Words Fail Me: A former fanzine writer recalls his days writing fanzines

Craig Stephen on a love of fanzines …

Bored, in between college courses, and with a desire to be noticed, this writer hammered at his keyboard to come up with a string of entertaining fanzines in the heyday of the format.

These A5 wonders were once an important part of the underground media. They were a source of information for music fanatics with music coverage restricted to the weekly newspapers which often bypassed certain bands or genres to the annoyance of many.

In Britain, the black and white paper frenzy began in earnest during punk, with titles such as ‘Ripped and Torn’ and ‘Sniffin’ Glue’, which have virtually entered the mainstream as reference points, and have been compiled into glossy books. As punk was overtaken by post-punk, indie and a myriad of sub-genres, fanzines blossomed, often particular to certain bands or the trend of the month.

In New Zealand, the likes of ‘Empty Heads’, ‘Push’, and ‘Anti-System’ appeared while the Dunedin-based ‘Garage’ fanzine is generally regarded as the daddy of them all, and has recently been compiled in a big fat book costing $59.

My own experience of writing/editing fanzines began while studying at university and with the hopes of having something to add to my rather thin CV. They were an outlet for my writing ambitions as well as my angsty, generally left-wing opinions. And they were also a vehicle to gently annoy people, people who needed to be annoyed. Of course, those people would never have actually read my zines, but that wasn’t the point.

 The first zine was dedicated to the House of Love, and was called ‘Se Dest’ after one of their album tracks. It was a straight-down-the-line band-focused fanzine, with the emphasis on fan. It was short and to the point. While it was strictly a one-off for me, I am pleased to say that ‘Se Dest’ continues as an online publication in the hands of one of the first people to buy that initial edition.

Nevertheless, my mind was more interested on the broader music scene so I did a zine dedicated to the Festive 50, the end-of-year chart of the year’s standout tracks which were aired on the John Peel show during the Christmas break.

It appealed to the list-making side of my brain, and while it was a straight compilation of annual charts from 1976, it had a great title ‘The Recreant Cad’, and a cover star in Kenny Dalglish in a Celtic strip. He wasn’t a cad, just my favourite player growing up. Dave Gedge of the Wedding Present was a buyer.

But the real deal were a series of zines that expanded my musical interest. The first of these, ‘Words Fail Me’, featured a cover drawn in the shape of a whisky bottle and had the words “established in 1997”. The back cover had a map of Angus with my home town Montrose snap bang in the middle.

The emphasis was on not taking myself seriously and to write about subjects that mattered to the still young self. “There is basically no limit to what can be discussed,” I wrote in my introduction trying to entice would-be contributors.

 So, the first article was entitled “Burn the NME” and was a critique of the best-selling music weekly of the time. Just to consolidate my dislike of the owners, editors and writers of that esteemed publication, there was an article called Morrissey versus the Music Press in which I both defended and pilloried the artist, and accused the music press (and that being mainly the NME) of having a vendetta against Mozza. Clearly, I had some internal issues with the music media at the time. Far more constructive was the obituary for Billy MacKenzie of The Associates, a cribbed interview from another fanzine of punk revivalists ‘S*M*A*S*H’, and some record reviews.

The enthusiasm was there, though it’s debatable about the quality. There is certainly a refreshing sense of dry and dark humour throughout, and some of it couldn’t possibly see the light of day in the current climate.

The second edition of ‘Words Fail Me’ is something I am far more prouder of. There are interviews I conducted myself – of Travis before performing one night in Sheffield, of Topper over the phone, Dave Gedge, and Euros from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, who wasn’t in the mood to talk after the band’s soundcheck but gratefully did so anyway. I stuffed up the recording of the Topper interview, and after writing up what I recalled of the chat almost immediately, made some stuff up based on what I knew of the band.

There were live reviews of acts performing in Sheffield and Hull, and a piece on French arthouse movie Battle of Algiers. Mates contributed short stories and there was a feeling that this was what a fanzine should look like. It was still stapled together, the font types and sizes are all over the place, and it contained several cut and glue pictures, but it was a move forward.

 The third of these zines was issued when I had moved to Croydon in south London. It was not a suburb renowned for producing great bands nor contained any venues of note, but had several excellent record stores including Beanos, which was apparently the biggest independent record store in Europe at the time. The best thing about it were the trains heading to central London or in the other direction to Brighton.

