Memory Mixtape #31: The 15 Fame-Filled Minutes Of The Fanzine Writer

The Boomtown Rats - Fanzine Hero

Continued from yesterday's post... when I was about 16 or 17, I was invited to join an APA. I had no idea what an APA was and the internet wasn't around to explain like it is nowadays.

You Am I - Bitter Young Man Of The Franzine Press

Iffypedia tells us...

"An amateur press association is a group of people who produce individual pages or zines that are sent to a Central Mailer for collation and distribution to all members of the group."

Initially I was just writing individual pages for a zine called Comic Critics Cavalcade, in which letter-hacks from all over the world could share their thoughts on new or old comics or the changing face of the industry. 

Emma Pollock - Letters To Strangers

After a year or two doing that, I was allowed into the inner circle: Inertron, an APA in which a small group of British comic fans made their own zines every couple of months, photocopied a batch, and sent them off to a central mailer for distribution to the rest of the group.

Fanzines are cheap, I know

Shape your mind

The Replacements - Sixteen Blue [Outtake - Alternate Vocal]

A week or so later, we'd receive a huge parcel containing every else's zines which we then read and commented on. Some of those zines were huge (for anyone who thinks writing this blog must be a time-consuming affair, it's nothing to the amount of time involved in being part of an APA). Yet it was also a lot of geeky fun... otherwise else why did we spend so much time on it? 

Aztec Camera - We Could Send Letters

Not everyone involved was a teenager like me - some of the other contributors were in their 20s, 30s or even older... but nobody thought there was anything odd about that. We were united by our shared love of comics... but also, films, music, TV shows, and life as we knew it. Nobody agreed on everything, but nobody violently disagreed either. We were interested, rather than angry, when someone liked different things to us. Being a part of that group was a natural precursor to the blogosphere - or this comfortable little corner of the blogosphere anyway. 

Kings Of Convenience - The Weight Of My Words

I recently found all my old APAs up in my mum's attic, and I'm in the process of scanning them to digital files for posterity. Below is the cover to the first issue of my zine Rock n Roll, named after the sign off line I used for all my fan letters. At the top of the post is a cover from a later edition. Even though this was an APA for comics fans, we could write about whatever we wanted in our own zines, so music was a big part of my witterings even back then. 

Wilco - Box Full Of Letters

Until I found that dusty old box up in mum's attic, I hadn't thought about my time in the APA group for maybe a quarter of a century. I'm not sure why it stopped, but I suspect it was partly that the internet took over. I did find myself quite active in online comics groups from the mid-late 90s, and I suspect quite a few of my fellow APA-ers made a similar leap. I was also spending more and more time producing my own comics by then (not to mention completing my English degree and working in radio) so something had to give. I miss the creativity and community of it all, but other things came along to fill that hole... like writing this blog. I guess I've always felt the need to put my thoughts down and have them read by others, all that's changed is the medium.

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear

Is the sound of someone stacking chairs

And mopping up spilt beer

And someone asking questions and basking in the light

Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Saturday Snapshots #138

It's the final weekend of our Department of the Peculiar kickstarter, so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your suggestions about appropriate songs for dead singers to sing. The tracklist has now been finalised and will be included in the "Heroes" CD booklet which we're hoping will be included as a free gift to all backers, if we hit our stretch goal over the next couple of days... along with many of Rob's excellent Dead Hero illustrations (see above), as mentioned on 6Music this week (Mary Anne Hobbes was particularly fond of his Aretha Franklin).

I always feel weird promoting my own work - but that's probably why I never made it as a professional writer. The writing, I can handle... the hawking, less so much.

Anyway, should you be interested... or know anyone that might be, please direct them to our kickstarter page before Monday for full details.

Now on with the main business of the day. Identify ten top tunes and their performers from the clues below, please. It's been a couple of weeks since I set this quiz and I have to admit, I struggled to identify a few of these myself! Hopefully you'll have better luck...




10. Piano playing dog meets marvellous man at the end o' the road.

9. Romantic fullstop for feathered Shakespeare.

8. Moorland flowers explode like stars... just like Caine.

7. What happens when Essex stops dreaming... flatulent warmongers.

6. Should a mother be so confident in her prowess?

5. Shortened tyres preferred by drivers in motor city when chased by small Spanish wolf.

4. Shipwreck connected to disastrous backbone.

3. Taxi driver meets depressed meteorologist.

2. Mythic ruse, honest.

1. Mentally fixated, like a Boy, Solo.

Answers tomorrow!

Your Suggestions Needed...

You'll be pleased to know that we hit our Kickstarter target for the latest issue of Department of the Peculiar, so Rob has come up with an excellent "extra" to give away with the comic if we hit our stretch goal. (Believe me, I don't understand any of this stuff.)

