'Are you as paranoid as a lot of your stuff suggests?'
'Paranoid? Oh yeah, paranoya is my life. I've been made that way by other people.'
Patrik Fitzgerald
Rapid Eye Movement wasis a brilliant fanzine. Sadly departed R.E.M. ed. Simon Dwyer's inspired delving yielded-up a celebrated corpus sublime. Mining a rare seam, Simon hewed from a fissure where music, politics, culture and the occult converged ('Occulture'); always deftly swerving the decent into accursed obscurantism. He'd go on to do a stint at Sounds and eventually launch 'Occulture' in earnest with the 1989 publication of Rapid Eye vol. 1 - this lavish artefact earned Simon his many plaudits. Of interest here though are the 3 early issues of Rapid Eye Movement featuring collaborators Alan Anger, Mick Dwyer and Lol Loveitt. These fanzines soar way above most other contenders, primarily on account of their searching interviews; check out the in-depth chats with Scritti Politti, The Piranhas (5 pages apiece), Patrik Fitzgerald (7 pages), Tony Parsons & Julie Burchill, and Mark Perry, and you soon get the picture. There's a profile on the Bridge House (Canning Town) namechecking gaffers Tony Murphy, Glen Murphy & Jon McGeady + mentions for Bridge House Records recording artists Rebel, The Tickets, Dogwatch, and a brief review of Mod's May Day '79 comp. There are short pieces on Nicky & The Dots (Simon's bro Nick's band), and Chelsea, which includes a review of The Slab. Elsewhere, reviews of The Flowers, PIL, SLF, The Monochrome Set, The Specials, The Undertones, The Stranglers, Penetration, 999, The Angelic Upstarts, The Damned, Earcom 2 (The Thursdays, Basczax Joy Division), The Merton Parkas, Killing Joke, Stiv Bators, and Pere Ubu + live - The Fall/Scritti Politti/Ian Penman. An absolute pearler!
A4 scanned at 600 dpi
Rapid Eye Movement #1
