Visit tonyfletchersubstack.com for more show notes, fanzine covers, the Ode To a Better-Badged Boychik poem and more. https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/how-14-yr-old-mark-jays-skum-zine

Mark Jay was just 14 years old in 1976 when, hanging out at the Rock On record shop next in Camden Town, close to his violence-ridden state school, an inadvertent reacquaintance with John Simon Ritchie - a.k.a. Sid Vicious - propelled him into the heart of the fledgling UK punk scene.

By the end of that year, Mark had started one of the first British punk fanzines, SKUM, and not only been befriended by Bernie Rhodes, The Clash, and members of the Sex Pistols, but by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who having seen Mark’s cartoon of the Sex Pistols v. Bill Grundy TV fiasco, commissioned a ‘Story So Far’ from him that became the insert to the Never Mind The Bollocks album. Mark was among the only proper fans, and surely the youngest to attend the Pistols’ Silver Jubilee boat trip/concert on June 7, 1977, at which he was arrested and spend the night in jail. By then he was all of 15. He remembers it to this day as the best gig of his life.

Mark ceased publishing SKUM in December 1977, a year after he had started, and indulged his Beat Poetry obsession instead, starting a fanzine called All The Poets, printed in early 1979 by Joly MacFie (featured on Episode 3 of this podcast) at Better Badges, as a ‘guinea pig’ for his new printing press. Around the same time, he allowed my zine Jamming! to cut-and-paste his (first ever) Sid Vicious interview from SKUM 1 for my Jamming! 7, also printed at Better Badges.

At the end of September 2025, Mark and I had a real time conversation for the first time in over 46 years, which I recorded in entirety for this, the final UK episode of the Fanzine Podcast. It is, quite possibly, and not as much for the renewed personal connection as for Mark’s incredible origin stories, my favourite episode of them all.

Other fanzines mentioned in this podcast: Sniffin’ Glue, White Stuff, Bondage, Ripped & Torn, and London’s Burning.

Find Mark on Instagram. Further links:

SKUM archives

All The Poets archives

The Sex Pistols: The Story So Far poster

Mark Jay’s Sex Pistols Jubilee boat story and more on sex-pistols.net

Mark Jay’s films are all listed and linked at the bottom of this page:

To order Geshmack x Gesheft via Spinners (and Mark’s next poemtry pamflet ‘Five Years - between the gutter and the galaxies,‘ when published November 2025). Five Years will contain ‘Ode to the Better Badged Boychik at the Favourite Caff,’

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The Fanzine Podcast is back after an unintentionally long absence to talk with Howard Wuelfing, editor/publisher of two key Washington D.C. zines, which have just been gathered into an eponymous anthology: Descenes and Discords. These influential zines, the first focused on local activities, its successor intended to gather additional material about the national alternative/underground scene, ran between 1979 and 1981 and served not only to influence and impact upon music in D.C., but provided publication space for a number of writers who would go on to national prominence, among them Gerard Cosloy and Byron Coley.

In this episode, Howard discusses abandoning plans to become a lawyer to focus on becoming a rock writer instead, how exposure to CBGB’s but especially the publication New York Rocker set him and his partners on their way with Descenes, how they were able to access typesetting, advertising and printing, and their successful game plan for distribution, but how the careerism of local “new wave” bands caused the team to pack it in after six issues. Embarking eight months later with Discords, the new look monthly zine had a winning run of cover artists (from Pylon to Circle Jerks to The Bongos and Mission Of Burma) and provided space and encouragement for the younger generation of hardcore bands who would soon step into the space Discords helped create. Accordingly, Ian MacKaye of Teen Idols, Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord (no relation) Records, was interviewed by Howard for a special reflection article that opens the new anthology.

Descenes and Discords: An Anthology is available from DiWulf.com in the Americas, and EarthIslandBooks.com in Europe. Howard Wuelfing can be found at https://www.howlinwuelf.com/

The theme music for the Fanzine Podcast is by Noel Fletcher.

The outro in this episode is the 12” mix of “Put It Down” by The Dear Boys, available at thedearboys.bandcamp.com

Tony Fletcher can be found at tonyfletcher.substack.com

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In early 1979, Tony D(rayton) ceased publication of his trailblazing punk fanzine Ripped & Torn, having experienced a seismic shift in his values by the emergence of anarcho-punks Crass on the scene. After nine months traversing Europe and rethinking his “decadence,” he came back to London and started a new fanzine, Kill Your Pet Puppy. Like its predecessor, KYPP proved highly influential, and at times equally controversial, gradually moving away from music coverage over the course of its six issues to become something more…

In this, his second appearance on The Fanzine Podcast (check Episode 13 for the Ripped & Torn story), Tony D. talks about his conversion to the Crass way of living, his sojourns in Europe, falling out with Adam Ant, falling in with a new squat scene, why Kill Your Pet Puppy initially had a far more shocking title, gaining the printing patronage of Joly MacFie at Better Badges, testing the boundaries of what a punk zine could achieve and represent, the attraction of the new ‘Positive Punk’ groups like Alien Sex Fiend, Southern Death Cult and Sex Gang Children, why he launched KYPP with an attack on host Tony Fletcher’s Jamming! fanzine, and why he eventually

ran off to join the circus. Literally.

For the full unedited interview with Tony D., and for more about fanzine culture in general, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/kill-your-pet-puppy-and-other-pop

The Kill Your Pet Puppy archives are at https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/the-complete-set-of-kill-your-pet-puppy-fanzines/

The Fanzine Podcast Theme is by Noel Fletcher. Logo by Greg Morton.

The Best of Jamming! Selections & Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is available from Omnibus Press and other online retailers.

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