COVENTRY Music Museum curator Pete Chambers BEM writes for the Observer.

Tales from the Ghost Town

TALES from the Ghost Town is 209 pages of pure nostalgic bliss for those of us of a certain age, who welcomed the arrival of the fanzine as future generations would welcome the internet.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, fanzines were the main source of local information on the local music scene.

These photocopied, often badly typed booklets may look archaic to the digital generation, but they served to galvanise the local music scene like nothing had before.

This new book by Alan Rider is basically an encyclopaedia of Coventry and Warwickshire fanzines, from the big boys like Alternative Sounds, Adventures in Reality and Anti-Social to the less well-known zines like Issue, Heretic and Great Masterpieces.

The book begins with Alan’s fascinating look at the Coventry music scene in 1979.

A man who knows, of course, he knows as he was there, as you can tell by this masterful insight.

It moves on to interviews with some of the ‘zine movers and shakers like Martin Bowes who created the mighty Alternative Sounds, (the ‘zine that gave me my first journalistic opportunity).

Onto Alan’s own fanzine Adventures in Reality plus a host of interviews from other ‘zine editors including two 13-year-olds, Miles Ratledge and Nicholas Bullen who created the fanzines Anti-Social and Twisted Nerve.

They both went on to not only form the band Napalm Death, but in doing so created the international music genre Grindcore.

Indeed, Martin also became a musician and formed the band Attrition and Alan formed Stress with Phil Clarke.

The rest of the publication is an A-Z of every local fanzine issued in the timeframe.

As Alan puts it: “With a foreword by The Specials’ Horace Panter, Tales From The Ghost Town collects together rare copies of every fanzine produced in Coventry at that incredible time.

“With an in-depth review of each, accompanied by covers and inside pages alongside exclusive interviews with their original creators tracked down from across the globe, it is the definitive record of this unique, punk inspired, explosion of grass roots creativity expressed in cut and paste form.”

Copies are available at The Hall of Fame shop at The 2-Tone Village.

Disney+ new biopic drama on the Sex Pistols

Danny Boyles six-part biopic drama that traces the career of the Sex Pistols is finally out and available on the Disney+ channel.

The band famously played Coventry on two occasions and this dramatisation is based on guitarist’s Steve Jones’s book entitled Lonely Boy.

In my opinion, it’s a total masterpiece not to be missed.

It may not be factually correct in places, but was I entertained, you bet your bondage trousers I was!

It was like a crazy riotous book that I couldn’t put down.

The Pistols have of course been demonised over the years, but for me, it’s the glimpses of humanity we see from Johnny and the boys that takes this film to another level.

The casting is superb, and the acting is inspired (especially Thomas Brodie Sangster as Malcolm McLaren as was Anson Boon as Johnny) as we are taken on anarchic journey of a band that would go on to change the world.

John Lydon apparently hates it, though his constant negativity in the press has only helped to highlight the entire project… hang on..Ever felt like you’ve been cheated?