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A Destabilising Pleasure: Representations of Alternative Music in Irish .

Ciaran Ryan

Abstract This article focuses on the position of the fan in Irish alternative music cultures through their connections with media texts. In particular, it examines the emergence of Irish punk music fanzines. By assessing the role of these publications in distributing valuable information within a shared taste community, it demonstrates that this process needs to be considered as a fan practice. What is evident is that fans within such communities (or ‘scenes’) can occupy several roles simultaneously – writer, promoter, musician, and facilitator of information. Furthermore, this work touches on the links between the rough texture of punk/DIY music, its participatory culture, and the corresponding application of the same aesthetics to production. This analysis draws on over thirty-five years of archive material, as well as valued contributions from fanzine writers, to prove that DIY production is not just about opposition to a dominant culture, but that it is a fulcrum for pleasure for its participants.

Keywords: Fanzines, DIY, scenes, punk, fandom, pleasure.

Introduction In 1999, a new Irish hardcore fanzine1 was printed entitled Hurling Abuse. As with many fanzines, the second page had an editorial of sorts, with the writer Ed Monahan welcoming readers to his publication: This zine has taken me forever to put out, but here it is and I know a lot of interviews are well out of date, but hey better late than never, I hope with [this] zine to give Irish kids a look at what HC [hardcore] is all about and give something back to something that has been an important part of my life for the past seven years, and an important outlet for hate and positivity. This is more than just music; it’s a way of life (Monahan, 1999). Handmade and photocopied fanzines such as Hurling Abuse were a staple of alternative music cultures in Ireland for a number of decades. Fanzines are regularly depicted as pronunciations of rebellion against mainstream popular culture and society (see Duncombe, 2008) and “vehicles of subcultural communication” (Triggs, 2006: 70). Furthermore, as per Monahan’s proclamation above, the music and the hardcore scene he is part of “is a way of life”; the intertwined activities of making music, writing about music, and sharing it with others are meaningful aspects of individuals’ cultural and social spheres. Despite this, and perhaps partially due to the privileging of such activities as subcultural acts, limited attention has been paid to the similarities between the music’s texture and that of the fanzine itself. While appropriating mainstream genres, music in DIY scenes still manages to represent and invite identification with marginality or outsider status by breaking with convention and expectation. There is a roughness that comes with the recording and performance of such music, not commonly found in music that deliberately aims to have commercial appeal. Similarly the amateur Xeroxing and the material texture of fanzines, purposely eschewing glossy paper, gives a deliberately low-tech feel. For the most part, fanzines are cheaply assembled, containing grammar and design imperfections in a comparable way to the lack of studio sheen that can be found on

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 101 most punk recordings. Even the quality of paper and the somewhat rushed feel (words crossed out in handwritten articles, for example) is at odds with the editorial chain-of-command in established music magazines. In this discussion, the argument moves away from merely positioning the fanzine and its corresponding community as a mode of opposition; instead, it considers the role of fandom within DIY music communities. It does this by looking at the emergence of print fanzines, which have served as a platform for dissemination of values and information. It demonstrates how, just like in the live punk environment, a disruption of the conventional roles of culture-making (audience, musician, writer) takes place, and how this distinguishes participants from fans of mainstream cultural activities. I argue that this conscious destabilisation led to significant pleasure for participants – pleasure in the sense of a networked togetherness, and pleasure on a more individual, corporeal level.

Positioning the fan in Irish studies Participants in music ‘scenes’ (Straw, 1991; Cohen, 1991) who are not producers of music are rarely the primary focus when Irish music is discussed. Audiences – and indeed, fans – tend to be overlooked in favour of discourses on identity (Campbell, 2011), nationality (for example, McLaughlin, 1999), and musicality. In the past decade, there has been a turn towards considering the experiences of others within music communities. While John O’Flynn’s (2009) fieldwork leans towards both traditional Irish music and some of the more commercially successful rock and pop acts, he does incorporate an element of audience studies. Mangaoang and O’Flynn’s (2016) in-depth mapping of popular music in Dublin actively considers the experiences and needs of music fans, across a wide variety of genres. Eileen Hogan (2016) also measured the practices of fans in her ethnographic study of music scenes in Cork city. Elsewhere, Gary Sinclair’s (2014) investigation into the Irish heavy metal scene demonstrates a significant shift; firstly, it is a move away from a narrative in popular music studies of Ireland that focuses on traditional music, successful rock artists (Bradby and Torode, 1984), or music of the diaspora (Campbell, 2011). Furthermore, he places fandom at the centre of his inquiry. While fandom scholars such as Paul Booth proclaim that “everyone is a fan of something [Booth’s emphasis]” (2010: 20), studies of music fandom have perhaps been more concerned with different fan responses to so-called ‘heritage acts’ (see Cavicchi, 1998; Devereux, Dillane and Power, 20112) or the relationships between groups of fans and current pop music sensations3. Mark Duffett argues that “there may be more to do in pursuing fan studies beyond the frame of stardom” (2013: 302), and it is noticeable that there have been recent studies ranging from fans of music producers (Hills, 2014) to – as in the case of Cornel Sandvoss’s (2014) exploration of fans of Ibiza – the connections that music fans have with place. Research conducted on those whose fandom is centred on non-mainstream musical acts or genres are still distinguished by either the extent of their fandom or how they are distinctive to others4. As such, both in Ireland and globally, limited consideration has been given to audiences of what can be termed DIY music 5 , particularly in localised contexts. Referring to key works of Ruth Finnegan (1989) and Sara Cohen (1991), Martin Cloonan (2005) spoke of a turn in popular music studies towards local practitioners with a focus on the “ordinary” music-maker. Such a shift has not occurred in the treatment of “ordinary” or local fans that operate within small music scenes. In a contemporary media environment – where talking about and making music is (technologically, at least) easier to do than ever – the lines between fan and

