Re-introducing: The Weedbus archives

Now that January's posting-binge is out of the way I can start to upload little project I have been working on. Last Spring I begun to review music again after a very long break, and some people with long memories were kind enough to say that they were glad I was 'back'. Anyway, last July I was sorting through boxes and I looked at some issues of the old fanzine I used to edit and publish. The zine was called the Weedbus, it was made in Belfast and existed in print form between 1993 and 1998. Some of the early issues were cringeworthy but some of the later ones were genuinely good, and it got me motivated to try and re-publish them as PDFs.
I have some of the interviews online in the archives of this blog, but they are re-versioned from the printed editions and there are quite a few missing from the internet. This project will republish all of the interviews we ever did, yes, even the time we had a game of 'slaps' with Greg Dulli from the Afghan Whigs.
Following on from finding those issues in that box, I have also unearthed many of the original interview recordings, many of which were done on a portable cassette recorder with a built-in mic. Most of these need substantial audio work and they are of little editorial worth, but they have given me the impetus to try and make an audio companion for each time I upload a scan of a back issue.
For the first archive re-issue I have only been able to scan the interview pages, the cover, and the singles reviews (!) from issue 3. Issues 1 and 2 are nowhere to be found and I'm in no hurry to look for them to be honest. All of the other scans are larger than this, in fact one later issue is 40 pages long, so this is very much the light version to start with.
The recordings salvaged from cassette are now part of a bigger mix with music from the time. This will be hosted on soundcloud for a month then removed to make way for the next one.
It's obvious that the zine improved the longer we did it, and this goes for the interviews too. The very first one we ever did, with Martin Carr from the Boo Radleys, is included for posterity and also because it clearly illustrates that I had no idea how to interview anyone, aside from chatting to them like they were my mate. In retrospect I guess that's not the worst approach to have.

The scans and the relevant audio can be found at weedbus.posterous.com A new one will be added in the early part of each month until we have reached the end. Incidentally, if you go to the PDF, view it as 'book' on the drop down menu; that little feature made my day.