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University Zine

In case you were wondering what the picture to the left with the 'buy now' button below it is, I am now going to explain.

University is my first perzine and centers around the first year I spent at university in Edinburgh. It covers everything from making friends, international relations, incidences of alarming stupidity and an adventure in a blizzard. Doesn't sound exciting? Well, it isn't really... but I have spent a lot of time on this so just humour me a little.

Nadiah and Jessica, you have complimentary zines on their way to you this week. Anyone else, you will have to buy a copy either directly from me or from as yet unidentified distros. (Being very, very nice to me might also get you a free copy. I rather like small trinkets and vegan cookies!)

56 pages, 1/2 size, 90g.

Cellar Door

Today is the worst kind of autumn day. The grey sky leaks continual rain and the blowing wind turns the golden carpet of fallen leaves into a swirling swarm of wet, rotting foliage. We retired to the cosy fire side with warm tea and time travelled back to 1988, where Middlesex, Virginia was basking in the loveliest of autumnal sun shine.
The following is my once published and long forgotten review of the film.


“Destruction is a Form of Creation”

Donnie Darko is a film that defies the genres of modern filmmaking. Part science fiction, part thriller, an off-beat teen film about time travel, mental illness, childhood, paranoia, a giant bunny rabbit named Frank, and the impending apocalypse. But director Richard Kelly’s first film goes far beyond anything he or I could ever have expected.

It is fall 1988 in the middle-class suburban town of Middlesex, Virginia. The US Presidential election is in full swing and the inhabitants of whitewashed Middlesex are blissfully unaware that the world will end in less than one month.
Troubled teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), a highly intelligent but increasingly disturbed Schizophrenic is the only inhabitant aware of this frightening prophecy. Prone to sleepwalking and terrifying hallucinations, Donnie wakes one night to a mysterious voice calling him from outside the house. Standing on the Darko’s lawn, a 6ft rabbit known only as Frank (James Duval), informs him that the world will come to an end in exactly 28 days, five hours, 52 minutes and 12 seconds. The next morning Donnie returns home to find a jet engine – unidentified by the FAA - has crashed into the room he would have been sleeping in if he had not been seduced outside by Frank’s haunting voice. Did Frank save him from being killed?
Heavily medicated by his baffled psychiatrist, Dr. Thurman (Katharine Ross), distant from his loving but frustrated parents (Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne) and controlled by his new friend Frank, Donnie embarks on a quest for meaning in which he will encounter time travel, violence, isolation, love and ultimately death.

As the countdown to the apocalypse proceeds, Donnie’s behaviour becomes increasingly anti-social. Frank encourages him to carry out destructive and violent acts, beginning with the flooding of Donnie’s conservative, private high school and culminating with the burning down of the mansion owned by sleazy local inspirational speaker, Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), whom Donnie publicly denounces as “the fucking anti-Christ”. The only allies to Donnie’s turmoil come in the form of innocent girlfriend Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone), reluctant science teacher Dr. Monnitoff (Noah Wyle), and mysterious local geriatric recluse and author, Grandma Death (Patience Cleveland).

Richard Kelly’s magnificent screenplay was bought to the screen with the help of actress and executive producer Drew Barrymore, who plays a small role in the film as Donnie’s ambitious yet inexperienced English teacher, Miss Pomeroy. Barrymore was responsible for hiring Jake Gyllenhaal whose portrayal of the title role is what makes the character of Donnie Darko so believable, while the haunting score composed by Michael Andrews adds beautifully to the eerie feel of the film - along with the carefully chosen 80’s soundtrack featuring Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears, Joy Division and Duran Duran.

Donnie Darko is a unique film. It is clever, surreal, funny, creepy and at times incredibly heartbreaking. Often indulgent, Kelly’s trick of switching topics from the sexual habits of Smurfs to the science of time travel is quite baffling, but shows the freedom of the independent filmmaker at its best. An ambitious debut bought to life by an all-star cast, Donnie Darko is a visually stunning and powerfully moving masterpiece.

