Not Just a Zine: the “Rollin Under” Zine and Thessaloniki’s DIY Music-making (1985 – 1990). Thessaloniki’s DIY Music Scene

From the early 1980s, with the common ground of the DIY ethos, lots of and different kinds of popular music idioms (from hardcore, punk to reggae and trip-hop) blossomed in Thessaloniki, Greece. This rich and constant music-making would not have been as vivid during its first period (1982 – 1994) without its own pillars of distribution, which consisted of independent labels and music stores, pirate radio stations and fanzines. In this essay I will focus on Thessaloniki’s emblematic fanzine Rollin Under, which was active from 1985 to 1992. I will show the relationship between Rollin Under, Thessaloniki’s music scene, the DIY ethos and the Greece’s historical and political context of that time. Finally, I will describe fanzines as alternative cultural spaces through which we music historians can “hear” the voices and untold stories of the participants of the music we research.