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© Who's Listening
TAPE ONE: ALAN HAYES...
Insert cassette… Press
PLAY…
I go back a long way with
Doctor Who. Not as far as many people do, but quite far enough from
a modern standpoint for me to be just a few years off celebrating my
50th anniversary as a fan.
After discovering that there
was such a thing as organised Doctor Who fandom, I joined the
Doctor Who Appreciation Society and went to my first convention –
Panopticon III – in 1979 at the tender age of 14. There, I met up with a
couple of fans I’d corresponded with by letter and telephone, bagged
myself some fanzines, and marvelled at all four parts of An Unearthly
Child projected on the big screen. This eye-opening event served to
reinforce the fact that there was so much more to the series than I had
actually managed to watch while growing up. Consequently, I sought to
discover as much as I could about early Doctor Who, be that
through the DWAS Reference Department and the STINFOs produced by that
nice Mr. Bentham, then of Hendon (at an address that remains burned into
my brain!), or through seeking out Target novelisations and other
sources of information.
And then, one day, one
incredible day, one of those friends I hooked up with at Panopticon III,
Anthony Goodman, kindly sent me a couple of audio cassettes containing
three whole hours of rare soundtrack excerpts. This was A History of
Dr. Who, an ambitious and, to me, quite magical retrospective of the
first thirteen seasons of Doctor Who. Once again, I was indebted
to J. Jeremy Bentham, who had toiled with Gordon Blows over this
wondrous window into the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and early Baker
years, most of which were then almost completely new to me. I had read
about them in the STINFOs, devoured the Target books, seen the odd video
clip on Nationwide and Blue Peter, but here I was,
listening to lengthy audio clips of stories I thought I’d never see or
hear. People talk about this era and say, “It was before DVD and
Blu-ray,” or “The Internet was barely a glint in the milkman’s eye back
then,” but in some ways, in terms of access to archive material, it
honestly felt like it was before the invention of the wheel!
I had previously placed
adverts in local papers in the hope that someone had recorded
soundtracks of Doctor Who stories that pre-dated the point at
which my own recordings started – The Ribos Operation. I even
dared to think that someone might have something on tape as old as the
then half-a-decade old Planet of Evil! It’s amazing just how low
you can set your targets when you have next to nothing and think you’re
the only person with this mad obsession (it’s also a sign of youth: at
14, the idea of “four years ago” was akin to delving into the dim,
distant past. Today, I think of decades how I used to think of years!).
Slowly, via friendships and
trades, I built up a modest collection – though no response ever came
from that newspaper ad. Through all this time, my most played tapes were
always the two that formed A History of Dr. Who. I still have a
special place in my heart for it, which is why it is included in this
website even though it was most certainly not a tapezine and predated
the first true tapezine by some six years; it was both an example of
what was possible with limited resources and an undoubted influence on
tapezine producers to come, myself included. (There are a few other
titles included in the guide that don’t quite fit the description of
“taped fanzine” - or indeed cover Doctor Who only in passing -
because to some degree they are part of the story and are worthy of
mention.)
Despite purchasing a VHS
recorder in 1980 in time for the summer repeats of Destiny of the
Daleks and City of Death, both of which I eagerly taped, a
lot of my time then was spent in trading audio cassettes of episodes of
the series. Some of the recordings were quite atrocious and almost
completely inaudible, particularly a cassette I received of Marco
Polo, which was distinctive for having a few short passages in the
fifth episode that could actually be understood. The rest could have
been Grandstand for all I knew. No matter, there was always the
hope of better to come and, as we know, it eventually did – but several
years later. Regardless of the quality of these relics from the distant
past, my fascination for audio continued undimmed. The concept of having
stories on video cassette seemed nothing more than a pipe dream (indeed,
I recall being wound up by a school friend who claimed to be modifying
an audio cassette recorder to make it also capable of capturing
pictures. I fell for his wheeze hook, line and sinker, and was convinced
it was only a matter of time before he would be making video recordings
on C-90s!). Regardless, at least with my audio collection I was making
some headway.
My love affair with
Doctor Who quickly led me into producing fanzines, and before 1979
was out, I had cobbled together something of a distinctly poor quality
called Fury from the Deep. An old (and now much-missed) friend,
David Hamilton, dug out his copies of these in the first decade of the
21st century, much to my horror (I subsequently
published them in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion via Hidden
Tiger in 2012). I went on to edit a couple of issues of Shada for
Gary Russell, doing, in my opinion, a bit of a mediocre job with the
fanzine, which went on to be one of the very best once Gary thankfully
returned to the editor's chair.
Shortly afterwards, I began
to find my niche somewhat, writing and submitting artwork for a number
of fanzines including Dynatrope and Peladon. During this
time, I co-ordinated and contributed artwork to the Doctor Who
Cassette Cover Project, an enterprise which gave fellow fans with
audio collections the opportunity to wrap their precious Doctor Who
cassette soundtracks in specially designed covers, one for each story.
Four releases, one for each of the first four Doctors, were issued with
unique cover artwork for every serial up to Logopolis, before I
got completely sidetracked by another idea… Tapezines!
