Ep. 16: James Brown & Mark Hodkinson (Attack On Bzag/Untermensch

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James Brown and Mark Hodkinson both hail from the Pennine District in Northern England. Both ran fanzines in the 1980s (Attack on Bzag and Untermensch). Both stayed in publishing. Both now have successful memoirs out about their lives in the world of words.

Beyond that, their paths have been different. James left Leeds for London, and after 10 successful issues of his fanzine, joined the NME. He then founded Loaded, which was selling 350,000 copies by the time he went to edit GQ after 36 issues. He's written about this - plus his addictions to alcohol and drugs and his subsequent recovery - in his memoir Animal House. Mark stayed in Rochdale, and started a small imprint called Pomona, which published books by people such as Bill Nelson, Barry Hines and Bob Stanley; in his memoir No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy, he explains how a boy who grew up in a house with one book ended up with 3500. Both memoirs are now out in paperback.

In this conversation with host Tony Fletcher, the three of them discuss:

• Leaving home vs. staying put
• Why Untermensch was a revolt against Rochdale
• The joys of selling fanzines at gigs - or not.
• 1980s fanzine culture with references to The End, Cool Notes, Idiot Stregth, Furious Apache, Raygun, New Youth, Kvatch
• How James could even sell a fanzine to a working policeman
• The night that James, along with former podcast guest Richard Edwards, raided Tony's Filofax for famous people's numbers
• How Loaded was James' ultimate fanzine
• Why Pomona was a critical success but rarely a commercial one
• How Attack on Bzag got it wrong about The Smiths

James Brown is on Instagram and Facebook.

Mark Hodkinson is on Facebook. The Pomona Books catalogue here

Also discussed in this episode:

'The Politics of Fanzines' episode with Richard Edwards can be found here

'One Step Beyond Ep. 27' with Mike Peters of Love, Hope, Strength is here:

'Tacky Tiger,' Sparks zine on a Gestertner, is here.

The Dear Boys single 'Blink Of An I' can be viewed, streamed, or purchased on Bandcamp from https://linktr.ee/thedearboys.

The Best Of Jamming! can be found here

For weekly articles by Tony Fletcher, news of upcoming writings, books, events, podcasts, and for exclusive access to archived interviews, sign up for his newsletter at tonyfletcher.substack.com.

Theme music by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.

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