Unfortunately, I can’t locate my own copy of this so I’m unable to offer judgement on it, but I recall it being a continuation of issue 2. It contained one of my own short stories (which I never want to read again!) and a piece on American gangsta novelist Iceberg Slim.

But at this point, the work involved for modest sales was draining, and a career in journalism was taking precedence. Meanwhile, fanzines were being taken over by the phenomenon that was the internet.

In 2023, there isn’t much need for printed music zines with so many avenues online. The DIY cottage industry still exists, and recent Zinefests in Wellington have been dominated by those focused on identity or other personal issues, or comics.

Some music fanzines exist in the UK where the football zine is surviving via veteran publications such as ‘Not The View’ (Celtic) and ‘City Gent’ (Bradford).

You hear that? That was this writer giving himself a firm pat on the back, not due to an out-of-control ego, but for having the motivation and commitment to do something that took an awful lot more work than the finished product would suggest. I put it down to a start in a career that has taken me to New Zealand, into radio and several quality publications, as well as being a published author.

Long live the fanzine. If you know what I mean.

Pass, Shoot, Goal: Football and Music

Football and music: small words that evoke memories of players singing out of tune, or Chas and Dave being dug up ahead of a Spurs appearance in the FA Cup final. Or ‘Back Home’ by the England World Cup squad, that dismal Baddiel and Skinner effort … the list of cultural criminality goes on and on.

Music has often used football for its ill-gotten gains and, on the other side of the coin, the sport has gotten a piggy back from the industry to promote a forthcoming tournament or boost the bank balance of a striker.

But perhaps it isn’t all bad, after all The Fall wrote a couple of songs about the sport.

So, here’s our resident Montrose FC sympathiser Craig Stephen, with the top football recordings of all time:

New Order - World in Motion (1990)

It included a rap and was England’s official World Cup anthem of that year but it’s by New Order, a band that could compile a range of fart sounds, add a drum’n bass beat and it would still be the best track of the year.

I was living in north-east Scotland at the time, and buying this at the local Woolworths would have resulted in pelters from the lads who would have accused me of being a traitor. So it was a furtive buy, carried out when the young shop assistant was someone who didn’t know me and probably knew nothing about football.

New Order had taken a new turn on 1989’s Technique, an album that revealed that they’d been listening and taking drugs to the emerging rave and electronica scene. For this single they teamed up with six members of the England squad for Italia ’90 and comedian Keith Allen. 

Footballers don’t tend to have very good musical tastes so it all made for an interesting session. It has a catchy chorus, a passable rap, a brilliant video and was devoid of much of the pommy arrogance that it could appeal to the masses. And it did. But perhaps not in Montrose.

The Undertones - My Perfect Cousin (1979)

Ostensibly about a family member who's good at everything including table football: "He always beat me at Subbuteo/ 'cause he flicked the kick/ And I didn't know," and the cover of this single features a Subbuteo player about to “flick the kick”. Believe me, that game was popular in the 70s and 80s.

I, Ludicrous - Quite Extraordinary (1988)

Graduates of The Fall school of witticism, I, Ludicrous spewed a handful of football-related songs, such as ‘We Stand Around’ (about hardcore fans braving all the elements and bad players), and ‘Moynihan Brings Out The Hooligan In Me’ (about the odious little shit of a Tory Sports Minister at the time).

‘Quite Extraordinary’ was a piss-take of the BBCs footballing and athletics commentator David Coleman. “Same routine year in year out/ It's predictable every summer/ Mispronouncing the Kenyan runners/ It gets worse in the winter/ with the goddamn videoprinter/ That's Stenhousemuir's 13th game without a scoring draw.” 

Getting the name of an obscure Scottish league side deserves a Brownies badge on its own.

The Proclaimers - The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues (1987)

“I'd never been to Ayrshire/ I hitched down one Saturday/ Sixty miles to Kilmarnock/ To see Hibernian play/ The day was bright and sunny/ But the game I won't relay.”

And the bespectacled Leith duo have also gifted the world ‘Sunshine on Leith’ which is now an anthem for Hibs fans.

Billy Bragg - The Few (1991)

Britain’s favourite lefty muso, Billy Bragg, also wrote ‘Sexuality’ which isn’t about football per se (you may have guessed as such from the title) but contains the remarkable line: “I had an uncle who once played, for Red Star Belgrade.”

