Just finished two new chunks of paper.
Greater Manchester Dark Ages is 164 pages of black and white photos from around Greater Manchester from 2011 to 2015, whilst World Force is 44 pages of phone snaps captured mostly last year.
Both are available via Central Library worldwide, Rare Mags in Stockport, Good Press is Glasgow and Village, Unitom and Catalog in Manchester.
Grant Petersen has done a lot for the humble bicycle. First through Bridgestone USA (the North American arm of the massive Japanese tyre company who produced some seriously influential bikes in the 80s and early 90s), and then with Rivendell Bicycle Works—the company he started in 1994—he’s been pushing for what you could maybe call an alternative bicycle future, where enjoyment, practicality and longevity take precedence over gimmicks, fads and The Next Big Thing™.
This might sound like common sense, but at a time when mainstream bikes have become unrepairable masses of high-tech jiggery-pokery, his ideas around hard-wearing steel frames and good ol’ simplicity (alongside the countless other uncomplicated concepts he laid down in his 2012 book Just Ride), have set him apart as a revolutionary.
What’s more, whilst his so-called ‘velosophy’ is no doubt influential (the recent uptick in baskets and swept-back handlebars being bolted onto old steel mountain bikes can probably be traced back to him), the way Rivendell operates is also well ahead of the proverbial curve. They’ve sold straight to their customers since the mid-90s and were publishing their own zine, the Rivendell Reader, long before people in meeting rooms started chatting about content marketing. He might also be the world’s biggest Bob Dylan fan.
Anyway, enough of the spiel. I caught him before a fishing trip to peck his head about everything from the early days of Rivendell to the art of finding satisfaction in struggle. Whether or not you’re into bicycles or not, Grant’s wise words here should give you something to think about…
Gutted to hear of the recent passing of Fraser Moss. I had the pleasure of spending a day with him in 2018 and he was a true fountain of subcultural knowledge who knew everything about seemingly everything good in life—with conversation ranging from vintage military jackets to the third season of Twin Peaks with no let up.
This interview from an old magazine we made at Oi Polloi captured a small portion of that conversation, telling his story from his beginnings in the clothes industry getting sacked from World’s End to flogging rare trainers before anyone knew about rare trainers, starting YMC and beyond. He had a lot of good stuff to say which applies today. RIP Fraser Moss. He did create.
Founded by Fraser Moss and Jimmy Collins back in 1995, You Must Create (or Y.M.C. to give it its snappier title), has been a firm Oi Polloi favourite for donkey’s years. It was one of the first things we sold in our old Tib Street shop back in 2002, and although a fair bit has changed in the world since then, their trademark blend of stripped-back design, high-end fabrics and left-field cultural references is still as flavoursome as ever.
Fraser is the man who designs the stuff. Curious to hear the yarn behind the garms, I made the perilous voyage down to Brighton to hassle him with some questions..
Starting from the beginning, where did you grow up?
Newport in South Wales. I grew up in that period when youth culture was really important, and it was all led by music. I was too young for punk, but I was old enough to recognise it. At that time it was more that post-punk thing – we could see what was happening up in Manchester.
There were only two magazines you could buy which involved style – I.D. and The Face. And you couldn’t even get those in Wales. I had to subscribe to them like some saddo, getting them delivered to my mum’s house. You were limited on the knowledge you could gain.
How did you end up working with clothes? Was it something you were always into?
I was working in a sports warehouse. I was working there and thinking, “I’ve got to get out of here.” So I’d get the coach up to London, and in those days it was all about the Kings Road. I used to go up and down there trying to get a job. I ended up getting a job at Vivienne
Westwood, at World’s End. It was just after all the Seditionaries stuff, so it was like a dream getting to work for her. But then I got sacked because I got pissed up and fell asleep on the counter – someone came in and robbed half the shop. So then I started Professor Head, which was dealing in old school trainers.
Was anyone into old trainers then? That must have been a relatively new thing at that time.
It was just us and the Japanese. We’d go to the library and get the Yellow Pages for a district of America, then sit there all afternoon ringing them up to see if they had anything. Then we’d get on a plane, hire a van and then go around Boston or somewhere.
You’d go into the basement and they’d have full stacks of Jordan 1s and the Wally Waffles. And they’d be selling them for two or three dollars a pair. We had this little office in Soho and a stall in Camden Market, and we’d just sell to the Japanese. It was good while it lasted. I wish I’d taken photos, but no one had cameras – no one cared.
How long did you do this for?
Until our addictions collapsed the business. By 94 it was going tits up. In 95 we started Y.M.C.
How come you started Y.M.C.? What was the thing that set it off?
I was really sick of the fact that the only fashion that was available at the time was big Italian labels, hip-hop or skate. I’m not against any of that, but it was either American or European stuff, and I just felt there was a need for understated, minimal clothing that people could create their own style with. At that time, people didn’t have quality simple clothing—it wasn’t available.
Where does the name come from? It’s a quote or something isn’t it?
Yeah, that’s Raymond Loewy, who did the Shell logo and the Coca-Cola logo. He was one of the first graphic guys who felt he could put his hand to everything. He’d design a logo, he would do architecture and then he’d do a can of soup. He was multitasking.
He did this lecture, and he said, “The thing is, you must create.” And we just nabbed that. At that time it was all very well me being anti-this and anti-that, but I had to do something.
It was a lot easier back then, the world was much more D.I.Y.—but to be honest, apart from the ideas, our first collection was shit—the fabric would be the wrong way around, or one sleeve would be longer than the other. We were learning as we were going.
How basic was it back then? How many people were involved?
It was just me and Jimmy.
How did you meet him?
I met him because he had the same German agent as our trainer shop, Professor Head. We were both disillusioned with what we were doing, so we set up Y.M.C. When we first started it, I was homeless. I’d been dumped by my girlfriend, and I was living on my friend’s floor. And then we got this little office, so I just lived there. It didn’t even have a shower; there was just a tap and a sink. Slowly we built it up so I could live like a normal person, but I remember for a month I was living on Oxo cubes. It was good though, I had a 28 inch waist.
Going back to you in Newport, was there a regional style when you were growing up?
Yeah, particularly when the casuals came along. Every football club had its look. Some might have been more influential than others, so the other teams would copy them. Newport might have nicked this from the north, but we really went for that gentleman farmer look—a deerstalker hat, a wax jacket, some plus four cords and a pair of Forest Hills. Seeing those guys on the terraces was bonkers.
