A Kickstarter campaign has been launched by Graham Burnett to fund his book all about Southend’s alternative press and fanzine underground. With over 200 pages and featuring a wealth of interviews and dozens of beautifully reproduced full-page covers and original artwork, this is both a history and a celebration of Southend's often forgotten 'alternative' and DIY culture, as told through the pages of the fanzines, people’s papers and community magazines made in the town between 1971 and 2021.

Book Details:

Title: Southend on Zine; fifty years of voices and stories from Southend's underground and alternative press

Author: Graham Burnett

Format: Paperback, 208 pages plus cover, dimensions 270 x 140mm

Forewords and commentary by Andrew Branch and Tony D Samson (Club Critical Theory), Tim Burrows (The Guardian, The Quietus, Vice, New Statesman), Dr Stephen Jordan (University of Essex) and Professor Matt Worley (Punk Scholars Network)

Extensively illustrated throughout, including many rare and historical photographs and graphics

54 page Cover Gallery featuring five decades of the best of Southend's fanzines and alternative publications

Places, Faces, Spaces and Traces - mapping the 'other' Southend

You Better Hear - a Southend soundtrack Extensive interviews with those involved with the town's fanzines, People's Press and alternative cultures over the last five decades, including;

- Will Williams on Mushroom community paper and Southend Claimants Union
- Ron Bates on Precinct Press and Southend’s 1970s counter-culture
- Adrian Green on Bang magazine and the Southend poetry scene
- Roger Pugh on Iliad, Odyssey Folk Club and the Southend folk scene
- Trevor Taylor on Avant magazine, Spiral Arts, free improv and jazz and experimental/avant garde music in Southend
- Gary Spencer Millidge on Amon*Spek, Strangehaven and the Southend comics scene
- Graham Burnett on New Crimes, The SLAB and 1980s fanzine culture
- Steve Pegrum on Necrology, Kronstadt Uprising, being a punk in Southend and The Taste Experience psychedelic club
- Steve Bulley on New Clear Product, Thee Armless Teddies and the 1980s Southend punk community
- Paul Barratt on Hard as Nails and setting the record straight on skinhead culture
- Keith Baxter on The Famous Potatoes Newsletter, barn dancing and digging the Westcliff allotments scene
- Steve Hexter on Calculated Risk, Alive and Kicking and the 90's Southend music scene
- Paul Wohl on The Scene, life as a gig promoter and rock and roll gentleman Lee Brilleaux
- Jennifer Farfort on Cheesy and making independent films and clothes
- Kelly Ann Buckley on Naked Tongue, making experimental music and climate change in a coastal town
- Sophia Rawlinson on Noisy! and everything rock 'n' roll in the county of Essex
- Syd Moore on Level 4, the witches of Essex and liberating the Essex Girl stereotype
- James Taylor on Managed Retreat and estuary bioregionalism
- Rich With on Trawler and celebrating Southend’s creative cultures
- Dave A on The Heckler, Alternative Estuary and grass-roots activism in south Essex
- Tom Di Capite on Breakfast Head comic, Tenbomb Arts and Southend street art
- Lu Williams on Grrrl in Print, curating the Grrrl Zine Library and zines as self-care
- Anna Armitage and Sonny Green on Ecstacy or Espresso, community poetry and Southend's grime/MC culture

What's the funding for?

The aim of this Kickstarter campaign is to raise the minimum amount required to fund the production and printing of this book.

This project has been a labour of love. But in the event that we exceed our funding goal it would be good to receive some amount of financial remuneration for the four years of so far unpaid work put into research, writing, editing, design and layout of the book, even if it's just to recoup the costs of getting the interviews transcribed! In addition we'd like to develop the project further, including making high quality Riso prints and posters of some of the artwork, as well as the possibilities of developing a physical or online Southend zine archive, organising local gallery exhibitions, events, workshops and so on. Plus we have plenty of other ideas for new projects in the pipeline!

By Graham Burnett

For further details please visit the official Southend On Zine Book Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/southendonzine/southend-on-zine

Southend on Zine - The Interview'
Graham Burnett speaks to Tim Fransen, Tony Charalambous and the ACI / Fashion students at London South Bank University about the Southend on Zine book project, and his own New Crimes fanzine which ran from 1980 to 1984