3. What is a fanzine?
• The term fanzine comes from the combination of the words ‘fan’ and ‘magazine’. It is an
independent publication created by lovers of certain arts and culture. The creator does not have
to follow any commercial criteria that would be used within large publishing companies so in fact
they can say and show anything they like. The term fanzine was used in an October 1940 science
fiction fanzine by Russ chauvenet and first popularized within the science fiction fandom, from
there the term was adopted by many other different communities. For my project I am doing mod
culture and the many fanzines that were created during the time of the mod revival, these were
known as Modzines instead of fanzines as it fitted with the style of being a mod.
4. I chose this fanzine to breakdown because out of the ones I have
seen so far this has lots of detail that explains many things about
the mod culture. On the far left we can see a woman who is
wearing a large collared top (most likely a dress) and has a sort of
bob style haircut. Mod women were feminists of fashion, they
wore bright colours and fabrics to fight against their parents
politics. From this we already have an idea of what style the
women had and we know that the mods weren’t just for men. On
the right side of the page we can see a women sitting on a
scooter. The scooters were what made mods stand out, aside from
their army parkas and music taste the scooter was what made a
mod stand out from anyone else. Lambrettas and vespas were the
two main scooters mods drove as they were relatively cheap to
buy at the time and most importantly were nice to look at. Aswell
as the images of the fashion and scooters we can also see that
there has been no professional publishing work to this as it all
looks handwritten and hand drawn, this idea of it being
individually created gives us a sense that the people were creating
these mod fanzines to show off their culture and potentially
influence other people to join along in the movement.
5. The front cover for the fanzine 48 thrills shows many popular bands
during this time for example the middle left we can see the band
name the clash which appears to have been stuck on with another
bit of paper. This helps identifying which ones were created by an
individual and had no help from any large publishing companies.
The messy titles of the bands would definitely tell us that the music
listed is in the punk genre as they were known for rebelling against
societies rules and going against what they were told. The creators
of this fanzine have targeted the audience very well as the bands
highlighted on the front page were very big during the time of the
mod revival so by having these large bands on front covers its going
to attract more of the people who are interested in this music and
perhaps the mod culture. I cant really say much about any
production methods towards this fanzine as it hasn’t been
published by any large company it has simply been individually
created by using pens and bits of paper stuck on the front, I
suppose I could say that the scruffiness is a method of targeting the
certain audience as most young people during the time of the mod
revival were rebelling against the countries politics and rules that
were being set.
6. Another mod fanzine we can see is very similar to the other ones I
have talked about. The front of this fanzine is covered with images
of bands that were very big at the time or were starting to get
their name recognised within the music industry. I very much like
this style of fanzine for many reasons. The first reason is that the
titles are very clear and easy to read, plus each band title uses
different fonts to indicate that they are not the same and
somewhat different. Another reason I like this style is because it
looks a lot more cleaner than the others for example other
fanzines I have looked at seem to have been handcrafted in a way
with bits of paper stuck to the front and all messy writing.
7. Although this is not a fanzine I wanted to put this into my research as I feel it
really explains a lot about the mod movement and the history of the culture. The
film follows an angst ridden London lad called jimmy cooper who escapes the
misery of his postal job as a member of the mods. In the film the mods have a
continuous rivalry with a group called the rockers, this rivalry ends in a huge
brawl between the mods and rockers on Brighton beach. The film Quadrophenia
will be a massive inspiration for the fanzine I create simply because it is an iconic
film that helped bring back the mod revival in the late 70s and features many
things that I will cover in my fanzine for example; fashion, scooters and music.
