Vague Post-Punk Memories

10 “Vague Post-Punk Memories” A Lecture byTom Vague, and Conversation with Mark Fisher (11|12|14) The fanzine or zine was one of the most important forms in which postpunk culture circulated. Many of the most renowned post-punk writers and artists — including Paul Morley, Jon Savage, and Linder Sterling — began as the producers of zines. But zines were important in their own right, as spaces in which a post-punk network was con- solidated, and new kinds of discourse could proliferate. Tom Vague started to produce Vague at the height of post-punk, in the South West of England. Vague’s preoccupations follow the rhythms of the wider post-punk culture — initial enthusiasm for groups such as Adam and the Ants is followed quickly by disillusionment. This reflects the volatile mood of the time, but also the speed with which the underground crossed over into mainstream pop, as antagonism turned into an embrace of the mainstream. As Vague developed, it kept faith with the spirit of post-punk experimentation even as it widened the focus beyond music. Later issues of the zine included long-form articles on psycho-geography, situationist theory and cyberpunk. Tom Vague’s lecture on the history of Vague is also a very particular history of post-punk culture and its aftermath in the UK.

Vague 1, November 1979 Tom Vague: Vague fanzine was founded in 1979, as Margaret Thatcher came to power, at Salisbury College of Technology and Art in Wiltshire — by me, the illustrator/cartoonist Perry Harris, and a Dutch guy called Iggy Zevenbergen. It was done as a “postpunk popular-modernist search for the new” — or for something to do other than attempt to play guitar or sing — rather than with any literary or artistic aspirations. We started Vague in the wake of the first Futurama post-punk science-fiction music festival in Leeds featuring Public Image and Joy Division. Thus it was inspired by post-punk and reggae; Adam and the Ants, the Banshees, the Clash, Joy Division, PIL, the Pop Group and the Slits, and Tim Aylet’s Channel 4 fanzine. The Vague launch gig was at Mere Youth Club in Wiltshire, 20 miles from Stonehenge, featuring the Sterile Androids from Winchester,

Vague was named as a DIY post-punk spoof of Vogue magazine, and was closely linked to the principles of vagrancy and vagary. It featured ‘The Vagrants’ cartoon strip by Perry. The same year as the fanzine started, the porn mag Club International featured a Voguespoof Vague magazine cover, and the VAG typeface was designed for Volkswagen. Vague is a real surname found in Cornwall, and the Vagrants were a real mid-60s rock and soul group from Long Island, New York — described as “the bad boys of garage-punk”, and an influence of the Ramones — who reformed in the 90s as the New Vagrants to record a 21st Century Vagrants album. Vague wasn’t a punk-rock fanzine historically speaking, it was post-punk — but it had authentic irreverent punk-rock attitude, semiliterate stream-of-consciousness prose, and experimental DIY antiVogue-style design. We didn’t use the term “post-punk” then, or “progressive”, but from ’78 we were into punk groups that were more experimental or avant-garde, not traditional punk rock. The first issue consisted of two offset litho-printed sheets of A3, one green, one black, folded and stapled, featuring record and gig reviews of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Adam and the Ants, the Specials, Madness, the Selecter, Swell Maps, and Red Crayola. On the back cover of Vague 1, Iggy, Spanish Alf and the black post-punk artist Dave Somerville are pictured outside the Salisbury College common room between the tech and art college buildings. The first issue was designed and printed by Mark Cross from the art college, who went on to design album sleeves, and typed by Sharon Clarkson. The second one was photocopied in a shop. I was at the tech college doing a building-studies course but the other punks in Salisbury were art students. Perry’s ‘Lovable Spiky Tops’ cartoons documented the evolution of Vague and the Salisbury punk scene, as we attempted to put on gigs and avoid bikers, Teds, rockabillies, squaddies, smoothies etc. The first cartoon was about the adventures of a PIL Public Image Limited badge. A lot of Vague fanzine production work was done on the train between Salisbury and Gillingham in Dorset, where I lived. We also

covered the West Country punk scene, focused on Bournemouth, where we saw the Clash, the Damned, the Jam, the Banshees, Buzzcocks etc. at the Winter Gardens or Village Bowl, and also gigs in Southampton, Bristol, and London. I had done proto-Vague “how’s-the-tour-going?” interviews with the Jam and Eater at the Bournemouth Village and we had ligged with XTC and the Pop Group in Bristol. In 1978 we started planning to do an Ants/Banshees/Public Image post-punk fanzine. We were particularly into Adam and the Ants after first seeing them at Salisbury tech college during an antipunk bikers’ riot, when they epitomised post-punk and described themselves as “heavy punk funk”. We went on expeditions in Minis to see the Ants on the Young Parisians and Zerox tours, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I had a grey and yellow post-punk Mini. In Vague 1 there were reviews of the Banshees and the Cure at Southampton Gaumont on the Join Hands tour, the Ants at the Electric Ballroom, the Specials, Madness, and the Selecter 2-Tone tour, and the Swell Maps and Red Crayola Rough Trade tour in Bournemouth. The first albums reviewed were The Specials, the Banshees’ Join Hands, the Ruts’ The Crack, and the Human League’s Reproduction, which began “The Human League are another one of those synthesiser bands…” The first singles were the Slits’ ‘Typical Girls’, Kraftwerk’s ‘Showroom Dummies’, and Salisbury band the QTs’ ‘Savage in the City’. Mark P’s Sniffin’ Glue fanzine was the primary influence on Vague and all other British fanzines, though I copied Ripped & Torn more and only kept scrapbooks in ’77, which were more footballthan music-related. The first copy of Sniffin’ Glue I came into possession of was via my biker mate Derek Skinner (who was known as Skin), from when he went to see John Cale of the Velvet Underground, the Count Bishops, and the Boys at Bournemouth Winter Gardens. Vague fanzine was first encouraged by Mayo Thompson of Red Crayola and Sue Donne at the Rough Trade shop, although it wasn’t exclusively a Rough Trade post-punk fanzine. Rough Trade was founded in 1976 by Geoff Travis in a hippy headshop at 202

Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill. Here they established the independent, indie, or alternative rock music tradition in most of its idiosyncratic post-punk forms — the deconstructed DIY rad-fem pop of the Raincoats, Essential Logic, and Kleenex, Swell Maps and the Monochrome Set’s male equivalent, the radical avant-garde Scritti Politti and Red Crayola, the industrial music of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, the avant-garde radical rock of the Mekons and Gang of Four, and radical trad rock represented by Stiff Little Fingers. Most of the original Rough Trade customers were either starting a punk band, a fanzine, or a reggae sound-system; including Mark P, the editor of Sniffin’ Glue, Jon Savage (London’s Outrage), and Jane Suck. Rough Trade sold the New York photo-strip comic-fanzine Punk and became the mailing address/office of London’s photocopied answer, Sniffin’ Glue, which inspired a deluge of Xeroxed efforts produced by punk fans — as opposed to uncritical fan newsletters — which were distributed by Rough Trade. By 1979 the competition was Ripped & Torn/Kill Your Pet Puppy, Search & Destroy/Re/search, Alternative Sounds, Biff, Chainsaw, City Fun, the beer-zine Ded Yampy, 48 Thrills, Fumes, Granite City, Grinding Halt, Guttersnipe, the glossy In The City, Intensive Care, It’s Different for Girls, It Ticked and Exploded, Tony Fletcher’s Jamming (the most successful fanzine), Mike Scott of the Waterboys’ Jungleland, Richard North’s Kick, Killin Time, Making Time, Mersey Sound, Next Big Thing, NMX, No Cure, On, Mick Mercer’s Panache, Peroxide, The Poser photo-fanzine, Simon Dwyer’s Rapid Eye Movement (from Brighton, the hippest post-punk fanzine), Rising Free, Safe as Milk, Shake, South Circular, Stabmental, The Story So Far, Sunset Gun from Glasgow, Ten Commandments, the anarchopunk Toxic Graffiti, Trouser Press, Viz, Vox, and Wool City Rocker.

Vague 2, December 1979 Vague 2, from December 1979, the hippest, most post-punk issue featuring Joy Division and Gang of Four, was also the worst produced. Our pioneering post-punk fanzine didn’t get off to a very good technological start. After all the available typewriters ceased working properly, I ended up writing some bits of it not very well, and then the photocopiers printed it too small. Perry’s ‘Vague Beginnings’ cartoon in this issue features Iggy, Perry, and me saying, “Salisbury’s boring. There’s nothing to do. Let’s start a fanzine. What shall we call it? Let’s base it on a real magazine…” The first issues were co-edited by Perry, Iggy, and me. I assumed more or less total editorial control by the third issue, with

my girlfriend who was called Jane Austin (with an I not an E) and my next-door neighbour Chris Johnson as assistant editors. There was a “how’s-the-tour-going?” Vague interview with Joy Division by Chris Johnson, who was working at their hotel, after Ian Curtis had an epileptic fit at the end of their set at Bournemouth Winter Gardens, supporting Buzzcocks. I did a rave review of Joy Division, at the expense of Buzzcocks, who I considered too pop at this stage though I had been and am a fan of them as well. Our first proper interviews were with Gang of Four and Red Crayola at Bournemouth Town Hall, at the time of the former’s Entertainment album. The local post-punk heroes Program, from New Milton near Southampton, who we championed to not much avail, were obviously influenced by Ultravox/John Foxx and Tubeway Army/Gary Numan. They cited their influences as Wire, Gloria Mundi, This Heat, who they supported in Bournemouth, and Magazine — bands “going in many different directions and exploring many possibilities”, rather than “boring narrow-minded bands like the Angelic Upstarts and UK Subs”, with “no direction, no future” — but they insisted they were “more of a rock band than an electronic band”. The post-punk Salisbury bands, rounded up by Mike Dyer, were the Kitchens, who had a couple of singles out, Identity Crisis, the QTs, and the Crimmos. There was also Stalag 44 from Warminster, and Frank Stocker the Vague hippy correspondent on magic mushrooms. The single of the month was ‘Transmission’ by Joy Division. Perry’s review of ‘London Calling’ was: “Isn’t that good but the Clash might get a hit out of it. The reggae B-side is far better.” The albums were Public Image Limited’s Metal Box and Adam and the Ants’ Dirk Wears White Sox.

Vague 3, March 1980 Issue 3 from March 1980 was the first one printed at Skittles in Gillingham, Dorset, by the railway station. Our hippy printers Rob and Sue, formerly of Butler’s Wharf in London where the Pistols played, produced the rest of the Vague fanzines and the first annuals. Vagues were mostly typed cut-and-pasted with proper scissors and glue, and Letraset, and stapled in Mere, in my bedroom, and the Ship pub. This issue was more post-punk populist than popular-modernist I think, with the Ramones, the Clash at the time of London Calling, the Boys, the Softies, and the Tours; an article on decentralisation, the Kitchens, Mental, and Toyah single reviews.

In the Ramones’ End of the Century/‘Rock ’n’ Roll High School’ report, the Vague pop sub-cult conflict between post-punk and trad punk rock continued. Putting the case for the latter, Kid Reid of the Boys introduced the Ramones backstage at the Bournemouth Stateside (formerly the Village) saying: “I don’t like weird stuff. I think it’s easy for a band to be experimental. The hardest thing to do is write a short pop song. I can really relate to the Ramones.” But I gave the Clash an unfavourable review for being too trad rock. Ironically, after my post-punk loss of faith in them, I went on to do the London Calling 25th anniversary CD booklet notes in 2004, when they gave me my biggest break in the music biz. The Vague 3 album of the month was The Raincoats — Mike Dyer’s ‘Homage to the Raincoats’ article summed up their post-punk anti-rock appeal with: Punk’s not dead, the Raincoats live, their spontaneous exciting grass roots music is subversive activity, revolt against the bigness and sophistication of the music industry. The Raincoats are not glossy or sophisticated, there’s a roughness and crudity in their sound that’s alive in contrast to the technical perfection of more successful music. The Raincoats often sound out of tune, play wrong notes, and scrape and grate their guitar strings. Like Rough Trade they are an antidote to the over big and too influential companies which manipulate consumer taste into conformist trends. We promoted post-punk village-hall gigs featuring Program and went on the road with them around the West Country. The Shaftesbury gig was in the town hall at the top of Gold Hill — of Hovis advert and Thomas Hardy fame.

Vague 4, April 1980 Vague 4: the most local West Country issue and the best produced, featuring Mikey Dread of Dread at the Controls and Clash tour fame, and Talisman (formerly Revelation Rockers) by our reggae correspondent Andy Kelford from Ringwood. By then Iggy and Sharon were only listening to reggae, Big Youth, Mighty Diamonds, Dillinger, at their bed-sit — the nearest thing we had to a blues club in Salisbury. Animals and Men from Frome, featuring Nigel House who went on to Rough Trade shop fame, took their name from the Adam and the Ants Futurist manifesto song. They were influenced by the Ants but were closer to the Monochrome Set or Psychedelic Furs, and