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 102 practitioner can be blurred, and this can partially account for why those active locally are not conceptualised as fans. However, as Duffett argues, fans have never been passive: a supposedly significant division between making and consuming music was constantly breached by participatory practices - performing sheet music, dancing, DJing, singing along, or learning instruments by listening to records - which had always been encouraged as part of music’s collaborative pleasure. Fans were always music-makers even if they were not musicians (Duffett, 2015: 2). Aside from the pleasure that fans of music have traditionally attained through these practices that Duffett lists, there are other ways of being an active fan. The writing and production of music fanzines, a key ingredient of alternative music scenes in Ireland from the mid-1970s up until the early part of this century, allowed certain fans a more esteemed position within their respective communities of taste. However, there are some complications in trying to research what are at times either retrospective or diminished communities. There are difficulties in establishing the physical and stylistic parameters of a scene, and there can be a tendency towards rose-tinted nostalgia.

The emergence of Irish fanzines Numerous fanzine writers (current and past), readers, collectors and musicians were engaged with as part of a PhD research project that I conducted between 2011 and 2015. In total, twenty-five semi-structured interviews took place, as well as three focus groups and random surveying. The interviews tended to ask respondents questions around their first encounters with fanzines, how did they feel the format differed to more mainstream publications, what were their own motivations to write their own. Additionally, there was a focus on what role fanzines played in their own contributions to taste communities. The willingness of those to share their experiences illustrates that their involvement in fanzines or scenes was primarily a positive one. Furthermore, I encountered 207 different fanzine titles that were published in Ireland between 1977 and 2014 that specifically covered music6. The empirical research examines 127 of those 207 publications over 257 individual fanzine issues. Copies of the fanzines that were consulted with for this research came from a number of different sources, but the majority were accessed through a single private collection and The Forgotten Zine Archive7 in Dublin. A very limited amount of the archive material had been previously digitised through specialist websites such as irishmetalarchive.com. This signals a preference towards retaining physical copies of are essentially ephemeral publications. Irish and international fanzines are characterised by their roughness; the actual texture of the paper used is an indicator of the cheapness of production, and rejection of the principles of mainstream publishing. A ‘zine librarian’ that was interviewed for this project pointed out that there are a number of debates about whether fanzines should be digitised: Some people feel that zines are created by hand and meant to be physically shared. Digitising them would give you the body of them, but not the soul. As they can be highly personal and generally distributed in small runs to like-minded souls, some members of the zine community are uncomfortable with having their work in an archive…To put something online for a worldwide audience might be completely against the creator’s intentions. As so many zinesters operate under aliases, obtaining permission from them to digitise zines can be a very time consuming and often fruitless task. Even within the zine community in Dublin there is disagreement over whether or not it should be done (O’Dwyer, 2015) What the data gathered during this process demonstrated was that Ireland had a rich and vibrant history of fanzine publishing. Before dissecting this data, it is important to historically and culturally locate fanzines. They are amateur publications that have been utilised in many different fields of interest (football, film, popular music, etc.) since

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 103 the early twentieth century (Atton, 2002; Duncombe, 2008); initially, their primary focus was on either the rise of Hollywood celebrities or science fiction (Warner, 1994). The emergence of rock n’ roll and rock stardom in the 1950s and 60s led to the first music- based fan publications, favouring major artists of the era such as Elvis or The Beatles. However, it has been and other genres that it has influenced (hardcore, , etc.) that are most closely associated with the fanzine. For Chris Atton (2010), individuals are often drawn towards producing fanzines as they feel that their own cultural interests and practices are either ignored or misrepresented by mainstream media. As such, he views them as niche publications that are shared within specific taste communities, and suggests that there is a somewhat homological relationship that exists between the music and its audiences (represented by the fanzine maker, in this case), that is “a reaction against professionalism” (Atton, 2010: 171). This deliberate anti-professionalism marked these publications out as “a new media tailor-made for the values of punk with its do-it-yourself ethic and associations of street credibility” (Shuker, 2008: 168). The rhetoric of punk championed seemingly simplistic song structures, and simultaneously admonished technical studio polish in terms of production. This was echoed in the publication of punk fanzines, where there was an expectation that the same aesthetical approach would be applied. For the most part, they were printed in black-and-white, photocopied, and stapled together; in fact, this paradigm of production can still be seen in the limited amount of print punk fanzines published internationally8 today. Even the fonts selected, imagery and assemblage of fanzines clearly identifies that these are not mainstream music magazines. Distributed at gigs and independent record stores, they essentially exist because they cover material that cannot be found in the mainstream music print media, and because they are a voice for the fan community. They also serve as a conduit for a blurring of boundaries between active participant and fan; something which Hebdige (1979) argued was quite evident in the first wave of UK punk: Examples abounded in the music press of ‘ordinary fans’ (Siouxsie of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sid Vicious of the , Mark P of Sniffin’ Glue, Jordan of the Ants) who made the symbolic crossing from the dance floor to the stage (Hebdige, 1979: 110). The rise of the aforementioned Mark P – instigator of Sniffin’ Glue, widely regarded as the UK’s first punk fanzine when it first appeared in 1976 – to a degree of notoriety did not go unnoticed across the water. In Ireland, young punk fans had started accessing singles from the UK and US; furthermore, they were reading the corresponding literature. Sniffin’ Glue – described by Frith as “the punks’ magazine” (1978:47) – was particularly influential on Stephen Averill (also known as Steve Rapid) who combined his role in Dublin punk band The Radiators From Space with that of aspiring fanzine writer when he launched Raw Power in March 1977. The cover of the first Raw Power featured a visual aesthetic it appropriated from international fanzines, and delivered similar content also. A cut out newspaper headline – “Punk Rock: A Way of Rebellion for Today’s Teenagers” – along with another pasted headline proclaiming that “Gardaí [Irish Police] Chase Punk Rockers” feature prominently. They are accompanied by images of local punk bands and the placement of safety pins, a significant appendage in the punk style that Hebdige argues were used as bricolage, “taken out of their domestic ‘utility’ concept and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip” (1979: 107). Despite the fact that he was a professional graphic designer, Averill adopted the ‘ripped and torn’ aesthetic of his UK counterparts for the two issues of Raw Power that were published: Largely it was all done in house; it wasn’t a conscious effort to produce something that was graphically very stylish. I think the aesthetic that was around required that it had

