Smash Hits: blast from the past
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…
…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.
25 February, 2011 @ 4:43 pm
Woo hoo! Like the new look – and obviously all The Clash stuff. Did I ever tell you that I once sang ‘I Fought The Law’ at punk rock karaoke?!
25 February, 2011 @ 5:02 pm
No one else could pull a snarl like Joe Strummer’s… and I love Orange Juice’s Rip it Up.