Party Fears

Party Fears was a Perth indie rock fanzine that ran from December 1985 to March 1993. It was the king of the scene, which says more about the scene than the zine. Award-winning, no less. I thought it would be nice to put copies up on the Web for posterior's sake*.

Press: 1994 interview in Woozy; something in the Telegraph-Mirror in late 1994, here's my answers to their questionnaire.

The issues of the zine were 1–7, 9–11, 11½, 12–16, 16½, 17, 18 and 18½. 8 didn't exist and 18¾ and 19 never did come out. (But see the fragments.)

What am I doing these days? Rocknerd! Not quite the same level of endeavour, but it keeps me off the streets.

For a sample of Perth music of 1986, here's MP3s of The Attic Tapes, Cherrytop's 1986 cassette compilation. Includes that photo of the Red Parrot, by me.

Other early music journalism by me: some stuff in X-Press (as David Gerard or Mark J. Smith), Juke (same) and I forget if RAM actually printed anything by me (though I did pitch them). Also for No-Name/Seed (VUT student paper) in 1995-1996. All this is lost — but if anyone has dusty clippings collections, please do send 'em my way!

Vortex was a magaziney fanzine thing put out by Radio 6NR Late Nite, edited by Anna Zanella. There were six issues, from late 1986 until late 1987. Issues four and six included a flexidisc. Scanned by Brad Lambert.

B-Side was the zine for Australian indie rock in the '80s. Brad Lambert asked Simon Lonergan and Caroline Birkett about putting these up, got the okay, and is going through the scanning. Coming before the end of time ...

I have vague dreams of scanning most of what's left of my Australian fanzine collection. If you have such a collection, there's no reason you couldn't do that too. I'll even put 'em up. Particularly after The Harvey and FreakZine. Thankfully Inner City Sound is in print once more.

After an appeal in 2003 for scans, I secured copies of almost all issues in 2004. Special thanks to: Jo Hoetmer (who also let me use her scanner), Helen Ardente (my mother, who paid my airfare to Perth) and Shirley Gerard (my mother, who kept the old copies). And Nick Potter, who decided I was being a slackarse and so sent me scans he'd done, including the long-lost #16½ (w00t!), Aaron Curran (#6) and Adrian Butcher (#17).

(Most annoying thing: #11½–18 were done on computer. Thinking there would be no use for the files ever again, I erased them as I went. Three years later, I discovered the World Wide Web. Bugger.)

— David Gerard.

* © Kim Williams