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that certain do-it-yourself look. It wasn’t so self-conscious; let’s downgrade it for what it is. It was of the moment, of the feel that we were trying to get across (Averill, 2013) For Averill, there were clear parallels between being in a punk band and writing a fanzine, noting that he “probably started it for the same reason that I started The Radiators, in that you weren’t seeing the kind of music you wanted to listen to or read about there so you went off and did it” (Averill, 2013). While there was a tone of necessity about his motivations for self-publishing, there was also an inherent sense of fun attached to playing and writing about this music. Punk is frequently depicted as a reaction to and rejection of both pop music and with its “back to basics approach” (Bannister, 2006: 36). Yet, to position the music itself and the accompanying fanzine texts as just that can be short-sighted.

Creating an “underground encyclopaedia” Producing a fanzine is not rooted in any great sense of altruism. It is not simply a case that a writer has the urge to compile and print a fanzine because nobody else is doing it, or that they feel it is an essential component of their taste community. It fulfils more fundamental needs for the creators, enabling them to become participants within a scene and to develop some level of credibility, and even power. As the author in Rhubarb (1993) states: “If you are contemplating ‘doing a zine’ then contemplate no further…just DO IT [writer’s emphasis]. The benefits of seeing the ‘vegetable of your labour’ certainly overshadow[s] any slight problems you may have”). For scene members like Robert who wrote Rhubarb, the format has provided them with a platform to articulate their own opinions on music, learn new communicative and technological skills, as well as help develop their own social networks. One respondent to this study said that he continued to produce a fanzine “because it keeps me sane. I can’t just do a day-job and nothing else” (Hynes, 2012). Involvement in fanzine making tends to be a site of great pleasure for those producing them – the social networks they establish, coupled with the knowledge that they are contributing to their music scene, helps accentuate the pleasure that comes from listening to music in a live environment. Another respondent stated that her favourite aspect of producing a fanzine is “making connections, and building community in the DIY punk scene. The idea that someone I don’t know read my words and they resonated somehow is really exciting” (Murphy, 2014). This participation in the ‘scene’ is demonstrative of their fandom. Many of the participants in this research spoke of their excitement of landing an interview (sometimes with a band who only lived a few miles away) or getting sent a new demo with the gusto of genuine fans. In Scumbag (1997), the author writes about his “first punk experience” when he was 14, seeing the band Brawl played a gig in his hometown of Wexford. Like many other fanzine writers, he describes what he experienced from the perspective of a fan, and determines it to be something of a life-changing experience, culturally at the very least, stating that: “I started getting into the scene, buying records and sending away for zines. I don’t know what I’d be listening to if I hadn’t discovered Punk.” This research draws heavily – although, not exclusively so - on fanzines from the late 1980s to early 2000s, as this was where the majority of the sample available to the study spanned from. The early part of this period coincided with a fanzine boom in Cork, Ireland’s second largest city. Jim Morrish – who was involved in a number of Cork-based fanzines, including Choc-a-Bloc – recalled that the “late eighties and early nineties were great fun gig-wise in Cork” (Morrish, 2014). The giddiness associated with the era is reflected on in Gerry Smyth’s Noisy Island (2005): a tradition of ‘mad’ Cork bands began to emerge…Nun Attax and its offshoots Five Go Down To The Sea? and Beethoven played densely structured yet ‘noisy’ music that took the anarchy of the punk patent movement to surreal levels; routinely dismissed as

