MY FANZINES. BAMBI ZINE

I’ve decided to write a bit about some of the fanzines I did in the past.

BAMBI was the 2nd ever fanzine I did - I did 6 issues between 1996 and 1997. They were all A5 B+W photocopied zines (tho’ some issues had coloured card covers) of about 20 or so pages. It went under the tagline All Rock + Roll Is Homosexual (slogan Manics used on a T-shirt a few years earlier) and was billed as the zine of homoerotic rock music. Although I did write about LGBT musicians I was more interested in examining the ambivalence around certain musicians and the grey areas - I used a lot of photocopied press cuttings/quotes and part of it was to show the media/fan interpretation of something could have a life of its own whatever the facts might be but that also that anything and everything was possible. The issues were a mix of quotes, photocopied press cuttings, short reviews + articles and reprints of pieces I found interesting (the last issue was also titled the Hollywood Babylon issue as it concentrated on actors + the film business). It wasn’t intended to be taken too seriously.

Overall I got a good reception to it. It wasn’t as popular as some of my other zines but I tended to do much smaller print runs but every issue sold out. As well as being reviewed in several fanzines, I also got a mention in Metal Hammer + a very nice postcard from Chris of Pansy Division saying how much he’d liked the zine + he’d copied the bits about Metallica and forwarded them on to Kirk! (they did actually know Kirk + he played on a Pansy Division single). Looking back on it now, I’m reasonably happy with how it turned out.

And here is a link to a list of what was in every issue (the printed copies are now all sold out but check the bambi zine tag on here on my tumblr to read some of the stuff or go to my website here)

List of what was in BAMBI zines