DIY or DIE!

An excerpt from ‘Running at the edge of their world : The Suspect Device fanzine story’ by Tony and Gaz Suspect, a behind-the-scenes look at one of the U.K.'s longest running and best loved punk fanzines…

I didn’t know that I was looking for a local DIY scene, but when small punk gigs started happening I knew they were exactly what I wanted, and needed. These gigs were put on by people my age, they were welcoming and friendly and now I was part of something cool. Gaz is much more social than I am, and had been part of the initial discussions on setting up the STE Collective (which came after the South Hants Fanzine Collective who had initially put on local DIY gigs), putting in his £10 with the others. I don’t know why I wasn’t there, although Rich Levene surmises that as I’d stopped drinking by this point I didn’t go drinking at The Joiners, which is probably correct.

So, although our new punk friends were open and accepting I still felt a little nervous and a bit of an outsider. I found it hard to mix, despite feeling like I was where I was supposed to be, and kind of hid behind Gaz’s more outgoing nature. But I loved it, punk was becoming more than the music I listened to, it was fast becoming something I did. I had already been inspired and influenced by the Subhumans, but now I was beginning to see that there was a better way to approach the world with punk as my guide. My politics were changing as I became more aware. I was naturally left leaning, but then the sort of things the anarcho bands were singing about started to make more sense to me. I was finding that things really mattered and I could have a say in how much I contributed to the evils of the system.

Great new bands were right there, locally, formed by people I knew, and they weren’t all the same, there was diversity and differences, but an underlying thread of co-operation, companionship and collaboration which unified us all. I still felt I wasn’t cool enough or clever enough to have a real say, but I loved being there and being part of it, in some small way.

The second Issue of SD definitely shows more of a DIY influence creeping in, thanks to our new friends and the gigs we were now going to broadening our horizons. But although we interviewed Political Asylum and Last Rough Cause alongside GBH and Peter & The Test Tube Babies, reviewed local gigs and had adverts for DIY distros and labels, we were still reviewing major label releases by The Damned, The Alarm and The Clash and even devoted a page to the Sex Pistols! However, we were still finding our feet and we were having a lot of fun. I remember being sat at the table in the back room of his house while Gaz wrote a guide to being a Train Spotter, and laughing until our faces hurt, it may not seem so funny reading it back now, but at the time it was one of those this silly things that seems like the funniest thing in the world. We also included our own punk rock crossword.

Again, this issue was printed by my dad on his work photocopier (I think Gaz got some copies of early issues copied at his work too). If these issues were mainly written and put together at Gaz’s house, they were collated at mine.

I still felt a little nervous and shy at these early gigs, but the desire to be part of what was going on meant I just had to fight the awkward feelings because I knew this was what I wanted from punk. I mean, a few years before this, some huge bloke with a tall mohican and a Stranglers t-shirt was giving me hassle in HMV because the SLF I put on my faux leather jacket was done in tape. He gruffly said tape was naff and I should paint it on. His leather jacket did have a very cool painted Stranglers Raven on it. But I thought punk was working with what you had and making the best from what you could do, and I wasn’t an artist, I didn’t have easy access to paint, but my dad was an electrician so we had electrical tape in the house, and I used that. Anyway, our new friends were accepting, it didn’t matter what you looked like, or what you had on your jacket, what was important was that we were there, creating something together.I was also eager to learn. I may have been a bit slow to get into the new bands in those days, but I was getting there. I was getting demo tapes, and buying more zines and starting to write to people all over the country.

This was still a time where my willingness to accept newer bands, unless they were local, was somewhat slower than Gaz’s (It was Gaz who got into Minor Threat first and urged me to listen to them). I was getting there but I was still stubbornly dragging my feet at times. Up until this point my punk rock influences had been John Peel’s show, the music press and Gaz, and our record collections were still almost identical. This started to change when this new scene got going, and I had my ears and mind opened to new sounds and new bands and a lot of them were coming to play in our town.

We were hooked on the zine now, or at least I was, and issue three arrived, featuring lots of Gaz’s drawings, including his cover drawing of Wattie. Whereas our first two issues featured collage front covers (mirroring Pete Zonked’s current back cover creations for us), this issue’s cover was just white, with Gaz’s drawing in the middle and the bands featured underneath. In all honesty it’s a bit of an uninspiring cover.

Speaking of the John Peel show, one of the new bands I heard him play one evening lead to our first face to face interview for SD. I would keep a notepad and a pen by the radio to note down any new bands he played that I liked the sound of. One night in 1985 he played a song called ‘Wherever You May Run’ from the first 7” by Portsmouth band Red Letter Day. As a long-time fan of the UK Subs, their melodic punk struck a chord, so when Peel gave their address, I noted that down and wrote to them. They got back to me really quickly, within two days in fact, and this was the days when writing to someone meant actually writing a letter and posting it. Featuring them for the next issue of the zine seemed an obvious thing to do, and they suggested meeting up to do the interview. This was new territory for us, and I found it a bit daunting, but they suggested meeting in a pub halfway between Portsmouth and Southampton. It was only a couple of weeks of making contact with them, when we jumped into my rusty, less than trusty old Mini and headed over to Fareham, Gaz’s old tape player in hand. Three of band were present, and they were friendly, and open and we had a good evening. This friendship with RLD lasted for a good while, and we would go and see them countless times over the coming months and years.

As well as RLD we featured The Press Gang from Liverpool, after I’d bought one of their records from Craig Burton, Intensive Care and The Adicts. We were featuring more DIY releases and ads, including Rich Levene’s The Plot Sickens distro, but there were still some major label releases covered, and another bloody page on the Sex Pistols! But, we were still learning, still growing and I, at least, was getting more used to being a zine writer, even if I still didn’t really know how to achieve what I wanted the zine to be. (Tony)

Gaz:

Issue #2 – This saw me getting more involved and I think I did the Test Tubes and Political Asylum interviews, with Tony doing GBH and Last Rough Cause. We were still tending to follow the bigger Punk bands that were still on the scene, but I’m pleased to report there were plenty of flyers printed up for DIY distros. It’s left me wondering where a lot of those Punk enthusiasts are now?! Where is Louis who ran Cider & Chips distro out of Bristol? There was also this bloke called Gord, who lived in Frazerburgh in Scotland and did Punk & Oi tapes. He used to ask for your phone number so he could give you a call. I actually remember him ringing me up and just asking me if ‘I had booted in any dickheads round my way lately’. Rumour had it that he was quite a lot older than most people he was in contact with and was in contact with quite a few zines etc. All very odd and I’m glad he lived quite far away!

Issue #3 – Ah Yes! The cover of this was the silhouette of Wattie from The Exploited shouting into his microphone. More of my ‘borrowed art is just inside the front cover with something nicked from the A Heads, Amebix and The Stranglers! This issue had interviews with The Adicts, Intensive Care, originally from Scotland, then their front man Iain moved to Sussex for work so it says in the interview! Iain went on to have a bit of success with Beerzone and then Control. The Press Gang from Liverpool also featured as did Red Letter Day from Portsmouth. I think this was our first face to face band interview too, which we did in a pub called the Delme Arms in Fareham, a town half way between Southampton and Pompey! Had to be a neutral venue for the football fans amongst us!