The result was Sonic
Waves, which I produced for four years between 1984 and 1987. I look
back on it as the best thing I did in fandom. It was the project which
gave me the most fun I ever had as a fan of Doctor Who. Above
all, though, I’d point to the many lasting friendships forged during my
time editing Sonic Waves as the single greatest legacy of those
four years. Some of these came totally out of the blue, like when, in
2000, I was ‘stalked’ in the nicest possible way by a bunch of Sonic
Waves listeners who had grown up in the Salisbury area and produced
their own tapezines, in part inspired by my own. I was stunned (I still
am!) and they have all become friends – and one of them is my co-author
on this very website, the fabulous Nick Goodman. I’ve got so much out of
tapezines and those exciting early days in fandom and I see this site as
a way of giving a little back.
Who’s Listening
– The Online Guide to Doctor Who Tapezines is essentially a history
and celebration of the Doctor Who tapezine, now very much a thing
of the past, replaced by a plethora of podcasts, just as fanzines have
for the most part been superseded by websites. The many tapezines that
were produced in Great Britain and around the world are remembered in
this internet tribute and visual materials are reproduced, such as
examples of cassette covers and original adverts published in
Celestial Toyroom, the newsletter of the Doctor Who Appreciation
Society. You can also read the opinions and memories of those who
produced and contributed to the tapezines and also of some of those who
listened to them. There is also the opportunity to listen to some of the
tapezines themselves.
This website has been in the
works since 2007, when its initial web presence was as Tapezine
Matrix, but the vast majority of research and writing conducted
since that time has been with a book in mind. At one point it was to be
released by Miwk Publishing – it even got as far as being assigned an
ISBN – but it was always a problematic book to research and write.
Generally, tapezines had a very small circulation, and tracking them all
down, not to mention their producers, decades later, has been a
challenge. In many cases, we have come up with little more than a blank,
whereas in others we have plenty of detail and also the enthusiastic
co-operation of the people who put those tapezines together. Ultimately,
we decided that it was better to publish the ‘book’ online, with those
gaps in the research apparent, than never to publish it at all – which
almost certainly
would have been the case in the print medium. Nick and I hope that you
will forgive the uneven nature of the coverage and will enjoy the
website and find it a useful reference nonetheless.
Doctor Who tapezines
came in many styles, from the staid and the slick to the wacky and
tacky. Each and every one is worthy of celebration. Perhaps you have
some of them buried deep in your collection. Who knows, maybe this site
will inspire you to blow away the decades of dust from one of them on a
rainy Sunday afternoon? If you pop one in your cassette deck (should you
still have one!) or hop over to our Tapezine
Jukebox, you’ll rediscover something that for a while caused
Doctor Who fandom to sit up and pay attention – and maybe, as you
click through these pages, occasionally a forgotten memory or two will
come rushing back to you.
Alan Hayes
TAPE TWO: NICK GOODMAN...
Late to the party would
aptly describe my life in most respects and fandom is no exception. And
when I did my thing, it wasn’t without some reserve towards the outside
world. But it was with a very personalised passion, for Doctor Who
and cassettes are two long term passions of mine.
Being asked to co-author
this website by my great friend and hard working collaborator, Alan
Hayes, is rather like being asked to write a piece in the autobiography
of two lovers with whom I shared great times. There will be very
personal and silly moments. Having now reached my Saga-holidaying year,
I wish I had bottled it all, the embarrassing and sublime
notwithstanding. Having bottled out of too much in my time, I look to
bottle as much of everyone’s else’s time as I can.
What of tape recording? My
parents bought a rather handsome Sony cassette recorder in 1970 which my
dad would use to tape programmes of choral delight from the radio.
Occasionally, the microphone would point towards my sister and me. One
Sunday night late in 1976, I thought I would have some fun and rattled
off some ditties as the ultimately doomed glimmerings of a career in pop
teased me. A year later, I came home from school and the same urge took
me. The Sony recorder and I looked at each other in a different way that
night and life was not the same again. I became a taping fiend with my
three family members, alternately willing and unwilling recipients,
entertaining a fantasy watching audience with my antics. Later, work
colleagues and folks at parties suffered the same indignity (if
immortality can be deemed to be indignity – maybe it is!). Some of this
early waffling was unspeakably childish. I do wish I had kept them.
Meanwhile, a certain
Doctor Who had been followed in my family since the earliest days. I
had dipped into Jon Pertwee’s tales and – although my first memory was
The Sea Devils Part 2, it wasn’t until Pertwee’s arachnid-filled
changeover to Tom Baker, that I vowed (at 6) to actually follow the show
properly, and take note of the stories / monsters / writers / Radio
Times billings. By early 1975 I was ready for geekdom. The trusty
Sony first crossed swords with Who as it watched Part 2 of
Revenge of the Cybermen in my place whilst I attended the birthday
party of a future marine biologist. The end result was not considered a
great success (the recording, not the party!) with much clambering and
shouting around Voga and a poorly judged microphone distance. Fast
forward to summer 1978 and the repeat of The Invisible Enemy, the
story that cemented my die-hard devotion to the show. Part 4 arrived and
I realised it could come and go and never be seen again. So, I taped it
and developed an appreciation for the first time of what went into the
show, especially Dudley Simpson’s gorgeous scores.
