Scottish Fanzines #2 Collage

BAM BALAM: One of the most influential fanzines ever. As Mark Perry, the editor of Sniffin’ Glue explained once to Jon Savage: ‘All that stuff about Glue being the first fanzine is crap. Brian Hogg’s Bam Balam, which was all about sixties music, was in its fourth issue by then.’ Published twice a year from his home in Dunbar, Bam Balam was lovingly researched, hugely informative and with its highly distinctive psychedelic logo – designed by Nic Dartnell – it looked pretty good too.

Bam Balam No.9 (1979) Bam Balam #9 (p 11)

Brian Hogg went on to write many liner notes for compilations – and has compiled a few albums himself for that matter. His book, All That Ever Mattered: The History of Scottish Rock and Pop is something you should read if you’re at all interested in its subject matter. Oh and he also contributed regularly to Cripes too, the free fanzine/newsletter available in Bruce’s Record Shops back in the day. (More on Cripes in the not too distant future).

BAYVIEW BULLETIN: East Fife football fanzine that morphed into Away From the Numbers.

(THE) BEAT GOES ON: Devoted to The Rezillos & Revillos.

BEATSTALKING: Don’t know much about this one bar it came out in the 1980s and covered bands like Baby’s Got a Gun (as you can see from the collage above). Did they ever feature The Beatstalkers I wonder?

BICYCLE PUMP: Grangemouth zine which helped promote many local Stirlingshire bands in the late 1970s. You won’t see many of these popping up on eBay.

Bis - Bis(t) Wee fanzine in the World Ever

(THE) BIS(T) WEE FANZINE IN THE WORLD…. EVER!: For all things Bis you may not be surprised to learn – well, if you didn’t know already. And it was wee, A6 to be precise.

BLOW YOUR NOSE ON THIS: See the Alastair McKay interview HERE.

BOF (BORING OLD FART): A short lived fanzine from, if I remember correctly, Edinburgh. I had the first issue which reviewed the year in music (1977) and featured The Rezillos.

BOMBS AWAY BATMAN: A fanzine created in 1983 by the band The Mixers, who featured Grant Morrison as bassist – that’s the Grant Morrison who, in 2006, was voted # 2 favourite comic book writer of all time. That same year, the Bombs Away Batman writer and artist began working for DC Comics… on Batman.

BORN YESTERDAY: Early 80s Glasgow zine keen on the music of Postcard Records.

BOYS ABOUT TOWN: Focussed on The Jam/Style Council/Paul Weller but the zine was produced in Scotland. Very glossy. Very professional and I’m guessing very popular – at least in terms of fanzines.

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And finally – in the last week or so I’ve experienced occasional problems with the blog showing some uploaded images as broken. No idea the cause of this as everything looks fine in preview but hopefully the problem is sorted soon enough.