Irresponsible Spirit (issue #2)YEAR: 1987CREATED BY: ?LOCATION: Manchester (Denton to be precise)SIZ

Irresponsible Spirit (issue #2)

YEAR: 1987
CREATED BY: ?
LOCATION: Manchester (Denton to be precise)
SIZE: A4

WHAT’S INSIDE….

This Mancunian zine came with a free Waltones/Pigbros flexi disc and includes ads for Eastern Bloc Records (which at that time was on Oldham Street), Identity Clothing (which was inside Afflecks Palace), “Head Over Ears” (a compilation album released by another Manchester fanzine called Debris), Temperance night at the Hacienda and forthcoming gigs at the Venue and Boardwalk….

The Waltones and Pigbros are both featured inside along with The Chesterfields, The Primitives, The Pooh Bears and Soup Dragons. The latter insist on slagging off Martin “Subway” Whitehead - who was responsible for releasing their first two singles on his Subway Organisation indie label and was also the main man behind indie band The Flatmates, as well as publishing a fanzine called The Underground.

A page of charts indicates that the creators of Irresponsible Spirit had eclectic taste that went way beyond the zine’s overwhelmingly indie content. There’s also an irreverent interview with Pop Will Eat Itself, whose main claim to fame at the time was popularising the word “grebo”, which was then used by the NME to describe a group of mainly midlands-based bands that emerged at roughly the same time in the second half of the 1980s - PWEI, The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (who all hailed from an unglamorous shithole called Stourbridge) as well as others like Gaye Bikers On Acid and Crazyhead. These bands didn’t really sound that much alike or have a great deal in common other than being a bit noisier, more dishevelled and less politically correct than indie bands were supposed to be at the time….

The zine got the Mick Middles seal of approval and also includes early mentions of future Madchester heroes Happy Mondays (who are described as “most doggedly urban”) and Inspiral Carpets (who played at the Boardwalk on 29th August 1987).

Click on the title above to see scans of all the zine’s pages….

my box of 1980s fanzines
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