RIFF RAFF DEEP LORE: ONE-BAND FANZINES AND "POP FACTORY"

For fuck's sake, I am probably the wrong person to document this shit, but I don't see anyone else making the effort -- or likely to.

As you may or may not know Riff Raff occupied a 6-year slab of time and space, roughly from 1989 to 1995, maybe a little longer. After 1993 I had pretty much drifted away from the project, but I was still aware of it, sort of lingering on, through my brother who continued to be involved.

At the time the rock magazine world was clearly going through a bit of a downward spiral, where titles that were not already established at the top were facing a lot of negative pressures, as rock music itself clearly became a less vital "form of expression".

For the Riff Raff collective centred round Mark Crampton this meant trying to leverage what they had learnt in newer and less authentic directions, including attempts to exploit the less sophisticated Euro audience that Riff Raff had occasionally tapped into.

The forms this took were special "fanzine" editions dedicated to single bands, like Guns N Roses, which were "hot" at the time, and something called "Pop Factory", a rather trashy mag that was essentially a callous rehashing of old material and/or a cynical latching onto new "pop" trends. Translated into various European languages, of course -- or possibly only Spanish (I don't really know!).

A 1995 diary entry mentions my brother Mark bringing round a copy of “Pop Factory,” for which he had written a "laughable guide to London" featuring the Astoria, etc. Really, that's about as much material as I've got on these post-Riff Raff projects, until I find out more.

In the meantime here are some of the images I dug up:

This is a classic piece of Crampton graphic design from the period, which is sometime in the early 90s going by the straplines and the imagery.

It's probably contemporaneous with the main run of Riff Raffs. As you can see, it's in English, so designed for UK distribution. I'm guessing there might have been other issues in Spanish or other Euro languages.

Next up a "Pop Factory" special about the Rolling Stones in Spanish. The graphic design alone tells me it's by Crampton and Co., although there are some new visual elements that seem evocative of trashy women's mags of the 90s. Hard to date as the Stones are pretty timeless.

Next up, a mag featuring the dregs of British pop. This one was really off my radar, but I'm guessing it must be from 1996 when Take That split up, or slightly before. Of course it might not be, as word of the break up may never have reached Spain. Again the graphic design is unmistakably "Mark Crampton" and must have taken him about 5 minutes -- tops!

Colin Liddell
Revenge of Riff Raff
19th March, 2023

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!