Because the writer is a sadist, the script for the latest issue required Rob to draw a wall full of portraits of dead rock stars. To be honest, when I wrote that, I thought he'd just do thumbnail sketches... but, Rob being Rob, he ended up doing full portraits... of loads and loads of them.

(Believe me, that's not all of them.)

These went down pretty well when he posted them on Facebook, so Rob came up with the idea of publishing them in a CD booklet. And because it wasn't really fair that the lazy writer got away with doing bugger all for this venture, Rob asked me to write the liner notes.

I came up with a couple of ideas, thinking about what else you'd find in a CD booklet, and decided to write up a track-listing for this imaginary record. Just like the kind of nonsense list / mix I've been writing here for years.

So I've started compiling a list of songs by dead rock stars about death / dying / living forever / etc. etc. etc. This kind of thing...

Hank Williams - I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive 

John Prine - When I Get To Heaven

Faron Young - Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young 

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

John Denver - Leaving On A Jet Plane

Warren Zevon - Keep Me In Your Heart

I have a few more, but because I'm scared of missing out some obvious ones, I thought I'd throw it open to you guys and see if you had any further suggestions.

Here are the rules...

1. The singer (preferably songwriter) has to be dead.

I rejected Who Wants To Live Forever? by Queen because it was written by Brian, not Freddie.

2. The song title has to be about life or death, heaven or hell... it can't just be in the lyrics.

I rejected Come As You Are by Nirvana... but I'd probably have included it if Kurt had called the song "I Don't Have A Gun".

Similarly, I couldn't include My Generation by The Who even though it contains the perfect line ("Hope I die before I get old") because the title doesn't allude to life or death, and the songwriters are still with us.

3. I'll also accept songs where the songwriter appears to have eerily predicted their own demise - like the John Denver one above.

Above is the cover to the "Heroes" booklet, featuring Mal (our character) posing as Bowie.

As always, your wisdom will be gratefully received.

And now, because I didn't have time last week to pay proper tribute to Little Richard...


More information on the Department of the Peculiar Kickstarter here.

Probably Not The Best Time To Launch A Kickstarter...

...but we held off as long as we could. Rob has dogs to feed.

The latest Kickstarter for our comic Department Of The Peculiar... Goes Pop #2 (the concluding chapter) went live on Saturday. The front cover is based on a classic album cover... kudos if you get that, because I wouldn't have if Rob hadn't told me. This is back cover...

And here's a few random panels from the interior.

If you were kind enough to support issue #1, you maybe interested in supporting #2... but no pressure, I understand funds are a little tight for many people at the moment. I won't hold it against you.

If you didn't sample #1 but are intrigued by what it's all about, you can easily get #1 and #2 together as part of the Kickstarter for very few extra pennies.

Here are some nice things people said about the first issue...

To find out more, follow this link.

End of Blatant Self-Promotion. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Here's an appropriate tune. Watch the video and you'll see where Joe Wicks got his best moves from...



By the way, I'd just like to point out, for those of you who read issue #1: yes, I did kill Bonio in that comic, because I have a great deal of animosity towards Bono. I don't have any animosity towards the Stones though, I've always found them very entertaining... hilariously so!

Kickstart My Heart

Taking a break from my break to let you know about my new comic. Now, I realise this will only be of interest to a few of you, and no worries if that's not you. But if you've read any of my comics before - particularly the last one I released before my "retirement" from writing, Department of the Peculiar - you may be interested to know that the second story from that series is set to be released soon... if we achieve our publishing target on Kickstarter. The book was mostly written about five years ago (around the time the first story was published) but for one reason or another it's been on hold since then. However, my collaborator and all-round artistic genius Rob Wells has been pushing hard to get the story out there and drag me out of retirement, and the Kickstarter looks like it may just do that.

How is this relevant to a music blog? Well, the latest story is Department of the Peculiar Goes Pop, and it may be on interest to music fans beyond the normal comics fanbase. You can read much more about it here or click on the images below for a preview of the first three pages in which something very nasty happens to a bunch of musicians you may almost recognise...

If you fancy helping us on our way to our publishing target, all help will be gratefully received. But I won't hold it against you if you don't - this isn't for everybody, just the discerning few.

See you back here on Saturday for more Snapshots.

Take Your Mind Off The Back To Work Blues...

...with a collection of short stories compiled by Martin in aid of the Population Matters charity. A fine selection of tales that are guaranteed to keep you entertained... plus one by me you can happily skip over, especially as you may have read it here on this blog many moons ago.

Seriously though, I have to take this opportunity to thank Martin for giving me the one (and probably only) chance to see a story of mine anthologised in print. I've had plenty of stuff published online, but there's something very special about holding a paper copy of your work, especially when it's been judged worthy for inclusion among so many other clearly far more talented scribes than I.