came up with the post-punk hit singles ‘Don’t Misbehave in the New Age’ and ‘Terraplane Fixation’. Moskow were the most successful West Country post-punk band with their ‘The Man from UNCLE’ single. Claire of the Wait from Wales, who we interviewed at Wincanton racecourse, is pictured with one of the Psychedelic Furs on the cover. There were also the Kitchens, the QTs, Lemmy of Motörhead, the local hippy George Hart of Heap’s Grandma Moses, the Bath bands Commercial Viability, 530 Boots, and Skitzoid, Stiff Little Fingers, and Plain Characters. The first review of Vague by Kris Needs in Zigzag magazine was: “covers a boring SalisburyBournemouth sort of area with enthusiasm”. Simon Dwyer, the editor of the leading post-punk fanzine REM/Rapid Eye Movement, wrote in his Sounds fanzine round-up: Every day the seditious seeds planted by Sniffin’ Glue and Ripped & Torn bear some unlikely fruit. Every day another young editor staggers proudly under the Westway with a new bag of radical reading matter, making the three-minute trip from one bright spark of the current explosion, Better Badges, to the other, Rough Trade… Rough Trade’s mail-order generation dumped passive consumerism and rattled off reams of rubbish in a search for identity, purpose and fun… In every corner of the country there seems to be something going on… Wiltshire’s Vauge [sic]. Joly MacFie’s Better Badges at the Bell Press, 286 Portobello Road also printed fanzines, which were distributed by the Rough Trade Fanzine Co-op distribution network. This operated on an anarchocapitalist “pay-as-you-sell” basis, or the remainder were sold back to the editors at cost price — thus encouraging and orchestrating the post-punk fanzine boom inspired by Sniffin’ Glue and Ripped & Torn. At its height in 1980, Sue Donne at the Rough Trade shop was receiving 12 new titles a week; most of which were taken on to be distributed around the nationwide network of record and book shops.

Vague 5, July 1980 Vague 5: an Adam and the Ants special featuring the Vague Adam and the Ants interview and Ants Invasion 1980 tour report, as they went pop. By then, as far as Adam Ant and the post-punk guitarist Marco Pirroni were concerned, punks had turned into hippies. After Adam said: “They’ve all got too fucking esoteric, just crawled up their own arseholes, punks have become hippies in the last nine months”. I asked: “What about Lydon and PIL?” His response was: “John Rotten’s a poet. It depends whether you like poetry or not. He made a very good first single and I haven’t liked anything since.” This issue also featured an interview with the Cure, ‘A Curious Day Out in Bournemouth’, when they were at their post-punk peak at

the time of ‘A Forest’, and I met Paul Morley backstage but didn’t get on with him. There were also interviews with the Passions, the Human League, and the Scottish Scars, who we liked but didn’t get on with very well either, an Ian Curtis obituary and Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle film review. There was a piece on the Undertones, whom I didn’t interview, but they dedicated ‘Teenage Kicks’ to Vague fanzine at Bournemouth Winter Gardens. The issue also featured the Specials, the Bodysnatchers, and the Go-Go’s, Mike Scott of the Waterboys’ Another Pretty Face, and a report on an anti-vivisection demo against the Porton Down government/military science centre near Salisbury. Vague 6, September 1980 Vague 6 featured the Pop Group and the Slits at Alexandra Palace — where they played along with the Raincoats, Essential Logic, the Au-Pairs, and John Cooper Clarke at the communist Morning Star

50th anniversary agit-post-punk festival. We did these centrespread photos, after we didn’t manage to get an interview with the Pop Group, the premier post-punk group of the West Country — but I went on to do the press release for the We Are All Prostitutes 25th anniversary re-release. There was a largely unfavourable anti-anarcho-punk report on Crass at Southampton, Bournemouth, and the 1980 Stonehenge festival bikers riot. Also Devo, Gary Glitter, Martian Dance, the Modettes, the Jam, the Vapors, UK Subs, Cosmetics, Silent Guests, and Blaue Reiter, Michael Moorcock’s Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle book, Breaking Glass, fanzines A to Z, and the Vague gig at Shaftesbury Town Hall featuring Program and the Squad from Southampton, reviewed by Jane Austin. Vague 7, November 1980

Vague 7 was the programme for Adam and the Ants’ Kings of the Wild Frontier tour in November–December 1980; issue 5 reprinted with a different colour cover and some extras, the Ants interview and reviews, Animals and Men, the Human League, the Cure, the Passions, Scars, and Another Pretty Face. This was the most successful, best-selling issue. Vague 8, December 1980 Tony Fletcher of Jamming fanzine wrote: Vague is growing a deserved reputation as one of the best about; in fact could prove the eventual successor to Ripped & Torn. It’s frequently scruffy, badly printed and incomplete, but must be the most regular fast-growing fanzine

about. It’s got that hard punk attitude, lots of colour and plenty of spirit. Suffered even more than Panache from being an Antperson to the extent that it sold 4,000 copies of an Ants special on their last tour, and then spent the whole of the next issue slagging them off. Adam Ant said of Vague: “The kids like it”, and he was quoted in the Fanzine of Noise as saying “the journalist he most respected was Pete Scott and the fanzine he most admired was the excellent Vague”. Then they said: “Well, I hope he listened to what Pete Scott said in Vague 8.” Vague 8 contained the Ants’ Kings of the Wild Frontier tour report and Pete Scott’s critical album review. Somewhere up north in a bus station on the Ants tour, I recall meeting two post-punk kids going to see Ludus (the group of the Buzzcocks artist and Morrissey associate Linder Sterling) and being put to shame that I wasn’t following such a hip/avant-garde/obscure/cult group anymore. There were interviews with Ian McCullough of Echo and the Bunnymen and Pete Murphy of Bauhaus — I think the latter’s classic ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ has stood the test of time as post-punk dub although their cool rating slumped somewhat in the proceeding goth years — a review of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters, the Specials, the Skids, Program, the Mo-dettes, the Revillos, and a report on the second Futurama post-punk Apocalypse Now festival at Leeds, in which I slagged off U2. I thought the Velvet Underground-influenced Wasted Youth stole the show, writing: “I much prefer this new psychedelia (especially under another name) to the grossly overrated U2 — Why, oh why, did it have to be them and not any other of the aforementioned that kept going?”

Vague 9, March 1981 Vague 9 was meant to be the programme for Bow-wow-wow’s early 1981 tour, which was cancelled. The tongue-in-cheek ‘Revolt into Style: New Golden Vision’ fashion issue also featured interviews with the Monochrome Set, the other Ants’ off-shoot Smiths precursors, Classix Nouveaux, Wasted Youth, God’s Toys, the Damned, Program, an Amnesty International report, Perry’s classic ‘Last of the Mohicans’ cartoon, an Adam and the Ants obituary, and 1980 Vague fashion by Jane Austin, when Vague was more fashionable than Vogue. Bow-wow-wow, the former post-punk Ants managed by Malcolm McLaren, were anti-post-punk or as they called it “coldarse new-