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typical Cork eccentrics….Although less threatening, the music of The Sultans of Ping F.C. and The Frank and Walters also operated at a tangent to the rock mainstream, incorporating as it did elements of humour, quirkiness and deliberate gaucheness.” (Smyth, 2005: 63) Like musicians in alternative music cultures, many fanzine writers take their role seriously but still manage to make it a gratifying part of their lives. One of the writers during this period was Trevor Meehan, who published ten editions of Unfit For Consumption from his home city of Limerick, in the mid-west of the country, between 1999 and 2006. Trevor outlined the strict policy he had when it came to analysing every single demo and that was submitted for review consideration: I always had a minimum of five listens to a record that came in before I’d review it. Some got the bare five; some got more if I was into it. But I always thought that one or two listens wouldn’t have been enough. A lot of hours are put into it [producing a fanzine], but again, they were hobby hours. It was time that I had to do it, and I just felt I was really enjoying it so I kept ploughing away (Meehan, 2013). While Meehan’s approach to his fan labour demonstrated significant commitment, there are no set rules for how a fanzine has to be assembled and distributed. For many practitioners, applying rules would not be keeping in the spirit of the ‘scene’ and some publications seemed to thrive on the fact that they have embraced a more haphazard approach, wearing it as a badge of their punk credibility. In the second issue of Aunty Hero (1997), the author Keith (surname unknown) tells readers that “If you missed issue 1, then just consider yourself fortunate….again I have not included reviews of zines and music.” However, all of these publications seem to follow similar patterns, with material written by and compiled by fans that is subsequently distributed to fellow fans through methods not widely used by the mainstream press. Fanzines can be free or have a nominal charge, and are available at independent gigs, record stores, or through mail order. Indeed, many fanzine writers embark on a form of translocal exchange, swapping their publications with writers all over the world. Boz Mugabe, who wrote one of Ireland’s longest-running fanzines Nosebleed between 1990 and 2002, explained that the role of fanzines can only be truly understood when placed within the context of a wide-ranging network: “One fanzine on its own didn’t really matter in itself, but a number of them together formed this amorphous information mesh, like an underground encyclopaedia, which varied in substance and style, but could be contributed to by anyone” (Mugabe, 2014). Most fanzines are readily identifiable by their somewhat amateur appearance, in terms of content and very basic production values. Such approaches mirror the DIY aesthetic central to the music that they write about. The first wave of punk fostered this ethos that anybody could pick up a guitar, start a band, write songs, or even run a . The spirit of the venture was perhaps more important than the quality – thus, punk was characterised by songs that were not just played fast but also written and recorded in short bursts of time - and the same criteria applied to the emergence of a punk fanzine culture. In saying this, the significant role that technology played in both the music and the medium needs to be considered because, as Pete Dale argues “so called Xerox music appeared because basic multi- track recording equipment was being mass-produced as never before, and because Xerox copiers enable fanzine writers to easily produce discourse about the recordings produced” (Dale, 2008: 175). Somewhat ironically, the proliferation of fanzine culture in the 1970s through 90s was supported by the mass production of such photocopying technologies. As such, fanzines tend to utilise the technologies available to them. In Scold, the writer George Curran leaves a note that reads: “Technical info: this issue comes to you thanks to the technology of cut n’ paste. Future issues should be of a higher standard thanks to the dawning of the computer age” (Curran, 1998: 2). However,

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 106 many of those that have been created in an era of widespread computer usage and easier access to publishing software have still preferred to use the ‘ripped and torn’ punk rock-style imagery that has dominated the Irish fanzine landscape for over thirty-five years. Writers use what design skills they have to hand, rarely seeking external expertise, and these skills range, depending on their own artistic background. Generally speaking, the fanzine producer will put most artistic effort into the cover page, as it is the starting point for any potential reader. In many cases, they will use stencilled writing, hand-drawn illustrations rainy black and white photographs, or repurposed popular culture content. Fanzines are engaged in a form of ‘dialogical’ (Bakhtin, 1981) communication; they take other media texts such as newspaper headlines (particularly from tabloids) and uproot these textual features from their original context and reinsert them in into a new context where readers are invited to orientate themselves critically towards them, and in so doing to experience a communal identity with producers and readers.

Figure 1

For his first issue of Unfit For Consumption, Trevor Meehan created a fairly basic front page. (see fig. 1) Underneath the title of the fanzine is a subheading that reads ‘A Hardcore Metal Punk Zine’ with a black and white image directly below that, which takes up approximately half the page. The image may be a standard picture taken from the perspective of the stage of a hardcore gig but it has significant connotations for the type of music featured within. The focus is not on the band, as the only member that appears is the singer. While he is in the centre of the photograph, his back is turned to the camera, and so we do not directly see his face. Instead, the faces that are clear are those of the audience. This signifies the communal and participatory nature of the

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 107 type of music that is on offer here. It is immediately clear that this is not a publication about contemporary pop stars. The venue is not an arena, and the barrier between audience and artist is minimal - audience members are almost on the stage and the singer is almost in the crowd. To the left of the singer, there are other visual clues as to what type of music is preferred here where a fan with spiked hair, symbolic of the punk style (Hebdige, 1979), watches on. The distinctly amateur approach to photography is further emphasised by the appearance of a different photographer at the edge of the photograph. On the right-hand side of the cover, another fan crowd-surfs his way through the crowd. This, combined with an audience with their mouths wide opened as if they were mid-shouting/singing, indicates that it is a loud and noisy performance. While Irish music fanzines have covered a number of other genres9, there has been a tendency for the majority of them to focus on louder and faster genres of music. As much as the image demonstrates the differences of these fans to those of other, perhaps more mainstream genres of music, it also solidifies their fandom and is a clear manifestation of the corporeal pleasure that is attached to the live environment. The picture captures the relatively ordinary rituals that take place at live gigs, without much regard for the technical rules of photography. Despite the fact that the image was a fitting representation of the community’s ethos, it was not the work of the fanzine writer. Instead, it was another example of how fanzine makers repurpose material from other sources: The handiest thing was to keep it as plain as possible for the cover, just because I wasn’t going to put too much money into it. I just wanted to cover costs obviously. I was getting it photocopied rather than getting it printed, so I just kept it as basic as possible. I stole an image off the Internet of a hardcore gig in the States, and basically then just using [Microsoft] Word, which was how I always did the fanzine from Issue 1 to Issue 10. I know a lot of people use all kinds of other stuff, like Publisher and Quark Express. But I just had Word, so that’s what I used. Basically just used some Word fonts then to do the name of the fanzine and to give a little description of what it was about and what bands were in it, and then how much it was, and that was pretty much the cover then sorted. As I said, I just kept it plain enough so that it would photocopy well so that the cover would look decent, whether the content was crap or not! (Meehan, 2013). While there may have been a degree of randomness attached to the image selected to accompany his first front cover, the message inside clearly reflects the participatory culture that the music espouses: “while this zine is for the most part predominately music orientated, every submission (i.e. art, opinion, etc.) will be considered” (Meehan, 1999: 3). Despite the fact that Meehan asks readers to get involved in his fanzine – which subsequently does happen – there is a strong tendency for fanzines to be run by one individual. The majority of fanzines analysed for this study found that the writer, editor and publisher were all rolled into one, offering an opportunity for the writer to express their “own desires, opinions and beliefs on a chosen topic” (Atton, 2002: 55). To Irish fanzine writer, collector, and musician Willie Stewart, one of the key signifiers of a fanzine’s identity is its amateur publication, arguing that “on a practical side, it [the fanzine] just has to be self-published” (Stewart, 2012). For Stewart, “DIY music and DIY publications go hand-in-hand” (2012). While there is no particular sound that quite pins down what “DIY” music actually constitutes, Charles Fairchild’s (1995) discussion of the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene perhaps sums it up as succinctly as possible: “Tying all these scenes together was a nihilism articulated through parody or cruelty each with a distinct groove of harsh standard time rock laced with blocked chords smashing out songs which vaguely resembled older rock styles” (1995: 21). As such, punk rock or DIY was not reinventing the wheel in terms of how music was written and performed. Early punk, in particular, borrowed from a number of other genres, such as rock n’roll, , and UK pub rock