Big Mouth Strikes Again

For HND Journalism we had to write a profile of a celebrity.

Few icons manage to outlive the generation they’re born into let alone maintain a thriving fan-base two decades later. The road hasn’t always been easy, with lawsuits, fluctuating record sales, accusations of racism and all matter of controversy, but Steven Morrissey was never one to run with the crowd.

The roots of the Morrissey phenomenon lie in the Davyhulme suburb of Manchester where Steven Patrick Morrissey was born on 22nd May 1959. The second child of Irish Catholic parents, by the age of nine Steven was a problem child. His Father later admitted he thought his only son to be a “complete fruitcake”, but his Mother, a librarian, saw the artistic side of her young son and keenly introduced him to the works of Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, the latter sparking an infatuation that persists to this day. Reserved and painfully shy, the young Morrissey was already a loner, a trait which would follow him into his teenage years and adulthood.

In the early 1970’s the barely teenage Morrissey had already discovered his interest in music, worshipping bands such as The New York Dolls and Sparks. His love was made public in June 1974 when NME published a letter from the 15-year-old Morrissey praising Sparks. Soon, he was bombarding the music press with early snippets of his piercing tongue and razor sharp opinions. In Manchester indie circles Morrissey was now a minor celebrity as fellow New York Dolls fan Phil Fletcher remembers, “I said, I’ve read letters by you in the press and seen you at the Free Trade Hall. He found it hilarious that somebody would notice him. I think he felt he was a star because somebody knew him.”

Conversations with other early Mancunian peers reveal that the young Morrissey had always wanted to be the star himself. What little money he earned from his first job as a clerical officer at the Inland Revenue was spent on records and attending gigs while he spent the majority of his time in his bedroom dreaming of stardom and penning scathing letters to the music press and his ever-growing collection of pen-pals. Morrissey was not prepared to go out and find stardom, it had to find him.

Now the early eighties, Morrissey had become what he later referred to as “something of a back bedroom casualty.” Spending long periods on the dole, he was what best friend and Ludus singer, Linder Sterling describes as “totally unemployable”. With very few social skills and intimidating eccentricity forming a band now seemed out of the question. He briefly changed direction and attempted to pursue a career as a music journalist, being taken on by the Record Mirror as a freelance local reviewer. A handful of record reviews and concert reports followed, but nothing more. In his early twenties Morrissey was already a has-been.

Eager to start a band, guitarist Johnny Marr approached local musician Rob Allman. Allman, a regular on the Manchester scene knew Morrissey and suggested they meet. Marr boarded the 263 bus to Stretford in search of the mythical Morrissey. By the end of the day, The Smiths was born. Marr called upon old friends Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce to complete the line-up and in a last attempt to consolidate himself as the next big thing, Steven Morrissey dropped his forename and became the Morrissey enigma. When asked about this Morrissey simply said, "I just felt this absolutely massive relief at not being called Steven anymore."

In the five years The Smiths were together they released five albums, toured relentlessly and became the band that epitomised the 1980’s. Morrissey’s eccentricities became a trademark and his decision to appear on Top of the Pops waving a bunch of daffodils and insistence on wearing a hearing aid even though there was nothing wrong with his hearing spurred the now legendary cult of Morrissey.

The demise of The Smiths in 1987 left Morrissey heartbroken. Despite admitting he always heard “great beauty in Marr’s rolling chords,” he was still driven by his ambition and wasted no time in releasing solo material. The cult of Morrissey was to leave The Smiths behind.

In the almost twenty years since the end of The Smiths, Morrissey has released six solo albums, toured the world, become a powerful animal rights campaigner, spoken his mind on everything from politics to British soap opera and in stark contrast to his previous Anglophilia, in 1998 set up home in Los Angeles, leaving England behind.

