Tom Vague
“I was completely obsessed with Vague (and to a lesser extent with RE/SEARCH and Rapid Eye, they were a bit too professional, ha ha) – such a great combination of underground culture and music, like this window into a strange London-centric counter culture of squats and revolutionaries and occultists and bohemians.”
(me – interviewed by Simon Reynolds earlier this year)
Fanzine legend now has something resembling a web-presence, courtesy of Housmans – one of London’s best alternative and lefty/anarcho bookshops.
Lots of nice cover scans – even of the early issues which I had never seen before. And a nice bit of documentation of Vague issues 1-54. Tom’s gone a bit Tony Wilson with the numbering with various books, websites and pdfs thrown in.
Vague #54: 50 Years of Carnival 1959 – 2009 is just out.
Housmans have some Vagues for sale online and links to downloads…
wow, had no idea he was still producing them – excellent link
Excellent news, will have a nose around later. Tom once sent me a really long, detailed letter about where I was going wrong with my zine – at least I think it was about that but as I’m not sure as I could barely read a word. It looked like a pissed spider had crawled through some ink.
I used to drink with Tom when I lived in the Nathan Barley crawling horror that was Notting Hill in the mid 90′s. I was being driven mad by stlye culture and its venal afficionados while Tom actually liked it. ‘Go on, keep you’re hatred sharp’, was his mantra. Going up to his room to drag him out to the pub I found him scrawling in his journal. ‘What are you writeing Vague?’ I asked, as incoherant scrawl poured from his pen over the page. ‘Dunno, I looked back over it recently,’(he waved towards his collection of ledgers) and I couldent understand a fucking thing. Passes the time though…Pint?