Zines, Sex Pistols, and the birth of Indie - "When I reached my twenties, I had my second DIY moment. I was living in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, when it was one of the hotspots of the American punk rock movement. Bands such as Minor Threat and the Teen Idles were being formed by white suburban teenagers and playing in church basements. Despite not knowing how to play an instrument and having limited talent, I got caught up in the excitement of the moment and played in some of the lesser bands in the scene. It was eye-opening.
Like all garage rock and roll, all you needed to be in a band was an electric guitar and an amp. But what was new about the 1980s punk phenomenon was that the bands did more than just play; they also started to publish. Photocopiers were becoming common, and from them arose a “zine” culture of DIY magazines that were distributed at stores and shows and by mail. Cheap four-track tape recorders allowed bands to record and mix their own music, without a professional studio. And a growing industry of small vinyl-pressing plants let them make small-batch singles and EPs, which they sold via mail order and local shops.
This was the start of the DIY music industry. The tools of the major labels—recording, manufacturing, and marketing music— were now in the hands of individuals. Eventually some of these bands, led by Minor Threat and then Fugazi, started their own indie label, Dischord, which eventually produced hundreds of records and is still running today. They didn’t need to compromise their music to get published, and they didn’t need to sell in big numbers or get radio play. They could find fans; indeed, the fans found them via word of mouth, and postcards poured into such micro-labels to order music that couldn’t be found in most stores. The relative obscurity conferred authenticity and contributed to the rise of the global underground that defines Web culture today.
My bands did all of this: from the photocopied flyers to the zines to the four-track tapes to the indie-label albums. We never got very big, but that wasn’t the point. We still had day jobs, but we were doing what we thought was genuinely innovative and getting people at our shows, even touring to New York and to other cities with their own indie music scenes. Out of this came the roots of what would become today’s alternative rock world.”
From 'Makers: The New Industrial Revolution' by Chris Anderson