While John Peel remained the sole source for radio exposure off all kinds of new music, regardless of validity, seeing scholarly written debate about bands I was unfamiliar with, was possible by browsing the stock of either in Virgin Records, which had recently opened in Eldon Square, or Listen Ear on Ridley Place (it became Volume in 1981), both of which had racks of dog-eared independent inkies you could read the covers off and nobody much minded that you didn’t buy them. In fact, living off pocket money and a paper lad’s wages, they were simply unaffordable if you wanted to buy records as well. Digesting the likes of the prohibitively expensive Creem, Rolling Stone, Trouser Press and Village Voice, exposed me to incredibly articulate pieces, not only about punk and afterwards but much good stuff that had gone before, by such journalistic Gods as Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus and Robert Christgau. Hence, I became aware that musical criticism diverged markedly between writers in the US and the UK. Admittedly Zig Zag was a thoughtful read, but most of the A5 English fanzines featured amateur doctoring of photos of the likes of Mary Whitehouse, Elizabeth Windsor, Hughie Green and Des O’Connor, with safety pins superimposed through their heads, alongside gig reviews based on how much cider the correspondent had imbibed and crass exhortations to buy Sham 69 or Lurkers 7” singles. This era left me cold.
Of far more interest to me was the music and the attendant cultural scene that began to appear from 1978 onwards, involving the likes of Gang of Four, The Mekons, The Raincoats, Delta 5, The Au Pairs, Clock DVA, Scritti Politti, This Heat, Cabaret Voltaire and a dozen other acts who took, as I discovered, their inspiration more from Can, Neu and Kraftwerk than Kursaal Flyers or Ducks Deluxe. These acts also had an ideological basis to their practice, often based on Marxism, Situationism and Dadaism, rather than scattergun nihilism or boorish hedonism. As you can imagine, this was right up my street, and these sounds still float my boat to this day. I changed from Sounds to NME, which I stuck with until I turned 30, and voraciously consumed dozens of indie magazines, mentioned in the small ads section in the back pages of NME. In a sense, buying words and music in this fashion was like drinking Real Ale; among the glorious successes, there were some fairly unpalatable disasters, but at least when you bought small press publications, you were sticking it to the man and staying away from the mainstream.
I first contributed gig and record reviews to various, long-forgotten fanzines in late 1979 and continued to do so until I got to university in 1983, when my horizons broadened, deadlines tightened, and briefs lengthened as the chance to write columns about politics, sport and books in a more nuanced publication were offered to me. I’m not name-dropping, but my first editor at Leeds Student was Jay Rayner, current Guardian and Observer food hack and son of Clare, the infamous agony aunt. He gave me free rein to explore complex, indeed arcane ideological concepts in live reviews of the likes of The Fall, Misty in Roots and Don Cherry.
After graduation and back on Tyneside, I continued writing about music and books for regional monthly magazines such as Paint It Red, Boiling Point and The Crack, until the late 90s when printed publications stopped being a regular feature on the Tyneside scene, after the internet and the subsequent ubiquity of social media urinated on William Caxton’s grave, in becoming the accepted mode of spreading (mis)information. Admittedly, the latter publication is still going, though I’ve not read it in years, nor have I sought to contribute to it or narc.
However, from the late 80s until the present day, I found a whole new zine scene that took my standard of writing and volume of contributions, to a whole new level. It was only tangentially related to music in the sense that probably the first football fanzine in Britain was the general Scottish one, The Absolute Game (named after a Skids song), while south of the border, and still producing a monthly issue to this day, When Saturday Comes, its title taken from a track by The Undertones, sought to cover not just English football, but the whole global game. Like music zines, these were irreverent, independent, authentic voices, from the terraces rather than the mosh pit admittedly, but dogmatic, independent and uncompromising in their honesty. I bought the debut issue of Newcastle United’s The Mag on the way to an opening day 2-2 draw with Spurs in August 1988 then, inspired by both concept and content, wrote for every issue from 2-178 until it closed down a decade ago. Similarly, when travelling to away games, I hunted down opposition fanzines and later contributed articles to most of them about my experiences of away travel or players who had moved between clubs. I must have written for nigh on 100 different periodicals; some still exist, others only produced a couple of issues. I even edited my own Newcastle United fanzine, The Popular Side, for 15 issues. We were resolutely old school; A5, no adverts, no colour, no website, no merchandise and only £1 an issue, with anyone welcome to contribute. I loved doing it but selling it outside a freezing pub on a January evening in a gale isn’t the best way to prepare for a game. That, and having to write half the copy myself, was a reason to wind it down. Energy can only get you so far. What any editor needs is a good, strong stock of reliable supporting players.
I still write for a couple of fanzines (View from the Allotment End for North Ferriby and Mudhutter for Wigan Athletic), but the internet has largely destroyed the football fanzine movement. Indeed, many club don’t even publish a programme. Percy Main Amateurs do and I’m the editor. Like the Windmill Theatre, we will never close. I’ve written a book about the club; Village Voice. Anyone who fancies a free copy, just drop me a line.
While I’ve always regretted the fact that fanzines never caught on with my real sporting love, cricket, my other style of writing, namely short fiction and poetry, has been well catered for over the years by the litzine movement. I’ve got a magazine called Iconlatre, published in West Hartlepool back in 1965 or thereabouts, which includes a couple of Charles Bukowski poems. Now what are the chances of that? You may remember a few years ago that TQ came with a free literary zine, glove, which I edited. Sadly, after 10 issues I wound the publication down as I was struggling for a high enough quality of contribution and anywhere to sell it, other than online. From my experience, both football and free verse independent publications have only a short shelf life, unless you are part of an enthusiastic cohort producing the magazine. It isn’t all gloom though; publications such as Spinners and Tangled Lines, both from Kent, and Falkirk’s Razur Cuts act as conduits for modern, experimental writing in the genres of both prose and poetry. I am delighted to regularly feature in all 3.
So, what about TQ? Being candid, I love this magazine, and the arrival of each new issue makes my heart swell with joy when it lands on the doormat. The simple truth is this: other than The Wire, TQ is the only publication catering for those of us who wish to familiarise ourselves with the experimental, non-commercial and often improvised, underground music scene. Whether this consists of the pastoral, found sounds, ambient electronica, drone, grinding feedback or disturbing power electronics, a combination of all of these genres and sub-genres or none of them, matters little. What unites us all is purity of expression, honest of purpose and artistic integrity, whether in sound, word, artwork or deeds. Unlike The Wire, which is scholarly to the point of academe and informative verging on the encyclopaedic, TQ is resolutely amateur, totally enthusiastic, highly supportive of all artists, and always ready to embrace the new. New writers. New sounds. New venues. All of these are welcome in TQ.
I believe I’ve known Andy for about 4 years now and every conversation I’d had with him has taught me something fresh and vibrant, allowing me to come away an improved human being. His publication does that as well. TQ is the living embodiment of the fanzine ideal; 60s idealism meets 70s radicalism with contemporary enthusiasm for the experimental. Long may it continue.
Anyone
who is interested swapping zines or anecdotes, get in touch via iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk