Friday, 18 January 2013

Between The Lines #1, 1979

Not a straight-forward fanzine at all really – more a thoughtzine in which Anna, with recourse to writings from elsewhere, shares with us her inner machinations. Sure, there are interviews with Gloria Mundi and Poison Girls but those are resolutely of the searching variety –there’s barely a whiff of the, “what’s your favourite colour” school of interrogation. As was standard with Poison Girls, Anna’s encounter with Richard and Vi is particularly illuminating – more discussion than interview as we witness the subject and host on an equal footing. Anna’s ruminations on Thinking and Thoughts are ably bolstered by contributions from Di and Abe, along with: poetry from D. H. Lawrence, Jackie, John Betjeman and Wilfred Owen; a short extract on Swearing from George Orwell’s, Down and Out in Paris and London; and a reproduction of the widely distributed CND Leaflet, No More Hiroshimas. I've noted this as issue 1 though I understand it is in fact a one-off. All told, Between the Lines is a real gem.

A4 single and double-sided scanned a 600 dpi

To compliment this post I’m uploading a recording of Poison Girls live in Leeds. The recording was made by Troy Bunn. Troy happened to be an inveterate bootlegger and was often to be found rooted to a spot throughout the proceedings of many a gig frantically hushing any approaching souls with a finger to lips gesture lest any intrusive natterings spoil his recordings. Sadly, most of Troy’s live tapes were lost to a rash bout of recycling during the nineties but those that survived - including 2 more PG’ sets - will appear here eventually. This is a reasonable bootleg though those aurally delicate types may need to allow their lugs to adjust to the slight coarseness of the recording quality - the songs however remain as beautiful as ever.     


Where’s The Pleasure?
Are You Happy Now?
Underbitch
Too Close For Comfort
Old Tart’s Song
Rio Disco Stink
Cry No More
Too Proud
Tension
Total Exposure
One Good Reason
Cream Dream
Persons Unknown
State Control
I’ve Done It All Before

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