Time Capsule: Fanzines as a Signpost Towards the Cultural Shift

Abstract

This essay explores the 70s independent music periodicals in Britain and the concept of music fandom as their pivotal element. Sown by rock ‘n’ roll fanzines in the 60s, the seeds of music writing sprouted in the 70s, the decade that is celebrated by Greg Shaw in Creem magazine as the golden age of rock journalism (23). In his article The Great Divide, Jon Savage underlines that “decadism and anniversaries [are] a product of the mainstream media” (Savage 67). A productive time for pop music as it was, the 60s seemingly planted seeds for all genres emerging afterwards. To a reader of the music press, the decade might have seemed a measure of all things and the beginning of the beginnings. To some extent, that was “a viewpoint of the press itself”.With the change of attitude taking place in America a bit earlier than in Britain, the beginning of the 70s became the time when some rock writers started thinking of popular music as a historical process. Their approach and artisanal methods of production were summed up in fanzine publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Opposed to professional music periodicals, fanzines do not follow conventional agenda-setting strategies. Relying on the terminology of Pierre Bourdieu, this project states that fanzines are a result of an autonomous pole of production. As an “autodidact” or an “enlightened fan”, a music journalist appeals to his audience, stating his opinions directly through the medium of fandom (Atton 55). The employed “artisanal” methods of production are aimed at the delivery of ideas to the precise target group of fans. Although coloured by the music preferences of an author, the opinion is not as biased as the agenda-setting policy of the mainstream media. It reveals a hidden facet of reality or the flip side of the coin which contributes to better understanding of what music is and how it works.