84 1979 THE BIG BEAT
Australia’s rock aficionados this month get an extra option when they go to the newsstand to pick up the national rock press. From this month, there’s a third competitor in the field, pitting its weight against the Sydney-based RAM and the Melbourne-based Juke. The new magazine is Roadrunner, from Adelaide—and it isn’t really all that new. The February issue is in fact the tenth Roadrunner, but it’s the first national one. Roadrunner first appeared in Adelaide early last year, edited by Donald Robertson and Stuart Coupe (the latter now in Sydney with RAM) after their punk fanzine, Street Fever, wasn’t able to go on after its first issue. Robertson and Coupe, then joined by several others in an editorial and productive collective, soon began producing the broader-based Roadrunner.
The first national edition has emerged with ‘Australia’s Independent Music Paper’ under the masthead, and it’s certainly going to have to create some form of dedicated readership around this or some other concept to succeed.
During 1978, the collective struggled on, usually just managing to survive. It was scratching for advertising, largely unrecognised by many of the people, even in Adelaide, who it needed recognition from. Various diets of largely New Wave fare were tried, but by October the other editors had decided to give it away. Coupe had by this time quit and joined RAM. Only Donald Robertson decided to continue. But he quickly managed to get a new team, including a number of professional journalists—something lacking previously in the Roadrunner editorial collective. He started
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commissioning articles and seeking out better quality pix. He streamlined the accounting side of the operation so the paper could start recovering more of the money it was owed by advertisers. Finally—he increased the print run. The next step was an eastern states tour by production editor Clive Dorman late last year. He found a lot of enthusiasm in Sydney for Roadrunner, both in radio and record company circles. Wizard Records took out a full-page ad, testimony of their faith in the magazine. There was also a lot of interest generated in Melbourne, where one of the editorial collective members, Bruce Milne, continues to write for the paper. More advertising revenue came from Melbourne. When Dorman returned from his trip, he and Robertson decided that the magazine really needed to go national. There was, really, no way back to the struggling Adelaide-based paper which sent perhaps one hundred copies of each issue to Sydney and Melbourne as curios. They decided to take the risk of attempting to produce a national newspaper from Adelaide. Roadrunner, in case you’re wondering, doesn’t take its name from the bird that consistently beguiles Wile E. Coyote and foils the ACME Company. It’s the title of a song by Jonathan Richman, a Boston New Waver, all about Living in The Modern World, and driving to the stop and shop with the radio on. Robertson chose the name for the philosophical reason that he and the others liked it. The first national edition has emerged with ‘Australia’s Independent Music Paper’ under the masthead, and it’s certainly going to have to create some form of dedicated readership around this or some other concept to succeed. RAM and Juke—each boasting much
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