I'm looking through some old letters sent to me 30 years ago in my capacity as co-editor/publisher of Distant Violins, a fanzine which ran to about 30 issues if I remember properly. I put up a short letter from Tim Hemensley a few months ago, and there are a lot of other really interesting ones. I'd like to post them here but it seems a bit nasty to do it with people who are still around. Tim isn't, and neither is David McComb, still it seems a little mean to make public their correspondence, but here's a historically interesting page from one of his letters and a handbill he also sent.
5 comments:
I'm surprised by the 30 issues amount because I have the first dozen and always thought it was the full set. Think I have about 3 or 4 cassettes too, one of which contains the "Triffids at Julian Wu's mums house for lunch" recollection...a favourite.
Thanks for that! I'd love to read more such DV correspondence, from those dead or living or missing in action. It's not like they're love letters or anything (..... or are there?). And please don't feel the need to be selective - more little details and gossipy bits, please.
My dad used to sing me St James Infirmary Blues in a spooky bass voice when I was a small girl. (Must tell my therapist.) Agree with DMcC, great song. Have you kept a full set of DVs, DN?
I don't have many copies of DV, probably three or four. I am not sure if I could be trusted with them. Yes, dfv, there were about thirty; I kind of revived it (because I could) in the late 1980s and did quite a few 8-page issues, which I think I usually just gave away. I suspect the last one (to date!) was about 1992 or so, but I can't be sure. As for DV correspondence - I don't know - it's not that exciting, really. Honest. And it does feel a bit like betraying a confidence.
The NLA will get hold of David's stuff one day and box it up as the DV Papers - I don't wanna have to go to Canberra! So any scans made and posted here now are 1. clearer to read than the photocopies oft featured in the DVs of the time (like the Epic Soundtracks list) 2. an added dimension to the published transcriptions (like letters from MES or Nikki Sudden) 3. if you cut out all the 'irrelevant' stuff the letters will read like press releases, alas....
For dfv's info, DV went up to issue 27, March '89 at least, or that's the last one I got (from AGG for a buck). Then Mike Nichols' Dirty on the Shovel sorta took up the mantle, for three or so issues in '92/3.
I like reading David here now as much as I did 30 years ago in DV. Not to glorify the old stuff, but - put it this way - Cee Walker's Stranded book tells a big part of the most prominent story, but DV fills in all the gaps and tells a tale all its own that's just as important....
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