By Andy N
In response to your recent article on Conor’s recent article on the probable demise of "Angry Left Wing Mofo", I thought it was only fair I added a few thoughts on it myself as I currently run a fairly successful website "Setting Sun" (http://www.geocities.com/aen1mpo) and have ran myself two fanzines over the years... "Rising Sun" and "Obsessions for Pain."
It is interesting to note with fanzines or zines, in Manchester for example who actually bothers stocking them. There used to be a number of record shops who used to stock them - you could frequently pick up some excellent fanzine or zine from "Piccadilly records" (which is still an excellent independent record shop) but I barely see any of them knocking around nowadays - I got told by somebody I know that works in them only the other day that they aren’t stocking them nowadays simply because nobody is bringing any in for them to stock!
Why does that happen? Perhaps people’s tastes have changed nowadays with the mass introduction of Game Stations (Nearly everybody I know has got one and seems to be more interested in playing one rather than writing fanzines). Perhaps everybody is writing them on the Internet nowadays, although I don’t tend to see many of them on the Internet - How many websites have
you encountered that have interviewed as wide variety of bands / singers as I have! I haven’t got any interviews on there this year yet, but I am in the process of speaking to four or five bands / singers at the moment for interviews including a new one with Matt Elliott - Mercurine also has a new CD out soon and I will probably do a new little interview with them once it is out!
But back to the point, the thing with fanzines is as I learnt when I used to publish them (I printed three issues of Obsessions and Pain, my poetry fanzine and one issue of "Rising Sun") that you don’t tend to make lots of money from fanzines.. I think I broke even on the first issue, but lost money on both Issue 2 and Issue 3 - and a fair bit of money on "Rising Sun"...
Fanzines I guess when you go down that road are a labour of love as much as anything else. "Angry Left Wing Mofo" has done well to reach five issues and in it’s own as much as anything else has done well to introduce me to several new bands and artists. Because of that, I have done an excellent interview with Elizabeth Harper and have just e-mailed The Violets and The Swear" - both of which were interviewed by Conor!
It is a major shame that Thrill Racer’s fanzine has finished as over the years I have known Thrill since about Issue 3 or 4 of her fanzine and have always found an interesting and informative fanzine but times change as I always say and people’s priorities change - when you work full time, it can prove nearly impossible to spend as much time as you would like writing fanzines and working on music. When I was at university (1998 - 2001) I must have wrote two or three short novels and literally 200 odd poetry and recorded 5-6 albums of music under various names and done dozens of remixes for people...
But like I said when you get older, your priorities change! My mate, Keith who is my partner in one of my bands D.I.H has just moved in with his girlfriend, Clara and simply doesn’t get as much time for music! In contrast when me and Keith would do a album of D.I.H material in a weekend when we were both younger - it took us two and a bit years to do our last album "Internal Conflict" and while we are currently plotting another album (which may be called "Suicide") - it has taken us 5 months to write 2 songs and one of them won’t be on the album as we both work too long and hard at our jobs!
But also as I like to say, "What swings around, comes around" - My friend, Jen who also lives in the States used to run a nice little fanzine in the mid 1990’s called "Stratosphere" or something... That folded certainly around the 1997 or 1998 territory if
my memory is correct, but last year Jen decided to start "Stratosphere" up again on Yahoo Groups and she has literally hundred’s of memories on it now...
Just goes to show, I guess...
Who knows what may happen in the future... For all we know Thrill Racer may re-appear in a few years time with a new fanzine and a new band or she may like, but like with "Angry Left Wing Mofo," the fun for me as a writer of a fanzine also is not just the case of seeing your work in print, it is the simple fact of learning something from it...
And that is what has made me proud to write for "Angry Left Wing Mofo"...
Cheers, Conor.