wave bank-clerk look, atom bombs, synth…” After the Ants’ tour ended in Manchester at the end of 1980, I jumped ship to Bow-wowwow, as they were launched as Malcolm McLar en’s post-Pistols proto-hip-hop cassette pirates. Having blown the last of the Vague money on McLaren/Westwood pirate gear at World’s End (formerly the shop Seditionaries/Sex), though Jordan bought a copy of Vague 7 and a train ticket to Torquay, I stowed away in Dave Barbe and Mathew Ashman’s hotel room to get their thoughts on sun, sea, cassette piracy, the recession, EMI, Malcolm McLaren, the Burundi beat, Adam and the Ants, their controversial Chicken mag, and World’s End. Classix Nouveaux were the least cool band I promoted, the newromantic group who formed out of X-Ray Spex. Vague new-romantic confessions: I was a Classix Nouveaux t-shirt sales-men/roadie and interviewed A Flock of Seagulls. On the Classix, Wasted Youth, and Our Daughter’s Wedding tour in 1981, I passed out in Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s studio in Liverpool after smoking a joint, causing a box of matches in my pocket to ignite and a cloud of smoke behind the mixing desk — that was the end of new-romantic post-punk for me. After the 1980 Antmania tour programme and Bow-wow-wow exclusive heyday, Vague fortunes went into decline, following a typical dystopian youth cult narrative — publication went from virtually monthly to just about bi-annually, my Ants book failed to find a publisher, the Vague Promotions gig by Martian Dance in Bournemouth was a financial disaster, and the cancelled Bow-wowwow tour dented sales of Vague 9. In early 1981 we were evicted from the Bournemouth Vague office and I was dumped by Jane Austin, for being a too-real vagrant and economically unviable. This was the end of the rural punk literary romance for me, as well as the actual punk-rock and post-punk music scenes, more or less, we had lost and it was the 80s. Punk was dead and my rural punk lit romance with Jane Austin was over — intensifying the depressing grey post-punk experience (in a rural rather than industrial setting). But this was also when Vague was properly launched nationwide and I realised my destiny — to be more of a post-punk vagrant roadie than a proper music journalist. In the wake

of a Joy Division-soundtracked rural post-punk comedown, I spent the rest of the year pretty much as a proper vagrant on the road: hitching around the country following tours of the Banshees, Bowwow-wow, Classix Nouveaux, Theatre of Hate, and Wasted Youth, selling fanzines, t-shirts, and badges. In retrospect this seems like archetypal Thatcher-youth activity but at the time we thought we were rebelling against it. Vague 10, June 1981 Vague 10 from June 1981: featuring Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Limited, TV Smith, Viz Comics, the Brixton riots, Jordan, Richard Strange, and the Thompson Twins.

The Siouxsie photo at Poole Arts Centre was by Iggy Zevenbergen and the design was by me. After the interview at Poole, we followed the rest of the ‘Israel’ single tour, selling fanzines on the stall. On the next tour we returned to Poole Arts Centre with the issue, which was duly confiscated by the Banshees’ new merchandiser. Admittedly, it was meant to be an alternative tour programme but, you know, this was the Banshees — a punk band — not the Stones. However, I had met up with a former Bournemouth punkturnedskinhead outside and got him in as my plus-one on the guest list. In due course, the Banshees merchandising stall was besieged by skinheads inquiring after the latest issue of their local fanzine. The tour manager had to beg me to call them off and the Vagues were swiftly returned. There was something on the Banshees in virtually every issue, as they vied with the Ants, the Pop Group, and PIL as the premier Vague band, and their interview was the first thing I got paid for by Zigzag magazine. I think this was the point where punk rock/post-punk finally ends as the Banshees went from post-punk to goth. Virtually every Vague interview featured a fairly extensive debate about Public Image Limited, sometimes even more than the Ants. We were obsessed with PIL, even more so than the Ants in the early days, as illustrated by the PIL badge saga in Perry’s cartoon strip. We dressed more in a post-punk anti-fashion jumble-sale style influenced by them, than leather/jeans punk uniform. Vague really began as a post-punk Public Image fanzine after we saw them at the Rainbow at Christmas ’78 (Manchester and Leeds) with dayglogreen John Lydon-face screenprint shirts and posters. But the best we managed to come up with on them was Perry’s review of their second album Metal Box, and my enthusiasm for their post-punk avant-garde progressive rock was on the wane by The Flowers of Romance album.

Vague 11, January 1982 Vague 11 from 1982 was the Crass special, also featuring CND, Charles and Diana wedding, Viz Comics, the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, the Cramps, Futurama 3, Wasted Youth, the Silent Guests, and the A-Heads. By issue 11 the Vague office had a new address, 34 The Paragon, Bath. After we were kicked out of our Bournemouth flat, Chris Johnson had ended up in Bath, pictured in the local press squatting a house on the Royal Crescent, of Oliver fame. He subsequently got a room in a short-life co-op house on the Paragon, and got me in. According to Simon Reynolds:

Anarcho-punk based itself on the most literal interpretation of the Sex Pistols’ anthem, the irresponsibility and narcissism of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ transmogrified into a neutered marriage of prosaic laissez-faire individuality and ascetic abnegation. But for all this, fanzine ideology is strangely close to the dreaded mainstream, to common sense. Fanzines advocate ‘being yourself’, the expunging of conditioning, even of all influences. Tom, editor of Vague: ‘You can’t tell anyone anything, except maybe, don’t let anyone tell you anything.’ I had sympathy for Crass politically but hated their basic punk thrash music and became anti-anarcho-punk, because I felt it was regressive and not post-punk. I was won over to the cause to a certain extent after putting on a Crass gig in Salisbury, at the Grange Hotel, and interviewing then for Zigzag in 1981, but still didn’t think much of the music. I don’t mind being called anarcho-punk now, but back in the day I would’ve sooner been considered a new romantic. I came to feel more at home on the anarcho-punk scene than I did in the mainstream music business in the 80s though. They were the only group who tried to put the punk ethic into practice, but they inspired hordes of copycat Crass anarcho-punk bands and fanzines, when we thought the point was to avoid being classified in a subcult. The only anarcho-punk fanzine I could relate to was Kill Your Pet Puppy, and I had some respect for Toxic Graffiti. I think Vague and Kill Your Pet Puppy were the best fanzines because they didn’t follow the party line, we were anarchist punk rather than anarchopunk and tried not to be boring. When it was a matter of “Who are you for: art-punk or anarcho-punk?” I was in the Ants camp but in retrospect I’m with Crass more.

Vague 12, July 1982 The cover artwork of Vague 12 was a pop-Situationist detournement of/homage to Club International’s Vogue-spoof Vague cover, “magazines we’d like to see on the bookstands in ’79”, featuring a picture of the porn star Fiona Richmond by Fanny — not Che Guevara’s girlfriend Tania as some thought. It’s also in the Vague collage on the cover and poster centrefold of number 13, design by Chris Johnson.

This issue examined the positive-punk vs negative-punk struggle embodied in the early 80s post-punk groups, UK Decay, Killing Joke, Theatre of Hate, Bauhaus, and Danse Society, before the dark forces of goth and U2 won out. There was also Perry’s Lovable Spiky Tops and Viz Comic cartoons, articles on the decline of the music press, nuclear war, Falklands War jokes, and an Adam and the Ants retrospective. This Vague got the best review from the West Country fanzine Sheep Worrying, summing up our lack of real talent but having something: This is more a symptom than a fanzine. As a review of the wouldbe street credible music scene Vague is irritating, affected and superficial, but as an unwitting expose of the kind of parasite Tom Vague is, it is sometimes fascinating. Tom Vague spends a very small proportion of his lengthy articles writing about the gigs or records he purports to be reviewing. The rest is a sort of disjointed autobiography, with special attention to how drunk he got, whether he could con a free ticket/record/handout, the violence he always seems to stay out of, toadying to the in stars whilst badmouthing the out ones. The clever title/cover design lead you to expect some wit, but Vague is mostly humourless, the only laughs come from some cartoons that turn out to be cribbed from a Newcastle fanzine called Viz.