Do you think that regional thing still exists now?
There’s less tribalism. You can be anything you want today, but that doesn’t mean to say you’re part of something. But these guys lived for the clobber and the weekend – it was different. When you’re in that tribal gang, that’s all you know. You’re kind of blinkered.
I imagine you’d get a lot of stick for dressing like that back then.
Can you imagine? Newport is a working class town. You’ve got the steelworks, the mines and the docks. I used to dress up like an absolute clown back in the 80s. I’d wear these opulent Nehru suits, I had my hair long, I had a walking stick and a fur coat. I’d be pissed out of my head, rolling into curry houses at three in the morning and going to sit with a load of rugby boys. You can Imagine the abuse I got.
Do you think that adds to the appeal? You were putting yourself on the line.
Definitely. It’s edgier. Today, I can walk around how I want and no one is going to bat an eyelid, but walk around Newport in the 80s like that and you’re putting your life at risk.
I suppose it’s like tattoos. In the 60s having a tattoo would be a pretty raw thing.
There’s no edge to most things now. Everything is accepted. From antiques to records, everyone knows what’s what. Everyone’s an expert and nothing shocks anyone. You can stream ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ on the internet and then say you’re a Joy Division fan, but it’s only on a basic level, the passion has gone.
I’m an obsessive vinyl guy, but I always have been. When I was young it was only vinyl, and when CDs came along, I didn’t reject them, I just couldn’t afford a CD player. And now I have to deal with my own son telling me that vinyl is fashionable and putting records on his wall. I say, “No, you play it, you don’t put it on your wall.” It’s not a trophy.
I collect records because I want the music. I go to record fairs, and there’s always dirty old fat blokes in overcoats looking for a Japanese import Madonna picture disk – it’s Madonna, what does it matter?
You’ve mentioned a few times about having an edge. How important is that?
It’s everything to me. I have this argument with people all the time.
I’ll say, “Taylor Swift is shit,” and they’lI say, “Yeah, but she’s successful.” But she’s still shit. People in the modern world can’t differentiate success with talent. And that’s why it’s important to have an edge.
What about for Y.M.C. – is it tough to strike a balance between what you want to do and what you know will sell?
Yeah, when we first started it was all about creativity, and ultimately it got to the stage where it was too out there. We were doing turquoise leather tracksuits in the late 90s. We weren’t doing four armed jumpers and hooded underpants, but it was still pretty out there. You’ve got to be creative, but it’s a business, it’s not a folly.
Is it hard not to be swept away with trends and stuff though?
It is, and I don’t want to be disrespectful to anyone who lives in a small town, but if you’re living in a small town, and you’re craving the latest thing, then you’ve only got the internet to tell you what’s happening. But when I was young we had nothing so we had to create it ourselves. And now I just sound like some old bloke.
When I design things, I tend not to look at other people’s stuff. I’m not on Instagram and I don’t have a Facebook account – I’m not totally unaware to what’s going on, but things are as pure as I can make them.
Obviously you’re mad on records and bands and all that. How does that feed into Y.M.C.? People talk about Influences, but I always want to know how they actually affect things.
When we first started, I was listening to Stereolab and a lot of library and soundtrack music. It was that retro-futurism thing – that idea of looking to the past and twisting it to create something for the future has always been relevant. You can’t create a 100% new thing. And it’s the same with clothes – everything we do has a twist on something that has come before – but we’ll never take anything literally.
What do you mean by that?
Well, we wouldn’t just say, “We’re making a hippy collection.” You can use elements from the past, but you’ve got to make it relevant and modern clothes still have to be wearable.
What are your thoughts on that remake angle – people who make clothes exactly how they were in the past?
I understand why that’s done, but it’s just not for me. I want to watch Peaky Blinders, but I don’t want to dress like them.
A lot of the stuff you reference is military or workwear. Why do you think men always come back to these functional things?
Men like there being a reason for something. We just love all that. It’s that idea of the working man. It’s all fantasy – I mean look at me – I look like some Vietnam veteran.
Haha, like Lieutenant Dan?
Yeah, we all play these rolls. You can’t take it too seriously.
I suppose you lot aren’t making clothes for the military, but that functional thing is still important.
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be ballistic, and it doesn’t have to be fireproof. I just think of my mates when they go to watch the football. I’ve got to make sure that if they wear one of our coats, it’ll either keep them warm, or protect them from the rain.
Is it hard to find things to reference? There are only so many jacket shapes out there.
If you’ve spent the last 20 years immersing yourself in it, there aren’t really any surprises anymore. So when you do find something new, it’s a good feeling. A new shape or a shoe no one has seen before. It’s interesting how something can seem outrageous to someone, and then within a couple of years, it’s something they can’t live without. Believe it or not, when we first made a V-neck cardigan maybe 20 years ago, people were like, “What the fuck is that?” But eventually, it registered.
It’s like the cropped trouser. We’ve always done a short-legged trouser. I don’t know why, it’s just something we’ve always done. In Wales we say you need to put jam on your shoes and invite your trousers down for tea. But now look around and everyone is wearing ankle flapping trousers. It becomes the norm.
I remember when I first moved down here twelve years, I had a quiff. And I used to get people shouting, “Elvis!” out of their car windows. 12 year ago, a quiff was seen as outrageous.
Yeah, things move pretty fast. How have things changed for Y.M.C. since it first started?
Computers, the internet, social media – it’s changed everything. It doesn’t matter how much I moan about it, but this stuff isn’t going away. When we started people were still photocopying and using fax machines.
On a deeper level, how have things changed? Are you still trying to do the same thing with Y.M.C. as you were in 1995?
Yeah, we’ve kind of always kept true to our beliefs. Basically, we’ve got the same ethics now as we did when we started twenty odd years ago.
What would you say those ethics are?
Well, it all goes back to the name. You Must Create. All we want to do is create nice pieces of clothing that the customer will want to buy and wear how they want. It’s all about the product.
It’s important that it’s not fickle or trend led. I’d like to think someone could have bought a pair of trousers off us ten years ago and still wear them today.
We’ve rattled on for quite a while now. Before we wrap this up, are there any words of wisdom you’d like to add.
Nah, after rabbiting on for this long, I haven’t got anything left to say. I’ve probably contradicted myself a hundred times.
FANCY GOODS / OPERATION VULCAN.
