Russ Bestley has reviewed ‘Running at the Edge of Their World: The Suspect Device Fanzine story’ by Tony and Gaz Suspect and ‘A Country Fit For Heroes: DIY Punk in eighties Britain’ by Ian Glasper in the latest issue of his Punk & Post-Punk blog. Clearly enjoying both of these new books he had a lot to say about them, mostly positive, and figured that both would be useful resource books for punk scholars attempting to unpack the UK scene well beyond the official punk histories of the usual suspects.
‘Running at the Edge of Their World’ is an autobiographical account of the 40-year history of Southampton-based fanzine Suspect Device, largely written by the publication’s two founders and leading protagonists, Tony Suspect and Gaz Suspect, though the book also features short essay contributions from other members of the South Coast punk and hardcore scene along with numerous collaborators over the years. In keeping with other titles in the Earth Island catalogue, notably David Gamage’s A Hardcore Heart: Adventures in a DIY Scene (2023), the focus here is on the personal stories of the people behind a DIY punk initiative rather than a formal, archival history of the fanzine as a material object.
With A Country Fit for Heroes: DIY Punk in Eighties Britain, Glasper returns once again to the 1980s to pick up on the stories of more than 140 UK punk bands that had been missed in his previous books. Many of these only released EPs and demos or only appeared on compilation albums before either disappearing below the radar or moving on to new walks of life within or beyond the subculture. A few slightly better-known names stand out – Brigandage, Born BC, Passion Killers (precursor to Chumbawamba) – but most are so obscure that most readers will be unfamiliar, beyond individual knowledge of local scenes they may have been a part of – Disattack, Carnage, Seventh Plague, Revulsion and dozens more.
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