Vague 13, October 1982 Ray Lowry wrote in The Face magazine of the next one in late 1982: Vague is an above average, funny collection of opinions and bitcheries about post-sporran music trends. In issue 13 there was a really amusing cartoon section, a William Burroughs primer, a hippy-bashing Glastonbury piece, WOMAD report and pieces on Vague faves Death Cult and Sex Gang. Of course it’s mildly encouraging that alternatives to big girls’ blouses are pushing their way through all over the place but I’ve yet to be totally convinced by a slice of the new psycho-punkabilly music. By Vague 13 I had got into the positive-punk proto-goth anarchoglam groups, Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, Danse

Society, and Look Back in Anger. Southern Death Cult, from Bradford, out of whom came the Cult, were post-punk originally — influenced by Adam and the Ants, Crass, Echo and the Bunny-men, and American Indians. There were also reports on the 1982 Glastonbury and Stonehenge festivals, the first WOMAD featuring the post-Pop Group Rip Rig & Panic and Pigbag from Bristol, the Banshees at the Elephant Fayre, and William Burroughs’ post-punk influence. Vague 14, May 1983 Vague 14 from 1983: the first London issue, featuring a Vague mission statement article against the “right to work”, by Pete Scott:

As the technological revolution continues to accelerate, more and more men and women will be set free from their condition of “wage slavery”, it may be necessary to alter the whole structure of society… The creation of a permanent unemployed class would certainly be a step in the right direction… So, if you’re on the dole, make the most of it. And above all, don’t be taken in by the “Right to Work” propaganda of bands like Chelsea and the Redskins. There was the last interview with Southern Death Cult and the Death Cult Beggars Banquet EP supplement, UK Decay, Danse Society, Dancing Did, Iggy Pop, another article on American Indians by our Manchester correspondent Dave Hicks (who was involved with Southern Death Cult and Joy Division/New Order), anarcho-punk, and more Perry cartoons. Richard North/Cabut described this one in NME as: A huge and interesting pub anecdote in print, Vague has come as near to professionalism, without joining the establishment, as a fanzine possibly can. It’s glossy, full of colour and absolutely vital with it. Given a decent distribution this mag could do very well. Vague is deep from the heart of the squatting, hitching punk rock beast. From which the most positive elements are taken and examined. Full of charismatic optimism and resolution, it’s a classical fanzine. This was at the height of the anarcho/positive-punk/goth scene and the revival of Zigzag magazine as the goth glossy under the editorship of Mick Mercer — the nearest I got to being a proper music journalist, when I was technically down and out, homeless squatting in Brixton and Elephant & Castle. In the summer of ’83 the Vagrants formed an alliance with the Mob, our anarcho-punk neighbours from Somerset, and crossed the river to live in their old squat on New North Road, Islington. As the Mob went off to form the Black Sheep housing co-op, this became the scene of the first stage of the formation of the Cult. When Southern Death Cult split, Ian Astbury moved into our squat as he teamed up with Billy Duffy from Theatre of Hate. I did their first biog and debut EP insert notes, and tried in vain to keep them on a postpositive-punk path, against Billy and Ian’s proper-rock leanings. After

our eviction from New North Road, the Vague office was briefly in the Anarchy Centre on Roseberry Avenue. Vague 15, June 1984 Vague 15, the 1984 issue, featured the ‘End of Music’ and ‘Stop the City’ Vague rants, the Cult, Getting The Fear, the rest of Southern Death Cult, and their singer Bee on Charles Manson, the Church of the Sub-Genius spoof cult religion, more Viz and Perry comic strips, the Stoke Newington group Look Mummy Clowns, Nick Cave (reviewed by John Apostle aka Travis of God Told Me To Do It, now an LA producer), Xmal Deutschland, Greenham Common, and American Indian women. The ‘End of Music’ King Mob Situationist pamphlet featured in this issue started the Vague obsession with the Situationists and

psycho-geography, after I became disillusioned/bored with the goth/psychobilly music scene. In 1984 the Vague office moved several times; from Essex Road into Stoke Newington, after a brief spell in Acton, back to Stoke Newington, Beatty Road and Amhurst Road, to Berlin and Hamburg, after the Xmal Deutschland European tour, back to 50 Beatty Road and then 57 Palatine Road for Xmas. Stoke Newington in the mid 80s was a hotbed of cider-drinking anarcho-punk squatters with dogs on bits of string, who my anarchopost-punk faction avoided like the plague. I spent most of the mid– late 80s at 7 Evering Road — opposite where the Angry Brigade were busted and a few doors up from where Jack “the Hat” McVitie was bumped off by the Krays — reading Situationist texts, conspiracy theories, and Vietnam War books, and watching cult films on video. Vague 16/17, May 1985, republished 1989 Vague 16/17 Psychic Terrorism Annual in 1985 was the first perfectbound journal issue with a spine, competing with San Francisco’s Re/Search manuals and reviving IT and Oz hippy underground-press ideas/ideals, featuring the Lindsay Anderson film If…, the Situationists, Paris May 1968 and all that, the Angry Brigade, King Mob, and the Sex Pistols connection. This featured Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle, as Genesis POrridge was going from post-punk to acid-house a little early for most people, the German film Decoder about Muzak featuring Genesis P-Orridge of PTV and TG, William Burroughs and Christiane F — who I ligged with in a Berlin nightclub (the real one, not the actress in the film) — Aleister Crowley, the JFK assassination, the miners’ strike, and The Avengers TV series. There were also my Berlin and Xmal Deutschland European tour diaries — post-punk Hunter S Thompson effort. In 1984 I was a roadie mechandiser for Xmal, selling t-shirts around England and Europe as a post-punk Lord Haw Haw. This issue also featuring the post-industrial totalitarian rock outfit Laibach in former Yugoslavia. I used to hang out with the Cocteau Twins as well — which I think is

my best namedrop now — when I was working for the 4AD and Beggars Banquet labels. Robin Gibson wrote in Sounds that: Vague 16/17 Psychic Terrorism Annual is a hugely significant volume. Vague has been evolving for a long time, but this issue takes a decisive next step. No longer just a thoroughly selfdefining fanzine at some kind of odds with the establishment, it has become a complete, confident, but still eminently accessible, outsider. It’s also still funny, egotistical and constructively nasty. It brags and nags while the ideas flow, but it has a continuity which intensifies its genuinely anarchic spirit rather than stifles it. Vague has a lot in common with the late 60s/early 70s underground press, while its starting point is the most dangerous inquisitive and inspiring area of punk. It doesn’t fit into (doesn’t need) any clear context, and it’s essential because of that. Vague 18/19, March 1987 Vague 18/19 Control Data Manual from 1987: the most extremistfundamentalist post-punk anti-music issue, featuring the ‘Videodrome’ Situationist text by Mark Downham, Captain Swing Riot Control report by Joe Banks, Jack the Ripper, the Illuminati, Robert Anton Wilson, Hassan i Sabbah, Nazis, JFK assassination, UFOs etc. Mark Stewart of the Pop Group, then of Mark Stewart and the Maffia, contributed some of his Control Data material featuring the Bilderbergers and William Burroughs. Vague 20, February 1988 Vague 20 was the first glossy-cover Televisionaries issue from 1988, containing the Red Army Faction Baader-Meinhof gang story of the West German terrorist group, who corresponded with and influenced British punk rock and post-punk — the Pistols’ ‘Holidays in the Sun’, the Clash, Snatch and Brian Eno, and Cabaret Voltaire.

