Smash Hits: blast from the past

Smash Hits, December 25. 1980 - p.01

When Brian McCloskey visited his parents in Ireland the year before last, he boxed up his decades-old collection of Smash Hits magazines and shipped it back to California without having much of a plan in mind. Then he decided to scan every issue, upload onto a blog and Flickr and share with the many (many) likeminded souls who remember the glory days of pop and teen mags. What made him do it and how many hours a day does he spend scanning?

“What made me do it? Clearly there’s only one answer: insanity! What the hell was I thinking?!!? I try to limit the amount of time I spend scanning: I spend one weekend a month scanning two months’ worth of magazines. A bit anal, but I need to impose some sort of order on this project, otherwise I really would go crazy.”

I bought Smash Hits religiously, fortnightly for the lyrics, the pictures, the interviews and the much-copied irreverent tone of the writers. It was a teen mag that you actually *GASP* read! Shocking, right? Smash Hits (along with Janice Long and John Peel) was my musical education. A broad mix of fluffy pop, rock, indie, hip hop, soul, punk even, it afforded its readers an all-round knowledge of good music whatever the genre. Having discovered Brian’s blog, I immediately skipped to The Clash of course…

Smash Hits, December 25. 1980 - p.04

Smash Hits, December 25. 1980 - p.05

Smash Hits, December 25. 1980 - p.06

…and that sent me straight to Youtube…

Talk about blasts from the past…you can browse the rest of Brian’s Smash Hits blog here.