When Martin Sharp, the internationally acclaimed Australian artist, died in 2013, I read that the University of Wollongong had created a digital archive of the Sydney and London Oz magazines that he was such a part of. I remember having a look and being impressed—not only that someone had put in the time and effort to do it, but that it was freely available to all. Then when Sharp’s friend
When I returned to Adelaide in late 1977 after two and a half years in the UK I came back with 25 singles—Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, Tom Robinson Band, X-Ray Spex, The Rezillos, Slaughter & the Dogs etc etc. I moved into a small cottage in Norwood owned by my old Adelaide Uni friends Larry Buttrose and Donna Maegraith and proceeded to go round
In January 1979, Roadrunner production editor Clive Dorman wrote to Michael Finucan at Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ asking if he was interested in writing for us about what was happening in Brisbane. Dorman was upfront about the magazine’s financial situation. ‘We’re poor as hell and will be so until the cheques for national sales start coming in, in about three months time. However we think we’ll be able to
Roadrunner’s ‘End of the 70s’ double issue in December 1979 (issue 20) made a few people sit up and take notice. One of them was Paul Gardiner, publisher of Australian Rolling Stone. He used to play the occasional game of squash with Stuart Coupe in Sydney and asked Coupe if I might be willing to sell the magazine to him. He had just started a new publication, The Record (edited
Roadrunner’s first issue of 1981 (issue 32) signalled some changes. First, the cover price went up from 60 cents to 80 cents. We attempted to offset this by a bumper subscription offer—two free albums (Vinyl Virgins, a Virgin Records Australia sampler and Tactics’ My Houdini) plus a year’s subscription (12 issues) for $15. The offer snared 61 new subscribers, netting $915, the magazine’s best ever subscription drive. Secondly, over the
The concerted push to increase sales and advertising revenue following the establishment of a Roadrunner Sydney office in mid-1981 was only a qualified success. While ad sales saw a marked increase and newsagency sales nudged six thousand for the first time (with the end of year issue), most of the extra revenue was offset by the higher production costs of going full colour, printing extra pages, plus extra typesetting and