By then the Vague office had moved to Freston Road in the squatted Republic of Frestonia in Notting Dale. Also included was the ‘Generation Zero’ Situationist text by Mark Downham, ‘The Abolition of Work’ by Bob Black, ‘Smile’ supplement by Stewart Home, more Viz, and a football fanzine supplement. Vague 21, January 1989 The Cyber-Punk issue from 1989: cover by the Sex Pistols’ designer Jamie Reid, featuring a lengthy interview with Jon Savage that previewed his history of the Sex Pistols and punk rock, England’s Dreaming, ‘Cyber-Punk’ by Mark Downham (which has recently appeared in a French translation), ‘Class War’ pulp fiction by Stewart Home, and ‘Blast 88’, a Wyndham Lewis Vorticist homage. Vague 22, June 1990 Vague 22 Media Sickness issue from 1990: cover designed by Jamie Reid again, featuring the Situationist International exhibition at the Pompidou Centre and the ICA, interviews with Jamie Reid, Margi Clarke, and the original Situationist Ralph Rumney, more Stewart Home, and ‘Cheap Holidays’ in other people’s misery — Paris — Berlin — Prague — Budapest 1989. Vague 23, September 1991 Vague 23 God Told Me To Do It from 1991: featuring the ‘God Told Me To Do It’ radical hip-hop posters, 23 Skidoo lists of 23, an interview with the Performance director Donald Cammell by Jon Savage, Twin Peaks, ‘Steam-Punk’, a William Gibson and Bruce Sterling interview by Paul Stewart (Mark Stewart’s brother), Hype cyberpunk graphic strip, and Stewart Home on Richard Allen novels. Vague 24, May 1993

Vague 24 The West Eleven Days of My Life: Notes from the Portobello Style Underclass was the last Vague magazine from 1993, featuring Notting Hill in Bygone Days, Happy Mondays — who I liked as much as Joy Division — more football, and Stewart Home stuff. Vague 25, June 1994 The Great British Mistake: Vague 1977–1992 Greatest Hits was published by AK Press in 1994, featuring the Ramones, the Clash, the Ants, the Banshees, Crass, Viz, Psychic TV, Situationists, the Angry Brigade, and the Sex Pistols. Vague 26, 1994 Vague 26 was Televisionaries: The Red Army Faction; an anarchopunk book published by AK Press in ’94 (available in e-book format, published by Bread and Circuses). Vague 27, 1997 Vague 27 was the book Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade; published by AK Press in ’97, available as part of the Televisionaries e-book and to be published in French by Editions Allia. Vague 28, 1997 Wild West 11: Grove Massive Psychogeography Report featured Michael X, ‘Performance’, the Clash, and a foldout Trellick Tower poster-mag issue; Vague revival attempt in 1997. Vague 29, 1997

The booklet Entrance to Hipp: An Historical and Psychogeographical Report on Notting Hill was published in 1997. Vague 30, 1998 The booklet London Psychogeography: Rachman Riots and Rillington Place was published in 1998. Vague 31, 2000 The compilation King Mob Echo: English Section of the Situationist International was published by Dark Star in 2000. Vague 32, 2000 King Mob Echo: Gordon Riots to Situationists and Sex Pistols supplement were published by Dark Star in 2000. Since leaving the 20th century I think I’ve continued the postpunk search for the new with various pop psycho-geography reports, mostly about Notting Hill/North Kensington — websites, films, exhibitions, booklets and newsletters — much the same as I was doing back in 1979. * Mark Fisher: You’ve presented a fascinating history of post-punk, and you’ve also given a sense of the breadth of the scene as well: the way it was bordered by the anarcho-punks on the one hand, and the goths and new romantics on the other. There are a couple of things I noticed listening to you. It’s interesting that Vague, as such, started in 1979 with Thatcher, and the actual magazine barely outlasted Thatcher… It’s almost as if it was the counter-discourse to Thatcher. Once she’d gone it never existed in the same way. The other thing that comes across to me is a serial disappointment with music; first with the Ants, then with Siouxsie and the Banshees. There was a sense that music had a promise which exploded for a while, but then we’re back to the same old business — like punk

never happened (as Dave Rimmer put it in the title of his book about New Pop). So, you started to move toward the idea of anti-music at a certain point, which was to do with that intense sense of disappointment and betrayal, I would imagine. TV: Yes. That was there in punk rock; the Sex Pistols can be seen as anti-music or really reviving grassroots rock ‘n’ roll. I’m a fanzine editor, but a fanzine does just imply that you’re a fan of a group. Sniffin’ Glue was a real fanzine, compared with me they were real experts on a cult music that they were fans of. For me, from the onset, being fans, sure, but being critical all the time really [laughs]. I’m always looking for new bands up until the mid-1980s and then the enthusiasm for looking for new bands ran out [laughs]. MF: Was that to do with something that happened in the music scene or was it your own patience that had worn out at that point? TV: I think it’s something that’s quite natural to happen in your mid20s, you’re not such a “fan”. I thought punk was meant to be searching for something new, not just reviewing records, going to gigs, and the music business. MF: So by that point other stuff had taken over, the conspiracy theories… TV: The conspiracy theories and far-left politics all came out of punk, or things that Malcolm McLaren said, and what different types of artwork people were using. MF: How did you fund that? Obviously the Ants one sold really well and that funded the next few… TV: Selling them outside gigs… With the Thatcher thing that really took place in the 1980s, we thought the whole point was about rebelling against that. We were “getting on our bikes” as Norman Tebbit says it, looking for work, and setting up a small business. That really wasn’t the intention on the way, and it didn’t work out

