Ten Years Of Bubblegum Slut
Written by Craggy
Tuesday, 12 October 2010 05:00
Saturday 25th September marked 10 years to the day since Bubblegum Slut began life in print. The fanzine covering all things alternative first aired in Essex, but 10 years later and a recent location change to the metropolis next door and the zine’s creator Alison B has organised a birthday celebration at The Gaff on Holloway Road. Being a happy reader of the pages of the fur-covered mag myself, I certainly was not going to miss the party.
I first picked up the zine in 2005; at that time it was a largely solitary voice comprehensively covering the music that I had been immersing myself in, without many empathisers, for years. I’d been aware of the good work done by other preceding publications such as Vagabond Hearts, and was a happy customer of the Changes One record store, but Bubblegum Slut was the first print publication I had subscribed to. Since its inception Bubblegum Slut has been a shining light in a pretty dark, and still largely ignored by music media, rock underground. Ever expanding, the zine continues to cover all angles from industrial to psychobilly and glam, 
without prejudice. The refusal to wedge itself in a particular scene is what remains so refreshing about Bubblegum Slut.
It traverses barriers that allows one to at once don a quiff and creepers whilst flicking contentedly through the latest glam review. Tonight’s bill reflects this happy mixture of styles. The line-up is headed by the punk rock supergroup The Bermondsey Joyriders, with support coming from other bands no doubt familiar to Bubblegum readers: Achilla, Evil Beaver, Zen Motel and The Duel. It is London goth-metal band Achilla then that kick off proceedings with a nice two-piece acoustic set that includes a well crafted cover of Alice in Chains’ ‘Down In A Hole’. They do well to warm the stage as the crowd is only just beginning to fill the venue.
http://achillamusic.com/
They are followed by the awesome Evil Beaver, a lively two-piece bass and drums combo with singer Evil’s bass sounding like she’d nicked it from Lemmy and thrust the gain up. Their set is powerful and tight, and this sleaze-ripping duo from LA really set the tempo in a way I’m not sure many were expecting. They are trying something a bit different, and it’s working in style. http://www.evilbeaver.us
To take to the stage after the success of that set is a tough ask but fortunately for everyone it is Zen Motel who follow in riffed-up sleaze rock style, offering up one catchy chorus after another. Once again this set offers a shift from the last, and the high energy raucousness directs the mood into the celebratory-like feel that continues through the night. Zen’s b
assist announced that this would be his last show, so we’ll have to wait and see who comes in to replace him. http://www.zenmotel.co.uk/
Another trip to the bar it is, while we wait for The Duel to get set up. The London-based punk band kick out a decent performance, complimented by a moment of comic value when vocalist Tara Rez appears to announce, “This is from my new album” prompting the guitarist to question, “Er, I thought it was our new album?” “That’s was I said you [expletive accompanied by middle finger waving].” I was not the only person in the crowd who heard what the six-stringer heard. http://www.myspace.com/theduel
Although made up of ex Cocksparrer and Chelsea members, I confess to not having heard The Bermondsey Joyriders yet, and I’m not sure I knew what to expect. I’d just heard someone say they were a punk band. They are not just a punk band. They are a fucking excellent punk band, and one with a hell of a lot of blues in there. My smile stretches from ear to ear as they deliver excellence song by song. During the song ‘Football’, a friend, who had never heard of them, turns to me and says, “they’re like Chas and Dave on crack”. That was perfect; I burst out laughing with that one, which just added to my delight at seeing this band. When it was over I was left brimming with happiness at what a good night of live music it had been. http://www.myspace.com/thebermondseyjoyridersofficial
The revelry continued into the early hours of the morning with the DJ busting out some cracking tunes until the night unravelled into fragmented memories involving Jäger-bombs, Def Leppard and kebabs. All in all it was a reminder of how much good a zine such as Bubblegum Slut, and the dedicated enthusiasm of people like Alison, can do for the underground world of rock music. Here’s to another 10 years.
Luckily I managed to catch up with Alison, burden her already busy schedule and pester her on the history of her creation.
So Alison, 10 years! How does that feel?
Surreal! I published the first Bubblegum Slut aged 15 without even a plan for Issue 2, let alone a 10-year plan! That pretty much sums up the way that Bubblegum Slut has developed since; one day at a time as ideas and opportunities arise. With no long-term goals to meet I’ve rarely become dispirited by expectations not being met, and so every interview with a personal idol secured and every compliment from a subscriber received comes as something of a pleasant surprise! With that approach, work on the zine has never grown to be dull or chore-like, which largely explains the Slut’s longevity. The nicest surprise so far as been to turn round one day and realize it’s been a decade!
What was your motivation for starting Bubblegum Slut?
I started Bubblegum Slut in autumn 2000, when nu-metal was at its peak and I was a 15-year-old glam fan born 15 years too late. The mainstream rock press largely forgot about glam until Steel Panther and the publication of ‘The Dirt’ afforded the genre a kind of ironic/guilty pleasure acceptance some years later. Back then it was deeply unfashionable but I loved it nonetheless and figured since no-one else was writing about it, why shouldn’t I? I’ve been writing ever since I learned to string a sentence together as a kid and, in some of the many other zines around back then, I saw a format that I could channel both my passion for writing and love of music into.
10 years ago, online self-publishing had yet to take off on quite the scale it has now – when every person with an internet connection also has a blog – and there were vast numbers of print zines in circulation to provide me with inspiration. Two fan mags that had a big influence on Bubblegum Slut in terms of content, attitude and visual style were Vagabond Hearts and Abaxis, both of which have sadly long since ceased to publish.
