Showing posts with label zines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zines. Show all posts

Friday, December 22, 2023

'How to produce a feminist magazine': Bad Attitude - radical women's newspaper (1992-97)

Bad Attitude was a London-based radical women's newspaper that ran from 1992 to 1997. It was put together by a group of women (mostly friends of mine) operating for much of this time from an office in the anarchist squat centre at 121 Railton Road, Brixton. The paper was an ambitious project, aiming for high production values and international coverage while having no funding and no paid staff. Unsurprisingly it eventually ran out of steam but not before many great interviews, news stories and other articles.

The story of Bad Attitude is told in some documents in the 56a infoshop archive, which also has a collection of the paper. The first document is a letter promoting Bad Attitude to potential sellers (bookshops etc). It promises that it will be 'wicked, witty and wild' and 'will inherit and expand the success of Shocking Pink and Feminaxe - members of the collective worked on both these publications... with a mission to overthrow civilisation as we know it Bad Attitude will put blander publications in the shade'. Distribution was handled by Central Books, originally set up in the 1930s to distribute Communist Party publications.


Five years and eight issues later the collective issued a 'Bye Bye Bad Attitude' letter to subscribers. 

 'BA brought a class struggle, anti-state approach to feminism that is scarce in any nationally distributed publication, and we managed to have few laughs along the way. It was  something worth fighting for! But life is change and the core of BA members have moved on in different ways — in  some cases, out of London. Lack of enough money and lack of energy have re-inforced each other, though our low overheads have enabled us to carry on longer than others. 

Most imporant, we're feeling the knock-on effect of changes in the benefits system. It's no   easy to sign on, keep going with the odd earner on the side and devote yourself virtually full-time to a project like BA. With wage cuts, pressure on low-rent housing and squatting and all the other survival hassles, it's also become more difficult to live on  part-time employment. This has made it difficult to find new collective members who can make the commitment to a regular publication on the scale of BA... Still for the overthrow of civilisation as we know it'


The group hoped that others would pick up the torch and with this in mind they 'How to produce a feminist magazine or how we did BA' with various practical points and 'advice from burnt-out baddies':  'Don't be over-ambitious. When we started as a bi-monthly. we roughly kept to schedule for a year. We also got ill! In retrospect. this sense of burn-out hung over the rest of the time we published. even as we went to quarterly. to bi-annual. to....non-existent.  It's better to start off with a publishing schedule you know you can stick to without giving up the rest of your life. 

At the same time, photocopies won't get the word out. Printing an attractive. well-produced publication makes it more accessible to those who don't already have a determined mission to read extremist tracts. And remember partially-sighted women will be interested too in what you've got to say. Try and get as many people as possible involved from the very beginning. We started off as a group of five or six, with the idea of involving more women when we published. But women coming in often didn't feel quite the same commitment. even though we tried to work out ways of including new volunteers. When we were overstretched we got stuck. We didn't have enough women to work regularly and train new volunteers which made it difficult for new women to get involved. which meant we didn't enough of us to  open the office. put out the paper and train volunteers...and so on'.










Bad Attitude benefit party during Hackney Anarchy Week 1996, held at the Factory Squat in Stoke Newington (more details of the Week at Radical History of Hackney)

Bad Attitude stall at Pride, Brockwell Park, 1993 - with Rosanne Rabinowitz (left) and Katy Watson



See previously:

Remembering Katy Watson (Bad Attitude collective member)



Friday, November 24, 2023

Muzik magazine issue One: 1995 club listings and Drexciya


Muzik magazine was launched with this June 1995 issue by IPC magazines, the publishers of NME and many other established publications. The mainstream music press had been caught hopping by the massive dance music explosion of this period, outflanked by magazines like Mixmag, DJ and Jockey Slut. Muzik was IPC's attempt to get a slice of the pie, and to me it felt a bit of a step backward. Or what I no doubt ranted about at the time as a musical counter revolution applying usual culture industry techniques of elevating cover star music makers out of the relatively anonymous masses of DJs, dancers and producers. It was all about 'proper' musicians (even if electronic ones), making proper albums filed neatly into product categories of techno, garage, house or even, as in this issue, hardbag. Of course Muzik didn't start the 'superstar DJ' trend but I think they went further than before in separating out the music from the experience of dancing to it - it was less clubbing focused than say Mixmag.

