Ep. 33: What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen with Chris Coleman

For the 33rd installment of the Fanzine Podcast, we welcome Chris Coleman, former editor of at least two important ‘zines from the 1980s post-punk UK Midlands: Stringent Measures and What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen. The first of these zines straddled a vibrant local indie scene that included the likes of Eyeless In Gaza, In Embrace, Attrition, and the Glass Records label (about which Chris put together a special edition) along with Chris’s evident excitement for early U2. What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen, while maintaining the fanzine format, declared itself musically with a first issue featuring interviews with The Waterboys, The Alarm - and Johnny Thunders, to whom it later dedicated a special issue (as it did Marc Bolan). WANWTTS also put out physical vinyl – EP’s and albums alike - that included the likes of The Jazz Butcher, Jasmine Minks, The Membranes, Mike Scott and Nikki Sudden, and which therefore continued to place the zine at the heart of the mid-80s indie music scene. To this day, Chris continues to release records of lost archived recordings on his Seventeen label.

Chris spent a Friday night indoors chatting with podcast host Tony Fletcher about his fanzine experiences back in the day. Other fanzines mentioned in this episode include Bucketful Of Brains, Alternative Sounds and Adventures In Reality, and the conversation also diverges into the likes of R.E.M. and The Smiths. We get to hear how Chris’s parents once collated and stapled and distributed zines for him while he was on holiday, and we find out which of the aforementioned musicians once commented to him, “You have great veins.” (Hint: it should be obvious.)

Visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/what-a-nice-way-to-turn-seventeen for images of some vintage What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen, to find similar posts and pages dedicated to earlier Fanzine Podcasts, and for Tony’s twice-weekly writings.

Thanks to Noel Fletcher for the theme music, and Greg Morton at Omnibus Press for the logo template.

The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is available from here.

 

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