I think some of the great
unsung heroes of the scene are the people who put together
the Fanzines. Those A4 sheets of paper stapled together and
fronted with some great label scans. For
me that is the real plus side of that genre. To be able to
sit and analyse the detail on these scans is so rewarding
and must help many of the collectors in their search for
quality records.
There have been many fanzines
put together over the years by the grass roots of the scene. For
example Shades
of Soul, by Derek Pearson, which has been running since the
early eighties, is extremely popular. Blackbeat
no longer exists, but I have a number of copies which make
great reading and on researching this project I found some Popcorn Wylie articles which were way ahead of their
time. Issue 14 above, also features the vastly underrated
Edward Hamilton on the front cover. One
fanzine seems to be beating the laws of gravity however and
that is
Soulful Kinda Music, which reached Issue 47 in October 2001. Quite an
achievement! One thing's for sure,
the editor, Dave Rimmer, will never run out of topics. Check
out his web site which is a mine of information at Soulful
Kinda Music. Other
fanzines which I have enjoyed over the years are:- Soul
Underground - Mark Bicknell Detroit
City Limits - Graham Anthony Soul
Up North - Howard Earnshaw (still in print) A lot of
effort goes in to putting these fanzines together. take a
bow!
Notes thanks to David Meikle.
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