Still there's extensive record reviews and the club listings are evocative, even if very far from the 'definitive club listings' promised on the cover. Here's an extract for a weekend in May 1995 with some of the many places (the more obvious ones)  I was going to at the time: Leisure Lounge in Holborn, the Cross at Kings Cross, the Mars Bar,  Ministry etc.



The Techno reviews section does at least include a critique of the state of music from the late James Stinson of Drexciya:

'Too many people focus on what label a record comes out on, rather than what the track actually sounds like. To me, that means there's something wrong. I remember the days when nobody cared if you were on Warner Brothers or Booty Up, just so long as what you were doing was good. When you throw a party, what are you spinning? Are you spinning the middle of a record where all the writing is at or are you spinning the wax? You know what I'm saying? When a group comes to perform, who's up on the stage? Is it the business people punching their little computers or is it the artists themselves? 

Drexciya won't be putting records out for a while now. We'll still be making music, but not records. We won't allow this form of music to just stop where it's at, but we're not even satisfied with the quality that we are producing. And I have to say that I really wish people wouldn't follow us. Be inspired, sure, but please don't follow. The minute we hear footsteps following us, we switch our style. We'll totally abandon what we're doing. We won't release any records or perform anywhere until things change'


I believe the magazine continued until 2003, and having fiddled around taking photos of my one surviving copy I see that Dance Music Archive have scanned in the lot. So if you want to read more go there!


 

Monday, November 28, 2022

London queercore 1995: Vaseline, Up to the Elbow, Sick of it All

'Vaseline zine' started out in 1995 'for gay people who love indie and alternative music and want to rage against the scene'. They put on club nights including at the Bell in Kings Cross (later the Cross Bar, today the Big Chill). The period saw a flourishing of 'queercore', riot grrrl and LGBTQ+ indie clubs and bands in the UK - including Sister George, Mouthfull,  Bandit Queen and Sapphic Sluts. 

Vaseline, no. 2 1995 'rage against the scene' - with review of PJ Harvey at Kentish Town Forum, May  1995

Vaseline no.2 (May 1995) mentions that 'Popstarz is a new weekly gay indie night' opening at at Paradise Club with 'indie-pop downstairs and 70s discos and trash upstairs'. Not sure where the Paradise Club was (don't think this was the Paradise Bar in New Cross) but Popstarz went on to be a massive club night moving to the Scala in Kings Cross and continuing for 20 years at various locations. Its founder Simon Hobart died in 2005 (see Remembering Popstarz)





from Vaseline no.5



'Mouthfull' interview from issue 7



My friend Katy Watson DJ'd  at the time at Up to the Elbow, a club night started by the band Mouthful, and then started another night Sick of it All. Here's her brief account of the scene, from an interview I did with her:

'I’ve played music with a few people over the years but we never got it together to be a performing band.  I did try to start a band with my old flatmate Rosanne but it didn’t work out. She had been in a band called The Sluts from Outer Space. We had a very nice drummer we used to rehearse with, I was well into her.

I used to DJ in a couple of gay punky clubs, that was lots of fun. It gives you a focus for lots of record buying, so lots of shopping in Rough Trade. It was very nice doing it, having the motivation to check out lots of new records and you can justify buying them and also I was writing reviews of them for Bad Attitude. 

At first I played music in a sort of indie gay club - Up to the Elbow (the world’s worst name). That had quite an indie music policy, I put in my punky classics as well, like Iggy Pop and New York Dolls. The club was in Islington and sometimes at The Bell, an alternative gay pub in Kings Cross.