A cartridge of Super 8 fired off in the rabbit warren of wholesale shops, counterfeit gear floggers and reputable curry cafes at the bottom of Bury New Road. Spent a lot of time wandering around here over the years, but it seems like thanks to Operation Vulcan (a police operation which may or may not just be a land grab to bulldoze and peddle this prime slab of real estate just outside of Manchester town centre) it won’t be like this for long.
Undercurrent of industrial dread courtesy of Tom Hopkins.
Best viewed on a snide iPhone with a cracked screen and blown-out speakers.
Since 1977 cyclist/pastry chef Tilmann Waldthaler had been pedalling around the globe – clocking over 590,000km in the process. I found out about this guy from reading a small article about his adventures in a 90s bike magazine I was scouring through at a second hand shop—a bit of internet sleuthing later and I was calling up an Australian retirement village to talk to him about bikes, kicking back with Bob Marley and nearly getting gunned down in Iran.
Read it over on the Outsiders site.
On a sort of similar two-wheeled note, I recently interviewed Iris Slappendel about her busy life since ‘retirement’ from the pro-cycling world, making clothes, starting up the Cyclist’s Alliance and working as a commentator for Eurosport.
MTB pioneer Charlie Kelly has been uploading some old issues of his Flat Tire Flyer magazine. This thing started out in 1980 as a simple newsletter before morphing into the first real mountain bike magazine, documenting the transition from balloon tired klunkers to honed Japanese machines. The covers are the best things about this magazine, with the limitations of the era adding to the charm.
The last cover is particularly good. Check the old Nike and New Balance runners to the left. Reappropriating what you can find will always be more interesting than forking out for whatever some ‘development team’ decided you should wear. Mountain biking looked infinitely cooler when there was no such thing as mountain biking clothes.
Here’s an interview with Charlie from a decade ago. Time flies when you’re constantly mithering people half-way around the world about things they did 30 years ago.
On that note, here’s an interview with photographer, rider and magazine-man James Hudson. From back-garden ramp set-ups to the big-top and beyond, James Hudson spent the 80s and early 90s fully engrossed in the world of riding and skating, not just as a rider, but also as a photographer and magazine-man—contributing snaps to R.A.D., editing SK8-Action and publishing BMX Now. This was originally printed in the last issue of Red Steps but there’s no harm in stuff being on the internet too.
Next issue of Roman Candle should hopefully be out sometime in summer. This stuff takes time.
Until then, here’s 28 minutes of audio mastery courtesy of James Ferraro. Been listening to this one a lot lately.
Writing about any music is tough, but writing about the music of the Meat Puppets is really tough. Breaking beyond the noise of the early 80s hardcore scene, this lot scorched ear-drums with a wide-open sound completely their own.
Some called them ‘alternative country’ and some called them ‘cow-punk’, but neither of those weak terms did ‘em justice. This lot nabbed flavours from the full sonic spice-rack to serve up a most flavoursome aural stew.
They’re still at it today, and after a few decades of working ‘a real job’, original drum-smacker Derrick Bostrom is back in the van. Here’s an interview with him about the early days of the band and the realities of being on the road.
Kicking things off at the beginning, what got you into playing the drums? Was there a defining thing that set you off?
I used to play on coffee cans along with my records as a kid. My mom decided to buy me a ‘proper’ children’s set when I was eight, but my kid brother destroyed it after a couple weeks.
When I was 17, I got a cheap department store drum kit so I could play along with a friend of mine who had an electric guitar. I played it for a couple years before I started looking in the newspaper ads for an upgrade.
What sort of music did you listen to growing up? Did playing in bands and being up on stage seem like an attainable thing?
I listened to typical progressive artists when I was a teen. The Dead, Zappa, CSNY, Yes, Todd Rundgren, King Crimson, Eno… and The Beatles, of course. I got heavily into punk in 1977. Once I saw punk rock, I immediately knew I could do it, and started my plan for world domination.
The arrival of punk rock is often talked about as this seismic thing—but as I wasn’t even born then, it’s maybe a bit hard for me to get my head around how radical it was. What was it like for you? Was it a real, noticeable shift?
Punk was seismic enough to make a splash even in a backwater like Phoenix. My friends and I used to get good weed from some cool older guys in town who had turned us on to music like Gong, Eno and King Crimson.
They then got into punk rock, formed bands, got gigs and got local press—I was amazed to read about my friends in the local weekly. Around the same time, I was seeing my first interviews with Johnny Rotten in Creem magazine. I was fascinated. I got caught up in punk quickly after that, though I was alone among my friends, who thought punk was a joke.
How did all this lead into you starting a band?
I tried to talk everyone I knew into starting a band. My friend with the guitar and I had a duo we called The Atomic Bomb Club, but he was hyper-critical of himself and didn’t like performing in front of people. He was also committed to finishing school and getting a ‘real’ job.
Even back then, all I wanted to be was a professional musician, but it wasn’t until I got to know Curt Kirkwood that I found someone interested in the same thing.
How did you lot meet?
I initially met Curt because my friends and I had access to good bud, but he also needed more cool friends. He was a cool guy who lived on the uncool side of town. Eventually, we connected. He was open minded enough to take an interest in my punk rock records, and soon we’d learned a bunch of them. Next, we invited Curt’s younger brother Cris to play with us.
Do you remember your first show?
Our first couple of shows were private parties for friends. We basically ran through songs we’d learned from my punk rock 45 collection. In the summer of 1980, we named ourselves Meat Puppets, started writing songs and did our first club gigs. We were so feral that we blew everyone’s mind.
The second album is the one that gets talked about—but the first one is still pretty wild and unique. What went into the making of that? What were you trying to do?
We got a lot of attention playing so fast and so crazy, but it was hard to reproduce that energy and intensity in the studio. The first album is us trying our best, but we were very green so it didn’t come out as good as we’d hoped.
Still, the first album stands as a good document of where we were at back then. Most of the songs are cranky punk anthems with words by me and music by Curt. Curt avoided the stupidity of my lyrics by screaming unintelligibly. After that, he started writing his own lyrics.
You spent a lot of the early 80s touring with Black Flag. What were those shows like?
Our distaste for ‘hardcore’ audiences is what caused us to turn our backs on punk rock. We took too much abuse from Black Flag fans back in those days. We didn’t like the fights and the spitting and throwing things. We didn’t like the jock mentality. We retreated back to our hippy roots pretty quickly, taunting the audience and playing shit they hated until they stopped coming.
What else went on when you were on tour? I know the shows are obviously the ‘juicy bit’, but I’m always interested in the normal stuff and the down-time.
