Monday, March 12, 2012

The Printing Press

What this teenage Metalhead was doing in 1983: While digging in a box I came across the original layout for the first (and unfortunately only) issue of my Metal fanzine Whiplash that I did with the late, great Sam Kress.

Pictured here: The cover (with color instructions for the logo) and the first side of the Mercyful Fate centerfold featuring the lyrics to the then unreleased songs 'Evil' and 'Curse Of The Pharoahs'.  The band's manager had given us permission to print the lyrics eventhough the songs had only been recorded for a live in the studio BBC Session.  Of course, studio versions of the songs were released later that year on the Melissa album.

Everything was done by hand back in those ancient times. There were no PCs or word processing or scanners. The printer had to typeset all of the text and half tone all of the photos for us. Then I had to cut the text and photos out for every page and glue them onto the production grids. The typesetter titled the Fate lyrics "Weird Poetry". Kidz these days don't even fucking know...

"... and when you're down beyond the ground... I'll dig up your body again.."