Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017) Ryan 101 A Destabilising Pleasure: Representations of Alternative Music in Irish Fanzines. Ciaran Ryan Abstract This article focuses on the position of the fan in Irish alternative music cultures through their connections with media texts. In particular, it examines the emergence of Irish punk music fanzines. By assessing the role of these publications in distributing valuable information within a shared taste community, it demonstrates that this process needs to be considered as a fan practice. What is evident is that fans within such communities (or ‘scenes’) can occupy several roles simultaneously – writer, promoter, musician, and facilitator of information. Furthermore, this work touches on the links between the rough texture of punk/DIY music, its participatory culture, and the corresponding application of the same aesthetics to fanzine production. This analysis draws on over thirty-five years of archive material, as well as valued contributions from fanzine writers, to prove that DIY production is not just about opposition to a dominant culture, but that it is a fulcrum for pleasure for its participants. Keywords: Fanzines, DIY, scenes, punk, fandom, pleasure. Introduction In 1999, a new Irish hardcore fanzine 1 was printed entitled Hurling Abuse. As with many fanzines, the second page had an editorial of sorts, with the writer Ed Monahan welcoming readers to his publication: This zine has taken me forever to put out, but here it is and I know a lot of interviews are well out of date, but hey better late than never, I hope with [this] zine to give Irish kids a look at what HC [hardcore] is all about and give something back to something that has been an important part of my life for the past seven years, and an important outlet for hate and positivity. This is more than just music; it’s a way of life (Monahan, 1999). Handmade and photocopied fanzines such as Hurling Abuse were a staple of alternative music cultures in Ireland for a number of decades. Fanzines are regularly depicted as pronunciations of rebellion against mainstream popular culture and society (see Duncombe, 2008) and “vehicles of subcultural communication” (Triggs, 2006: 70). Furthermore, as per Monahan’s proclamation above, the music and the hardcore scene he is part of “is a way of life”; the intertwined activities of making music, writing about music, and sharing it with others are meaningful aspects of individuals’ cultural and social spheres. Despite this, and perhaps partially due to the privileging of such activities as subcultural acts, limited attention has been paid to the similarities between the music’s texture and that of the fanzine itself. While appropriating mainstream genres, music in DIY scenes still manages to represent and invite identification with marginality or outsider status by breaking with convention and expectation. There is a roughness that comes with the recording and performance of such music, not commonly found in music that deliberately aims to have commercial appeal. Similarly the amateur Xeroxing and the material texture of fanzines, purposely eschewing glossy paper, gives a deliberately low-tech feel. For the most part, fanzines are cheaply assembled, containing grammar and design imperfections in a comparable way to the lack of studio sheen that can be found on