Jason
There is too much action on here I keep losing track of what thread I was posting the Smash Hits material on so I will start a new one here, at least I should be able to identify it from the thread title.

Anyhow, Smash Hits came out fortnightly. I don't know what years you are into but I seem to have multiples of most although the spares are likely to miss bits. I am guessing you are not too into 1980 but there are Toyah, Japan and Gary Numan covers. I will pick a random year of 1983 and list what I have double:

Jan 6 Malcolm McLaren on cover - full page Toyah photo and Ieya lyrics + Japan with Visions Of China lyrics
Jan 20 Pete Wylie on cover - Boy George poster
Feb 3 Kajagoogoo cover - Tears For Fears poster, Haysi Fantayzee with Shiny Shiny lyrics half page
Feb 17 OMD cover - Spandau Ballet and Thompson Twins article
Mar 3 Eurythmics cover - Toyah profile (bit cut out) and Soft Cell with Numbers song. missing Kajagoogoo poster
Mar 17 Paul Weller cover - Duran Duran Q&A 3 page, Altered Images with Don't Talk To Me About Love song half page. Missing giant Wham/Culture Club poster.
Mar 31 missing Clare Grogan cover, Mari Wilson poster, Altered Images 2 page article
Apr 14 Thompson Twins cover + article - Big Country poster
May 12 JoBoxers cover - Culture Club Q&A, missing giant Tears For Fears/Kajagoogoo poster
June 9 Imagination cover - Orange Juice poster
June 23 Matt Fretton cover - Sylvian & Sakamoto with Forbidden Colours song half page
July 7 Paul Young cover - Shalamar poster, Duran Duran back cover, Thompson Twins with Watching song
July 21 Tracie cover - Depeche Mode poster
Aug 4 Duran Duran cover - Spandau Ballet poster, Kim Wilde full page photo
Aug 18 Wham cover - Style Council poster, Spandau Ballet Q&A
Sept 1 Heaven 17 cover - Madness poster, Gary Numan song, Classix Nouveaux song, Culture Club Karma Chameleon song
Sept 15 Roman Holliday cover - Culture Club back cover, Altered Images with Change Of Heart song
Sept 29 Culture Club cover - Modern Romance poster, Toyah with Rebel Run song
Oct 13 Jimmy The Hoover cover - The Cure poster
Oct 27 Aztec Camera cover - 2 page Marilyn
Nov 10 ABC cover - Marilyn song Calling Your Name, Thompson Twins song Hold Me Now
Nov 24 Jim Kerr cover - Howard Jones poster, Adam Ant back cover, Culture Club with Victims song, Toyah with The Vow song
Dec 8 Duran Duran cover but missing Marilyn back and 16 page Duran liftout
Dec 22 Howard Jones cover, Boy George back

That gives you some idea. Most copies if they are OK I would look at about $5 each.

Can I have the following?



Jan 6 Malcolm McLaren on cover - full page Toyah photo and Ieya lyrics + Japan with Visions Of China lyrics

Jan 20 Pete Wylie on cover - Boy George poster

Feb 3 Kajagoogoo cover - Tears For Fears poster, Haysi Fantayzee with Shiny Shiny lyrics half page

Feb 17 OMD cover - Spandau Ballet and Thompson Twins article

Apr 14 Thompson Twins cover + article - Big Country poster

May 12 JoBoxers cover - Culture Club Q&A, missing giant Tears For Fears/Kajagoogoo poster

June 9 Imagination cover - Orange Juice poster

June 23 Matt Fretton cover - Sylvian & Sakamoto with Forbidden Colours song halh page

July 7 Paul Young cover - Shalamar poster, Duran Duran back cover, Thompson Twins with Watching song


Aug 4 Duran Duran cover - Spandau Ballet poster, Kim Wilde full page photo

Sept 1 Heaven 17 cover - Madness poster, Gary Numan song, Classix Nouveaux song, Culture Club Karma Chameleon song

Sept 29 Culture Club cover - Modern Romance poster, Toyah with Rebel Run song

Oct 13 Jimmy The Hoover cover - The Cure poster

Oct 27 Aztec Camera cover - 2 page Marilyn

Nov 10 ABC cover - Marilyn song Calling Your Name, Thompson Twins song Hold Me Now

Nov 24 Jim Kerr cover - Howard Jones poster, Adam Ant back cover, Culture Club with Victims song, Toyah with The Vow song

Dec 8 Duran Duran cover but missing Marilyn back and 16 page Duran liftout

Dec 22 Howard Jones cover, Boy George back


ALL THE REST WITH CLAIRE GROGAN I won't need. I love her BUT pinky Blue Skie's will NEED TO HAVE them :-)

I'll have to sort them all out to figure out what there is. Every page in every magazine needs to be checked as I would be keeping the better copy. These sort of magazines are notoriously clipped for articles.

A 5m high stack could take a while to get through, although if you are only after Smash Hits then it is only a little over a metre.

That is a project for another day, I'm going to bed.

arghh crap, I was too slow off the mark!

Umm, I may already have the Paul Weller one with Altered Images inside... I'll check my collection tonight and see what I want, can't afford too much though as I am merely a poor pauper.

Oh dammmnnn I woulda wanted the Imagination copy with Orange Juice poster sooo bad...

darn darn darn

I have some Spunky! magazines from 1975 and 1976 as well a magazine called Scream. There is an article and pic layout on AC/DC featuring Bon Scott.

I have some Spunky! magazines from 1975 and 1976 as well a magazine called Scream. There is an article and pic layout on AC/DC featuring Bon Scott.

I've got quite a bit of the local version of Smash Hits from 1985 onwards. It was a great magazine when it started although it lost something during the 90's/00's.