 And then after that I bonded a bit with these two gay punks called Rick and Satoshi and we did our own club very positively called Sick of It All (that was Rick’s gloomy American approach to things!). That was more punky than indie sort of gay stuff.  We didn’t do that many nights of it, but it was lots of fun. We had trouble fixing a venue, it was in a different place every time - we did one night at 121 Railton Road, the anarchist centre. Another one we did upstairs in a funny little club place off Warren Street with gold lame curtains and velvet chairs, it was a bit too smart for us..

 It was around the period of riot grrrl with bands like Bikini Kill. We went to two or three Bikini Kill gigs, and hung out with the band including Kathleen Hanna. She’s a very good self-promoter, so we interviewed her for Bad Attitude and she hung out with us in the squat that I was living in at the time. Tribe8, another US queercore band, also came and stayed in Brixton.  It was a very happening time for gay punky/indie bands and female punky/indie bands – the whole riot grrrl thing. We were being very cool and punky with our dyed hair and squatty lifestyle and all that sort of thing'

[notes: you can see Rosanne Rabinowitz in the great Rebel Dykes movie and the Sluts from Outer Space feature on the soundtrack; Katy's Brixon squat where Kathleen Hanna once stayed was at 2 Saltoun Road; I remember meeting San Francisco band Tribe8 in Brixton, in someone's house in Josephine Avenue around this time]

Katy (right) on her way to see Bikini Kill


Good to see some mentions of some of these nights in Vaseline. It seems that the first Sick of it All was at Sol's Bar near Warren Street in July 1995

Sick of it All's first night - 'The philosophy of the club seemed to be 'fuck the common denominator' and the atmosphere was reminiscent of Up to the Elbow. DJs Rik and Katie careered their way through punk, queercore and harder edged indie music, while Satoshi added the je ne sais quoi' (Vaseline no. 5).

The 'punk party extravaganzathon in a huge Brixton squat' in October 1995 was presumably the night at the (not particulary huge!) 121 Centre in Railton Road, Brixton. Katy was involved with the feminist paper Bad Attitude which had an office upstairs at 121.

Vaseline no. 7

Flyer for Sick of it All at 121 Centre, Brixton, 21 October 1995
'A one off punk party for homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals, fags, dykes, and their special "friends" ("gays" admitted at discretion of management)'

I went to a couple of  'Up to the Elbow' nights with Katy on the decks at the Bell (I saw Bandit Queen and the Frantic Spiders) and downstairs at Freedom in Wardour Street. Of the latter I noted at the time (January 1995) that I went  'to 'Up to the Elbow', the queercore club where Katy (DJ KT) does her stuff. It had moved from the Bell (which has been bought by the Mean Fiddler for heterosexualisation) to the Freedom Cafe in Soho. There were a couple of good bands playing - Mouthfull who were a bit Nirvana-like but did a great punkified version of 2 Unlimted's No Limits and Flinch who were more in the Pixies/Throwing Muses mould'.

Katy Watson (1966-2008)

See also:



[thank to MayDay Rooms archive, whose display of Vaseline zines at the radical bookfair at the Barbican library set me off down this wormhole. The bookfair was part of Quiet Revolutions: A Celebration of Radical Bookshops, 26 November 2022]

[updated September 2023 with Sick of it All flyers found at 56a Info Shop]

Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Compilations against the Criminal Justice Act

The mid-1990s movement against the British Government's Criminal Justice Act, and in particular it's 'anti-rave' police powers, was one of the more exciting episodes of that time (see my Datacide article 'Revolt of the Ravers: the movement against the Criminal Justice Act, 1993-95). Naturally this movement found musical expression including a number of disparate compilation albums.

The one with perhaps the biggest names - some of them surprizing - is Criminal Justice! (Axe the Act), with tracks from Jamiroquai, Radiohead, The Shamen, Stereo MCs, Aswad, Orbital, Dodgy, Corduroy, EMF and a frankly bizarre Duran Duran cover of Public Enemy's '911 is a joke' in a Beck style. In between the tracks there's spoken work narration from Malcolm McLaren. 
  


