The reviews are coming in. And people seem to like the book. ‘The Big Beat is a heavily illustrated, beautifully presented year-by-year history of Adelaide-based punk fanzine Roadrunner, which was founded by Robertson and music-press legend Stuart Coupe, and was distributed only in South Australia. The book features a selection of more than 400 fully indexed pages from the original issues; just looking at it, you can see that it’s a labour
Around eighty people gathered at The Howling Owl in Adelaide’s East End last night to celebrate the release of the Roadrunner magazine anthology, The Big Beat. Deftly marshalled by ABC Radio Adelaide producer Suzy Ramone, a panel of Dr Collette Snowden, singer and songwriter John Schumann and myself was invited to ruminate and reminisce about the South Australian music scene and the impact of Roadrunner magazine in the post-punk period
I have just published an anthology of articles from Roadrunner. ‘The Big Beat: Rock music in Australia 1978-1983, through the pages of Roadrunner magazine’ is a 544 page, A4 size (210x297mm), hardback book with colour throughout. In the book, a year-by-year history introduces a selection of over four hundred fully indexed pages from the original magazine. Featured artists include: The Angels, Australian Crawl, Boys Next Door (and the Birthday Party), The Church, Cold Chisel,