Tom Vague is writer and editor of the post-punk fanzine Vague as well as numerous publications on situationists, psychogeography and West London radical history. He has since worked on his London Psychogeography project in Notting Hill, including the Clash ‘London Calling’ box set booklet and the forthcoming book Getting it Straight in Notting Hill Gate: an historical and psychogeographical report on Notting Hill considered in its economic, political, sexual and intellectual aspects and a modest proposal for its remedy.
Vague was the Post Punk Fanzine that tuned so many people into the joy of punk and the futuristic and hybrid styled music that followed it, that became known as ‘Post-Punk’ or for a period of time ‘Positive Punk’. Vague promoted the notion that a band meant something more than the music and that meaning could be shared amongst like-minded folk, the ‘lovable spikey tops’ or the like-minded ‘tribe’ that people were looking for. Vague though was critical enough to see through the growing number of punk bands who were seduced by the world of pop stardom and teen adulation. That disillusion often turned into a searching for the counter culture, or philosophy and radical politics, to find something that could inspire us to be different and to change the world around us. Vague became the go to critical counter cultural fanzine that still found music irresistible but wasn’t just a fawning FAN zine. Vague also importantly had a sense of humour, it could laugh at itself as well as brag about how good it was and slag off those it found wanting!
Tom Vague: “In 1978 I went back to tech college, got into post-punk and reggae – Adam and the Ants, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Pop Group, PIL, Slits, Rough Trade groups – and started Vague fanzine; more for something to do, other than attempting to play guitar or sing, than with any literary aspirations. The Bournemouth punk scene ended pretty violently, with Bobby glassing Iggy for shoving Sharon in a Vague editorial dispute at a Cure gig, and a drugs bust. After a post-punk on the road period, hitching round the country following tours of the Ants and Banshees, selling fanzines/programmes and T-shirts, and writing for Zigzag, I dropped out of the music business and spent most of the 80s squatting around London – in Brixton, Elephant and Castle, Islington, Stoke Newington – attempting to be a cyber-punk Situationist or something; finally becoming a fixture on the Ladbroke Grove scene. I’ve been trying to write the radical history of Notting Hill, to counter the media hype, ever since.“
