Looking back at these old things reminded me of the ink on my hands when we printed and distributed the finished Deadbeats. I had a print machine in my folks house and it was a clunky old AB Dick. I'd never been a printer before and it shows. The best thing about the old AB Dick's (apart from their scrap metal value) was the sound. In full tork the pages streamed through and as long as you kept the old drunk happy it churned out page after page. The only problem came when you had a cover like 24. Morrissey with the rest of the Smiths in the shadows. Black used a lot of ink and sometimes too much. The skilled printer could cope but not me. I grew wise and later issues had less concentrated sections of black. I was never one to bang my head against a brick wall for too long, somebody elses yes, but mine no. The earlier issues like no. 6 with Siouxsie Sioux or no. 9 with Ian McCulloch must've been a nightmare for Stevie the man who sold me the machine. I was really luck in 1986 when the inch community centre gratefully received my donation of scrap metal. When you look at what photocopiers could do you realised it wouldn't be long before these machines were fairly obsolete, although the sound will forever ring in my ears.
Once printed we'd take the 6 times 2500 bundles up the stairs and start to collate them. This by far was my favourite job. You can have all the interviews, even that one with the gorgeous Annie Lennox, and let me play origame as I take 6 pieces of paper marry them together, put a staple in the and then fold in half. I knew I wasn't meant for better things. Every time you completed another pile of ten, you'd look at the cover and talk yourself through the contents and start weaving the next issue. It was very laborious but never tedious. My mind always wanders and doing something as mundane as collating Deadbeats was the perfect foil for creating content. It was obvious from the beginning but clear as crystal towards the end. Keith & I didn't have the time to print and collate. When we started printing the end was nigh. It was one full day for novice printers. Numerous time saving prioritisation was put in place, we'd do the centre pages one day and then pages 2 & 19, or 2 & 23 and leave the cover until the day but it was all too much of a stretch.
As soon as you finished printing it was essential to get them married up, folded, stapled and distributed to the shops, yes published for reading. We took one small stage out and as a result taken control of something which had previously been a great control for us, namely finish writing, hand over to printer, go for a pint and wait for a call to let us do stage three. How joyously naive. We didn't realise that you need a day of rest! By the time we'd done the printing job we were usually a day behind schedule. There were bands to see, interviews arranged and as soon as we moved into the corporate version of Deadbeat the wheels ground to a halt. Its not a lie when people say small is best, its possibly truer to say small is easier, its simple but the truth is more likely to be keep your focus in the small and let the large look after itself. When we were growing from 500 - 1500 we were still publishing roughly every three weeks.
Looking at the history, issue one was published on a wet wednesday in August 1982 and the free issues continued until October, roughly every three weeks. By the end we had issue 33 declaring in December 1985 we were going to a quarterly publication and issue 33c, the unfinished free copy in August 1986.
By Issue 9 when Hilary drew Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen for the cover we were in full three weekly cycle.
Week one we'd write up the material and hand over to the printer, week two we'd get it back and collate it and then we'd sell and distribute hopefully collecting more material via the gigs in the towns that we'd see.
There was plenty of material although very little did get discarded. We got a lot fussier later and it was manifest by the length of time it took us to get it out. Analysis paralysis and a growing belief in our own journalistic abilities got in the way. The rawness of the early issues is so refreshing. There is a great sense of purpose in the just get it out there. Its a fanzine and its a laugh. Its not to be taken too seriously, Morrissey hadn't been interviewed yet and there was no need for neurosis.
I was given great advice in 1985 from my boss Rick, "just do it right and just do it now". Its not too complicated so I followed this advice. A bit later I realised how many people 'didn't get it right' and spent tomorrow not doing work but addressing their mistakes or 'didn't do it now' and were answering calls asking why something hadn't been done.
Only once with Deadbeat did I make that holy mistake of not getting it right when collating the fanzine. I had the pages all laid out but had a hangover and didn't fan them all to check they were all facing the same way. Oh how we laughed when I had to unstaple 200 copies to turn pages 8 & 11 the right way round, it wouldn't have been so bad but presenting the X-word answers before people saw the puzzle was clearly not the plan.
The issues came out on the following dates with the person/band on the cover.
Issue 5 -
Issue 6 -
Issue 7 -
Issue 8 -
Issue 9 - Jan - Feb 1983 Ian McCulloch cover
Issue 10 -
Issue 11 -
Issue 12 -
Issue 13 -
Issue 14 -
Issue 15 -
Issue 16 -
Issue 17 -
Issue 18 -
Issue 19 -
Issue 20 -
Issue 21 -
Issue 22 - Jan- Feb 1984 The Kate Garner cover
Issue 23
Issue 24 - March - April 1984 The Morrissey Cover
Issue 25 -
Issue 26 -
Issue 27 -
Issue 28 -
Issue 29 - Feb- March 1985 The Lloyd Cole cover
Issue 30 - April - May 1985 The Paul King cover
Issue 31 - August - Sept 1985 The Crucial Xylophones cover
Issue 32 -
Issue 33 - Dec 18 1985 - The Alarm cover
Issue 33c - The unpublished final issue many drawings
No comments:
Post a Comment