Get Stuck into Pritt Stick Lit
Written by Jess Holland
Varsity Magazine

The time's never been so good for DIY publishing in Cambridge. New magazines are being started weekly, awards are being collected and small battles are being won against boredom and complacency. I talked to the people making it happen.

Richard Rose is Cambridge's king of fanzines. His sprawling, passionate cut'n'paste ‘zine R*E*P*E*A*T, beloved by the late John Peel, has been going strong for over a decade. Encyclopaedic in its scope and diverse in tone, you can spend years reading each issue. It was born, Rosey tells me, out of some drawings by his primary school music class and a love of the Manics. "They were the band that changed my life. They inspired me to read and to write and to be creative." Rosey's commitment to inspiring young people has resulted in a R*E*P*E*A*T record label and weekly new band nights at the Portland Arms. He is also responsible for a group of punk-rock ten year olds from his music class playing a gig on Blue Peter

When asked why fanzines are so important, his answer is straightforward: "It comes down to advertising. Even though R*E*P*E*A*T loses money I've never taken a paid advert. As soon as you take an advert you're beholden not to upset that person. If you're funding yourself you can be more yourself. All you need is a glue-stick and a photocopier.'"

What makes a good fanzine, according to Rosey, is ‘opinions, mess, prittstick, cut'n'paste, people not giving a fuck about who they offend, being honest, and using full stops.' R*E*P*E*A*T ticks all the boxes.

R*E*P*E*A*T slips into a long tradition of independent fanzine literature. The history of fanzines started out in the 1930's as self-made sci-fi publications spawned by fan-clubs. They have since been adopted as a mouthpiece for every anti-establishment form of music, most notably 70's punk (Sniffin' Glue) and 90's riot grrrl (‘zine-turned-band Bikini Kill). In the 1980's fanzines had money thrown at them and became hype-meisters like THE FACE and Dazed and Confused, demonstrating just how wrong the 80's got everything apart from teen movies starring Molly Ringwald. This type of glossy fanzine-hybrid is still going strong, with the love-it-or-hate-it Vice leading the way. It offends just about everyone, treading all over the line between too-cool-for-skool and too-cool-for-cool in a way that makes you feel either uneasy for reading it or for not getting the joke.

Less offensive, though no less cool is Cambridge's Meat magazine. Meat is a beautifully produced publication with an emphasis on comics, artwork and literary innovation."We wanted to do something that's highbrow meets lowbrow" James Pallister, who started up the magazine last year with student-turned-artist Nick Hayes, tells me. "Something that looks good - the design's really important - but with some stupid humour, so it's not just po-faced and pompous."

"Meat was born out of frustration at the fact that there are so many people in Cambridge that just don't seem that excited about the world around them. Who've just got too much work to do. There didn't seem to be a real forum for ideas other than TCS and Varsity." The magazine may be pushing against the mainstream tide but James says "I don't have any problem about selling more copies. It's not going to steal my soul or anything. But I'm proud that it's independent. You can actually do this by yourself."

DIY publishing is growing up, and perhaps you no longer have to choose between integrity and success. Everett True, who brought Grunge to Britain, and whose independent magazines Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B have set a new standard for cutting-edge music journalism, bears testament to this. True's magazines have all the breathless enthusiasm and obsessive knowledge of a fanzine with the kind of scale and production values of a mainstream music magazine.

"The only concern I ever have in my own writing is to try to communicate the love for the music I feel. I don't know where that fits in with any kind of scene. We wanted to put together an intelligent, passionate, soulful magazine about music. When I was reviewing music for other magazines (Everett used to run Melody Maker), we would always get the same 5 or 6 CDs every week. I was really annoyed that there was all this great music coming out that I wasn't allowed to review anywhere."

The web has had a transformative effect on all these publications. The move towards the web has put a dent in R*E*P*E*A*T's circulation and precipitated the closure of many established music titles. Yet many fanzines and magazines have embraced this change. The web has caused an explosion in the availability of independent, fanzine material.

Printing and desktop publishing too is getting cheaper and easier. The magazine section of Borders gets more cluttered each day, with magazines catering to ever more specialist tastes. Fanzine makers are making the most of the physical, sensual aspect of holding something beautifully made, with cut-out stencil layers (Amelia), white ink on white paper (Perfect) or hand-stitched covers.

People remain excited about the old-fashioned combination of paper and words. With ever more student-run arts publications like Prep, Contraband, Filament, Inprint and upcoming music magazine The Laundry Room, it's an exciting time for DIY literature in our little cobbled town. So put down your textbooks, they're getting in the way of your education.

From Varsity

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