Welcome to the rage archive home page.

rage was one of the first magazines specifically created for the Internet, that refreshingly didn't talk about the internet, it had a very short but very eventful life covering 1995-1996 the heyday of the Brit pop explosion.

We think rage - note no capital letter, we were funny that way - was the first UK lifestyle magazine on the Internet, and we were never able to prove it, but as nobody objected we're happy to maintain the story. We were also one of the first people in the World to do this, we know there were others but it was a low figure, possibly in the low tens.

The intention in the early days was to cover the best bands, the best clubs, and fashion. However that soon expanded and We added film, theatre, stand-up, manga, sport and even poetry.

We also had the other things you’d associate with a normal magazine like horoscopes, classifieds and problem pages. Oh and adverts, but hey we had to pay the rent somehow.

Initially we did the magazine as a PDF - we were definitely the first people in the World to do this, as the UK marketing manager for Adobe Acrobat told us, he then said "I'm in a band do you want to review a gig?"

Once we had decided that PDF was wrong - three issues in - we went to a normal HTML version. PDF was slow, the files were too big, and you didn't have the ability to just download a page at a time. This was when the fastest modems were 33.6K so a 300K file took an age.

We did lots of firsts;

First number one was audio and video ads in the first issue. You could link a story to a video or a sound, so in issue one we had pics of Lucozade and if you clicked them they launched three short snow boarding videos. We also had a link to a Fatboy Slim track before he was even called FatBoy Slim.

We did the first live blogs at Glastonbury in 1995. The team were armed with Psion handhelds a very early Kodak digital camera and in the HQ tent we had an IBM laptop - although we told the world it was an Apple - I forget why - and a mobile phone which we used to upload the band reviews and pics and our diary at 9.6k. I remember praying that the batteries in the laptop, camera and phone lasted, and I think with careful use they just about lasted until Sunday. We then went on to do Phoenix festival and Reading, apparently we found out years later that the NME were worried.

We were also responsible for the World's first viral marketing - it was a mistake. Guinness wanted an advert online, Saul Klein at Ogilvy and Mather wanted to do something different, so we all put our heads together and we came up with the idea of a downloadable screen saver. Tyler Moorehead our sales person (yes that was a first too) got her mates at Noho Digital to produce a screen saver based on the Guinness TV advert. So we put it on the site and next thing we knew it was everywhere. By the way Saul, Guinness still owe me £3,000 for that.

We also did the World's first review of Oasis's "What's the Story Morning Glory." We had one of the first seven cassettes of it - we bought it off Timmy Abbot at Creation for a whole load of blagged software - and instead of keeping with the embargo, we just reviewed it and put it up on the net - oops.

We had music downloads of other Creation stuff this time it was legit.

We had the first digital nightclub on 3D shoot-em-up game Doom. Heaven in fact.

There's probably more, but I think that's enough.

Lastly we have to thank John Loder (RIP) MD at Southern records for having faith in us from the start, and sticking with us to the end. I enjoyed your mad phone calls about rock-and-roll tours in the US and the encouraging chats, you were a great man.

Marcus Austin

The People

Indie Editor/Blagger - Colin Hamilton

Dance Editor - Gareth Lancaster
Freelancers/Blaggers - Jaspre Bark, Captain W E Paranoia, Stephen Jelbert, Jimmy Blackburn, Karen Trevelyan, Jem Rolls.
Photography - Colin, Mike, Stephen, and anyone else who could get the camera out of Marcus's hands.

We also have to thanks lots of people. So a big thanks to :- Timmy Abbot ex-creation records now Better records for the Oasis scoop, Jackie Seear at Logitech (your digital camera saved our life), Tania and Nic at Mean Fiddler, Ravi Holy at Adobe, and anyone else who's stuck with us.

Issue 2 - PDF version - May 95 - New band Laughing Gas, Seattle band Mad Season, Jeff Buckley, Whitby goths and Tank Girl

Issue 3 - PDF version - June 95 - Foo Fighters and Black Grape

Issue 4 - The Glastonbury issue - July 95

Issue 5 - The Phoenix and Reading and Oasis issue September 1995

Issue 6 - The bumper fun issue + the Megatripolis Wad file -October 1995

Issue 7 - November 1995 - The Pulp Issue

Issue 8 - December 1995 - The video reviews issue

Issue 9 - Jan-Feb 1996 - The Babybird issue with exclusive interview and downloads from Creation band Crawl

Issue 10 - March 1996 - Nicholas Blincoe Acid Casual

Issue 11 - April-May 1996 - Guided by voices interview - The links between Ecstasy and dance - David Devant interview.

Issue 12 - Coming soon - Issue 12 was to be the last issue of rage, but due to work and lack of cash, it was never published. The copy is there. I just need to get the templates ready and the images ready.

You are viewing an archive of rage magazine from 1995-96 All copyright belongs to rage magazine. Email rage@tenc.co.uk