The 1995 release was billed as a benefit for the Coalition Against the Criminal Justice Act. Initiated by the Socialist Workers Party, the Coalition was viewed with some suspicion by many of those in the anti-CJA movement though it did manage to get various trade union branches and civil liberties groups to affiliate. I doubt whether many of the acts on this CD were being played out on free party sound systems at the time with the possible exception of Orbital, still fair play to these bands for putting their names and music to the cause. 


'Taking Liberties' (Totem Records, 1994) was closer to the actual soundtrack of the movement, featuring mainly electronic/dance music acts including The Orb, The Prodigy, Loop Guru, Tribal Drift, Trans-Global Underground, System 7 (with Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy from Gong), Galliano, Fun-Da-Mental, DreadZone,  Ultramarine, The Drum Club, Test Dept and Zion Train. The Shamen and Orbital feature on both this and the compilation above.


Proceeds were ear-marked for the Freedom Network and the sound systems' based Advance Party (who had jointly kicked off the grassroots anti-CJA movement), along with civil rights organisation Liberty and Squall magazine.


The cover art, reflected on the cassette tape version too, was by Jamie Reid.


 
'NRB:58 - No Repetitive Beats' refers to clause 58 of the initial Criminal Justice Bill which infamously defined raves as including music characterised by repetitive beats. It is basically a compilation of fairly mainstream house music of the period including a mix version by Hacienda DJ Graeme Park. It has some great mainly US/Italian tracks on it by the likes of Loleatta Holloway and The Reese Project (Kevin Saunderson),  not sure if any of them specifically endorsed the campaign but there was a promise of a donation from each sale to famous Nottingham based free party sound system DiY Collective and its associated anti-CJA campaign 'All Systems No!'




'For every copy of No Reptetitive Beats sold Network will pay a royalty to DIY/All Systems No! (an advance payment of £3000 was made before the release of the album), the monies will be used by DIY/All Systems No! towards the cost of a sound system which will be on hand to replace any sound equipment seized by the police using draconian powers granted to them by the Criminal Justice Bill... Fight for your right to party'




Finally and on a real DIY tip is 'They call this Justice?' a benefit for the Freedom Network put out on cassette by Spanner in the Works, a label started by London-based Earzone zine


No famous names, but just the kind of bands you would find playing at squat/benefit gigs at this time, like Scum of Toytown, 70 Gwen Party, Electric Groove Temple, Spithead and Blind Mole Rat.

Notice of compilation from Earzone zine





'About the Freedom Network' article from Earzone, with contact addresses of various anti-CJA grops from Football Fans Against the CJA to the Hunt Saboteurs Association

[I have Taking Liberties and NRB:58 on cassette. I have never heard the other two compilations though familiar with some of the bands/tracks. Intrigued in particular by the Malcolm McLaren contributions to Criminal Justice!, would like to listen to them if anybody can help me out. Thanks to nobrightside for Earzone pictures]

 See also on the CJA:

Marching against the CJA, July 1994

Eternity report of July 1994 anti-CJA demo

Revolt of the Ravers – The Movement against the Criminal Justice Act in Britain 1993-95


Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Datacide #18 Launch Event

 

This Friday 21 February sees the London launch event for Datacide magazine, issue number 18. The event at Ridley Road Social Club E8 starts at 7 pm with some talks including one from me on the anti-poll tax movement (see poll tax posts here for a flavour of this). Afterwards Praxis and Hekate present DJ and live sets. £5 entry.  Full line up -

Talks:

Datacide Introduction by Christoph Fringeli
Flint Michigan: Electronic Disturbance Zone
Neil Transpontine: The Poll Tax Rebellion – 30 Years On.

Music:

Psychic Defence
Vera Spektor
Dan Hekate
Luke Hekate
FZV.

Noise, Industrial, IDM.