financially, but there was the Ants one, and the Psychic TV issue was cheap to make… MF: Then there’s the “anti-work” thing, which started to work through the 1980s in particular. You mentioned it with the “Right To Work” stuff, and it’s interesting in thinking about that as an opposition to Thatcherism. Rather than demanding work it’s about demanding alternatives to work. I’m sure in one of those 1980s Vague issues you say how long you were on the dole for… TV: Yes, so that’s the answer to how I financed it! [Laughter]. Yes, so just to find an alternative to nine-to-five work. I’m just about doing it now, only in my later years, not being on the dole. I’m not on the dole now — just. MF: You said in one issue you’ve been on the dole however many years, someone else has been on the dole for 20 years, I don’t think that would be possible now would it? You’d be hounded off the dole… TV: Yeah I don’t think it’s possible. It was always difficult. In the 1990s somebody brought up doing various Enterprise Allowance schemes. That’s Thatcher youth. MF: Were you on the Enterprise Allowance scheme? TV: Yeah, a couple of times. MF: I was on it as well — I wasn’t very enterprising. [Laughter]. But it was a way of staying afloat. It was a way of staying on the dole without being on the dole. TV: Yes, but I have got a work ethic to keep on doing this for not much money. As you say, that’s the main point I’m trying to make, which is about alternatives to “work”. MF: Yes, and pursuing obsessions which get more and more extended as the issues get bigger and less frequent. You mentioned

the texts ‘Videodrome: The Thing in Room 101’, and ‘Cyber-punk’. Can we talk a bit about Mark Downham, who wrote those strange, experimental texts? Where did he come from? Did you know him? How did those texts come about? TV: I met him in the mid-1980s where there was this post-punk Situationist activity in small-press publications. Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid, Tony Wilson were all Situationist influences into pop culture, but Mark Downham and Stewart Home were more the same age as me, into the same things. Stewart was actually doing avantgarde or anti-art things. I met up with Mark Downham again after ten years or more. In this century, early 2000s… He works in the City, in some investment bank or something, I really didn’t know about that side of his life. [Laughter]. He was up in Manchester or Liverpool; he did have some kind of Hacienda connection… something called the Royal Family and the Poor up there that he was involved in… MF: So did he approach you with the texts or did you commission them? TV: Doing a fanzine, he would just send me loads of stuff. There’s still unpublished stuff that I just couldn’t fit it in. Hand-written. Of course this was pre cyber-punk. Audience member 1: I’m curious about the end of the 1980s and mid-1980s, when you went to Warminster and things like that, and there was an anarcho-punk scene, and travellers’ convoys; rave music and techno. Did that have any impact on you? You mentioned Psychic TV. There’s that whole scene with rave and techno, anarcho-punk and Crass… Did that other form of music — DIY, free parties, techno, and all that have an effect on you? TV: I think Genesis P-Orridge was tuned in to what was going to happen, but he didn’t quite do it. He was making an attempt then — which was why he became associated with me, to become a bit more commercial [laughs]. Brian Jones session, “hyperdelic”, I think. I remember going to see something with him, still in the mid-1980s at King’s Cross, with him and the Mutoid Waste Company. I remember

Richard talking about warehouse parties; yours were hipper than that… Those King’s Cross things, and early raves, to me it was mainly anarcho-punk people and Psychic TV-types. I personally was kind of generation-gapped when acid house came along. I was disillusioned with anti-music. I only really listen to house music, and I think it’s a natural progression from post-punk, synthesiser music, to house music. Audience member 1: Yeah, I’ve got this copy of a fanzine I’d never seen before called Unnatural by this guy who’s now at Goldsmiths. I was looking at it and there’s all kinds of connections to techno, underground, and all that. Some of the graphics are very much like Vague, it seems to have carried on in all these techno outfits… MF: Yes, Vague was an influence on British cyber-theory — particularly the Downham texts. This is why I’m trying to press you on it — they seemed to come from nowhere… TV: I’ve got a quote from a blog — it’s more complimenting me on publishing Mark Downham rather than complimenting me, per se! He [Mark Downham] was the first person, really, writing like that. MF: Yes, the Situationist stuff was one thing, but it was the mix with Ballard, Baudrillard, and very early on to Gibson, the significance of the term “cyber-punk” itself, etc. It was form following content. It wasn’t enough to write about cyber-punk in a distanced, academic way — it had to somehow embody that in the textual strategies itself. There was really nothing else like it in the mid-1980s, really. TV: I can’t think of the term this blog was saying, about a new “postcyber-punk genre”, that Mark Downham cited as a British thing, rather than American thing. MF: I think it opened up that British approach to cyber theory, which people like Nick Land and Sadie Plant developed in the 1990s — it was an alternative to that kind of Californian “sunny side-up” model of cyber culture, really. Just on the writing style, if one looks at the

crucial Nick Land cyber texts they hark to Mark Downham. This para-academic space of “pulp theory” really is fascinating, and could only really have come out in something like Vague at that time. It’s pre-internet, and the only way those kinds of “para” discourses could circulate, really. TV: Vague was just kind of like my blog, really. MF: You obviously moved to London at a certain point. TV: That was early 1980s. MF: You were squatting? TV: Yeah. I briefly had a flat in Bournemouth. I wasn’t a squatter in the Royal Crescent in Bath, but in London we were joining that kind of network of punk rockers, post-punks, and anarcho-punks. Honestly, when I moved to London it was goth in 1983. On this side of the river in Elephant & Castle, at the time of The Bat Cave. MF: What’s interesting is that you have an anarcho-punk methodology, but not an anarcho-punk style. You rejected the term “anarcho-punk” at a certain stage, because of its association with a certain kind of “lo-fi”… TV: It wasn’t just a musical dislike of Crass, or that kind of post-punk theory — that anyone who wasn’t playing punk thrash wasn’t postpunk. We thought that groups had to have something… I feel bad about slagging off the Buzzcocks now, they’re one of my favourite groups — they can be described as a post-punk group as well as a punk-rock group. MF: But it wasn’t just about the music, it was also about style wasn’t? Wasn’t it part of the betrayed promise of new romanticism and goth, a return of this flamboyance or glamour, that the anarchopunk scene then became associated with exactly the opposite? I think that’s also part of the stylishness of Vague as a kind of counterdiscourse. It wasn’t enough to look amateurish and scribbled… That

worked at the first stage of zines, but by the mid-1980s you had to have a kind of counter-style to the dominant style culture, really. TV: Yes, but it wasn’t just me, or the glam coming in. Richard North/Cabut and groups like Blood and Roses, and Brigandage, there was that kind of political squatting scene, but they weren’t in the boring uniform, there was still some glam. Gavin Butt: What really struck me listening to your fascinating history of the zine is how unapologetically local it is. There’s a kind of localism — bands in Salisbury, Bournemouth, Bath, or wherever else. You also covered bands that had more of a national public and fan-base, but there was a really unapologetic attention to local bands. I guess that was part of the spoofing on something as international and mass-produced as Vogue magazine coming out of London and New York. Was that localism important to you, and did you think about that? TV: Yes, I think that was a tenet of post-punk, coming out of punk rock. Do It Yourself in your own local area, even if it’s really unfashionable or in the middle of nowhere. I think it became more interesting if somebody came from Wiltshire or Middlesbrough or Wales, rather than Camden or Soho. There’s a contradiction though that at the same time I wanted to get away from the West Country and get up to London. Yeah, to be a local fanzine — I wanted to get away from that as well… GB: So, quite contradictory in a really interesting way. Another question: Futurama, sounds to me like it must have been an amazing science-fiction and music festival. I never was able to go along — being too young to have been there. But thinking about it, it seems to me so un-punky, if punk was “no future”. Post-punk, on the other hand, was typified by Futurama — by an embrace of science fiction and music as a way to reorient oneself towards a future. Could you say a bit about what that was all about and how you fitted in there in relation to Futurama? You went at least twice, right?