Worshipped by fans new and old and hailed as a genius by his peers, Morrissey is and always has been a true original and a bona-fide British icon. And as his nephew Sam attempts to shed some light on the real Steven Morrissey, the man himself is as elusive as he always has been. “At the end of the day, he lives in L.A., he drives a Jag, and he goes to the beach. I don’t think he’s living in a dark room dressed in black.”

Noise Floor!

Noise Floor: rarities 1998-2005

Since the very beginning of my love for Bright Eyes, many of my favourite recordings have been the ones hardest to find. Those songs that were sessions or split singles with short lived bands; appeared on compilations for friendly labels and zines, or 7” vinyl released on some obscure label in an American town I’d never heard of and could barely pronounce - they were always the ones to cut deepest. I collected these recordings, whether on battered cassette tapes with sun melted corners or on vinyl encased in pretty pictures, now displayed lovingly upon my defunct 1960s record player. I treasure them as if they were worth all the gold in the world, but that doesn’t mean butterflies didn’t flutter inside when I read Saddle Creek were to release a compilation of rare and unreleased material, recorded 1998-2005.

Noise Floor and I have now spent three long and happy days together. There’s no polish or perfect production. There is the nostalgic rawness of those early songs, so thoughtfully put together on A Collection of Songs 1995-97. I no longer have to steal time with unfamiliar record players to listen to Motion Sickness or wind the tape back into the cassette with a broken pencil for the Trees Get Wheeled Away, and although I miss the crackle of a needle on vinyl and the chugging of an old cassette player, I am truly grateful.

With last years twin releases a fondly distant memory and the Conor backlash (I believe it was the ‘emo’ and the ‘hair’) somewhat subsided, this record is a perfect reminder of why my love for Bright Eyes began.

It’s the sound of the basement and the fragility in the voice, the foot tapping on the concrete floor.

Love/Hate

I've been rather busy lately, hence the lack of updates here. While looking through some files on my old laptop, I found this wee article from a year or so ago. I thought it tied in nicely with the review further down this page.


I’ve been trying to avoid the return of Idlewild in much the same way as one would avoid a modern day outbreak of bubonic plague or a horrifically contagious, disfiguring illness. They have much in common when you think about it. Simple avoidance and blind denial worked at first, but it’s impossible to avoid contamination and Roddy Woomble now faces me from every direction, and I believe is currently crawling under my skin.

I can’t deny that I’ve heard the new record, I can’t deny that it was my own choice to listen to it, and I can’t deny that it did have some redeeming qualities. As a whole I can’t decide what I think of it, I just feel that it’s important to keep reminding myself that somewhere along the line, either Roderick Woomble or I appear to have suffered serious head injury.

Idlewild were one of the big loves of my life. I mean, who needs boys when you have bands, right? They were one of those bands that you could so easily let yourself fall totally and completely in love with. Many nights were spent alone on my bedroom floor listening to Hope is Important in the dark, staring at Roddy’s gap-toothed grin peering from the cover of Melody Maker and wishing I was the girlfriend looking through the dirty window on the cover of Captain. Everything about them was so furious and passionate, from Roddy falling around on stage wearing only one shoe to Bob’s constant sarcastic wit. I would’ve sold them my own soul. Hell, I would’ve given it to them for free.

I was in Virgin megastore on Princes Street when I heard Bob had left the band. Within days he was back in Edinburgh, stumbling along the street alone in a drunken stupor, can of Stella in hand. It’s when the reality sets in that you fall out of love the hardest.

My dearest Roddy, a few years ago I wanted to be your wife and darn your socks in our Highland croft, while you wrote songs about dreams to sing to lonely children. Then you changed and I found that I could no longer love you like I used to, so I left you to drown in your own arrogance. Please promote your album quietly. Love always, Elizabeth.

As far as Idlewild are concerned, I’m going to continue to put my fingers in my ears and yell “la la la la la”. You may notice me doing this at Rock City in April.