‘The Few’, also from the Don’t Try This at Home album, was a grim tale of hooligan firms: “At night the Baby Brotherhood and the Inter City Crew/ Fill their pockets up with calling cards/ And paint their faces red white and blue/ Then they go out seeking different coloured faces/ And anyone else that they can scare/ And they salute the foes their fathers fought/ By raising their right hands in the air.”

Bragg’s ‘God’s Footballer’, by the way, was about former Wolves player Peter Knowles, who retired early to become a Jehovah’s Witness missionary.

Half Man Half Biscuit - I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan (1985)

Written in recognition of Hungarian football, and with the almost obligatory “hungary for” joke, it’s actually not even the best song about eastern European football on the Back Again In the DHSS album.

‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’ is mainly about Subbuteo, well, actually, Scalectrix, but Subbuteo gets the gig among the young crowd when the racing game conks out due to a dodgy transformer.

Barmy Army - The English Disease (LP, 1989)

The English Disease (a reference of course to hooliganism) was very much of its time, with tracks such as ‘England 2, Yugoslavia 0’ and a protest song against a plan in the UK by the then ruling Conservatives to issue all football fans with ID cards.

Barmy Army cut and paste interviews and match commentary, using them ad nauseum; expressing their love of West Ham United with snippets of the ‘Ammers theme tune I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, and songs dedicated to Alan Devonshire and Billy Bonds. 

On a hit-and-miss (the goalpost) album, the strongest moment is ‘Sharp as a Needle’, featuring the Anfield Kop in fine voice.

The Pogues - Down All the Days (1989)

My own favourite football-related song, even if the core subject is writer Christy Brown, is this track from the Peace and Love album, for the line, “And I’ve never been asked, and I’ve never replied, have I supported the Glasgow Rangers,” which can mean many things to many people.

Super Furry Animals - The Man Don’t Give A Fuck (1996)

The Welsh superstars’ expletive-ridden tale of a man who, well, you get the idea. It was dedicated to 1970s Cardiff City player Robin Friday and featured the Welshman flicking the Vs on the cover. Apparently, he really didn’t give a fig, and who can argue with that kind of footballer. It was a great song too, but let’s forget that it used a Steely Dan sample.

The Sultans of Ping - Give Him a Ball and a Yard of Grass (1993)

“If God meant the game to be played up there, He would’ve put goalposts in the air.”

The speculation is that this single was about Nigel Clough. Was he any good?

Primal Scream, Irvine Welsh and On-U Sound - The Big Man and the Scream Meet the Barmy Army Uptown (1996)

Three magnificent talents who utilised those skills in very different ways in this one-off single, Scotland’s unofficial theme tune for the nation’s team’s participation in the 1996 European Championships held south of the border, which ended in predictable glorious failure.

Welsh describes a boozed-up trip to Wembley to watch Scotland play England as opposition supporters chant “who are ya?” in the background, but the writer is essentially hitting out at certain Scotland fans.

“In every hick town/ Across this pseudo nation/ You can see the most fucked up scum/ That was shat into creation/ Where a blue McEwan's lager top equals/ no imagination/ You're hunbelievable.”

Oh, isn’t the mention of the top a reference to supporters of the now defunct club called Rangers? Tee hee, you cad Welsh. 

Gracie Fields - Pass, Shoot, Goal (1931)

And just to prove referencing football in song is not a new fad, Gracie Fields recorded this track before Hitler had even taken power. Fields was apparently a big Rochdale FC fan. The song was written and recorded for a film called Derby Day about a derby match between Rochdale and Oldham Athletic. 

The film was never made but the song survives, with a bedazzling chorus sung in magnificent Lancashire tones: "Football, football, it drives me up the pole. You hear their gentle voices call – pass, shoot... goal!"

Listen here

The Fall - Kicker Conspiracy (1983)

Let’s read what The Fall’s Mark E. Smith himself said about ‘Kicker Conspiracy’ in an interview with Uncut:

"It's about English soccer violence being triggered off by rubbish management and frustration that the game's been taken away from its support, that the English game is so boring there's nothing else to do.”

Like most Smith songs, the lyrics are obscure. It namechecks Jimmy Hill (as J. Hill), Bert Millichip and George Best, but also ‘Pat McCat’, “the very famous sports reporter” ...

