretty rare
beasts and every household didn’t have their own high
tech printing facilities. I remember spending half a day trying
to master the dreaded Gestetner duplicator, getting covered
in crap and practically losing limbs until deciding that life
was too short to waste wrestling with the cutting-edge of Hungarian
engineering. The first issue was a black and white photocopy
made at a local office supplies company where they charged 20p
a sheet or something ridiculous like that. Basically they allowed
us to take the piss with unlimited ‘test’ prints
until the output met with our rigorous quality demands. We then
gathered up all the ‘rejected’ prints and cobbled
together some sort of issue which sold out in the playground
about an hour later. Buoyed by the success of these initial
forays the next issue had an improved layout and was properly
printed in bogus colour and ran to a few hundred copies, sold
in record shops and outside gigs. And, as far as I can recall,
that was that as we both abandoned the fanzine to form bands.
I’d love to tell you that it was the very cutting edge
of in-depth uncompromising music journalism. But it wasn’t”. Other notable
Belfast fanzines included Mr Puke’s ‘C. S. Control’,
‘Complete Control’ (Ivan Kelly and other Ruefrex
members had a hand in this one), ‘Nine To Five’
(compiled by Aza and Joe Zero of the Androids, ably assisted
by Mervyn Bradshaw), ‘No Fun’ (Stevie Boyd) Stevie
recalls how it all came about “The brainchild of 3 not-so-bored
but disillusioned teenagers, No Fun was launched in 1977. Some
proto-type versions of No Fun were produced on our school’s
Banda machine –we had volunteered our services to the
School Magazine just to gain access to this valuable tool. The
Banda machine was a duplicator for the production of multiple
print offs –a poor man’s photocopier. The sheets
the Banda produced were streaked with lines of purple print
to highlight our purple prose. They had a distinct pungent chemical
aroma and were sometimes called ‘Ditto Sheets’.
I loved this name and toyed with the idea of running a fanzine
under this moniker -but then I stopped drinking the methanol! We went
to see some big bands that were all very well, but they weren’t
saying anything about where we came from, until we hit off Rudi
and then a whole new world opened up –a new ‘we
can do this’ attitude was born. We were caught up in the
excitement and all around us things started to happen. When
Terri Hooley got a look at our efforts, he encouraged us to
up our game and he introduced us to the services of his friends
at the print workshop. Before this we didn’t know what
Letraset was but soon these transfer letters together with Rotring
pens, cut-ups and glue became part of our toolbox. There followed
a bit of a boom time for our inky rag. The Good Vibes connection
led to the ‘zine going national (ha ha). When people picked
up an issue in Rough Trade, they would start to send us freebies.
We got introduced to some interesting people such as Swell Maps
and the Monochrome Set this way and there were notable highlights,
including Peter’s post- apocalyptic vision of a world
informed by ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ and Andy’s
scratchy but inspired art work. We used to cart the sheets all
over Belfast and I used to plaster the lampposts with posters
made from the fluorescent cards which I liberated from the Fruit
‘n’ Veg shop where I worked. I agree
with Toby Mott that the DIY ethic of the fanzine writer has
been over-intellectualized. It was all about finding a voice
and taking some control of your own culture and by this time
a lot of other people were doing it. There were plenty of Ulster
fanzines creeping into circulation and some of them clearly
had more of a voice than we did. Sure we were getting some scoops,
such as the first Undertones interview, and we had the first
signs of the picture stories that I wanted to run but, by the
time the last issue hit the streets, half-arsed political pretension
had crept in and this plus the piss-poor quality of the external
contributions and the lack of finances combined to bring us
down. I made one last effort to revive the fanzine’s fortune,
going as far as drawing up an elaborate cover in the style of
a horror film poster. We interviewed Mick Jones and had some
stuff from people across the water (including Tom Robinson)
–but, I hadn’t generated any cash from this particular
chaos so my Piggy Bank was empty. From the
thoughts of a few suburban kids in their bedrooms to a forum
for up and coming bands, the fast, furious throwaway fun eventually
became safe predictable nonsense. No Fun was all this and so
much less. It was what it was –warts ‘n’ all.
It could have been better, but sure couldn’t we all? Now
where did I put those ‘Ditto Sheets’? The fanzine
phenomenon wasn’t just confined to the Belfast area though
and the trend quickly spread. Derry, although being N. Irelands’
second largest city and home to such fine bands as The Undertones,
The Sect and The Moondogs, only managed to produce a handful
of fanzines in the 1970’s and early 80’s. The first
of these was the short-lived, ‘It’s Your World’,
the only issue of this fanzine appearing in September 1977.
The equally short-lived ‘Up Boys And Atom’ followed.
Best of all was ‘If And When’, an early 80’s
fanzine produced by Jim Walker of The Sect and Vinny Cunningham.
