What a Palaver!

I didn't tell you about the perhaps biggest surprise at Rip It Up. In the middle of a gig Andrew turned and pointed towards a girl wearing a white t-shirt with "Grimsby Fishmarket" printed in large green letters - "that's something you don't see everyday!", he said and I could only agree. For those of you who don't know, Grimsby Fishmarket was an old Swedish pop fanzine. Then later on, as we were looking through the stuff Fraction Discs were selling at the festival, there were three issues of the fanzine and it's predecessor Smash Hit Wonder. It wasn't too difficult to solve the mystery though, as Jörgen told me that the girl wearing the t-shirt worked together with one of the guys who used to do the fanzine. He had lots of un-sold copies lying around at home and was planning to throw them out. So she'd brought them to the festival instead! I've read through the first issue that you can see pictured above, and it was really interesting. They seem to have been very into the whole él scene. Felt strange reading a fanzine in Swedish though, but it only proves that it can be done. The fifth issue (which was the other one they sold) came with a transparent flexi holding two songs by Chocolate Barry. I didn't know this artist but they were nice enough songs and I was surprised to find that their address was Bunkeflostrand - a small suburb to Malmö that I've actually been to a few times! The writers of the fanzine also made a cassette compilation that has become quite legendary, because it included an exclusive track from The Orchids. I heard something about there being cds with the songs from the tape, but I'm not sure if that was true. But luckily a kind soul actually sent me a ripped version of the tape on a cd a couple of months ago (two or three songs didn't fit on it though), so I'll be putting up two of the songs here shortly. The Orchids told me that they hadn't heard the song in question themselves for about 15 years, so I hope these people still have a master tape or something! I don't think Fraction Discs sold all the copies of the fanzines, so you could write to them and ask if you're interested. Or you could write to Marcus Törncrantz, to whom to can send a message via the Indiepop Directory entry for Grimsby Fishmarket. I think that might be the person we're talking about here.