In a galaxy far, far away…. Err start again. After getting into music in the early nineties through mainly dead rock stars like The Doors, the Beatles, Hendrix and The Stones (yeah I know they ain’t dead but that’s more luck than judgement) we hit the jackpot with the indie scene back in ’91. In the space of a few months we’d seen the likes of The Happy Mondays, The Wonder Stuff, Blur, Nirvana and Chapterhouse. We’d found our second spiritual home, first was on the football terrace then into the record shops and music venues. Over the next few years the bank account was drained by a combination of a rapidly expanding shiny disc collection and literally hundreds of gigs and festivals including the vastly overrated Glastonbury and far better Reading festivals. Then something cool happened, Claire an intrical member of the Shadders life picked up a camera and started taking fantastic pics of our favourite bands. As a vehicle to show off her talents a variety of cool fanzines started printing this pics. Soon they were asking for reviews to go with the pics, that’s where I came in, armed only with a failed A level in English, a pen and paper the first review was penned to an enthusiastic response. More and more pics and reviews were featured in some excellent fanzines and independent magazines until it dawned on us, actually why on earth don’t we do this ourselves. The Shadders? On me Lungs? Concept was born. It was obvious what we needed to do, a mixture of live reviews, pics, album reviews and a few wacky views along the way too. What was less obvious was the name but that’s where the Shadders cat came into his own. See he’s called Alfie, a very fitting name taken from the great Michael Caine film (not the dreadful remake and anyway it was well before Jude Law made a arse of that) and Caine utters the immortal line “Shadders? On me Lungs? I’m bein’ eaten away, this is the end of me, oh gawd in ‘eaven ‘elp me!”. It stuck and we loved it, it’s never been the easiest title to repeat to strangers but once heard rarely forgotten! The first issue hit the streets way back in 1995 featuring a fantastic Michael Caine stolen pic as Harry Palmer on the cover along with a great pic of Louise from Sleeper nursing a can of stella! Inside musically we featured Oasis (the live review from Sheffield Arena that can be read on the Oasis – Stop the clocks page), Elastica, Carter USM, Senseless Things, Sleeper, New Fast Automatic Daffodils and Suede. Claire supplied some killer pics of Brett Anderson, Louise from Sleeper, the girls from Elastica, These Animal Men and New Fads. We also moved away from music to make light of our fav boozer, how to make your own DIY arena gig and one of our Southern friends, Monsier Clay Connor started his ‘Letter from london’ which to be fair was a pop at everything and everyone! From an advert in the now defunct excellent music magazine Select, word of mouth, other fanzines and a shed load of flyers we actually sold quite a few copies at a pound a pop. We made enough in fact to pay for the printing costs of issue two! From this moment we were on a role, with an actual hard copy fanzine to our name we were able to prove who we were and what we were about, this meant we could go to record companies and their press companies and say any chance of seeing these or having a chat with whoever. This lead to the first shadders interview with our old mates Carter USM in issue 2. Also in issue 2 we had our first live review of a supercool The Bluetones plus a huge Britpop special including an extensive round up of what we cristened Britstock at Roundhay Park, a free gig that included Powder, Marion, Menswear, Sleeper, Bluetones and headlined by Pulp. We also printed an excellent feature entitled Mod scene ’64 by a mate of our old friend Clay Connor on what it was like been a proper mod back in the day, great read. Over the following decade before shaddersonline was born we met / interviewed the following great (and in certain cases not so great) bands: Carter USM, The Bluetones, Revelino, My Life Story, Longpigs, 60 Ft Dolls, Bennet, Roadside, The Animal Men, Wedding Present, Jack, Cecil, The Dandys, The Beekeepers, Kiosk, Kasabian, Boxer Rebellion, The Cooper Temple Clause, Lee Griffiths, The Rain Band, Battle, Ria Bright, Dark Star, Rico, Jim’s super stereo world, Symposium, Tom Hingley, Midget, Terrorvision, Athlete, Kaiser Cheifs, Black Velvets, Budapest, Exileinside, INME, Oceansize, The Shining and Longview to name but plenty! Wow, we’ve been around the block a bit! We could try and list all the gigs we’ve covered and reviewed over the years but that would take absolutely ages. Suffice to say from the toilet circuit through the Uni’s and onto the mega stadiums we’ve been there and done that. The fanzine also spawned three dedicated zines too; The Rain Band got ‘Easy Riders’, Lee Griffiths got ‘Voice of an Angel’ and The Cooper Temple Clause got ‘Kill Music’. These three bands we loved unconditionally but like most things in life they break your heart in the end, in this case The Rain Band and The Cooper Temple Clause split up. Moving to one side for a moment and away from the music and back to the name ‘Shadders? On me Lungs?’. Throughout the decade the zine was in production there was one constant that ran through it, Michael Caine! A few others got onto the cover notably Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, Sean Connery, John Lennon, Elvis and Vinny Jones but mainly the cover belonged to Michael Caine. We used all the classic poses, including shots from Zulu, Alfie and multiple as Harry Palmer but our long time favourite is Get Carter. We’ve used a shed load of shots from this our favourite ever film but the ultimate is either Carter with the terrace houses and power station as back drop or the shot of Carter looking hard as nails holding a double barrelled shotgun and looking straight into the camera, super cool.  We did start to use a pic of Caine on shaddersonline until we were reminded of copyright rules, he was unfortunately replaced by our own pic of the star of New York, the naked cowboy. It was with heavy hearts that the digital age beckoned and we’ve just learnt too that our trusty printer is actually to up sticks and move to Florida so there is no going back, the fanzine is dead long like the website!