Sniffin' Glue & Other Rock 'n' Roll Habits
The Fanzine Podcast hosts punk 'zine pioneer Mark Perry. Plus, win a copy of the Glue compendium.
For those of you who are new here, Tony Fletcher Wordsmith typically puts out two posts a week: a Midweek Update, full of news, reviews and links from around the cultural hub; and a long weekend read, ideally to be digested on a laptop, over a leisurely morning coffee/brunch, rather than on your phone on the go. There is also the monthly Crossed Channels podcast, co-hosted with Dan Epstein. Most of these posts are free, but the podcast, occasional weekend posts, and archives older than 12 weeks are for paid subscribers.
Published today, Feb 29, 2024: the latest episode of the Fanzine Podcast, featuring a one-on-one conversation between myself and Mark Perry. You can listen from the two major platforms above and below, or find your preferred streaming platform from the home page here. Or just listen using the audio link below:
For those who don’t know: Back in 1976, given that there was no other publication dedicated to the Ramones and the new bands popping up around London, Mark founded Sniffin’ Glue, the original British punk zine. Barely a year later, after a dozen issues that saw circulation rise from 10 – as in ten, total - to 20,000 copies, Mark walked away from it, partly because he was disillusioned with punk, but also to focus on his group, Alternative TV.
Now, in 2024, copies of early Sniffin’ Glues go for ridiculous sums of money, but they have additionally been gathered up for a new edition of the compendium, Sniffin’ Glue and Other Rock’n’Roll Habits, also published today, Feb 29 2024 - by Omnibus Press, the fine UK company that also put out the compendium of my own new wave zine, Jamming!, as well as my first three books. The Sniffin’ Glue compendium brings together every single page of that zine's 12 (and a half) issues, even including all the adverts, and has an extended intro written by Mark, along with various photographs from back in the day.
You can order the book direct from Omnibus, from all good online retailers and hopefully find it in many shops as well. However, thanks to Greg at Omnibus – who also designed the Fanzine Podcast logo - we have a copy of the book to give away. You just need to be a subscriber to Wordsmith, which will enable you to DM the answer, using the nifty new DM tool that makes Substack less of a writers platform and more of a social media site than ever. But I digress. Here’s the question:
In this episode, Mark talks of three ‘zines that already existed in 1976 and which helped show him that it could be done. What are the names of those three zines?
Send your answer via a Direct Message below, and on March 19, for no particular reason other than that the date exists, I’ll draw one name from among hopefully many correct answers, pass it on to Greg, and Omnibus will send that lucky person a free book, whatever country they may be in.
On this episode, you’ll hear me mention the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, which I did not know existed until this week, when Liz Mason – who was on the last episode of the Fanzine Podcast, “Perzines are Awesome,” alongside Billy McCall – sent me photos of Jamming! and Sniffin’ Glue sitting on the shelves of the Museum’s fanzine exhibit. It’s a strange sensation indeed to think that something you put together as a teenager, something so marginal that you were excited merely to see in an independent record shop at the time, should end up in a museum several decades later, let alone a museum in Vegas of all places, entitled the Punk Rock Museum of all things. But that, at least, is one of the fun aspects of sticking around for a few years: life has a habit of surprising you.
The more serious aspect of this, which is something that Mark clearly wrestles with, and which we talk about quite a bit on this interview, is how to balance one’s pride in one’s past activities against our generational obsession with nostalgia, especially punk nostalgia, which ought to be an oxymoron but sadly is not.
This was the second time I have interviewed Mark since sitting down with him in late-ish 1978, when I was 14 and just getting going with Jamming!, while Mark was already an ancient 21. The subsequent interviews have each followed at a coincidental 23-year gap, which suggests we’ll be pushing it to imagine a fourth one in the year 2047. In other words, enjoy it while you have it!
You can catch up on other episodes of the Fanzine Podcast from here, the data base is running pretty deep at this point. Indeed, I’d like to believe we’ve got a good thing going with this show, and I hope to keep it running for a long while yet – especially as I just put my other, older, lifestyle-related podcast, One Step Beyond, to bed, and possibly for good. That one you can check out here: I am super proud of it, but it has just become one too many of the creative endeavors I juggle. Thanks to everyone who ever listened, and everyone who ever agreed to take part. And on we go…
As noted up top, and as regular subscribers will be aware, the Midweek Update is usually chock full of short reviews, and external links to and about, various podcasts, playlists, movies, books, singles, albums and more. This one is focused on the Sniffin’ Glue podcast, but knowing that we have quite a few new subscribers since last week – someone somewhere on Substack must have bigged up Wordsmith, and hopefully a few of you are coming over from the Fanzine Podcast as well – I am going to go out by highlighting those of the Weekend Long Reads that have generated the most discussion and feedback, especially based on the number of subscribers at time of publication.
In an ideal world, these posts don’t “date,” but because most of them are now behind the paywall, I’m going to open up a free 7-day trial, which *should* work via this link: https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/7daytrial. Hopefully you’ll take advantage of that trial to mosey round, enjoy the old posts, listen to Crossed Channels with
, and come away sufficiently buoyed by the amount of quality “content” that you’ll stick with the paid program as a result. That way I can bring you more quality content - all of it entirely ad-free, including the podcasts – and round and round the creative wheel of positive karma and generous patronage shall spin. Cheers everyone!
Fabulous, brings back some good memories - saw Eddie And The Hot Rods at Nottingham Uni back in the 70s, very good too !