The new issue of Datacide, the magazine for noise and politics is out now and includes my article on Trump and occultism. Full contents:

Editorial

Christoph Fringeli: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany 1919

Ross Wolfe: Marxism Contra Justice – A Critique of Egalitarian Ideology
Joke Lanz: Ghosts & Handbags – A short Travel Report from the Japanese Underworld
Matthew Hyland: Masterless Mouths

Three poems by Howard Slater
fiction by Dan Hekate
News roundup by Nemeton
book reviews:


Frankenstein, or the 8-Bit Prometheus – Micro-literature, hyper-mashup, Sonic Belligeranza records 17th anniversary by Riccardo Balli
Dale Street: Lions Led by Jackals – Stalinism in the International Brigade, by Christoph Fringeli
Activities since last issue
Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy
graphics and illustrations by dybbuk, lesekill, Darkam, Sansculotte
The physical zine is a fine thing - you can order it here or come along on Friday and buy one!

Monday, October 26, 2015

Magic Feet (1990s zine)

'Magic Feet' was a 1990s Nottingham-based dance music zine. Here's the front and back cover of the first issue from November 1994 promising 'hard house, ambient, electronic, acid, trance, techno, whatever you want to call it', and featuring Stefan Robbers, Innersphere and Warp/GTO charts.


The back page includes an article from the Brixton-based Freedom Network about the then ongoing campaign against the Criminal Justice Bill and its 'anti-rave' powers. A demonstration in London's Hyde Park in the previous month- on October 9th 1994 - had ended in clashes with the police and the article calls for witnesses to come forward. Forthcoming events mentioned include more Anti-CJB actions in Guildford, Barnstaple and elsewhere, the launch of the 'Taking Liberties' compilation (an anti-CJB LP featuring Test Dept, The Orb, Loop Guru and others) and a benefit for Squall magazine at Megatripolis - the alternative techno/trance club held in London on Thursday nights. I think I went to that night, anyway I remember seeing a film/talk about the Newbury road protest in the somewhat incongruous setting of a banging Thursday night in Heaven.



Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Datacide Book Launch at Housmans

This Friday (23 October) I will be saying a few words at the launch of the new Datacide book, Everything Else is Even More Ridiculous, which brings together the first 10 issues of the noise and politics zine published between 1997 and 2008. It takes place at Housmans bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 (round the corner from Kings Cross station).


Full details:

Datacide - the Magazine for Noise & Politics - presents the release of two new books with short talks by Datacide writers Stewart Home, Neil Transpontine and Christoph Fringeli

EVERYTHING ELSE IS EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS
a decade of noise & politics – datacide issues 1-10

A major project in the works for quite some time, this is a complete reprint of the issues 1-10 of datacide, which originally appeared from 1997-2008. Titled “EVERYTHING ELSE IS EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS”, the 364 page volume collects unique material, most of which has been out of print for many years, charting a one-of-a-kind history of the counter-cultures associated with electronic music and free festivals.

“The free space of the party met the free space of the page and then you got a dynamism that encouraged expression and perversions and tangents because the covers held it together as a nomadic movement and you were convinced that music had catalysed it all and that music was somehow inherently political as it sidestepped rhetoric and dogma, and absented us from control addicts and the free space of the page was a kind of historic party, a kind of invisible college, a launching pad for driftage.” Flint Michigan

AND:

Almanac for Noise & Politics 2015

If you’re already familiar with datacide magazine and our related record label for extreme electronic music – Praxis – then you’re familiar with the efforts we’ve made over the last two decades to continually explore the intersections of radical politics and underground rave culture, experimental and extreme electronic music, moments of free spaces and momentary freak-outs and how these can be represented on the page and through the speakers. If not, this may be a good place to start. Either way, the Almanac for noise & politics 2015 contains a selection of articles and excerpts from various issues of datacide, as well as a peek into the activities of the Praxis label and its offshoots. 