The 80's ones are great - better and more open interviews and great fashions of course. Some of them have a lot of Countdown photos in them as well which is interesting - I enjoy flicking through them when the current world gets too drab for my liking - which is often!

I bought Smash Hits from '88 to '94, but agree, it started sucking majorly around '92. Suddenly there was hardly any writing in the magazine, and it became all about 90210 etc., which I never liked/watched. It might as well have re-branded
itself TV Hits. Then in '93, things got even worse - Jeremy Jordan seemed to be on every 2nd cover, alternating between 90210 and Melrose Place 'stars' . I can now appreciate 'The Right Kind of Love' in an ironic, nostalgic sense, but it hardly warranted his appearance on every second cover. Things started to pick up with Smash Hits in '94, but by then I'd discovered the better, and free, street press mags like 'In Press' and 'Beat', and wasn't interested in the boyband pop focus in Smash Hits.


Some Smash Hits flashback memories of mine:

- the first edition I bought featured Michael Hutchence on the cover. I think it cost $1.75. I wanted to get hold of it mainly to see what was in the top 50 charts. I bought the 'Smash Hits '87' cassette the year before, and I think it took a while for me to realise that Smash Hits was actually a magazine.

- In one of the earliest editions I bought, I read that Mel from Mel & Kim had been diagnosed with cancer, which I was quite shocked to hear.

- I remember the full page condom/safe sex ads in late '88/early '89.

- On some TV show (something like 60 Minutes), I saw a segment on teen magazines, and it saying that Smash Hits was recommended for children 'age 13 and up'. I hadn't yet hit 13 (or 12 for that matter), and remember feeling slightly awkward the next time I bought the magazine in case the shop assistant felt i was too young to be reading it

- When I started high school, I used to buy Smash Hits & Hit Songwords on a Wednesday morning and give people in my form the posters etc. that I didn't want (which was most of them, as I was never into posters).


Sadly, I got rid of all my Smash Hits magazines (and other things) in a big clean-out in 1998. Though TBH, they'd just be sitting there gathering dust if I didn't chuck 'em out.

I loved the covers Smash Hits had in the 80's - very striking and dynamic to look at.

I've got some with Pseudo Echo and Sigue Sigue Sputnik on the covers which look unreal. What I also loved about it back then was the variety of articles it had - there was always something of interest to read.

Certainly it fell down a heap when 90210 entered the scene - although TV Hits was like that as well with that show gracing its covers non-stop.

Back in the 80's - the height of its creativity - Smash Hits remembered to visually project the excitment of the times and the bands which helped to make the 80's the BEST decade of the last 40 years!

Spunky are really hard to find these days, it had that real mid-late 70's feel to it. It was a fantastic magazine. Look after them, they are a little gold mine.

I had a huge collections of UK smash hits circa early 80's back in the 80's but lost them in a move The late 70's/early 80's ones are great but from about 1987 onwards I kind of lose interest.

@ Nathan

I began buying Oz Smash Hits from about June 1987. I would have just turned 13 and really got into music. The compilation at that time was '87 Right On Track' and that cassette, discovering Aria Top 50 charts and Smash Hits magazines was a major turning point that began my love of music.

A few memories for me was buying the magazine in high school and giving the girls the posters (that was the thing during smoko before school - we usually congregated across the road in a dodgy carpark at these scummy flats). A group of us used to make a joke to other's, saying they couldn't be in our gang unless they bought Smash Hits! although we were being d i c k h e a d s by saying it.

I liked the feature 'Ask Daz' in Smash Hits. He would answer any readers questions re bands hits, chart positions anything really on an artist. The photos were great and the interviews.

I bought the mag right up til June '92, then I stopped. I realised 'hey I'm 18 now, I've gotta stop this teeny bopper stuff'. So that was the end of a great period. To this day, I have never gotten into a music mag like Smash Hits. RIP.

'87 Right On Track was awesome! My sister bought it, and I ventured into the world of purchasing various artists' 'hits' compilations on cassette shortly afterward, beginning with '87 Hots Up.

I too was a chart freak for a while... I used to write down the top 50/60 from Rage and keep it in books, which I still have. I always preferred the lesser charting songs at the bottom of the chart best though . At one point, I could automatically wake up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning to watch the top 50 without even needing to set my alarm




I don't think I knew anyone else in school who bought Smash Hits.




I remember Daz. I don't remember seeing too many (any?) chart histories though. I remember those in 'Number One' (UK mag, similar to Smash Hits) though. I think at one point I subconsciously thought I could be a 'Daz' when I was older




The last one I bought was just a couple of months before turning 16. I think I started thinking it was a waste of pocket money, when I'd read the bits I was interested in in probably less than half an hour - esp. when I could get street press mags that had more reading in them like 'In Press' for free.

After that, I moved on to 'Record Collector', which I regularly bought until I was 18 and a half.

Nathan - I use to listen to Take 40 Australia religiously starting from about November '86. I use to write down every song and chart position in the Top 40. I did this for a few months, until I realised that Aria Top 50 charts existed! I threw them out a year or so later.

Like you, I would just automatically wake up at 5:30 on Saturday mornings and watch the Oz Top 50 on rage. Lying very uncomfortably on the floor, next to the stereo (tuned into ABC reception)and ready to hit record to put together a latest hits tape.

I do remember someone asking Daz all of Madonna's releases and what chart postion they achieved in Oz.

Jason
I found about another 250 music mags at the weekend from around 1981-86, mostly UK Smash Hits, No1 and Record Mirror and a few Countdowns.

I will start listing my spares on ebay soon, have started with 12 Countdowns and will get to the others. Will let you know when I start on the UK issues.

The ones I mentioned to you and Maryanne earlier are yours but the rest I will list as I have no idea what they are worth and will let the market decide. They will all start at 99c and if they don't sell they can gather dust for another decade.