Continuing the Manchester theme, here’s a zine by one of my long-lost Manchester friends, Carl Bradley. I first met Carl at a Urusei Yatsura gig in Manchester when he asked me about my Hello Kitty tshirt, but we only made friends later after some zine swapping. We eventually met up again when I visited Manchester to interview Mogwai – it was good to have some moral support and extra questions and I still count that as the most fun interview I ever did. I often wonder what happened to Carl and hope he made it over to Japan too – we were both big Japan fans.
This issue (#5) is from the height of the teen-c zine scene when zinemaking was popularised again by a group of bands led by bis. During this point in time, it was pretty much law that any zine had to have an interview with either bis, Urusei Yatsura or Mogwai. Fancy Biscuits breaks that mould a little though – it may be handwritten and full of cute manga panels, but the bands featured include Melt-Banana, Stars of the Lid, Rachel’s and Elliot Smith.
I remember always being very impressed by Carl’s ability to just get his thoughts down and keep going past his mistakes. As a bit of a perfectionist, that’s something I could never do. Loses points for my #1 fanzine pet hate though – NO STAPLES. Luckily I do still have all the pieces. One day I might use my new long-arm stapler and fix all the non-stapled zines I own. Then I’ll be happy.
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This is part of a series of posts about my epic zine collection – I’ve been collecting zines for the last 20 years and I plan to write about all of them eventually. You can find all the zine posts under My Epic Zine Collection.