The Fall also released a track called ‘Theme from Sparta F.C.’ which contained lyrics in Greek. Here’s some of the most transparent English words: “Cheap English man in the paper shop/ You mug old women in your bobble hat/ Better go spot a place to rest/ No more ground boutique at match in Chelsea/ We are Sparta F.C.”

Trout - Green and White (1995)

This is a single I can't recall buying by a band I had never heard from (nor since). And that's almost the same amount of knowledge as Dr Google has. 

It is gloriously non-produced with incomprehensible vocals - I can detect something about Partick Thistle and “doing the conga” in The Jungle at Parkhead but the chorus is quite transparent: "Green and white and Rangers shite/ Green and white and Rangers shite" repeated several times. And what more would you want in a song?

The single (entitled "A Tribute to Celtic") is shared with electro-friendly act Cha Cha 2000 who's ‘Tired Legs at the End of the Game’ is equally word-unfriendly but I can make out a "Celtic Celtic" chant and some sort of football connection. Somebody out there must know something?

Andy Cameron - Ally's Tartan Army (1978)

Glaswegian comedian and all round gallus Cameron released this wee cracker that even got the supporter of the old Rangers a Top of the Pops appearance when it reached No.6 in the British charts. Comparing manager Ally McLeod to Muhammad Ali was typical of the tongue-in-both-cheeks humour.

Listen to this verse with a straight face: "When we reach the Argentine we're really gonna show/The world a brand of football that they could never know/ We're representing Britain; we've got to do or die/ For England cannae dae it 'cause they didnae qualify."

Scotland lost to Peru, drew with Iran and found themselves out of the tournament instead of winning it.

Morrissey - Munich Air Disaster 1958 (2004)

He used to be an inspiration now he's a flag waver for all the shit political philosophies of the world. But back in 2004, when he was still much revered, Mozza recorded what I think is his only football related song, a tribute to the Busby Babes, the lightning Manchester United side of the 1950s, most of whom died in the infamous plane crash at Munich.

Luke Haines - Leeds United (2006)

The somewhat eccentric Haines, formerly of the Auteurs and various offshoots, wrote this about life in the 1970s of Vauxhall Vivas and Ford Corsairs; of Kendo Nagasaki and World of Sport. "From Wakefield to the Ridings/ To the ground at Elland Road/ At Leeds United they're chanting vengeance, it's a 13-nil defeat on the front page of the Post/ A last-minute substitution but we didn't have the talent/ I was beaten, we were gutted, I was sick as a parrot."

Mano Negra - Santa Maradona (Larchuma Football Club) (1994)

A typical brew of latino, reggae, dub and hip-hop from Mano Negra. There's big drums, tannoyed vocals, the sound of flares, football chants and a certain Argentinian player with a unique way of using his hands during a game. Sounds like Les Negresses Vertes.

Thee George Squares - 74 in 98 (Easy Easy) (1998)

"The official Fortuna Pop! World Cup EP". The A-side featured a “supergroup” of members of Prolapse, The Fabians and John Sims (a band) based around an actual world cup final held at Hampden Park in "92 or 93" in which Scotland beat the United Arab Emirates on penalties after leading 3-nil. 

The B-side, the "Sassenach side" by MJ Hibbert celebrates, as it were, England taking home the ‘Fair Play Trophy (Again)’. It was definitely the poorer cousin to Scotland's entry which when it comes to art and music is usually the case, and to prove how woeful the poms were, they had an image of Jimmy Hill on the back.

Colourbox - The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme (1996)

Despite featuring that same Mr Hill (on the cover, groan), this is actually supremely excellent, an instrumental built around a pumping bass and a horn section, it really does sound like it should be the theme tune for a World Cup highlights programme, or at least a segment featuring cracking goals and other choice moments. The story goes that Match of the Day producers were keen to have this as the soundtrack to its tournament highlights show. I don't care if it's true or not I'm going to tell all my friends that it is.

Pop Will Eat Itself - Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina (1990)

The Poppies were a bang average indie rock band from a humdrum town called Stourbridge; La Cicciolina was a blonde porn star who became an MP in Italy with a small left-wing group. A marriage made in ... ahem. Anyway, the Poppies eschewed their traditional greasy guitar sound for this very 1990 dance track peppered by samples from Bowie, the Human League and Funkadelic that could have been touched by Andy Weatherall. La Cicciolina doesn't have any input into the song itself but does appear in the video looking supremely lovely.

