1.2 History of Music Fanzines

The first fanzine to be published was The Comet, which came from the science fiction phenomenon in 1930. Then, many other groups of interests adopted the idea such as comics, arts, horror films, music and sports.

Music fanzines started in the 1960’s with science fiction fans sharing the same music interests and sharing it in fanzine form. The first music fanzine was Crawdaddy!, started in 1966 by Paul Wiliams. The fanzine later turned into a professional music magazine in 1970. Rolling Stone music magazine wrote about the rock music fanzine explosion in their August 1970 issue. Many homegrown rock music fanzines arose in the peak of stadium rock stardom in 1980’s.

Figure 1: Crawdaddy! #4 (1966)

The punk music and subculture used “zine” as a counterculture alternative to established print media. Among the pioneers of punk zines are Sniffin’ Glue (1976-1977) from the United Kingdom and Flip Side (1977-2000) from the USA. Some of the punk subculture followers eliminated the word “fan” from fanzine because they view themselves as an egalitarian community which means a community without hierarchy of producers and consumers. So, there is no such thing as “fans” to them because everyone is considered as friends. (Wright, 1997)

  

Figure2: Sniffin’ Glue issue 12, 1977                 Figure 3: Flip Side zine issue 6, 1978

In United Kingdom, many fanzines were published that covered the local music scene in a particular town or city mainly in the 70’s and 80’s. All music styles were covered such as Rock, Punk, Heavy Metal, Ska or Dance. The contents were music and artists below the radar of mainstream music press. Among the examples include Bombsite (1977), City Fun (1984) and Spuno (1980).

 

Figure 4: Aedes zine issue 1, 1987

The first fanzine to be published in Malaysia is believed to be a punk music fanzine called Huru-Hara from Terengganu in 1986 that only published one issue. It was made by a man named Mamat Hitam. The following year in 1987, an underground music fanzine called Aedes came out also from Terengganu. Eight issues were put out between 1987 and 1996 with later issues put together in Kuala Lumpur by the editor, Joe Kidd. There were also Heavy Metal music fanzines emerged in Malaysia such as Vortex From The East and Krenmaut. By 1993, there were countless music fanzines around the country which were also reviewed and promoted in Blasting Concept, a weekly column by Joe Kidd in The Sun newspaper from 1994 until 1998 about the independent music scene. There might be other publications using the same methods that were not associated with the word ‘fanzine’ (Jamaludin, 2011).

Fanzine graphics mostly disregard rules and prescriptions because most of them are made by non-professional writers and artists. They experiment with their graphic styles and there are no corporate strategies that they have to follow. They have the freedom to express without consideration of conventional design rules or aesthetics. It features spontaneous page layout, values of the photocopier, and a mixture of typographic treatments such as cut-and-paste, ‘ransom notes’, typewritten, handwritten letter forms. Most fanzines maintained an individual approach.  The graphic manners, visual elements and layout reflect not only the message but also the individuality of the fanzine publishers. (Triggs, 2010)

Today, fanzines are still being published using printing methods such as silk-screen, letterpress, linoleum cut and hand-stitched binding. Fanzine publishers stick with printing because of it is warm, more human feel and distinctive artistic expression and elements. Fanzines are intimate and people can read them anywhere. The existence of internet extends the network of fanzines; people can interact and sell fanzines online (Brent & Biel 2008 p. 19). As written by Triggs (2010, p. 7), fanzines related events such as The London Zine Symposium, Portland Zine Symposium and Kuala Lumpur Zine Fest are held today where people sell, buy and trade their fanzines. Fanzine publishers also often do readings of their fanzines at these events to promote them. These events are mostly held on July that is celebrated as the international fanzine month.