This gave excellent coverage to the scene in Derry but only
ran for three issues. Jim Walker recalls why “as I remember
it was just too expensive to have it printed in the end. It
was fine when were photocopying it, but we were commandeering
the Orchard gallery's photocopier for days on end. We had reached
the point where we would have had to fill the fanzine with ads
to cover the cost or charge a lot more for it, and we didn't
really want to do that. Interviews were hard to come by too
as Jim recalls “ We never had a coup, interview wise,
due to the fact that we lived in Derry and nobody (and I mean
nobody)ever played there! We would get the likes of Mama's Boys,
Perfect Crime or the odd post Undertone project. We did an interview
with Feargal Sharkey in which we asked him what his favorite
thing about Derry was. He replied 'The fact that by the time
people read this I will no longer live there!' Way to endear
yourself to your hometown Feargal ! I think one of best articles
we ever featured was written by former Sect guitarist Seamus
Cassidy, who after the BBC 'Something Else' programme (Derry
edition) had relocated to London and was making inroads to television
production. He wrote a great piece about the fledgling 'Hacienda'
club, Tony Wilson and New Order were on location for a programme
he was working on. Seamus Cassidy went on to become commissioning
editor for Channel $ and is now responsible for ‘The Panel’
on RTE. In every
corner of the province there seemed to be something going on.
From Omagh there was ‘Plastic World’ / ‘Positive
Reaction’. Positive Reaction’s debut Issue landing in March of 1979, for the princely sum of 20p. Later in the early eighties ‘Follow The Crowd’ fanzine also emerged from Omagh. All three fanzines
had some input from Omagh’s well-known punk Ernie Badness.
Tony McGartland (AKA Ernie Badness) recalls his involvement
with fanzines “The first fanzine I launched was in the
summer of 1977 and was only intended as a backlash to punk being
banned in the local pub venue the Coach Inn. It was only intended
to be a one off but when 'Plastic' hit the streets of Omagh
it was sold out and became an instant collector’s item.
It was the only publication that existed that cost more to print
than it sold for! Photocopying was expensive back then and the
local library was the only source we knew who would print it
on a machine with a 5p per copy box attached to the side of
it. Soon after, a civil servant friend, based in a London law
office, heard of our plight and printed it for us free of charge
when his boss was out of the office. We sent the layout to London
and he sent the package back within a few days. It had a short
run of less than six issues but we boasted that 'it was printed
in London.' Below is a very rare interview, conducted with the editor of Positive Reaction Fanzine by Downtown Radio in 1980.
When there were few fanzines left in N. Ireland 'Positive Reaction' was launched and we quickly lined up a series of guest writers from various parts of the UK. When it got itself established it was taken off our hands by Geoff Travis in London where it was distributed and sold by Rough Trade and in Belfast, Terri Hooley took it under his 'Good Vibes' wing and was kind enough to print it at no cost to us at all. It became a vehicle for the Good Vibes label then and died of natural causes in 1979 when I managed to get the job of free-lancing for Hot Press magazine in Dublin”. There was also ‘Germ’ fanzine and ‘In- Form’ emerging from Coleraine, and Keith Campbell’s ‘These Days’ fanzine from Dungannon which ran for two issues. Even ex N. Ireland International footballer Ian Stewart got in on the act by releasing his own fanzine entitled ‘Anarchy In The UK’ which only ran for three issues. Just Books even launched their own Fanzine called Just Words in July 1978.There was also Ben Allen’s Cabaret Fanzine from the Carnmoney / Glengormley area which ran for eight issues. Ben “I did 100 copies on the school duplicator (gestetner) of number one. Issue two had 200 copies; number three had 300 copies and was printed in Just Books, Belfast. I sold to Rough Trade in London. At the time I was learning how to take and print photographs and had built my own darkroom out of scrap doors at age 14. All my friends were in punk bands so I went along to take photographs. I also liked to collage weird 1950s adverts together so Cabaret was my outlet for these. By issue number 8, I was making Cabaret with about 80% of my own artwork. I then got involved with the mail art network and then I was off to Art College. Recently I’ve returned to collage and produce limited edition collage and photo shopped prints. I kept a few funny contribution pages inc. a great one spoofing the Nolan’s saying they were secretly punks. I’ve only found this again recently! Fanzines
remained an integral part of the local music scene during the
1980’s. Examples from that period include ‘Helden’,
'Warzine', 'Anxious' produced by Sheena Bleakney and her sister Julia, which ran for six issues, ‘Blast’ (debut Issue 1982) and Martin Smith’s popular
fanzine ‘Youth Anthem’. Martin recalls his time
putting the zine together “I started Youth Anthem (horrible
name I admit) in 1983 after leaving school. Although it
was a good few years after the initial punk explosion I was
still heavily influenced by the spirit of punk. A young
kid of 12 in 1977 I still remember vividly selling a load of
books to a second hand bookshop on the Castlereagh Road in east
Belfast before cutting through to a record shop on the Cregagh
Road to purchase Never Mind The Bollocks. Was too young
plus lived a bit out of town so couldn't attend the Harp etc
I kept in touch by buying all the Good Vibes singles.
Always loved the idea of the fanzines so decided to start one
myself on leaving school. I wanted to share my love of
music with other like minded souls. First couple of issues
had a run of 300 but by issue 6 I was up to 1000 which was fairly
decent. Dave Hyndman in the Print Workshop did most of
the printing duties and what a good guy he was.
|
©
Spit Records 2024
All Rights Reserved.