This first edition is meant to be a brief introduction to the wide range of topics covered in datacide.
Articles include: Post-Media Operators by Howard Slater/Eddie Miller/Flint Michigan, No Stars here (track -1) by TechNET, A Loop Da Loop Era – Towards an (Anti-)history of Rave by Neil Transpontine, Radical Intersections by Christoph Fringeli, Vinyl Meltdown by Alexis Wolton, Plague in this Town by Matthew Hyland, Just Say Non – Nazism, Narcissism and Boyd Rice by whomakesthenazis.com, Interview with Christoph Fringeli/Praxis Records from Objection to Procedure, a new short story by Dan Hekate, as well as a commented catalogue. This is interspersed by new visual work by Matthieu Bourel, Lynx, Sansculotte, Tóng Zhi, and Zombieflesheater!
Full colour cover and 104 inside pages in A6 format!

Starts at 7.30 (till 9-ish) - Entry is £3 (redeemable towards any purchase in the bookshop)

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Panacea: 1990s Cardiff zine from 'techno underground'

Panacea was a mid-1990s zine from Cardiff ('Panacea West') and Southsea ('Panacea South').


Panacea 'future sounds collective' aimed 'to provide information distributed from the techno underground, bring quality music to your ears, and find ways of getting to best future sound parties'.


This issue (number 3) from 1995, includes articles on Jeff Mills and DJ Torah, and a round up of London techno nights, including Digital Nation at Bagleys, Kings Cross and of course Dead by Dawn: 'next Dead by Dawn will continue the party with cutting edge hardcore and hard experimental sounds to challenge the techno establishment. The next Dead by Dawn (121 Railton Road, Brixton) is on Nov 4, line up includes Torah'. I remember chatting to the Panacea crew at Dead by Dawn, nice people.


The front page mentions 'Insurrection in Hyde Park' and the issue includes a review of the pamphlet I wrote at the time about the October 1994 anti-Criminal Justice Act riotous demonstration in Hyde Park, 'The Battle for Hyde Park: ruffians, radicals, and ravers 1855-1994'.



With Datacide magazine we are planning an event at the May Day Rooms in Fleet Street, London,  on October 19th 2014 looking at the anti-CJA movement and also featuring a panel discussion on the radical/techno zine scene at that time. Put the date in your diary, it will start at 2 pm and carry on into the evening with films and music (further details here soon).  We would be interested in hearing from people involved in that movement/demonstration, if anyone from Panacea is out there (Arlene/Sian?) get in touch as we'd like to have you there too!

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Pirate Radio: Article from Muzik magazine, 1995

There's now an online archive of every issue of Muzik magazine, from 1995 to 2003. The launch of the magazine by IPC was an indicator of the state of music in the UK a the time - dance music was massive and the coverage of it in IPC's NME was woeful. Magazines like Mixmag and DJ were flying off the shelves and IPC wanted some of the action. Likewise by 2003 the boom was well and truly over and there had been a revival of the guitar-led bands that NME liked to feature - so it was farewell Muzik.

There's lots of great material to be found in this archive. From Issue no.2, July 1995, here's an article on pirate radio (click on image to enlarge, or go to the archive and look through the whole issue).

'''Meet me outside McDonals in Crystal Palace. I'll be there in 10 minutes". The voice on the mobile phone belongs to the man behind Energy FM, one of London's longest-running pirate radio stations... As one of the highest places in London, Crystal Palace is a prime location for pirate radio transmitters and a prime target for the DTI investigators. Energy has been broadcasting on and off from here for over three years and the station's boss knows the area intimately. Tower blocks are central to pirate radio mythology because their height provides stations with the widest possible catchment area. Most hide their transmitter in a lift shaft or a drainage pipe within cable reach of an aerial placed on top of a block. Energy's transmitter is sufficiently high to enable their programmes to occasionally be picked up in Luton, which is some 50 miles away'. Dream FM (Leeds) and Power FM (Nottingham) also feature in the article, as does Kiss which by then had gone from being a pirate to being legit (the article mentions that they also used Crystal Palace tower blocks).