We liked to spend as much time in nature as we could in between shows. We liked to go to the forest whenever we could. But mostly, it was long drives between towns, begging for floors to sleep on and looking for cheap food.
Do you think some people missed the point with punk music? Were some people just looking for an excuse for violence and dubious behaviour?
Some people thought that violence WAS the point of punk music! We didn’t feel that way, obviously. But people tend to miss the point a lot, no matter what they think.
The music was fairly different, but you lot shared a lot of sensibilities with Minutemen and Hüsker Dü. I’m not sure if competitive is the word here, but was there ever any slight rivalry between the bands? Did what they were doing spur you lot on at all?
We never felt competitive with the Minutemen nor the Huskers (there were times, however, that Cris would become exasperated with my simplistic style and wish he had a drummer like Hurley in the band!) But in general, we didn’t feel like we had much in common musically with our SST label mates. We were just into our own thing too much.
That time in music is often mythologized (maybe I’m doing it right now)—but what are the things that don’t get talked about? What sucked about being in a band in the early 80s?
Doing it as we did, for a living, being in the band left us very broke most of the time. We had to tour constantly in order to make ends meet. This was not only exhausting, but disruptive to our lives. The upside is that it made us a great band.
How involved were you with the song-writing? How did a song tend to come together in the mid-80s?
I wrote most of the lyrics for first songs, the ones on the first album. But once I got the pump primed, Curt took over from there. After that, I contributed song titles occasionally. Since we rehearsed all the time, we usually develop a song over time during rehearsal. As often as not, Curt wouldn’t finalise lyrics until he got a song into the studio.
What about the recording aspect of it? Were there endless multiple takes and mammoth studio sessions, or was it all pretty laid-back?
Each studio session was different. Quite often, our reach often exceeded our grasp in the studio, so sessions could be fraught with frustration. I can confirm that it was never laid back. It would take us a good while to get comfortable in the studio.
Am I right in saying you all lived in a house together? Were you working at the time or was being in the band a full time thing?
We lived together for a while in the early days. Or rather, the brothers lived together and I crashed at their house most of the time. When Curt and his girlfriend had twins in 1983, I moved out. But we always lived nearby one another and were able to rehearse as often as we wanted, usually every day.
Up On the Sun was another fairly distinct record—but it’s maybe a bit more… erm… ‘stylistically cohesive’ than Meat Puppets II. Was there any specific themes or influences going into that album?
I suspect that Curt become a father had the most thematic impact on the album. But also, we’d been together for five years by this point, were always restless, and were itching to spread our wings.
Did you anticipate it becoming the classic it is known as now, or was it just another batch of songs?
I always felt that ALL of our output was destined to be classic.
Haha – fair enough. You lot played at the Desolation Centre Gila Monster Jamboree in the Mojave Desert which is often seen as the precursor to a lot of the big festivals that exist now. What do you remember about that?
It was a long drive out to the middle of nowhere. The PA was terrible. Our performance was just fair. There was a lot of psychedelics around. Kind of a pain in the ass gig.
I like your honesty there. I’m not sure if Mirage is a particularly popular Meat Puppets album – but it’s one of my favourites. For a fairly clean-sounding album, there’s a lot of natural-world type stuff on that album. Did you think much about the lyrics, or were they just things that Curt came up with?
Curt completed the lyrics in the studio. We had a lot of the music rehearsed, but he had a notebook full of stuff that he didn’t finalize until he had to record his vocals. This became a pretty common practice for him after that.
A lot of people dream of being in bands—but not many people actually cut it. How much work is actually involved?
For us, it was a full time job. Constant rehearsal, constant touring, lots of recording, lots of talking to people on the phone, lots of self-promotion. If you put that much into it, you’re bound to get something back, no matter what your endeavor. You don’t even need to be actually good if you put that much work into it, though it helps.
By the early 90s you were signed to a major label and featured regularly on MTV. On the face of it, this is ‘a positive development’—but how was it for you? How did the new business aspect, and the tour bus, change things?
We did a lot of good work in those five years, but it took a toll on our relationships and on our art. Ultimately, I think it pulled us off our game. But we’d been on indie labels for ten years at that point, and were sick of being broke and were near to burnout. Being on a major gave us a nice shot in the arm. Plus, the exposure we got in those years allowed us to keep working right up to this day, during a time where “rock bands” aren’t exactly in high demand.
You left the band in the mid-90s. What else have you been up to since then? Was it weird to work a ‘normal’ job after being a band for years?
Getting married and getting a “real job” saved my sorry ass. It allowed me to grow and mature and explore my potential.
Now that I’m back with the band, my experience in the “real world” is really paying off. I’m a better Bostrom in every way than I used to be back in the day.
You’ve been back with the band since last year. How do you think playing in bands has changed since back in the early 80s?
In too many ways, things haven’t changed at all. The band itself and the music is a lot better. But the Meat Puppets has never been a “popular” band, and just like in the 80s, we can sell out any three-hundred-person-capacity club you can name. But beyond that is anybody’s guess.
Have crowds changed much since back then? Do you think people react to music the same as they used to in the 80s?
Like us, the crowds have aged. But we still pull in some younger folks. By younger, I mean people in their 30s and 40s of course.
You lot seem to attract a pretty obsessive fan-base. People have written books about the lyrics, and I’m sat here now typing up questions about stuff from over 30 years ago. What do you think it is about those songs that register with people?
For one thing, our songs are fantastic. Second, Curt makes sure his songs are open-ended enough to be open to a wide interpretation.
What do you think kept Curt going with the band over the years? He’s been with the Meat Puppets the whole time.
Curt just likes to play. He’s lucky enough to have had enough success to allow him to keep it going at a pace that suits him.
What was it that brought you back into the band? Was it something you were wanting to do for a while?
I reconnected with the band when we were inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hal of Fame. I hadn’t considered rejoining the band at all before that. But so many people were excited for the induction that I swallowed my pride and reached out to Curt. Once thing led to another after that.
How do you apply your ‘real world’ experience into the band? Rock bands don’t usually hint at a logistical mind, but I imagine it’s pretty important.
Mostly, I have experience working with lots of different kinds of people now. I came straight out of my teens into a rock band, and never really learned that skill. I’ve also learned how to keep organized and stay focused on a a goal. I’ve also learned how to HAVE goals!
Makes sense. I think this is my last question; thinking back to the lyrics and the art that goes with the albums and everything, there’s some funny stuff in there. Is that sense of humour important?
