The Fanzine Podcast

Visit tonyfletchersubstack.com for more show notes, fanzine covers, the Ode To a Better-Badged Boychik poem and more. https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/how-14-yr-old-mark-jays-skum-zineMark Jay was just 14 years old in 1976 when, hanging out at the Rock On record shop next in Camden Town, close to his violence-ridden state school, an inadvertent reacquaintance with John Simon Ritchie - a.k.a. Sid Vicious - propelled him into the heart of the fledgling UK punk scene.By the end of that year, Mark had started one of the first British punk fanzines, SKUM, and not only been befriended by Bernie Rhodes, The Clash, and members of the Sex Pistols, but by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who having seen Mark’s cartoon of the Sex Pistols v. Bill Grundy TV fiasco, commissioned a ‘Story So Far’ from him that became the insert to the Never Mind The Bollocks album. Mark was among the only proper fans, and surely the youngest to attend the Pistols’ Silver Jubilee boat trip/concert on June 7, 1977, at which he was arrested and spend the night in jail. By then he was all of 15. He remembers it to this day as the best gig of his life.Mark ceased publishing SKUM in December 1977, a year after he had started, and indulged his Beat Poetry obsession instead, starting a fanzine called All The Poets, printed in early 1979 by Joly MacFie (featured on Episode 3 of this podcast) at Better Badges, as a ‘guinea pig’ for his new printing press. Around the same time, he allowed my zine Jamming! to cut-and-paste his (first ever) Sid Vicious interview from SKUM 1 for my Jamming! 7, also printed at Better Badges.At the end of September 2025, Mark and I had a real time conversation for the first time in over 46 years, which I recorded in entirety for this, the final UK episode of the Fanzine Podcast. It is, quite possibly, and not as much for the renewed personal connection as for Mark’s incredible origin stories, my favourite episode of them all.Other fanzines mentioned in this podcast: Sniffin’ Glue, White Stuff, Bondage, Ripped & Torn, and London’s Burning.Find Mark on Instagram. Further links:SKUM archivesAll The Poets archivesThe Sex Pistols: The Story So Far posterMark Jay’s Sex Pistols Jubilee boat story and more on sex-pistols.netMark Jay’s films are all listed and linked at the bottom of this page:To order Geshmack x Gesheft via Spinners (and Mark’s next poemtry pamflet ‘Five Years - between the gutter and the galaxies,‘ when published November 2025). Five Years will contain ‘Ode to the Better Badged Boychik at the Favourite Caff,’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Fanzine Podcast is back after an unintentionally long absence to talk with Howard Wuelfing, editor/publisher of two key Washington D.C. zines, which have just been gathered into an eponymous anthology: Descenes and Discords. These influential zines, the first focused on local activities, its successor intended to gather additional material about the national alternative/underground scene, ran between 1979 and 1981 and served not only to influence and impact upon music in D.C., but provided publication space for a number of writers who would go on to national prominence, among them Gerard Cosloy and Byron Coley.In this episode, Howard discusses abandoning plans to become a lawyer to focus on becoming a rock writer instead, how exposure to CBGB’s but especially the publication New York Rocker set him and his partners on their way with Descenes, how they were able to access typesetting, advertising and printing, and their successful game plan for distribution, but how the careerism of local “new wave” bands caused the team to pack it in after six issues. Embarking eight months later with Discords, the new look monthly zine had a winning run of cover artists (from Pylon to Circle Jerks to The Bongos and Mission Of Burma) and provided space and encouragement for the younger generation of hardcore bands who would soon step into the space Discords helped create. Accordingly, Ian MacKaye of Teen Idols, Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord (no relation) Records, was interviewed by Howard for a special reflection article that opens the new anthology.Descenes and Discords: An Anthology is available from DiWulf.com in the Americas, and EarthIslandBooks.com in Europe. Howard Wuelfing can be found at https://www.howlinwuelf.com/The theme music for the Fanzine Podcast is by Noel Fletcher.The outro in this episode is the 12” mix of “Put It Down” by The Dear Boys, available at thedearboys.bandcamp.comTony Fletcher can be found at tonyfletcher.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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.

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.