You’ve had ten years without a plan, but a lot has been done in that time! How many issues have been printed to date?
Bubblegum Slut has always been run day-to-day : I’ve never had a 10-year plan but then, even with the decade milestone now rolling by, I’ve never thought to stop publishing either. Fanzines are not a profit-making form of media, so if you’re to edit one you need to be able to find suitable reward for your time and efforts in the experiences and enjoyment the whole endeavour offers you. The day it gets dull and feels like an unpaid job will be the day to stop, but right now it keeps giving – after no less than 37 issues!
Give us some of your highlights so far, I’m sure there must’ve been many?
Over the course of a decade there have been a LOT. A few that stand out though would be spending a night in a haunted castle with Wednesday 13 and a ghost hunter as part of an album launch stunt; seeing one of our first sampler CD releases become perhaps the first, and last, label-less CD-r release to gain a 4K Kerrang! review (and seeing the Kerrang! journalist to
thank, one Brett Callwood, later come aboard as a columnist for Bubblegum Slut!) and years later, starting a champagne-fuelled afternoon with the 69 Eyes with a toast to the zine, raised by the band over their PR girl’s suggestion they drink to the glowing Kerrang! write-up she’d just secured!
Then there are the interviews. And few favourite interviewees (both for Bubblegum Slut and freelance jobs it has led on to) will always be Justin Hawkins, Jayne County, Brian Molko, Slash, Vince Neil, Lydia Lunch, the late Nikki Sudden, Emilie Autumn, Angie Bowie, Andy LaPlegua and Steve Dior.
Finally, cheesy as it may sound, one of the greatest rewards/highlights in the experience of zine editing will always be receiving feedback from readers. As I still sell the majority of each issues print run face-to-face at gigs I get to see close-up my readers’excitement over a new issue or coverage of a band who have been underrated and out of the spotlight for sometime (something of a Bubblegum Slut speciality). And that goes a long way to justifying mind-numbing hours spent snipping out the fluffy hearts that adorn the cover of each copy!
And dare to share any lows?
Lows can almost invariably be pinned on the failings of modern technology – dictaphones failing to record and leaving me to piece together a given issue’s ‘big’ interview from memory… or weeks’ worth of work being lost to corrupted computer files (which unfortunately has happened on a couple of occasions).
How does the rock scene compare now to 10 years ago?
Bubblegum Slut has always been almost wilfully ignorant to rock trends. Instead the focus has always been on genres which had their heyday before the zine even began publishing (broadly glam, goth, psychobilly, rockabilly and classic punk), bands who have been underrated and overlooked elsewhere, and original and trend-defying bands still emerging. As such, it’s difficult for me to comment on how contemporary rock has evolved over the past 10 years.
From the specific vantage point I have got, the most obvious changes are probably those I referred to in answering question two earlier. When I started publishing the zine scene was still pretty busy and whenever I went to a gig to sell copies of Bubblegum Slut I’d see two or three other editors doing the same. Since blogs and ezines have risen along with printing costs I’m often the only one, and scarily a lot of gig-goers of my generation or younger don’t even recognise the concept of a zine, asking “what is it?” if I approach them with copies of
Bubblegum Slut at shows! For all the positives I’ll acknowledge the internet has had in terms of challenging the mainstream media’s position as arbiters of taste, by validating everyone’s voice as a music fan/critic, I feel the availability of information has – for much of a certain generation of music fans at least – destroyed the desire and initiative to seek out and discover music that was also once a defining part of the underground and zine scene.
With Bubblegum Slut having rather ‘retro’ tastes and selling predominantly to a readership who still love the feel and substance of vinyl, and the memories that the zine’s content and printed format evoke (as I said above, I’ve always felt like I was born too late, and most of my friends and readers are at least 10 years older than me), it’s not a shift that dented my sales, but it does make me a little sad.
The only occasions on which the trends have touched me is when they’ve glanced over the genres that Bubblegum Slut has always covered regardless. When the zine started, 80s glam could not have been less fashionable, and I could never have predicted that – for a couple of years, post-Dirt – the sound would experience a resurgence, in the form of a spate of first-timer reunions and revivalist bands forming. Now it seems the ‘two-decade nostalgia rule’ has come into play and it’s found an acceptable place in the mainstream once again, as a guilty pleasure on ‘cheese’ playlists, or as a fancy dress theme at rock clubs.
Anyone we should be checking out now – anything upcoming to keep an eye out for?
A few personal favourite acts doing the round of London’s live underground right now would have to be The Rotting Hill Gang, The Duel, Strangefruit, The Dogbones, The Peckham Cowboys, Pink Cigar and The Skuzzies.
What’s next for Bubblegum Slut and Alison?
I started the zine with an unplanned, trial and error approach and, for all the advances it’s now made in terms of print quality, page count and circulation, the overall approach remains that haphazard. I can tell you what’s in the next issue but little beyond that – only that it’ll be out there until it gets boring, which is yet to happen.
For me personally the next projects are Vive le Rock – a new national glossy from the publishers of Big Cheese I’m contributing to which launches on October 15th, and ensuring everyone knows about Kiria’s debut album ‘Radio’! It’s out October 27th, people – find out more at www.kiria.co.uk
Alison gets a major Über thumbs up for taking time to answer some questions and for putting on a great birthday bash!
Make sure to get a copy of the Bubblegum Slut 10th Birthday Issue, which is out now.
http://www.myspace.com/bubblegumslutzine
Photo Kudos Trudi Knight