It's amazing how things can change, and how quickly that can happen. Since February there has been a lot going on, both personally, and things that effect the continuation of the FAS magazine. While life (and death) have been getting in the way of things, it's time for a bit of an update, and to let you know what's been going down. So, here's the bit that makes for some necessary changes with/to the FAS magazine. Fortunately it's not all bad news.
Over Christmas and into the New Year I got to work on the next part of the story, working into 1972 and FREE reforming. New interviews with Simon Kirke, Johnny Glover and Corky Laing for this part. It took a while, but it all rounded up quite nicely into four magazines. Three usual sized, and one bigger concluding issue. Pretty much the way we've been doing them for a while now. Then the shit hit the fan somewhat...
Since May 2003 (issue 100) Gary has been printing the FAS magazine, and has done a fine job. Just spectacular. This took a lot of weight off me, and I can't even begin to thank him enough for all the hard work he's put in over the last 20 years. Sadly circumstances have changed, and now he's now longer able to print for us. This has made a bit of a dent in our future plans, and Gary is as unhappy as anyone that he's having to stop. There's nothing that can be done about it. That's the way things work out sometimes. So we pick ourselves up, and move on.
Since the last issue came out we've both been looking to resolve the printing problem at a price that can be... tolerated!... There's no way we are going to stop the magazine at this point, but running anything in 'hardcopy' these days can be insanely expensive. That's one of the reasons we are pretty much the last of the older music fanzines standing. 'Amazing Pudding' (Pink Floyd), 'Tight but Loose' (Led Zeppelin), and the 'Neil Young Appreciation Society' fanzine are all a thing of the past, along with many others. It's sad, but keeping a magazine like this running on a shoestring budget is TOUGH. It's a hobby after all, not a job. Gary was our 'ace in the hole'. A subscriber and fan, who could also print for us. Perfect... Well it was until now anyway!
It's taken a while to put things into place, but I think it's finally looking like I've managed to secure someone new to take over. This was MUCH HARDER than I expected. Not only due to some of the seriously insane prices I was quoted, but also by the rather lacklustre 'tone' of some of the people I was asking to take the magazine on. I'm not giving the task to someone who really doesn't give a shit about it, whatever the pricing is like! However, one place consistently answered my emails quickly, and were super helpful. I went in, and got a proof printed for the next issue, and was greeted by a friendly guy (Hi Neal), obviously a music fan, who within a few minutes told me he was a "bit of a Hendrix fan" and had been checking out the FREE Isle Of Wight footage on Youtube after seeing the FAS mag 'test'! A Hendrix fan... Wow! Not something I hear that often these days from someone at least half my age, probably more, cuz I'm old now!
So, I'm pretty happy with the copy from Neil, but there are some other issues. Previously we've been printing directly from the master files (made in MS 'Word'). I tend to use very old software, and I'm very good with it. Gary found a way to make that work and printed directly from my original file. Sadly that doesn't help the new people printing, who really need the magazine in PDF format. This has proven to be a challenge. I've tried a number of ways to do this, and they all have pros and cons - none of them are perfect. The PDF form can blur the text if it compresses things too much, I don't like/want that, but I've worked on that to try and keep everything in the old press readable, as it's images that tend to be the biggest and get the most squashed by the PDF compressing the file size. It's a bit of a task, and fiddly. Also very time consuming. It means I have to write and set the magazine up in one program, then move it to another where it needs to be set up again as everything moves, and only at that point I can make a compressionless PDF (the PDF maker in new versions of 'MSOffice', which I was hoping would resolve this, is garbage - so money wasted there). I've actually set up the next magazine (paged it for printing) half a dozen times now at least, as each different program simply scatters pictures and text all over the place, despite fixing borders and margins to be the same. It's a pain. Boy, is it a pain! Anyway, I've worked to fix that as best I can. So the good news is the FAS is still up and running, and heading into a batch of new issues very soon. The chances are you won't even notice any differance in the acual printing quality. So that's good. Hooray! The first will take the longest as I get my head around everything that I now need to do to complete an issue to 'print format'.
Sadly the original vision for the upcoming issues has had to change a bit. Given the circumstances, and the current situation, with the price of everything in the whole world going up and up (so it seems), the new magazines will be 52 pages (not 56), and while there was a big issue planned, this has had to become two issues. That's necessity I'm afraid. I don't want to put the subscription price up further, and something has to give. BUT this should stop any further repeats of the Post Office trying to say the magazine you get doesn't have the correct postage applied when it's delivered to you, as it will be a bit lighter, and a bit thinner, but still in full colour, and packed with everything that was intended to be there. I've had to shuffle some things about inside for these issues, but it's all still in there. Every last cutting and photograph. This includes the Island 1972 black promo booklet that was done after the UK tour in February. So, like a say, it's not all bad news.I just need to be a bit more careful with sizes.
The 'Free At Last' issues will start in July by the looks of things, through to November. Five issues in all. One a month. The first is complete apart from a final check, and the introduction. The second just needs some last minute changes, then paging (again) before final corrections, and the other three require some final checking, corrections, and paging in the new format. So it's all good, and I'm pretty sure I can sort it all out. It's been a challenging couple of months or so, one way and another, but hopefully now we can move forward again.
We are, as the saying around here goes, Sailing On!
Quite apt considering the album we are dealing with in the next issues!
Sneaky peak of on-going work below...
%20-%20COVER%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2012-13%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2014-15%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2020-21%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2030-31%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2026-27%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2032-33%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20Promo%20Pages%2034-35%20sf.jpg)
%20-%20COVER%20sf.jpg)