Real Sounds of Africa - Dynamos vs CAPS (0-0) (1984)

The (usually) 11-piece Zairean band who recorded out of Harare, Zimbabwe, also recorded ‘Tornados vs Dynamos’, ‘Soccer Fan’ and ‘Na Alla Violenza’ - likely to be a plea to footy fans. The band, also known just as Real Sounds, were one of the African bands, alongwith the Bhundu Boys, who came to Europe’s attention in the mid to late 1980s and collaborated with Norman Cook.

I haven’t covered everything … how can I? And there are club/band team-ups that are actually quite good, notably Shane MacGowan and Simple Minds appearing on a charity EP, in tribute to Celtic legend Jimmy Johnstone, plenty of songs by Serious Drinking, or more from I, Ludicrous and Half Man Half Biscuit, and an obscure indie trio from Norwich who issued one single in 1991 and who’s name I haven’t made up yet, blah blah blah, but you get the bloody point.

(But you have covered a full first-team squad’s worth, an OCD-defying and curiously symmetrical full score plus two, which in this case, might just about be right. - Ed)

The Vinyl Files Part 3 … The Green & White Brigade - The Holy Ground of Glasgow Celtic (1968)

Taking the blog out of its comfort zone to explore something a little bit different this time. An album that taps into my love of football and my love of Celtic FC way more than it does my love of music. An album handed down to me by my Dad, much like my love of football and Celtic FC. A rarely played but very precious gem within my collection.

Some background: In 1967, Scottish football ruled the roost. That year, Celtic FC became the first British club to win the European Cup - yesterday’s equivalent of today’s Champions League - and it did so with an all Scottish playing eleven, with every player being born within a short driving distance of the club’s home ground in Glasgow. A month or so earlier, the Scottish national team had beaten the then World Champion English national side at Wembley to claim the British Home Championship, and a week or so after Celtic’s Cup triumph over Italian giants Inter Milan in Lisbon, the club’s bitter rival, Glasgow Rangers FC, narrowly lost the second tier ECWC Final against crack German outfit Bayern Munich. These were halcyon days for Scottish football. Never to be repeated, although Celtic would make another European Cup Final in 1970, and semi-finals in 1972 and 1974. 

Released in to commemorate Celtic’s phenomenal 1967 success, The Green & White Brigade’s The Holy Ground of Glasgow Celtic is essentially a collection of the terrace songs and accordion-led Irish rebel tunes so beloved by the club’s supporters ... many of whom identify strongly with Ireland; although based in Scotland, the club and its forefathers had - and still have - strong links with the Emerald Isle … it’s complicated, and deeper explanation of that scenario would require more than just a separate blogpost, it would require a whole book. 

Musically, it’s an acquired taste, obviously. I have no idea who The Green and White Brigade are, other than the fact that they clearly have great taste in football teams. The singing isn’t anything to write home about, but if you like Irish “folk songs” with um, tribal elements at their core, or if you feel the need for more accordion in your life (who doesn’t, right?), then this may just be an album for you. 

Includes timeless masterpieces such as ‘Hail Hail, The Celts Are Here’, ‘We’re All Off To Dublin’ (in the green, naturally), ‘The Soldier’s Song’, and ‘Sean South of Garryowen’, plus of course a couple of obligatory medleys. Just sing along in private, and make sure you don’t get arrested. 

In these days of mass marketing of football, where all manner of paraphernalia is available - replica kits, books, CDs, posters, club magazines, unofficial fanzines - it’s perhaps easy to forget that it wasn’t always like this, and an album like The Holy Ground of Glasgow Celtic would have been a relative rarity 50 years ago when it was released. A forerunner of things to come. For me, the music is hardly important, but purely as a keepsake, passed down from father to son, it means the world. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)

The Vinyl Files – Introduction

For the blog’s 600^th post (yay me, etc) I want to introduce a new “series” focusing on the small but precious set of vinyl records in my collection. I plan to roll out a post per week, over the next few months, looking at ten of the best or most important records within that collection. But first, some context … 

We all consume music in different ways. I’m not much of a fan of Spotify. I don’t have the premium option and therefore don’t “store” albums for future streaming. I only occasionally check into Spotify for one-off album previews and only rarely check out the odd playlist that platform offers. It isn’t that the cost of premium is prohibitive or anything like that, far from it, it’s just that Spotify doesn’t really hold much appeal for me. Other members of my family swear by it.

