On the inside front cover of my fanzines I would always print this:

“If you came in the pub and said
‘what the f’k are you trying to achieve by this’
Then I’d have to explain it to you.
Then if another geezer comes in the pub then I’ll have to explain it to him
Then another geezer
If I get on stage then I’m telling all of them at the same time.”
- Terry Sylvester from the punkrockumentry DOA

Its from the film DOA – A Rite Of Passage (directed by Lech Kowalski). The film documents the Sex Pistols North American tour juxtaposed with stories from the UK.

The cameras follow Terry Sylvester and his band Terry & The Idiots as they prepare for and play a gig at The Golden Shoe pub on their estate.

Terry’s summary of why he’s in a band is also why people write fanzines and now publish blogs. I think it’s great and wonder what Terry makes of the www and the idea that his words are on it.

Fanzines do get referred to in one or two discussions of media culture. Steve Redhead in Unpopular Cultures is my favourite but is only fleeting – he points out how fanzines were a way in for many music journalists. He also makes a very important point about how fanzines (like blogs) are free from the constrictions of setting out to sell audiences that influence other media.

Generating income from advertising came much later for people like Sniffin’ Glue. This seams to be the case with blogs. Advertising arrives after reaching a certain level and comes with apologies to readers.

I too can see parallels between the world of Zines and the world of Blogs – the “Me” of 20+ years ago would now be glued to the internet reading and commenting on a whole host of Blogs rather than getting 4-5 times as much post as my housemates as my zines kept arriving…

It is, I think both the ease of doing it, and the ubiquity of the personal computer that have lead to the rise in Blogs exploding in a way that Zines, even at their most prolific never did. I’m sure lots of people nowadays use a computer keyboard without thinking about it, where typewriters were not so common. And while Students had cheap and easy access to duplication, the same was not true of everyone, wheras cheap or free blog sites and software are now common.

The “man in the street” blogger probably does not consider themselves to be “part of the Zine tradition” either because they never encountered it, or if they did, always thought about it as something done by obsessive fans of (whatever the zine was about, be it games, music, football, comics etc etc), rather than as a social network operating beyond the control of “big business” allowing a platform for discussion to anyone interested in joining in – (And, of course, personality clashes, legal threats and bitter wars of words.)

As you mentioned there is the potential for reaching a wider audience than the fanzines ever could and this is to be celebrated because it gives a genuine opportunity for “dissenting” views to be heard, seen and read.

However, access to those views even through the internet requires a certain amount of concentration and filtering. Most people who use the web for accessing news and information will still go to the huge corporate news sites.

The “blog” does give us a potential global community in whatever interest one may have and that is the real beauty and attraction of this “new media.” The genuine opportunity to speak to the world.