TV: There were half a dozen, I carried on, I think I went to five. Most were in Leeds. Then, later on, it was more post-punk going goth. People like New Order and Nico — there was one at Stafford. There was this guy John Keenan, and it was out of that Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, northern post-punk. I think John Keenan is still going, he’s mainly known for Futurama… I’m not sure if he’s still a promoter in Leeds. With the science-fiction thing, it was pretty much PIL and Joy Division headlining one day, then the second day it was Hawkwind or various Robert Calvert-related connected people in 1979. It wasn’t called post-punk; I don’t even know if even Paul Morley would have been describing it as post-punk… Then, electronic — that carried on through the 1980s… There’s a Leeds festival, a “normal” outdoor kind of festival… Leeds has always had big gigs, like the Who. I just emailed Rouska fanzine from Leeds saying that that was where Vague started — after that PIL, Joy Division one I went back to college in Salisbury, did a bit of typing, and got the first Vague together. I was 19, at the technical college, re-taking O Levels and then doing a building-studies course to be a surveyor or architect. I did finish the course, I think I’ve got some sort of building diploma — I never actually got it, I sort of went in a different direction. [Laughter]. The “tech” side of it is part of where I’m coming from — I’m not an art student and never was an art student. MF: But the main distribution is going to gigs, the Rough Trade shop, by mail-order? TV: Yes, there was this distribution network with Rough Trade, Better Badges and so on. I just about made a living out of that up until the mid-1980s. Then it was the advent of the Smiths, or just after that, when Rough Trade really became a normal record business and stopped distributing fanzines. I went from the Rough Trade warehouse in King’s Cross to Housmans bookshop. I think that’s when I went more to the radical-politics side of things. MF: That’s interesting about the Smiths actually, if we’re thinking about the end points of post-punk. There’s still a continuation with post-punk but nevertheless the kind of imagery around the Smiths,

the basic kind of rock sound and so on, were nods to the past in a way that wasn’t really possible at the height of post-punk. It’s interesting that you say it all ended with the Smiths… TV: Yes, I wasn’t particularly a fan, but I think fair play to Morrissey and Linder. I think she’s done things with Morrissey as well as with the Buzzcocks. Audience member 2: Do you think that for British counterculture, with magazines from this kind of era, as soon as the internet came in the 1990s all the old ways of putting out flyers, doing your own tshirts, putting out magazines all disappeared. Searching for these kinds of things it seemed like things were better in the old days in that less people produced this stuff, not everybody had access to a Facebook page, and only committed people like Tom never gave up. I want to ask him if he thinks that what’s out there on the web is anything like what he’s done? If the web was around in his day, how would he have handled that? TV: Yes, it was a much smaller scene. We thought post-punk was quite a large scene but it still was very much a subcult. I think about 4,000 copies of one issue was about it — pretty good for a fanzine, but it’s not much for a serious magazine. People doing blogs get to an insane kind of subculture. They get to far more people than we did with our fanzines. Audience member 2: It may have only been 4,000 but, the way I see it, that’s 4,000 personal connections. On the web you wouldn’t get the personal connection. With the zines you’ve got people actually getting off their arse, going to the gig, doing the money — for me that’s all missing from the web. It’s not got the same excitement as ending up in a field somewhere, buying a piece of paper that you then take home and hide from your mum… MF: Is that partly to do with difficulty as a condition of possibility, in a way? It took a lot of work to do it, to put a fanzine out, as opposed to putting something up on Facebook. Perhaps we could think of postpunk in general as emerging at a time when access was widening,

people could do things themselves, but it wasn’t completely “open”; people couldn’t post up anything. There’s a kind of faux-democracy now in that people now can do anything, but no-one’s reading it. It doesn’t build up these hubs or points of consistency in the same way. Clearly it’s partly about accessibility, the fact that you could cutand-paste — and it’s interesting that Vague tracks the development of technology from typewriters and glue, through to word processers. TV: Not always in front! MF: Yes, a little bit behind, but that is the kind of cyber-punk thing, it’s not the latest thing, it’s the last discarded thing that becomes the basis for street experimentation. You needed there to be things like photocopiers, that culture of DIY, but there were limits to it. That created this kind of traction which is under threat in the online world. There’s this circulation without the “grit” in a way… Gavin Butt: The other thing about the zine is that it’s embedded in a social world. It’s something that you buy at a gig, you can happen across it. You might not know anything about it, who’s producing it, who’s reading it — but you see it there. That way you can become initiated into the readership. This next is an arguable point, but it seems to me to be more difficult to happen across a blog — if you don’t know about it in advance, nobody has told you about it. So, there’s a kind of narrowcasting with a blog. MF: Something we haven’t really talked about is record shops. I first saw Vague at the Rough Trade shop. I hadn’t seen anything like it, I just came across it. I hadn’t seen a review of it, I just liked the look of it. TV: I think that’s become the internet social media… The network of record shops around the country, Probe in Liverpool, Revolver in Bristol… I guess in any youth cults in the UK or around the world, where punk scenes were, there were similar interactions, and now they’re on Facebook.

Audience member 3: I was wondering what drew you to psychogeography and stuff like that? What does it mean to you? TV: I got into the Situationist concept of psycho-geography through punk rock, and Malcolm McLaren mentioning it. Then I read up on the Situationists. The only things I was interested in at school were history and geography, more than literature or art. It wasn’t as if the Situationists invented psycho-geography, or just interpreting the environment in a personal way, rather than what you’re told. Disillusionment or loss of interest in music led to being more interested in the places that music comes from. Audience member 3: Is that why you’re drawn to Ladbroke Grove, Westbourne Park? TV: Definitely, apart from the Rough Trade connection. I didn’t use them for my postal address like Ripped & Torn did, but Notting Hill in 1979, well it represented the Rough Trade shop then. The original one isn’t there anymore, but it’s now opposite the Hugh Grant travel bookshop which tourists come from all over the world to see… And for post-punk there was Acklam Hall, under the Westway [flyover], which I haven’t mentioned but it’s an important post-punk venue in London. Notting Hill and other areas of London had equally interesting things going on and music connections. Notting Hill has the Clash and reggae, and also a sort of hippy history; Jimi Hendrix and Beatles connections. I think I’ve come back around to music through pop psycho-geography. Anybody can do a psychogeographical study just walking through the street. I think most Situationist people would agree that I’m not doing, strictly speaking, proper psycho-geographical research. I have gone back to pop culture and I’m interested in any music that has got something to do with a place, which most music has I suppose!