Interview with Dave Fountain by LaesQ

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\\ oO //  Interview with Dave Fountain by LaesQ          /  \__/
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Editor's note: Hot on the heels of last issue's "Calling Fudgepacker" article, we got a tip from Equinox which, after a bit of detective work, allowed us to track down Dave and enabled our very own LaesQ to sit down and interview him.

Why did you leave the Spectrum scene back in 2000?

Good question, forgive me if I rewind to the beginning. I'd been obsessed with the Spectrum since I got mine in 1984. I wasn't a prolific buyer of games but I did read the monthly magazines and always went for either a definite triple A title or maybe something obscure and niche. I tended to trust the reviews and most of them proved to be correct. The Spectrum had so many average and downright poor games but a few absolute belters. I was also interested in it for its musical angle, not the obvious thing associated with the Spectrum but I was obsessed with the Specdrum add-on and actually used it for the live group I was in during 1986 (on a 4-track backing tape rather than having it live on stage fuck that).

When Your Sinclair closed it left a rallying cry in the editorial for users to join PD groups and get together behind the scenes, which I did. Met several people including you lot - Extacy 3 and the United Minds in particular were complete nutcases, and the UK underground scene started coming together. E3 were the premium UK demo group and you did us proud alongside the already established mainland European groups like the Mad Guys and all the others I've forgotten. Sorry!

Then I compiled the PD library and then Crashed fanzine and I knew that 'hands-on' use of a real Spectrum was dying out fast.

I realised it was going to move lock stock and barrel to the internet with emulation and I felt I no longer had a part to play.

I was literally going to be 'redundant' from my role because I didn't have a PC and didn't have internet apart from weekly visits to an internet cafe to see what all the fuss was about, so I already had a reason to move on and see what would come next in life. I worked for a short while at the Retro X games shop in Shepherds Bush as 'the 8-bit-guy' during the summer of 2000 but I use the term worked lightly as I never actually got paid.

What happened to the Knuckle Girls? Did you leave them too?

I'd known Amanda and Claire for a good few years in London, we were into the indie pop scene of the mid 80's, when I left to spend a couple of years in Nottingham in 1992 for a change in scenery, we obviously saw less of each other but Amanda then became more interested in the Spectrum scene as a way of a connection with me and we'd swap ideas we'd made through writing letters and swapping tapes. She had my toast rack 128K but didn't use it much.

Remember those kids? Haven't seen either of them in years and no idea where they are or what they are doing. Friendships come and go, such is life. They were the Linda Barkers of the demo scene, they never owned their own Spectrums, never bought and played games, they were more into playing Sonic, FIFA, Golf and Ice Hockey on the Sega Megadrive. Linda was editor of YS for a short while but never owned a Spectrum or bought a game either, it was a career move for her, a job, and nothing more.

Amanda and Claire were generally pissheads, up for a laugh with no responsibility but you didn't want to cross them when they were drunk or into other things, they could be somewhat volatile, ignorant and hedonistic. A bad influence as my dear old Mum would have dubbed them. Someone once suggested they were lesbians, they weren't. It was unusual to have females in the Spectrum scene, but as I've just explained, their input was not exactly direct.

Why did you choose the scene name Fudgepacker?

It was a name that made me laugh after having heard it on an 'adult entertainment video' I watched in the early 90's. It was three straight people stood around a pool table, two blokes and one woman, and they were discussing last night's individual action with cut scenes to that action. Hollywood stuff. And one of the blokes said something like "She said she didn't want to get pregnant she wanted me to pack her fudge!" in a really thick drawling Texan accent. That was what I found funny. Later the word appeared in street slang to become a gay insult or a slur of some kind. I don't tend to habitually call people names, if I call them anything I prefer using their first name. So, I stopped using it and just became Dave Fountain.

A bit of occasional bum fun is not exclusive to any gender or persuasion, so the gay insult thing was other people's issues, not mine. During a brief meander on World of Spectrums forums a few years back, I objected to a comment that Dizzee Rascal had 'a monkey head' alongside other overtly aggressive insults towards him. I called him out for it and got no support. I left the group immediately and never saw the outcome. The guy was banned for it. When you see something that is really out of order, you don't just ignore it, or make excuses for it, you call it out for what it is. And if there is no valid defence of a comment like that then take what's coming.

What did you do with all your old Spectrum kit?

I packed it all up and contacted St. John Swainson who I knew through Crashed. I felt he would give it a good home. There was loads of stuff, too much to mention, but what could I do with it? Who would have wanted it or the bother of collecting it? It may well have been stored in a loft for years and rotted away had it held it back. I don't regret it. I wouldn't get it all out the box now if I still had it.

Do you have a "claim to fame" in the Spectrum World?

I'm not sure, it's probably not for me to say. I took over Crashed fanzine when Mark Sturdy had kind of reached the end of the road with it. It became reanimated and even I wondered where I was getting all the material from as the scene before the internet thing took over was on its arse. It was fun writing it and getting it printed and it gave me a sense of achievement.