It has always been impossible for the meat puppets to look at the world as anything but completely absurd!
Interview originally published in Roman Candle issue 1.
Scrap Cars Wanted is a 40 page zine mostly made up of unused riding photos from the last five years or so.
For anyone wondering, the title comes from a batch of notorious stencilled signs which cropped up everywhere in Manchester around ten years ago. At the peak of my obsession with these big plywood adverts one windy winter night I successfully managed to liberate one from a chainlink fence and bring it home on the train wrapped in bin bags. My sign eventually rotted away, but I’m pleased to say that after a few years AWOL I’ve started to see these things crop up once again – always in the best locations.
Anyway, this zine is the first in the Central Library Editions series. Will it also be the last? We shall see.
https://www.thecentrallibrary.com/product/scrap-cars-wanted-zine-sam-waller
Army surplus shops are really something. Not only are they rammed full of dope military garb, but they’ve got a certain raw ’n’ raggedy flavour to ‘em which is missing from most places these days. Like the humble car boot sale or the British seaside town, they seemingly operate on their own axis, relatively untouched by the sanitised hand of modern life.
War-time wares are piled up all over the place… old sheepdogs snooze behind the counter… mysterious scents waft throughout… and amongst all this, the clothes look sick and will actually last for longer than five minutes.
Admittedly they can sometimes be a bit of a gamble, but it’s in that roll of the dice that lies the appeal. This isn’t lazily clicking the ‘add to basket’ button on some slick-looking website and then getting the garb delivered into your lap via drone the same afternoon. It’s an effort, and whether or not you even buy anything is besides the point… it’s an experience that you’ve got to earn. The ‘buying things’ aspect is just a small part of it.
From what I can gather, the blueprint for these fine establishments was first drawn up over the Atlantic after the Civil War. Up until then, most war gear was made in fairly short runs by each separate regiment… but with mass production added to the equation, military schmutter was churned out by the shedload. When the war was over, both sides had plenty of wares to spare, so they set about flogging it as a way to make back a bit of wedge. One of the big bidders was a 14 year old scrap-metal merchant called Francis Bannerman.
Francis sunk his sizeable scrap fortune into buying heavily-discounted surplus gear (guns included), and after a bit of shuffling up the ladder, bought a seven-story super-store in Manhattan to house it all. Aptly-titled ‘Bannerman’s Army & Navy Outfitters’, this shop attracted the attention of everyone from twiddle-tashed gentleman-explorer types to mercenary soldiers fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and at it’s height, needed a full island on the Hudson River, complete with custom-built castle, to store all its stock.
Bannerman’s eventually dwindled for various reasons (including constant explosions on its ‘surplus island’ caused by rusting artillery), and whilst it slowly faded away throughout the mid-20th century, it set the stage for countless other surplus shops to pop up in seemingly every small town around the globe.
From WW2 up until the Gulf War the constant stream of battle meant there was no short supply of hard-wearing clobber, and the growth of arduous leisure activities like camping, fishing and hiking meant that more people were after tough clothes that didn’t cost a fortune. And perhaps most importantly, unhinged small-town madheads who didn’t make it into the forces could now walk their Alsatian whilst draped in the clothing they dreamed about.
These days there are still a fair few of these wondrous establishments around, and whilst a few of them have been infiltrated by snide ‘military-esque’ gear seemingly designed for moody bouncers and paintball moshers, gems may still by found in the shape of old M-65s, ripstop BDU jackets or those US Army ECWCS Gore-Tex parkas (which cost a fraction of the price of usual GORE-approved garb).
As well as the yank stuff, also look out for Swedish military work pants, German cold-weather parkas, that wild Swiss Aplenflage gear and another other Euro anomalies (like the seldom-seen Irish ‘Paddyflage’).
Don’t hang about though—in the age of artificial intelligence and cyber warfare, less humanoid cannon-fodder is needed, and because swanky computers and high-flying drones don’t wear ripstop cotton, not as much gear is made in the first place. Obviously it goes without saying that the less people involved in combat the better… but still, this genuine surplus won’t last forever—snaffle it whilst you can and leave the real combat to the robots.
A few months back I wrote down some stuff about the Stone Monkeys over on the Gramicci website. This lot followed after the Stone Masters of the ‘70s, pushing things further once again by pioneering all-manner of bold outdoor pursuits. Read the full thing here…
https://gramicci.co.uk/blogs/journal/in-profile-the-stone-monkeys-of-yosemite
Illustration by the almighty Ben Lamb
I recently had a phone call with legendary musician, producer and Shimmy Disc main-man Kramer about his new ambient album, his time in the Butthole Surfers and working with Daniel Johnston. This guy has been involved in some of the finest records of the last 40 years, so chatting to him about his work was a true pleasure…
Read an edited version of the chat on the Quietus site here. The full Q and A might end up in the next Roman Candle magazine if all goes well, but this article still covers a fair amount…
https://thequietus.com/articles/31884-kramer-bongwater-interview
In the present day, the past is easier to grasp than ever before. Whether it’s the AI algorithm serving up long-lost city pop, or the notorious cult films that are only a click away, perhaps one of the main defining characteristics of the current era is our convenient relationship with recent history.
That said, there’s still no substitute for accessing this stuff in physical form, and although it might not take long to find a poorly digitised copy of a Derek Jarman super 8 film on Youtube, or maybe a few low-res scans from an old Face photoshoot on an Instagram moodboard page, these metaverse versions still don’t hold a candle to the real thing.
That’s where Unified Goods comes in. From pristine copies of Perfect Blue on VHS to official Aphex Twin beach towels, the London-based shop sells tangible cultural artefacts from the not-so-distant-past—liberating rare gems from attics and wardrobes around the globe. And whilst niche culture can often be a bit of a closed-off clique, the shop is anything but elitist—choosing to share the knowledge rather than belittle those who aren’t in the know.
With founder James Goodhead currently scouring the streets of New York for new stock, I talked to him about hoarding, Fargo snow globes and nostalgia over on the Sabukaru site…
https://sabukaru.online/articles/unified-goods-using-the-past-to-progress-culture-forwards
Founded in 2008 by David Keyte and Stephanie Porritt, Universal Works takes cues from sportswear, functional military design, utilitarian work-wear, British tailoring and about a thousand other reference points, to make a range of modern, wearable clothing.
In today’s fractured age—an amped-up era when everything at once vies for your attention, Universal Works has made a name for itself off the back of well-thought-out design—free from gimmicks, but rich in functional details.
