The latest episode of The Fanzine Podcast, and it is also the last issue of The Fanzine Podcast. We wrap things up with an in-person visit to RAPMM – the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines, a digital archive of what are in fact mainly fanzines, 133 titles and counting, spanning genres, decades and countries.
While RAPMM is essentially an online archive, it is operated from the City University of New York (CUNY)’s Graduate Center right by the Empire State Building, where many of the fanzines are also physically archived. It is there that host Tony Fletcher went to interview one of the prime archivists behind this project, Lindsey Eckenroth. Lindsey is among the rare Academics who is also a Fanzine Editor: Irrational Exit, which she runs with partner Joe, is a small-scale music zine that demonstrates that the culture is alive and thriving.
This Episode 37 runs long, but it is in two distinct parts: the first an interview with Lindsey about RAPMM itself, followed by a fun flick through a variety of physical zines she pulled out of the archives for me to look over and discuss. They include Bomp!, Bam Balam, Blaze, miau!, Razorcake, In Effect, Louder Than Bombas, Hardcore Architecture and more. Dozens of other zines get discussed over the course of the episode.
To see covers of some of these zines, screenshots of the RAPMM web site, and to read a longer article about this specific episode, please visit https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/the-final-fanzine-podcast
Tony Fletcher hosts another podcast, Crossed Channels, with Dan Epstein. Find it on your preferred streaming platform; full episodes are available to paid-up subscribers either of our Substack pages. More info at https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/podcast
'The Jamming! Fanzine Podcast Theme' is by Noel Fletcher.
Logo by Greg Morton.
The Best of Jamming!: Selections and Stories from the Fanzine That Grew Up 1977-86 is published by Omnibus Press