It was 1994.
I was a student on a postgraduate magazine journalism course in London with a project deadline.
Step forward Heaven Up Here, a music fanzine I put together with two fellow students.
We dreamed of jobs on Select magazine and loved getting on the guestlist for gigs at venues like the Astoria and the Water Rats.
It was the Nineties and we didn’t have a care in the world.
The first issue, published in 1994, featured a lead interview with film-noir favourites The Tindersticks and went backstage with Britpop breakthroughs Sleeper at the now-defunct TV show The Beat.
Last week I took a couple of issues from 1994 and 1995 to the London College of Communication.
There they will join the likes of Sniffin’ Glue and Smiths Indeed at the University Library Zine Collection. It has over 200 zines from punk to fashion from the late Seventies onwards.
You can find out more from the collection Facebook page.
Or search the catalogue for the issues here and here.
It only lasted for three issues but our little fanzine helped to launch a career in the media for its founders. And it was lots of fun along the way.
As for the name? Heaven Up Here was the second album by Echo and the Bunnymen, my favourite band as a overcoat-wearing student in the early Nineties.
On the day that the NME sees its last ever print edition on the newsstands, my little bit of history is a reminder that, while we all now work multi-platform, print is still not dead.
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