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(Laing, 1985), all of which were considered reactionary at one point or another. The same standard – guitar, bass, and drums – were primarily used, but punk repackaged and presented guitar-based music in a different way. Similarly, fanzines take the conventions of a traditional medium (the printed magazine) and subvert them somewhat, and there are interesting connections to be made here between the aesthetics of DIY music and its corresponding medium. While he may be discussing underground music of a far more avant-garde persuasion, there is some merit in Stephen Graham’s view that “the underground is essentially a practice, a cultural philosophy of music that exists outside the mainstream” (2010: 10). Moreover, as he expands: “The aesthetic tone of underground music usually pivots on sublime and fragmentary modes, with surface abrasion and syntactic destabilization, in many subtle formations across the field, being the primary expressive currencies” (Graham, 2010: 10-11). This “syntactic destabilization” can be seen in DIY music and fanzine making. The modes of production are similar to those of more ‘traditional’ or ‘popular’ fields, but it subverts the conventional practices of the cultural industries in the process. Take for example the seventh issue of Unfit For Consumption (2003); this particular fanzine regularly featured interviews and reviews of international hardcore and punk acts. However, this edition featured exclusively Irish acts, under the banner of ‘DIY Ireland’. Its publisher Trevor Meehan adopted a similar approach to many of the music magazines available in newsagents at the time, by including an accompanying CD of the acts interviewed. However, its presentation was somewhat different: Obviously I didn’t want to staple the CD to the front or stick it on like they do with glossy magazines I just bought a load of A4 jiffy bags. I put the fanzine in and then basically put the CD in with that, and that was that, and I didn’t charge anymore. I think it was still €2. I thought it would be a good idea to do a cheap kind of CDR, and, just put basically 24 tracks from Irish bands, all sorts of stuff, because I thought it would be a good idea if people were reading about these bands and these types of music that they could get some kind of reference point, especially if they were younger people that didn’t know the bands, or someone in a different end of Ireland that hadn’t too much access to gigs or didn’t go to Dublin too often to hear the Dublin bands, or to Limerick or you know Belfast or whatever (Meehan, 2013). Meehan appropriated a device (the addition of a free CD) that the mainstream music press utilises to help sell copies of their publications, and it made it the most successful (in terms of sales) edition of his own fanzine. The music contained within the CD was symbolic of the varied nature of DIY. Celtic punk in the form of Blood of Whiskey, instrumental math-rock (The Redneck Manifesto), anarcho punk (Striknien DC) and metal (Coldwar) were all represented. What connected these acts was that they often featured on the same line-ups and were loosely part of the same DIY scene. Furthermore, they were all bands that the writer was a fan of, using his curatorial influence to promote their music to his readership.

“Already up to their necks in it anyway” The textural similarities between fanzines and the music that they feature can also be attributed to the fact that there has traditionally been a significant crossover of personnel between fanzines and bands. Data collected indicates that at least forty (close to 20%) of the fanzines from my sample were written by people who were also members of bands, and thus, one could say that fanzines are a medium of communication for active musicians. Raw Power was founded by Stephen Averill in 1977 not just to write about the local punk scene, but to also provide a platform for his own band and other bands emerging in fledgling punk scenes in Dublin, Derry, and Belfast:

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There was a slightly ulterior motive as well, in that we wanted something to be a vehicle for writing about The Radiators From Space. That magazine had an interview with the band, which was probably the first interview of the band that appeared, but we were also very interested in what was going on with other Irish bands. The second issue was the first interview with The Undertones. We tried to seek out like-minded people to write about (Averill, 2013). As part of this study, focus groups were held with musicians, in three major Irish cities (Dublin, Cork, and Limerick) in 2014. Limerick was selected as it is the city that I reside in and had closest links to, and this helped in terms of generating participation in the project, after initial issues in attracting interest elsewhere (the first Dublin focus group only received one attendee). The inclusion of Dublin and Cork was more obvious; as the two largest cities in the Republic of Ireland, they have unsurprisingly been the two cities that traditionally have had the most prominent music scenes. Dublin’s punk scene was particularly strong in the late 1980s and early 1990s, characterised by two different factions – the ‘Old Chinaman’ scene (referring to a now defunct Dublin pub that hosted shows) and the ‘Hope’ scene (indicating the Hope Collective, non-profit gig promoters in Ireland’s capital who were very much influenced by the Washington, D.C. DIY scene).

