21st Century Old Boys!!!

Welcome to the first very first Flexipop! blog.

Actually, would you mind terribly if I take the ! out of Flexipop! for a wee while? It plays hell with the punctuation and confuses the fuck out of my spell checker.

As I was saying:

Welcome to the first very first Flexipop blog.

Ahhh, what a relief. Dispensing with the ! in Flexipop! just then felt like loosening a pair of too-tight-for-your-fat-gut trousers to accommodate a potato-heavy lamb vindaloo and five pints of Kingfisher.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes.

Welcome to the first very first Flexipop blog.

Since last April, we’ve been running a Flexipop fan page on Facebook.  At first, it was the plaything of two sad old men reliving past exploits long ago and far away. Neil Matthews, the magazine’s resident photographer, had saved every issue and kept them in pristine condition in a special folder.

I, on the other hand, didn’t know where one copy was. I had a vague recollection of once stumbling across an old cardboard box full of magazines falling apart in the damp on a rare foray into the loft. My memory served me well. I found the box. It had rotted away and its contents had spilled onto the floor. Old newspapers, the kids’ primary school exercise books, ten-year old bank statements, Sunday supplements, a cuddly toy and… loads of Flexipops.

It was a miracle. I found the lot, from No.1 to No.33. Not only that, each and every one of them still had the flexi-disc attached. Ex-Flexipop scribe and computer guru, Huw Collingbourne, had already launched the Facebook page last October and posted pictures from his complete set of Flexipops - no doubt kept in pristine condition in a special folder – on the first day it was up.

But life, like the bitch it is, got in the way and it took over six months before another post was made. Since then, not one single day has passed without a Flexipop photo or cartoon or Top Ten 80s charts or Fallout Favourites or vintage advert being posted.

It’s fair to say that Neil and I are hooked. Looking at the magazine for the first time in at least a quarter of a century has been a revelation. It really was dramatically different from its contemporaries with an editorial approach that eschewed glitz for shits and stuck a weedy two fingers up to the industry.

It was also different because we were totally independent. Flexipop was a tarted up fanzine with a flexi on the cover that found itself on the shelves of WH Smith and John Menzies alongside the music publications of the day all owned by huge conglomerates. This really was punk publishing in its truest form.  

We wanted to share that vive la difference 80s moment with you on Facebook, but we soon found out it wasn’t enough to convey a true Flexipop experience.

So Neil designed this website.

Hope you like it. xx

Barry Cain

Tomorrow’s Blog : How Flexipop! began.