Fortunately, I was able to sell it over the counter in several retro / games second-hand shops as the postal subscribers dwindled to almost nothing. I was doing 300 copies each issue which I thought was pretty good, and made a decent return. It cost 100 to print and I charged 1 per copy. The key was I was reaching a new market, people who remembered having a Spectrum years ago and never knew it had gone underground. All I wanted was to break-even so was pleased with how it went. I was generally at a loose end, and if I had had something better to do at that time I probably wouldn't have taken it on.

I think there were two or three of us in the UK (such as yourself) who were bringing the drum and bass / rave vibe into AY chip music, it differed from the style of music that seemed to dominate the European demos. Axel F for instance used to do my fucking head in.

I know Fountain PD was the biggest and best organised of any previous UK PD library, maybe even the biggest in the world back then? I was obsessed with typefaces and fonts and attempted to gather the biggest useable collection in one place. These made their way into the last few issues of OUTLET. People who wanted programs on tape or disk declined rather rapidly over time so that was never going to last as a viable 'thing'.

Do you miss "the scene"?

Cannot say I do to be honest, I mean I occasionally watch new demos and games on YouTube and I appreciate that amazing things are still occurring considering the computers modest limitations, but through the passage of time I don't get the same vibe I used to get from it. I miss the people and the swapping of letters/disks and the collaborations and the sense of camaraderie we had.

The scene has changed, are you ever tempted to return?

Can't say I have. I was never a coder in any sense of the term, I was a very basic BASIC user and I could wield other people's utility software like a pro, but we always asked you to put our modest bits and pieces together into the finished program, I was interested in music using Soundtracker and graphics knocked up in Art Studio and I never developed beyond that. I think I did some different things though, like Viz and Beavis & Butthead images all hand to eye pixeled, if that is even a term.

What have you been up to since 2000?

Well, I left London to move down to Kent because I'd met someone very special in quite a random way, and it was all a bit of a whirlwind. Within a few weeks I was settled down there with a job and living in an old cottage by the English Channel in St. Marys Bay. On the first drive down from Ashford station we passed a small 13th century church in a field surrounded by sheep. And after living in London, mostly in Silvertown which was a London industrial estate with some social housing squeezed into the gaps, trees and grass always at a premium, I thought to myself fuck me, this is me now boy, I'm not going back. Kent is beautiful, you got big towns, small towns, villages, open countryside, stunning coastlines, seaside resorts, harbours, country pubs... what's not to like. It was a fantastic new start.

I got a job working on building the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Folkestone to Ebbsfleet, piloting the work trains literally building the track and infrastructure from the ground up. That was fascinating and really well paid, so I was able to get a mortgage on a house. Things just really came together for me in ways they hadn't before. I started my own small engine repair business and repaired garden machinery for several years. The catalyst was meeting Emma, she brought out the best in me and I seemed to achieve my potential alongside her. I had mostly hung out with drifters and losers in London before, but you don't see it at the time. Not that I've become a decent member of society, I've not lost any of my down to earth working-class sensibilities, socialist politics or opinions. I still class myself as an outsider looking in which is pretty much how I've felt all my life.

I wrote a biography about being a high functioning Autistic (with associated caveats), which I am and never actually knew until I was in my forties. It certainly explained an awful lot that's all I can say. It was a therapeutic exercise to write everything down and see clear pointers that most things weren't 'typical' somewhere. But I do realise that without Autism I probably wouldn't have done half of the things I ended up doing, and I can't say I have any regrets. Apart from head butting a Police horse at a Millwall game. In truth the horse was driven at me whilst I was trying to get home but that was the official Police line and they insisted that was the charge. I love animals, why would I do that. It hurt.

I don't think it would be too wide of the mark to suggest that the incidence of Autism in specialist activities like the 8-bit scene is pretty high. Sue me if I'm wrong.

What are your future plans, and do any involve a Spectrum?

I'm semi-retired now and fortunate enough not to have to work.

My wife still does and if we ever need more money for something major then I'd go out and get one as well, not bothered what.

I'm pretty much a natural recluse and love working on my own projects or doing DIY, gardening, fixing stuff. Just sitting down and learning a new skill because you want that skill is liberating, and for all its ills and drawbacks and the negative ways it has affected society, the internet and modern technology has empowered the individual to achieve things. I only have the Spectacular emulator, and though I have thought several times about recreating the one obtuse and niche text adventure I ever made on GAC, I don't think the world will suffer in any way if it fails to make it off the things-to-do list.

I still make music now with Reaper and FL Studio in my home studio set-up (Dream Pop and Shoegaze stuff) and help bands and individuals develop by offering free mastering and production for their songs. Until I get well known then maybe I can start to earn a living from it, but that's not exactly me in a nutshell.

I like helping people and money has never been my motivation. I don't see how going back to 8-bit music would ever seem desirable. If I had had an Amiga like you did back in the 90's I would have been making music on that rather than a Spectrum at that time. I used what I had around me and at that time the 128K +2 was all I had. I didn't get my first PC until 2000 but I had a PlayStation in 97, and Music and Music 2000 were brilliant to play around with.

Well, thank you for tracking me down, I wasn't hiding you understand.