Figure 2

Fanzines and DIY scenes are similar in that both are part of a culture that fosters translocal exchanges. Local music scenes sustain regular contact with scenes in other locations that are bonded by shared taste (Bennett and Peterson, 2004). Gigs are swapped between cities, and there has been a tradition of a trade culture within the wider fanzine community. This was taken a step further when React (fig. 2), the unofficial mouthpiece of the Hope Collective released a joint issue with Cork’s Choc-A-

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Bloc in 1993. This pooling of resources enabled the producers to increase distribution outside of their home cities. The exchange of information and the swapping of gigs was not just a practice that happened within nations’ borders. For instance, Niall McGuirk from the Hope Collective and the writer of React, wrote a ‘Dublin Scene Report’ for the Malaysian fanzine Vitro in 1997, and this was very much a common practice for punk zines of the era. Despite all of this there was an inherently localised context to them; fanzines tend(ed) to be primarily bulletins from the city of the writer. The casual nature of the focus group format in these three cities facilitated the groups in taking the conversations in many different directions. Invariably, the topic of conversation would come back to the live environment and the roles occupied by musicians, fans, and fanzine writers. One of the musicians who took part in the Dublin focus group alluded to the interchangeability of roles within DIY communities stating that “most people are already up to their necks in it anyway”. It should not be considered any great surprise that musicians are inclined towards writing fanzines also. They are creative individuals with a genuine interest in the music; after all, musicians are fans too, and fans that can provide unique and technical insights into the music-making process. As such, they frequently apply the same aesthetic values to making fanzines as they would to making music. When Willie Stewart started playing in bands as a teenager, he saw immediate parallels between performing punk-influenced music and immersing himself in fanzine culture. It started for him when he picked up a copy of the fanzine Rejected: Basically I just started playing in a band and we weren’t really aware of any DIY scene or the underground…I guess it just looked like the kind of thing – it didn’t call to me or anything but it was like ‘oh, that is interesting’. At the time, I didn’t realise there was a network of underground Irish bands, and I certainly didn’t know that there were publications to go along with that, and that’s how people networked. Maybe because it came with a 7” and it kind of looked punk or something, definitely an aesthetic to it (Stewart, 2012). Willie’s participation in his own fanzine Non-Plastique also ensured that his band Bambi received some column inches, regularly featuring in Irish fanzines of the 1990s. Despite this, he is adamant that it is somewhat taboo to promote your own band. If DIY purposely positions itself away from the dominant ‘culture industries’ with bands did not crave or expect the stardom and attention of the pop music world, it is expected that they should not be abusing their powers as fanzine producers, according to Stewart: I think it is a bit of a ‘no-no’. Ah, I did it in the first one because I didn’t know what else to write about. You wouldn’t really write about your own band. The day we got interviewed for Nosebleed was just like a career-breaker in punk rock as far as we were concerned. The four members of the band without really ever thinking about it rejected mainstream music and mainstream media. What are you dealing with in Hot Press? You’re dealing with bands like Aslan and U2. They’re no good you know, and when you are a teenager they are certainly not cool (Stewart, 2012). However, I encountered several examples of fanzines where the author writes at considerable length about his or her own band. On many occasions, this can be put down to the personal nature of fanzine writing, where stream of consciousness writing details every event that has happened in the writer’s life since the previous issue. Also, because those works are without the control of an external editor, these aspects are kept in. In many cases, the writers are not overtly promoting the music itself, but are instead focusing on the process of being in a band and partaking in an alternative music scene. Music fanzines tend to incorporate aspects of the ‘perzine’ – personal fanzines where “authors document the most intimate details of their lives, generating personal narratives and thereby unique autobio/graphical” (Triggs, 2010: 12). This function of the fanzine as a diary, chronicling intimate and important aspects of the writer’s daily lives, would attach some logic to active band members discussing their

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 111 musical activities within the confines of the physical fanzine. Nova Wreck was written by Jamesy (James McDonald), a member of Belfast-band Yakuza, and he used issues of the fanzine to chronicle the band’s progress. Issue 3 (2000) featured one- and-a-half pages on the band, while Issue 4 had a feature entitled “The Yakuza Saga Continues – Chapter IV: We’ll Do Anything For A Record Deal.” While it was a way of discussing what was happening in his life, Jamesy was also taking advantage of his position as a fanzine writer, giving his band more coverage than any other band over the course of these issues. Nonetheless, these diary entries not only demonstrate the realities of DIY music production, but these snapshots are primarily positive, drawing on the sense of satisfaction that the writer has attained from performing music in the live arena. Having the experience of running a fanzine ensured that you knew how the process worked in terms of organising interviews or getting your band featured. Boz Mugabe admits that his status with Nosebleed allowed him to get The Steam Pig featured in other publications. He was also able to utilise Nosebleed to feature the band, doing so in a more novel way: Because of being a fanzine editor, I was aware that a readable interview with solid content was invaluable. At various points we asked friends of ours from other bands to interview us... once for Nosebleed [Issue 16] and once for Maximumrocknroll (Mugabe, 2014). Not all musicians retained such a dual position. Richie Egan (who plays in the acts Jape and The Redneck Manifesto) ran his own fanzine called Fake briefly from 1995 to 1996. Egan, like many other current musicians in Dublin acts (for example, Michael Owens of Owensie and Barry Lennon of Hands Up Who Wants To Die), flirted with fanzine publishing. It allowed him as a fan to connect with various bands within the city of Dublin and it crucially offered him a gateway into a community he has been part of since. His recollection of his first interview as an eighteen year old for his fanzine highlights the awkwardness that can exist between performer and fan: I organised an interview with Tension, and couldn’t believe they said ‘yes’ for a start, and so went to Rathmines. They were playing there and were my favourite Irish band. I was meeting this band – and you know if you go to a gig and you see someone from a band that you really like, it’s hard to go talk to them; like, what do you say ‘that was a really good gig?’, whereas this was a way that you could actually ask them questions – influences and all that shit. And then you realise that they are just normal people as well so it was a great learning experience. Fanzines were an opportunity for kids to be able to speak to each other and to be able to speak to bands… then I got into being in a band. I started experimenting with loads of shitty bands and doing fanzines, and decided that I’d go with the bands, but still had a connection with people doing the fanzines (Egan, 2013). For young scene members like the teenage Egan, the correlation between fanzines and DIY music was quite evident. They seemed to be all part of the same process, which while utilising the tools of traditional media, were doing so in a destabilising mode.