I’m relatively old-school, and most of my current music collection consists of CDs and mp3s (albums downloaded). My collection in each of these formats is extensive and varied. Some might say its huge and rather excessive. The mp3 option, for all of its flaws – compression, variations in bitrate quality – offers the portability I crave in a way that still allows me to “own” a copy or file of the music I listen to. The CD option appeals because I like to collect “physical” things and stack them on a shelf. 

Having said that, purchasing CDs is a less frequent indulgence these days, and the vast majority of new additions to my music collection in recent years have arrived in the form of album downloads/mp3 files, which are meticulously tagged and filed away with all the pedantry of a particularly speccy and spotty OCD librarian. 

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when I first started collecting music, it was a combination of vinyl records and cassette tapes. By 1992, my collection was extensive and – in the wake of CDs becoming the most fashionable form of consumption – largely redundant. Desperate for cash, and determined to embrace the CD format just as soon as I could afford it, I sold virtually everything I’d spent the previous 15 years collecting – vinyl and cassette tapes, the vast majority sold in bulk to a trader on Wellington’s Cuba Street. Sold for peanuts. It broke my heart. 

Well, it did, and it didn’t. It did because they were my life; the only tangible thing(s) I had to show for more than a decade in the workforce. And it didn’t because my life was undergoing major change and I desperately needed the money to fund long-yearned-for overseas travel. And hey, I couldn’t fit that little lot into the one backpack I left the country with, could I?

It just made sense (at the time) and it made even more sense that when I was flush with the green stuff, I’d be able to rebuild the collection – replicate it, even – in the form of CDs, which had fast become the mainstream poison of choice. And that's exactly what I eventually did … but I also held on to a number or tapes and records I couldn’t or simply wouldn’t give up. I stored them at my parent’s abode for the duration of my travels. The most precious and sentimental stuff; the first vinyl record my Mum ever bought me (Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Album, 1970). Something passed down to me by my Dad (The Green & White Brigade’s The Holy Ground of Glasgow Celtic, 1968), and naturally enough, a childhood first love, 1978’s Solid Gold Hits Volume 22. Plus a few others, which I may or may not get to in future posts. 

Among the handful of cassette tapes I couldn’t bear to part with were The Cure’s ‘Seventeen Seconds’ (1980), and New Order’s ‘Movement’ (1981). Those albums remain firm favourites today, although I tend to listen to each of them in a newer format nowadays. 

Since then – since The Great Purge of 1992/1993 – I’ve purchased very little in the way of vinyl, but I have added a few records here and there, and I’ve “inherited” a few albums to add to that small core set. Last Christmas, when I was gifted a very cute and portable “record player” I had yet another purge because it was clear that some of the vinyl I had was simply unplayable – badly scratched, tatty, and/or filthy – and I figured there wasn’t much point in keeping them or trying to salvage them. Which means my collection today is even smaller (about 40 albums and a handful of singles) but rather more selective. I can play what remains and what remains tends to be those records I value most. That’ll be my focus in this series of blogposts. 

With new vinyl so much more readily available than it has been at any time across the past couple of decades, I also harbour sneaky plans to add to this wing of my wider music collection. But for now, it strikes me that the most unique or more interesting works in my post-purge music collection exist in the vinyl format, so I’ll try to cover off ten of the best in the coming weeks, with a short post about what makes each one so special.

Magazines of my time Part 2: The 1970s … Shoot! and Tiger

I must have been about nine years old when I signed up for my first magazine subscription. It was 1973, or perhaps 1974, a standing order for Shoot! magazine, a British football weekly. Once a week, I’d race down to collect the magazine from the local newsagent at the Awapuni shopping centre, which was a five minute bike ride from my home in the sprawling metropolis of Palmerston North … four minutes, if traffic was kind.

It was all very exciting. I came to love the smell of newsprint, there was a cardboard folder behind the counter with my actual name on it, and I think the cost of the magazine was around 35 cents local currency, which was about half my usual weekly “pocket money” (or allowance). Although the ship freighted magazines arrived some three months after publication in the UK, I’d pore over each new issue as though it contained all the hidden secrets of the universe.