In my latest interview for Nativve, I talked to David about the early days of the brand, separating business from creativity and the importance of mixing things up…
https://www.nativve.com/people/an-interview-with-david-keyte-universal-works-co-founder/
From staircases that lead to nowhere, to doors that open out to fatal drops, ‘Thomassons’ are architectural oddities generally described as ‘useless, but still maintained’. I wrote a bit about them for the Sabukaru site. Read the full thing here…
https://sabukaru.online/articles/the-wonderful-useless-world-of-the-hyperart-thomasson
A few minutes wandering the streets of Tokyo back in 2018.
Finally got round to offloading some photos from a trip to Tokyo in 2018 off the computer and into the real world. Auto Focus 8 is 124 pages of cats, dogs, owls, humans, taxis, trains and pretty much everything else. Available via Central Library worldwide, Rare Mags in Stockport, Good Press in Glasgow and Unitom in Manchester. Also down for trades if anyone’s got photo zines (or CDs for my car stereo) lying around…
https://www.thecentrallibrary.com/product/auto-focus-8-destination-tokyo-sam-waller
It probably goes without saying that bike riding relies pretty heavily on ‘spots’. Whilst some strange folks are content with the reliable, safe-play environment of the local pre-fabricated skatepark, anyone with anything about them will soon hanker for new surfaces to touch tyres (and occasionally pegs) on.
But unlike more accepted (and slightly mumsier) pursuits such as hiking or whale-watching which are aided by exhaustive guide-books and extortionately-priced package tours, there’s little information out there to help you in your quest for banks, benches, banisters, hubbas and hitching posts.
Magazine captions give away slight clues, as do landmarks and road signs lurking helpfully in the corners of fisheye footage – but outside of that, you’re mostly just left to pedal aimlessly and hope for the best.
Having said that, there is one seldom-talked-about tool out there that’s helped countless riders, skaters and moody teenagers in the United Kingdom find somewhere to while away their time – the Knowhere Guide.
Launched back in the early, frontier days of the World Wide Web, this simple, text-based website allowed the general public to recommend (or slate) the spots in their local town. And beyond just telling riders and skaters where to find stair-sets and smooth floors, it extended into a guide for everything that’s often overlooked, from the best chip shops in town to the finest bus stops to sit and drink a bottle of White Lightning in.
The site still exists today, and whilst it’s maybe a bit dated in the current age of high-speed virtual reality streaming, it remains a pretty fascinating time capsule of the late 90s in Great Britain and a glimpse at the early promise of the internet.
Tim Leighton-Boyce and Paul Sanders were the masterminds behind the guide. Here’s what they had to say on the matter…
How did the Knowhere Guide start? Am I right in thinking it was originally just for skate spots?
Tim: Yes and no. Knowhere itself was never just about skate spots. But its origins date back to a paper-based directory of UK skate spots which first appeared in a newsletter published by a skateboard retailer, Alpine Sports at the start of the 80s. That listing was created at a time when all the skateboard magazines had collapsed. I ran the skate mail order department of Alpine Sports and was aware, from letters mostly, of all these skaters who had been cut off from any form of mass communication but wanted to know what was going on. And where to skate. So I started to expand the mail order price list into something a lot more.
The printed version of the listing had many different names. But the original data was carried forward and expanded as a continuous process. The Alpine newsletter evolved and expanded. It changed its name to Alpine Action. The company folded but before it collapsed they sold off the skate (and by now BMX side) to some of the people who ran it and the new shop adopted Alpine Action as a name. I did not join them. One of my great mistakes. But they were all friends and I was very close to them.
I ended up concentrating on photography with a side-line in digital stuff. I gradually got more involved in BMX Action Bike magazine. I think we may have started publishing a version of the guide in BMX Action Bike and then R.a.D. It may sound odd that I can’t remember clearly, but it was a long time ago. I would need to check the magazines for dates and for what it was called at that point. It’s had some very cheesy names in its time ‘Concrete Corner’ was one of them, I think. Or is that just a bad dream?
A critical point in the evolution of Knowhere was the brief flash and burn which was Phat magazine. R.a.D magazine was sold out from under the editorial team yet again, so we tried to launch our own magazine called Phat. The distributors were insistent that it must not be ‘just’ a skateboard magazine. We had to be very careful to avoid the skate content dominating, even though our motive was to produce a skate magazine. So as part of that, the ‘where to skate’ guide dutifully started to include other types of listing. If I remember correctly the name also changed in a relevant direction and it was now called “Where?”
Phat exploded after three issues in 1993 and I had nothing to do. Gavin Hills said he knew some people I would find very interesting. He took me along to Brick Lane where there was an empty old brewery. There were three businesses in it at the time, if I recall correctly. A car park, a music hall and, in one big office with big windows and a very big table, Oscar Music. The interesting people were Paul and Phillip who ran Oscar Music and certainly did interesting things. The interesting things were to do with music. And they were exploring digital things such as broadcasting MIDI files via TV on Tomorrow’s World (or something like that) and interactive disc-based media like CDi.
The timing of that meeting was perfect. The web had just been invented and the earliest graphical browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape were about to appear. The great thing people said about the web then was that suddenly “everyone had a printing press” – the distinction between publisher and consumer had been removed. And it was true.
Paul: I was doing some music projects at the time, but thinking that online technology would have a big impact on lots of things. When it became possible to make a website, we decided to try and were having ideas about who we wanted to be looking at it. The descriptions of the places in the guide had all been sent in by readers of the magazines, and Tim organised them into a database and edited them so they read well. We started off by doing an output of the database and using some code to chop it up into web pages. Then I thought we should let people contribute directly.
There were a few categories other than skate spots – newsagents where you could buy skate mags, cheap food, hook up spots (meeting your friends rather than dogging – that came later…), and I think the notorious best and worst were already there.
So the main influence was what Tim was already doing, but with some changes for the Internet age. We were looking at some online bulletin boards too, and the alt.* internet newsgroups which were pretty wild. And communities like the Well in California.
When did it first go online? What was the internet like back then?
Tim: I think it probably went on line in 1994, not 1993. The internet had been around before then, but this was the point when general use started to take off. The invention of the web and browsers with graphics and sound, combined with commercial organisations like AOL making access relatively open, triggered an explosion. It was very exciting. Very new. It felt like a whole world was opening up. Which it was. I’m so glad I got a chance to experience that.