Conclusion There is sufficient evidence to show that punk fanzines are much more than acts of rebellion or opposition. Nonetheless, music fanzines do not always focus on the positive, pleasurable aspects of DIY cultural production. As the writer of Hurling Abuse quoted at the outset of this article suggested, the music has been a beacon of not just positivity but hatred also. Many examples emerge in Irish music fanzines of tensions and issues, yet these are primarily away from the actual music itself, and dealing with more personal aspects of the writers’ lives. Occasionally, music is derided for not being to the writer’s taste or in more severe cases, it is a source for a more extreme anti-

Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 112 fandom, where the writer takes delight in criticising others’ work. Elsewhere, some bands have used fanzine interviews in the past as an outlet for contributing to rivalries that exist with other fans. However, the position of the fan as writer means that the primary focus is on music that they like. While the texts may be somewhat oppositional, the pleasure for people in my study was particularly manifested at the live gig; it was in being with like-minded people and reading about them in the corresponding fanzines. The cover image of the first edition of Unfit For Consumption perfectly encapsulates this – a sense of community and equal participation, with a shared aesthetic between writer, fan, and musician. Leagues O’Toole has been a successful journalist, author and broadcaster in mainstream Irish media. He is currently a booking agent for major concerts and tours. However, in the early 1990s, he was a shy young music fan, and he recalled how his initial foray into the live gigs he was reading about in fanzines served as a transitional platform from the quiet teenager who internalised his music fandom. Part of the DIY ethos was to bring people in; it wasn’t about who you know. It was open to anyone who had a genuine interest and it encouraged you to be active in your own way, in whatever way you were comfortable with, whether that be writing a review, making a fanzine, putting on a gig, being in a band, learning an instrument, whatever. That’s what that culture was about. That is the most positive aspect of that culture (O’Toole, 2013). O’Toole started to write columns for fanzines, help out with gigs for the Hope Collective and create his own short-lived publication Fudge. In an interview conducted for this study, he pinpointed the live DIY environment as an outlet for “giving people confidence and giving people a voice” (O’Toole, 2013). However, the influence of fanzines in Ireland has waned in recent years; it is no longer a regular fixture at merchandise tables at DIY gigs, and most of the independent record stores that once distributed them are now closed. While still cherished by many, the format is treated as something of an oddity or a reaction to online media platforms when it appears. Newer technologies have emerged that have enabled users to connect with more people instantaneously, and they now have the ability to embed audio, something which the physical fanzine never had. Fans can now listen to and read about the same piece of music simultaneously. Despite this, they have yet to manage to show a direct correlation between the texture of the music and their new media text. A more solitary pursuit perhaps than the often-shared fanzine, it is questionable as to whether new media platforms allow for the same degree of pleasure that comes from the cultural outsiderness of DIY production.

References Atton, Chris – (2002) Alternative Media. : Sage Publications. (2010) ‘In Search of Cultural Politics in a Fall Fanzine’. In: Goddard, Michael and Halligan, Benjamin. (Eds) Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 169-180. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981) Holquist, Michael (Ed & Trans) & Emerson, Caryl (Trans) The Dialogic Imagination – Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bannister, Matthew (2006) White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bennett, Andy (2006) ‘Punk’s Not Dead: The Continuing Significance of Punk Rock for an Older Generation of Fans, Sociology, 42(2), pp. 219-235.

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Bennett, Andy and Peterson, Richard A. (2004) ‘Introducing Music Scenes’. In: Bennett, Andy and Peterson, Richard A. (Eds) Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, And Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, pp. 1-15. Bradby, Barbara and Torode, Brian (1984) ‘To Whom Do U2 Appeal?’ The Crane Bag, 8(2), pp. 73-78. Booth, Paul. (2010) Digital Fandom. New York: Peter Lang Campbell, Sean. (2011) Irish Blood, English Heart: Second-Generation Irish Musicians in England. Cork: Cork University Press. Cavicchi, Daniel (1998) Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans. New York: Oxford University Press. Click, Melissa A., Lee, Hyunji, and Willson Holladay, Holly (2013) ‘Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media’, Popular Music and Society, 36(3), pp. 360-379. Cloonan, Martin (2005) ‘What is Popular Music Studies? Some Observations, British Journal of Music Education, 22(1), pp. 77-93. Cohen, Sara (1991) Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Curran, George (1998) Scold. Louth: Self-published Dale, Pete (2008) ‘It was easy, it was cheap, so what?: Reconsidering the DIY principles of punk and indie music’, Popular Music History, 3(2), pp. 171-193. Devereux, Eoin, Dillane, Aileen, and Power, Martin. (2011) (Eds) : Fandom, Representations and Identities. Bristol: Intellect. Duncombe, Stephen (2008) Notes From Underground: Zines And The Politics of Alternative Culture (2nd Edition). Bloomington: Microcosm Publishing. Duffett, Mark – (2013) ‘Introduction - Directions in Music Fan Research: Undiscovered Territories and Hard Problems’, Popular Music and Society, 36:3, pp. 299-304. (2015) ‘Fan Practices’. Popular Music and Society, 38(1): pp. 1-6. Fairchild, Charles (1995) ‘“Alternative”; music and the politics of cultural autonomy: The case of Fugazi and the D.C. Scene, Popular Music and Society, 19(1), pp. 17- 35. Finnegan, Ruth. H. (1989) The hidden musician: music-making in an English town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Frith, Simon (1978) The Sociology Of Rock. London: Constable. Graham, Stephen (2010) ‘(Un)Popular Avant-Gardes: Underground Popular Music and the Avant-Garde’, Perspectives of New Music, 48(2), pp. 5-20. Gray, Jonathan (2003) ‘New Audiences, New Textualities – Anti-fans and non-fans’, International Journal of Cultural Studies Volume 6(1), pp. 64–81 Hebdige, Dick. (1979) Subculture – The Meaning Of Style. London: Metheun & Co. Ltd. Hogan, Eileen. (2016) ‘Corkonian exceptionalism’: Identity, authenticity and the emotional politics of place in a small city’s popular music scene’, Ethnomusicology Ireland 4. Hills, Matt (2014) ‘Back in the Mix: Exploring Intermediary Fandom and Popular Music Production’. In: Duffett, Mark (Ed) Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices. New York: Routledge, pp. 16-36. Laing, Dave (1985) One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

