FANZINES: The Lost Moment
Monitor, issue 1, 1984

by Simon Reynolds

Author's Note 2009: an early effort this,written when I was 21 and to be read with a forgiving eye. Decidedly jejeune in its verbosity (if you think I'm wordy now, well below is dictionaries-for-breakfast) and in its emphatic tone (chronic over-use of underlining, which looks much worse than italics, which for some reason we couldn't do at this early stage of Monitor's production history, if someone could gesticulate wildly through the medium of print then this is what it would look like). And YET there are some passages here that don't make me cringe and cower my head under the duvet, the raw discourse data derived from my scrutinising many issues of mid-Eighties fanzines is interesting, while the basic argument still has some pertinence and also seems.... characteristic. Read it kindly!