Outside of the guides you’d already done in R.a.D and the like, was it influenced by anything else?
Tim: It seemed like a natural progression from those guides. In my case it was also an extension of the free classified adverts which we used to publish in R.a.D. I was very keen on those. They were like a public bulletin board for readers. Those messages were also a precursor of what was about to happen. I wanted to level the playing field so everyone could have their voice heard.
The guide didn’t just focus on big cities, and there’s pages on pretty much every town in the country. Was it important for these places that are often ignored to have a presence?
Tim: It was extremely important. That was more important to me than the big towns and cities because the big places are always well-served. R.a.D had always been about covering what was happening in as many places as possible. Everywhere was just as important.
Paul: When it started to take off it got us thinking about a whole lot of things. One of them was how sometimes a place might be called all sorts of things by local people, and might even be considered to be in a different place. My view was that people’s opinions were more true than the official data – which you couldn’t get anyway because the government controlled it and wouldn’t let us use it.
We let people suggest new places to add, and took the names and locations they gave us rather than checking on a map. So even the geography itself was user generated.
I also thought it was very important to be vague rather than trying to give every curb or wall a latitude and longitude. Local people knew where things were without looking at the OS map, and we didn’t want to make it too easy for the authorities to use Knowhere to organise patrols or for dodgy people to target young people.
There’s some pretty wild stuff on there, with a few people getting named and shamed. Did anyone ever have to step in and delete anything?
Paul: Yes. We’ve had big and small vendettas, and a few times the police have been involved either to keep the peace or because someone posted information about crimes. It’s very hard to get the balance right and we try very hard to go for free speech, so we’ve had a few moments. When we added message boards it got wild. But it also got really creative and we had some strong communities inhabit Knowhere for a while. There’s no need for that now with Facebook and Twitter.
Was it annoying that something that was set up as something helpful eventually become a forum for small-town beef… or did you anticipate that all along?
Tim: This is something that mostly happened after I was involved. I did not anticipate it because I had not really experienced it before. In retrospect my life during R.a.D magazine was like being in an echo chamber. The people working on the magazine and the people reading it shared a common interest and that was the focus of our dialogue. For example the free classified messages sometimes contained a slight element of local rivalry, but not much more.
Once the listing went on line and started opening up for other content things started to change. The thing which also started to happen when I was around was people trying to get in touch with old school friends. In retrospect we might have spotted the user need for something like Friends Reunited and then Facebook. But at the time I certainly didn’t.
Paul: It’s still much, much more than a forum for small town beef, but I didn’t find it annoying – and I still don’t. The language people use is amazing, so they are obviously putting some thought and effort into the helpful and informative stuff as well as the complaints and insults.
What happened as well is that the users got much more diverse, and we encouraged that by adding many more categories of information. When small towns still had record shops and music venues we had quite a big community of musicians and gig-goers.
Adding pubs also took the average age up a bit, and adding clubs brought in another group – the Saturday night lads and lasses, and some boy racers. We knew these moves would have their downsides but they also added a lot of depth that keeping it pure would have missed out on.
What’s the Knowhere Guide’s current status?
Paul: It’s still up – you can still add stuff, and people do every day. We’ve had a few ideas over the years for ways to change it, and we have something in the works now. There’s no way that Knowhere can compete with the combination of Facebook and Wikipedia though.
I think there is something relevant Knowhere can do today, especially as we can see the downside of social media.
The guide was based around sharing information – what are your thoughts on people keeping their cards close to their chest and being secretive about spots?
Tim: I accepted that as a reality of life. There were places which we never listed or kept the details very vague. I think Droitwich banks were an example. We didn’t want to be the instrument which wrecked a place.
I’m not really sure if there’s a question here, but the guide really captures a certain time in England – there’s a lot of flat-rails behind supermarkets, damp bus shelters and kebab shops.
Tim: I really liked that aspect of it. I wince that you use the word ‘England’ because R.a.D was very keen to cover more of the UK. One of my favourite entries was for Tayvallich and there was someone who used to get in touch from Stornonway. I liked hearing about the scenes in places like that, where the fewer people and less choice of where to skate. I also liked the edgelands of the cities, like you say they would be round the back of somewhere – places other people ignored.
Do you think the entries would be much different today?
Paul: Yes – very different. For a start when we put Knowhere online nobody could just post stuff on the internet – we were one of the first wave. So the language people used was very different. Plus there was a general lack of information available about the sorts of places we had – a massive gap between the tourist guides and the Yellow Pages basically.
The local papers also felt they had the monopoly on local opinions and were often outraged by the fact that their own readers could express themselves on the Knowhere Guide. I think the views and the way they are expressed were more direct and less self-regarding too, but that might be me over-interpreting. It was really obvious however when we got a contribution where the writer was trying to write a proper review, and those were quite rare.
I think we captured in public some of the stuff that now goes on privately through phones, private groups, and social media. But the strong instinct to share is still very much there. I suppose it was a precursor to social media and the current age of everyone airing their opinions.
What are your thoughts on the internet today? Has it lived up to the expectations you had back in the early 90s?
Tim: Yes. And the most important aspect of that is outside the big ‘western’ countries. Phones have changed everything. The real liberation is what’s happened to people in very different worlds from mine. But you mention ‘social media’ and when I think back to the early days of that, when they called it ‘Web 2.0’, I remember thinking at the time that this was not new. It was just like the early days of the web when everyone tended to assume that they could put content out there and that they could email companies and bands (we were working for record labels) and get a reply.
That was suppressed for a bit when commercial organisations upped their game and produced slicker content and tried to restore the ‘few to many’ publishing model.
Social media was the same user need (I want to say something and I will) bubbling back up again. It turns out that things were not quite that simple. Big business pushes back. The big platforms are now being viewed with suspicion and hostility. It’s like the tide flowing in and out. The tide is immensely powerful and the shape of the coast changes.
Paul: I knew in 1992 that the internet was a revolution, and that’s what drove me to develop my business (mostly music now, but broader back then) at a time when there was not much money in digital media.
It’s interesting that the fundamental technology is still very similar to what it was in say 1996 – it’s just faster and more ubiquitous. Maybe we’re due another revolution. I don’t know what my expectations were other than that we would be connecting one to one and many to many around our shared interests, and that seemed to me a creative opportunity as much as anything.
I did expect that the trivial would be right there alongside the bigger and more important stuff, and that was one of the things I really still love about Knowhere.
