When We Was Rad…

I remember being sat around our table a few years back, sharing food and life with a bunch of friends who used to come around every Tuesday evening. Somehow we got to talking about inventions and how we couldn’t imagine an existence without the internet. One of my friends suggested that the most important invention in mankind’s existence was something much simpler – the printing press. I recall screwing up my face, but as he began to elaborate I found myself understanding the thought process.

Words are hugely important things. The tongue is difficult to tame and from it little sparks can spout which lead to metaphorical wild-fires. There are times when we’ve said too much and times when we’ve not said enough. There are words that all of us over-use and others that we simply love the sound or meaning of.

But, back to the printing press. It put words and information, stories and philosophies into the hands of ordinary people. Provided that the process was coupled with increased levels of literacy, then that had the power to shift the very power-base, to encourage engagement and reasoning. If that, in turn, was combined with the power of the idea – then that could actually lead to a collision point as combustible as humans making fire for the very first time.

I’m reading the beautifully presented Long Live Southbank book at present. It is a work of art and of history capturing many voices, stories and opinions through photography and font in its 400 plus pages. I found myself reminiscing of hours spent with friends pouring over the words and photos of the underground skate and bmx scenes in everyday towns and cities across the UK as documented in BMX Action Bike and R.A.D in the mid 80’s to early ’90’s. There were quite a few forays into the places we travelled to throughout Scotland too. I have so many fond memories of devouring and re-reading those magazines, of condensation on my bedroom window as a mob of sweaty teenagers would grab a cold drink and flick through skate mags in my room before heading back out to ollie and slide our way around the often damp or frosty winter streets under the cover of darkness and streetlights.

This week I re-visited a website that remains an unfinished project with an initial plan to create an archive of all of the editions of R.A.D. I’ve looked at it often over the years, but this time I thought I’d leave a comment of gratitude – a few choice words of thanks. Truthfully, I’d lost myself on the site and within a happy state of nostalgia and it was pretty late when I quickly typed in my comments without spell checking.

Anyhow, the next day I received a genuinely lovely email from Tim Leighton-Boyce who had been the editor of R.A.D magazine back in the day. He told me a little of what life looked like now, of how much he had enjoyed a half hour or so reading my blog and my musings upon the surf scene in the north. He briefly regaled a tale of an odd moment he experienced at a deserted beach somewhere to the east of Loch Eriboll. He shared my joy at what the Long Live Southbank campaign had achieved. He talked about how there was still a lot of the old R.A.D magazine ephemera kicking around including some examples of original paste-ups and even some repro “film” for some pages. He mentioned how he would one day like to curate an exhibition so that people who have grown up with digital design can see how very physical things used to be. Now, that would be rad!

All of that just made me feel really appreciative of the things and words that have influenced me, of old-skool magazines that actually ended up documenting parts of our lives in an age when we didn’t have cameras with us regularly, let alone smartphones and digital platforms to record and share seemingly everyday occurrences that would one day become the fondest of memories.

Words that I most over-use?

B.