It might as well have. Football was more or less my whole world at that age. My Lanarkshire-born immigrant father played it at a high local level, representing Hawkes Bay, Manawatu, and the NZ Combined Services team (he was in the police) at various times throughout the 1960s and 1970s. I trained most evenings myself, and my weekends were consumed by round ball activity – Saturday mornings for the school or (later) club teams, Saturday afternoons watching Dad's games, which often involved travelling to different North Island towns, and by 1976, my Sundays were taken over by my own representative/Manawatu age group team commitments.

 

If I was really lucky I'd manage to catch the LWT-produced Big Match on television once a week. The main drawback being that this hour-long highlights package of games from the English top flight of a week earlier, had an often inconvenient Sunday lunch broadcast slot. This was, of course, in the days prior to the VCR, or the scarcely imaginable option of saving a TV programme to something called a hard drive.

As for local newspapers covering British football ... forget it. The Wellington-based broadsheet, the Evening Post, offered weekly league tables, printed on a Monday, but any coverage in Palmy's Evening Standard was a rarity, and very much a bonus if it happened at all. So in this tiny isolated rugby-obsessed corner of the globe, Shoot! magazine was a godsend, my weekly bible, and my only way of keeping up with all the news on the global game. It was an escape into another, hugely exciting, world.

Once a year, in late July or early August, at the start of every new football season, Shoot! had a removable cardboard league ladder feature, where each division in England and Scotland had its own set of slots, and each team had its own tab which could then be inserted, removed, and reinserted on a weekly basis as the teams jockeyed for position, up and down the various tables as the season progressed. Not having regular access to the Evening Post, I’d try to keep my own tables up to date by listening to the early Sunday morning reading of the British football results on national radio (from games played overnight), calculating the weekend tables accordingly. But it was usually a forlorn task, as those pesky midweek games often went unreported, and in truth, I probably wasn’t as good at maths as I thought I was.

 

Shoot! also had a "star-studded" line-up of feature writers (or at least, ghost writers representing them) – the likes of Alan Ball, Gerry Francis, and Kevin Keegan being the most memorable from that mid-1970s period in terms of the English game. But as a fan of Glasgow Celtic, I had a special relationship with the game north of the border, and I was always drawn to what the “tartan talk” columnists had to say – the likes of Danny McGrain and Kenny Dalglish were, as Celtic players of the era, particular favourites at the time.

Other features in Shoot! included ‘Football Funnies’, which included a short comic strip called Nobby, ‘Ask The Expert’, which offered £1 for every letter published, and ‘You Are The Ref’, where the reader is presented with a rule book conundrum to resolve, and a chance to play the role of the “bastard in the black”.

I especially enjoyed the ‘Club Spotlight’ sections, usually two per issue, which included a team photo of the featured club(s) and short player bios. And the ‘Focus On’ section was always good read, where one top player was asked a series of questions from the professional to the personal, but in a very digestible/snapshot format.

I was supposed to be saving up for a “racing bike” (to get me to the shops faster, right?), but usually, if I had any spare money leftover, I’d more than likely spend it on a comic called Tiger. Tiger was also a football-centric UK-based comic, the original home for the famous Roy of the Rovers strip, prior to Roy Race and his Melchester Rovers club becoming popular enough to demand an entire comic of their very own.

 

Alongside Roy of the Rovers, Tiger had strips like Billy’s Boots and Hot Shot Hamish, along with a Motor Racing/Formula One strip called Skid Solo, and a wrestling one featuring a giant American Indian dude called Johnny Cougar. Tiger merged with a rival comic called Scorcher, before disappearing completely in the wake of Roy Race’s rebranding.

I occasionally flirted with a more highbrow monthly, the illustrious World Soccer (magazine), which I sourced from second-hand bookshops. Or I found myself the lucky recipient of used copies that Dad had somehow found for me. It’s funny, because although Dad often frowned upon me spending so much time reading about football when I “should be outside practicing”, he did tend to support and feed my obsession.

World Soccer was a much more challenging read however, with a lot more emphasis placed on the international game, and Shoot! was my main poison of choice throughout the mid-to-late Seventies.

It was all rather fascinating stuff for a pre-teen come pre-pubescent teenager living on the other side of the world to where all the action was (clearly!) taking place, but things were about to change, and by 1978 or 1979, I started to develop a healthy (or unhealthy) interest in music and pop culture, one that stays with me to this very day.