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McDonald, James (2000) Nova Wreck. Belfast: Self-published. McGuirk, Niall (1997) ‘Dublin Scene Report’. In: Lam, B. (Ed) Vitro, Johor: Self- Published. McLaughlin, Noel (1999) Pop and the Periphery: Nationality, Culture & Irish Popular Music, (PhD). University of Ulster. Mangaoang, Áine and O’Flynn, John. (2016) Mapping Popular Music in Dublin: Executive Report. Dublin: Dublin City University. Meehan, Trevor (1999) Unfit For Consumption. Limerick: Self-Published. Monahan, Ed (1999) Hurling Abuse. Wicklow: Self-Published O’Flynn, John. (2009) The Irishness of Irish music. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sandvoss, Cornel. (2014) ‘“I ♥ IBIZA”: Music, Place and Belonging’. In: Duffett, Mark (Ed) Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices. New York: Routledge Shuker, Roy. (2008) Understanding Popular Music Culture. London: Routledge. Sinclair, Gary (2014) ‘Retreating Behind the Scenes: The ‘Less’-Civilizing Impact of Virtual Spaces on the Irish Heavy Metal Scene’. In: Duits, Linda, Zwaan, Koos and Reijnders, Stijn (Eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures. Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 209-222. Smyth, Gerry. (2005) Noisy Island: a short history of Irish popular music. Cork: Cork University Press. Straw, Will (1991) ‘Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Scenes and Communities in Popular Music’, Cultural Studies, 5(3), pp. 361-375. Triggs, Teal – (2006) ‘Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic’, Journal of Design History, 19(1), pp. 69-83. (2010) Fanzines – The DIY Revolution. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Warner, Jr., Harry (1994) ‘A History of Fanzines’. In: Sanders, Joe (Ed) Science Fiction Fandom, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, pp. 175-180.

Personal Interviews Averill, Stephen (2013) Egan, Richard (2013) Hynes, Cian (2012) Meehan, Trevor (2013) Morrish, Jim (2014) Murphy, Clodagh (2014) Mugabe, Boz (2014) O’Dwyer, Mick (2015) O’Toole, Leagues (2013) Stewart, Willie (2012)

1 This works prefers the usage of the term ‘fanzine’ as opposed to the shortened version ‘zine’. The dropping of the prefix ‘fan’ removes the fan practice from the process. 2 Cavicchi’s (1998) study of Bruce Springsteen fans is one of the first significant fans studies to centre on music fans, while Devereux, Dillane and Power’s (2011) edited collection of essays on Morrissey were primarily written by those who self-identify as fans of the former frontman.

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3 For example, fans of Lady Gaga (Click, Lee, and Holladay, 2013). 4 Andy Bennett’s (2006) study of older UK punks notes that while the punk fans have moved away from the spectacular style of the mid 1970s (Hebdige, 1979), they still retained certain visual indicators – a patch on their jacket, a pair of Dr Martens boots, etc. – that identified them as a punk. 5 While not solely encompassing punk music (a genre whose own definition is a site of contestation), DIY music communities could be depicted as hubs of ‘anti-fandom’. The term ‘anti fan’ was initially coined by Jonathan Gray (2003) who conducted research on The Simpsons with couples. Frequently, he found that one of the respondents was not fan but was significantly well versed in the plotlines and idiosyncrasies of the show, and in many cases displayed as much knowledge as the ‘fan’ in the household. This knowledge gave them the capacity to discuss the programme critically and with a degree of (dis)pleasure. 6 This is not to suggest that this is a definitive number of fanzines produced in Ireland: firstly, there were surely a number of publications that my research just did not come across; secondly, there were titles of a handful of fanzines that I uncovered which I could not determine were music-specific or related to other fan pursuits. Many of those classified as music fanzines also covered other interests and concerns – for example, football, politics, food, etc. 7 Based in Dublin, the Forgotten Zine Archive was established using the private collections of some prominent fanzine producers, and is undoubtedly the largest single collection of music fanzines in the country. During the research process, eight separate visits were made to the archive to analyse the materials. 8 Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the non-profit Californian fanzine Maximumrocknroll, which has been published monthly since 1982. It is still entirely in black and white, and is quite distinguishable from mainstream music magazines. 9 This research encountered at least three different Irish publications that specifically focused on ska music in the 1980s and 1990s.

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