You can buy a print copy - or download it digitally - from Amazon, should you wish. All proceeds go to a very worth cause.

Here's a few songs that fit the general theme...

10. The Leaves - Too Many People

9. The Hollies - Too Many People

8. Paul McCartney - Too Many People

7. Bobby Goldsboro - Too Many People

6. Blondie Makhene & Amaqabane - Too Many People

5. Melissa Manchester - Just Too Many People

4. Pet Shop Boys - Too Many People

3. Palaye Royale - Too Many People

2. Glen Hansard - Too Many People

1. Unkle Bob - Too Many People


If you're back to work today (as I am), I hope it's not too traumatic.

March #8: I Want To Tell You A Story...

More Dar Williams today. I make no apologies for that: some bloggers write about the same artists week after week. Why do we blog about music we love? Because we love it. Because we want to grab you by the lapels and say: "Hey, listen to this. This is good." Because whenever we hear a really good song, we want to share it and help it find another pair of ears that will love it the same way we do. Because maybe we don't have anyone in our real lives who loves music in quite the same way we do, who values it quite the same way we do... but out there in the blogosphere, we might just find a like-minded soul.

And finding a like-minded soul is kind of what today's song is all about...

8. Dar Williams - Mortal City

Up until just a few years ago, I used to love writing short stories. I enjoyed writing longer works of fiction to, as you'll see in the sidebar, but they took a lot more time, blood, sweat and tears. A short story, I could write in a day. I think I got quite good at it. Maybe not "publish my collection" good, but good enough to be shortlisted for a few prizes. Ha... at this point I can't help but remember a cartoon that appeared in the Guardian Review section a few years back. I remember it because it's pinned to the noticeboard at the side of me as I write this...

Anyway, the point is: I liked writing short stories, and I like reading them. It's a different skill to writing a novel, a different art form. There are different rules, different pleasures. You don't get to use as much repetition of a word like different in a short story as you might do in a novel. You'd get pulled up on that.

I realised something the other day. Out of all the music blogs I read, mine is the one which focusses the most on song lyrics. The only other blogger I can think of who regularly quotes song lyrics is Alyson at What's It All About? But for Alyson, the lyrics are there because (often) they remind her of something in her own life, and those memories are her blog's reason for being. I'm the only blogger I can think of who obsesses over lyrics, who makes whole Top Tens out of obscure lyrical references to toasters, who raves about the working man's story songs of Bruce; the cleverly worded puns of Elvis Costello; the mordantly witty couplets of Morrissey; the everyday woodchip-on-the-wall minutiae of Jarvis; the self-deprecating romanticism of Billy Bragg; the ludicrously exaggerated melodrama of Jim Steinman...

I like a lot of different types of music for a lot of different reasons. But if I were to list my all-time favourite artists (a list I started, but by no means completed, in the previous paragraph), they'd all have something in common. Their words are as strong... if not stronger than... their music. I realise I may be somewhat in the minority when it comes to this. I'm not saying you lot don't like the lyrics of your favourite songwriters, don't pore over them, didn't spend hours as a teenager transcribing them because there was no lyric sheet in the album sleeve... I'm sure many of you did. I just don't think the lyrics are paramount, the main reason behind your choice of favourite artists. I doubt any of you have found yourself giving a pass to Gary Barlow... or James Blunt... or even Coldplay in the last week or so because, you know what, their latest singles have some interesting stuff going in the words, even if their music still sounds like their same old tat. (Actually, the Gary Barlow song has better music than usual too, mainly because he's nicked a load of ideas from Jeff Lynne... but I digress.) The point is, good lyrics will always sway me to a song, even by an artist I would normally cross the road to avoid. I'll even throw Bono a bone... if he ever writes a lyrically interesting song, I will buy it and sing it proudly at the top of my lungs. Go for it, Bono!

(By the way, I may be wrong about much of the above. You may value lyrics as much as I do. If so, I'll be happy to start up a club and we can get together on the third Tuesday of every month in an abandoned bus shelter on the edge of town to discuss whether Ben Folds has written a funnier song than John Grant. The invitation's there.)

The point... I was getting to the point a few paragraphs back, wasn't I? The point is, I like a good short story. And today's offering, the title track of Dar Williams's second album, from way, way back in 1996, is a great short story. You may decide it's not a great song... but I can't really tell the difference. No, as far as I'm concerned, there's no difference at all. Musically, I suppose it sounds a little bit Joni Mitchell, but... oh, just give it a listen.

Dar Williams - Mortal City

Why do I write this blog? All the reasons above plus one more. I don't write anything else anymore. This is all I have left...