Positive Energy of Madness, where did the title come from? From a review of Ken Kessey’s book Demon Box. It struck a chord with me and the words kept circulating in my head. The year was 1989 and like many others we were attending Acid House parties and London nightclubs. We loved the style, the attitude, the clothes, the music, the mayhem, the madness, the sex and the banter, it was exciting times and you really did live for the weekend.

There were other fanzines around like Boys Own, but we felt they were elitist and contained in jokes, no one had captured the passion and the energy. Fanzines like Boy’s own were littered with what not to do, people became afraid to live it up, worried that they might show themselves up. Our philosophy, why bother going out? We knew countless people who just stood at the bar, making comments about others. Boring, we found colourful people on top of speakers, poppers up their nose, losing themselves in the music, talking bullshit, but it was beautiful bullshit. These were the people that had essence, and we wanted to speak to them. Like so many fanzines, our enthusiasm was our driving force and we just done what we thought we needed to do. First issue and bingo, we were on the map. Some loved it, others hated it. Fuck them, we wanted a voice to be heard. It was then, that we saw that a great deal of club land was full of hypocrites. They wanted sheep, to smile but not speak. We were making progress and people wanted to talk to us. We lasted on and off for 6 years, then we deicide to call it a day. But with the growth of the Internet, we knew it was time to resurface. We are not going to try and get an “acid house” revival going, no we are forward thinking.

When we decided to put Positive Energy of Madness on the web, we weren’t sure whether to post the original issues up or not, butwhen the new (and best ever) team of PEOM, consisting of myself, Joe Cumbers and Anthony Kenney sat down and went through the old issues the main thing that shone out were the interviews. We have some gems, which we are really proud of, Paul Weller, Oasis, Danny Rampling, Andy Weathrall and a few more. We think you will enjoy them! We will post other articles from the original issues as we go along. I would like to thank those of you who helped us in the early days; there’s no massive list. Those who know… know!!

Matteo Sedazzari