DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture by Amy Spencer

Author:Amy Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780714522609
Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers

The Impact of the Punk Zine

The punk zine did not need to appeal to a wide market. As their publications could be sold at gigs and in record shops, unlike the editors of underground newspaper editors, punk zine founders were rarely concerned with widescale distribution. In fact, they were only really interested in reaching fellow punks. This meant that they did not need to tone down their attitudes to court the mainstream, and such disregard is evident in the dominant style, which was rough and angry looking. The sloppy style seemed to be a badge of authenticity. If a zine wasn’t slick in appearance or perfect in terms in presentation, and was not interested in reaching a mass audience, then the content was seen as truthful and therefore something to believe in. The rough style intentionally emphasized the unprofessional nature of the zine and asserted its independence from the mainstream. The punks did not aim to please anyone else or sell their zines to anyone who wasn’t already a part of their world.

Music was generally the primary focus of the punk zine. It was this angry new sound that brought young punks-in-the-making together and it was this that was most celebrated. Zine pages were filled with reviews of gigs and records as well as interviews with bands. But this was different from the representation of music in mainstream magazines. This was media written by people who were positioned inside the music scene rather than impartial critical observers on the outside. New bands were written about almost as soon as they were formed, long before the mainstream music magazines such as the NME knew about them. This was a music scene documenting itself, caused in part by the lack of early coverage of punk in the mainstream music magazines, who failed to recognize its worth as a valid music scene. That they were so slow on the uptake meant punks were at first forced to write about themselves, and their antipathy towards the music industry meant that they were happy to do so. This set the punk scene apart from other previous music scenes. It was founded on DIY principles and these became its strength. The zine was a medium over which the creator had ultimate control. The punk ethos could be transmitted without any interference from the mainstream press, or the music press.

As Jon Savage explains, ‘Although the British music magazine, the NME, is always presented as the champion of punk, that was not actually so. Because of the NME’s collective ego, it hung back before it could give its “imprimatur” to the movement.’ Other British music magazines, Sounds (John Ingham, Giovanni Dadamo) and Melody Maker (Caroline Coon) were much more off the mark in 1976. (I never saw Tony Parsons or Julie Burchill as being as representative or as influential as they, and many others, would now have it.)’

When the British music press caught up with the new punk music that the zines were writing about, it revitalized them.

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