The origins of this newly discovered horizon, or soon-to-be obsession, can perhaps be traced back to an older sister, who also had a couple of magazine subscriptions of the same era – I’m fairly certain her sub was for a girl’s mag called Diana, or it may have been Jackie magazine. Each of those publications had pull-out posters, of (then) teen idols like David Cassidy and Donny Osmond, through to more serious artists like David Bowie and um, Gary Glitter … but I’ll cover some of this off in the next post as we journey into a far less innocent time and place …

And Now For Something Completely Different …

I was pretty excited earlier this week with the announcement that West Ham United FC will be visiting my home city of Wellington this coming (northern hemisphere) summer, our NZ winter. The “Hammers” will play in a “tournament” involving fellow English Premiership team Newcastle United, two-time A-League champions Sydney FC, and host club Wellington Phoenix.

You see, aside from having an incurable obsession with pop culture, you could say I’m also something of a football nut.

In fact, way back in the day, between 2001 and 2010, long before everythingsgonegreen was even conceived as an alternative outlet to “document shit”, your humble blogger used to write a fair bit about football for a webzine called Etims, an independent site celebrating all things Celtic FC. It was a labour of love – a small team of about six of us contributing up to a dozen or so posts per week and it soon became (and remains) a hugely popular fan site … clocking up something like one million page hits inside its first five years. While humour was its most obvious draw, my angle was frequently the more serious view of the long distance fan.

One day I just stopped writing for Etims, for no real reason really, I guess I lost a bit of the requisite passion, but as a football supporter I’ll always be a Celtic fan. Family history and the fact that I was employed at Celtic Park for a period in the early Nineties makes that one of the few locked-in non-negotiables in my world. My Celtic “mojo” has faded a little in recent years (distance is an obvious problem) but I made it to Celtic Park as recently as 2011, the love is always there, and I know I’ll never lose it.

 

More than just a football club ...

When it came to watching football (on television) growing up, by dint of its wider accessibility and a weekly highlights show, English football was an ever-present, and given that Celtic (and Scottish football) received virtually no coverage in New Zealand, it became almost obligatory for me to adopt “another” team. So I did, and that “other team” is West Ham United.

It’s West Ham, I guess, because one night in May 1975, as an 11-year-old, I was allowed to sit “up late” with Dad to watch live (early morning) coverage of West Ham winning the FA Cup Final against Fulham. It seemed like a really big deal at the time, and I can still recall the buzz of that occasion. The West Ham team of that era played an irresistible brand of football and those precious Sunday lunch hours watching London Weekend Television’s ‘The Big Match’ suddenly took on an extra significance for me. It also helped that my Monrad Intermediate school uniform colours replicated those of West Ham.


Nightclub superstar Macca

That means I’ve followed the fortunes of West Ham for the best part of 40 years now, as the club bounces its way around the top two tiers of English football (best finish, third in 1986); occasionally brilliant, so often way more stylish than any other club, yet frequently a major disappointment as serial under-achievers.

 

I also have a life-long friend, Scott, who for his sins is also a firm and committed West Ham fan (as opposed to my rather more “casual” status). He’s just an hour down the road, so I hope to hook up with him for the occasion of West Ham’s visit, if only to tick that one off any mutual bucket list.

 

Scott and I share many passions – not only football, but a love of industrial strength dub and On-U Sound reggae. We shared a roof for a year or so 25 years ago, and his influence on my early record collection was immense. It was Scott who introduced me to the delights of dub guru Adrian Sherwood and I recall it was quite the thing when we learned of Sherwood’s own shared passion for West Ham – albeit a far more consummated relationship with the club than either Scott or I could ever have hoped to have. But it felt like an alignment of the tribes, an affirmation of sorts, something meant to be, West Ham, Adrian, Scotty and me …

We saw Sherwood together in Wellington back in 2011, indeed, Scott was granted a post-gig audience with the man himself. Another bucket list event we shared was The Specials in Auckland in 2009, so I’m thinking West Ham in NZ would make it something akin to a very sweet hat-trick … it's been a while since we caught up, so I’ll give him a call.

Right. Back to the music, here’s some appropriate content to finish – On-U Sound’s Barmy Army, on the Adrian Sherwood-produced West Ham-celebrating ‘Devo’ … (a track dedicated to West Ham cult hero Alan Devonshire):