I then audio taped the
summer repeats from therein on. That it didn’t occur to me to tape a
whole season until 1980 is probably due to my lack of vision rather than
my pocket money (which was splashed out that year on my Target
collection). No expense was spared in getting me my own tape recorder,
so my paws were kept away from the precious Sony. To this end, my
rubbishy Rumbelows Crown machine rattled and tattled noisily through
four, subsequently incoherent seasons of Doctor Who before it was
given the last rites. Its woolly legacy is still mocked by those who
heard its work.
1980 was the year I joined
DWAS. A wide-eyed, sensitive and thoroughly green 11-year-old, I was
dismayed to find the era that had led me there was so derided (Mr.
Graham Williams’). But the potential for fanzines fascinated me. I had a
half-hearted throw at one of my own in 1981. This went nowhere and I can
only remember it had the word ‘zine’ in the title.
Then an ad in Celestial
Toyroom – "The Oracle Speaks…" it announced – the great David J.
Howe with the first of a new concept, the tapezine. What a great idea!
Why had no one thought of it before? I was knocked out by old clips and
the very pleasant, enthused presentation on Dr. Who: Tapezine 1.
It was another year before I bought my next purchase, UNIT Tapezine.
Checking this site's highly useful Timeline,
I am mildly appalled by how many other titles just passed me by. My only
attempt at that time to emulate this revolutionary new craze was
Ergon, in 1983. I had a fairly appalling 1983 and Ergon was
similarly a disaster. When I tried to interview the cat ten minutes in,
I kind of realised that the time was not right.
Then, one fate-crunching
day, I saw an ad in CT for the rather soothing-sounding Sonic Waves
Issue 1, which proposed to review The Invisible Enemy. The story
that sold me on audio taping Doctor Who had now also brought
about my first contact with my future pal Alan Hayes! With its
personable, discerning host, intelligent features written and presented
by fine contributors (amongst them future broadcasting luminary Matthew
Sweet), and home-produced music, Sonic Waves was a cut above and
still comes across, to my mind, as the slickest of all the tapezines.
Would I be so unprofessional as to butter up my co-author? It
additionally brought me street cred with my new Who friend from
school, Keith Musselwhite, who delighted in this quality product and
spoke about it liberally.
School mercifully ended but
Keith led me into the Salisbury Federation of Whovians (SFOW), which
started in the summer of 1986 and was, at long last, my introduction to
conventions, videos and the world of fandom beyond fanzines. In 1988 I
finally persuaded my parents (and, if we are honest, myself) that a
video recorder was the thing we needed most in the world. My
conservative and technophobic dad agreed and, fearing the penury as
ever, insisted my mum sold Mandy, her car of 28 years, to pay for its
rental. My fan friend and video mentor Linda King then gently pointed
out she had never rented a video, only ever paid outright. Seeing the
logic, I defied my family’s post-war rental culture, and bought one
myself. Pity about Mandy…
Meanwhile the tapezine
world, having forgiven me for Ergon, was moving in for the kill.
My young fan friend Paul Chandler had produced a one-off tape, Who’s
Next. Keith was never far from a tapezine production, with Meglos
his established title. When I announced I intended to produce my own, he
set to work on a rival, Death Zone, to keep me on my toes! I
worked slowly. Two Death Zones preceded my first issue. I named
my tape child Rayphase Shift after a piece of technological
jargon that had taken my fancy in the last episode of The Trial of a
Time Lord. Speed was of the essence so only myself and Andrew
Candish, another Whoed-up school friend, took part initially.
Within it was my need to be
heard. A decade in DWAS had made me realise I was a minority voice. I
liked all that was loathed (well, nearly all). I was not always
impressed with the seemingly impressive. My underlying mission from the
start was to champion the unloved – or at least the under-loved!
Choosing mouse over man, my publicity was non-existent bar word of mouth
and regular classified ads in TV Zone magazine. I didn’t so much
take the tapezine scene by storm so much as knock on its door and run
away! I assumed Rayphase Shift was a one-off. Then Warren
Cummings, a fellow SFOW member, asked when Rayphase Shift 2 was
out. Heartened that such a thing was desired, I went out and made it
happen. This time, Keith, Warren, my other SFOW veteran Andy Trowbridge,
Paul and Who pen-friend Elaine Bull joined me at the microphone.
From out of the
now-disbanded SFOW came a band of friends that I like to think
Rayphase Shift (which quickly became known as RPS) helped bind
together and grow. We lasted six years, spawned a documentary by film
maker Andy Ching, and an abortive comeback, RPS 15. Many of those
involved now helm and guest in their own podcasts, the obvious natural
development from the old tape.
The joy of those pioneering
days of sound fanzines is what we celebrate here. There will be ’zines
you have never heard of (mine is probably one of them!) and others you
have may well have loved from Day One. Sit back and explore our portrait
of an exciting little niche of fandom across the ’80s and ’90s. Enjoy!
Nick
Goodman
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