Definitely. There’s a lot of ‘everyday’ things on there that most people overlook. As someone involved with the internet fairly early, how do you see the web going in the next few years? Should people be worried?
Tim: I think the thing called the ‘web’ and concepts like ‘web sites’ have become less and less important. I spent the first years of my digital work trying to explain to people what web sites were, and for the last few years I’ve been trying to explain that they’re not a useful concept any more. The internet is being used to communicate and share knowledge in so many different ways, and I believe that expansion will continue. As with medicine and electricity, I think the ever-wider use of the internet is transformative and mostly in an extremely positive way.
There have been several different waves of attempts to make use of the internet conform to earlier non-digital models and then to earlier versions of itself (assuming an ‘it’ as viewed from various perspectives). What actually happens is always slightly new and different. People want to communicate. Some of what they want to communicate has always been very divisive and repugnant to different people, but broadly speaking I think that will sort itself out over the generations as it always has.
Paul: I’ve got a deep optimism that, given the right information and the ability to choose, people will generally do enough of the right thing. What is hurting now is that the owners of the platforms are hiding so much, and controlling the choices we have so that our friendships and family connections are hostage to their greed and irresponsible spying on us.
You could look at the last ten years as one huge experiment on humanity, and what’s good is that the subjects of the experiment are learning from the results. I’ve written about this in the context of music and I think the same forces and principles apply everywhere.
So yes, we should be worried enough to look for the right thing and do it when we can, but I’m not predicting dystopia or internet-induced fascism. We need to find a better way to contextualise what we see and experience online, so we don’t give the harmful things the momentum they’d otherwise lack.
But the original skaters who were part of Knowhere in the early 90s, and I’m sure your readers now, don’t think of themselves as helpless victims of online sociopaths, and will call out bad behaviour when they see it, and that is all that it takes to get us through this phase. One thing I am very sure about is that we’re not going to deal with our problems by becoming less connected to each other.
INTERVIEW ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN RED STEPS ISSUE 4
Peter Bergman is an artist from America. Throughout the 90s he did all manner of boundary-pushing performance pieces—like sending postcards to random people for a year before turning up at their doors, just to see what happened… or posting notes in the windscreens of white convertible VW Golfs offering to take the owners out for dinner.
Probably the most strenuous of all these pieces was his attempt to walk the 2,653 mile Pacific Crest Trail in his graduation suit. Things didn’t exactly go to plan, and after having to call it quits 900 miles short, he made a pact with his hiking partner to finish the trail when they were twice as old… 23 years later, in 2019, they managed it.
I recently talked with Peter about the trek—along with such other important subjects as failure, ageing, rites-of-passage, the random nature of life and cheap suits—over on the Outsiders website. You can read the full conversation here.
When most people get misty eyed and nostalgic about old cars, they usually end up rattling on about old Volvo estates and maroon Saab 900s. Smug car dweebs might regard these as ‘design classics’ (and they probably are), but surely it’s a bit of a cop-out to buzz off such obvious stuff?
Meanwhile, a completely overlooked box-shaped wonder with a strange badge that hardly anyone recognises can still be spotted in damp towns around the north of England—the Proton Saga.
I’ve got no knowledge of whether these things are actually good or not—but I’ve always been into these mysterious Malaysian oddities—mainly because they always remind me of a great afternoon back in the late ‘90s…
Due to the fact that my primary school was dead small (there were only 16 pupils by the time I left), hiring a coach for a school trip would have been overkill, so every time we went out somewhere we’d just be driven around by whichever parents happened to around that day. This led to loads of slightly sketchy stuff going on, like my mate’s drongo dad treating us to handbrake turns in the school car-park (in a Lada estate if I remember rightly), and ten of us being bundled into space in the back of a Land Rover usually reserved for barking sheepdogs.
Back to the original point, the chunky-necked grandad of two sisters who lived on a farm drove a Proton. This was the vehicle that was to take us to a dull college building in Kendal for an afternoon of what might be known as ‘hazard awareness’.
This basically consisted of us lot being shuttled from room to room to be told various potentially-lifesaving-yet-very-boring tips such as ‘don’t swim in reservoirs’ and ‘be sure not to overload plug sockets’. For the grand finale, they wheeled out a massive TV which was deeper than it was wide, and our attention was instantly grabbed—television reigns supreme over laminated fact-sheets and overhead projections onto walls covered in Blu-tac marks, so we knew we were in for a treat.
The treat in question was a particularly high-concept public information film themed around farm safety. Whereas most of these films follow a pretty basic plot usually involving grubby 1970s kids with flares getting their kites stuck in power lines, this one was a 20 minute opus telling the tale of a group of kids who’d recently relocated to a farm. After vandalising a gravestone they found in a bit of wasteland, a curse was placed on them and they each fell-foul of farm-based hazards.
Suffice to on the way back to school the sisters I was sharing a lift were too traumatised to talk, and in the months that followed the younger one repeatedly had nightmares relating to the harrowing public safety vid. Not ideal, but as far as I know she is still alive, and wasn’t involved in any farm-machinery-based disaster, so at least the film did its job.
I think I first Manchester mosaic master Mark Kennedy in 2014. He was working with adidas on some project which involved making large-scale tiled depictions of Stan Smith’s moustachioed mug, and the shop I worked at back then was somehow involved the project. For a good few weeks Mark was a regular face in the office—a definite breath of fresh normal air when compared with the shameless ‘brand managers’ who used to wander in trying to peddle their wares. From what I remembered Mark even went to the effort of making a particularly catchy song, complete with music video, about Stan Smith, to go with the mosaics—but for some reason adidas didn’t use it.
Eight years later, I interviewed him and snapped a few photos for an opticians. Mark wears some pretty swanky glasses. Read it here…
https://www.seen.co.uk/blogs/journal/mark-kennedy-mosaic-manchester-interview#article
Or read the old interview I did with Mark back in 2014 here…
https://www.oipolloi.com/blogs/the-blog/18182911-interview-mark-kennedy-mosaic-mastermind
Finally got around to printing a zine of photos from two trips to France a few years back. I constantly have about five InDesign files of fully laid-out zines 98% finished, but actually exporting them and doing something with them seems to take years. Anyway, this one finally made it off the hard-drive, and is now available via Central Library worldwide, Unitom in Manchester, Catalog on Oxford Road, Rare Mags in sunny Stocky and Good Press up in Scotland (who now have pretty much the full range of Auto Focus zines).
Roman Candle Magazine 