Continuing the theme of how the Prefab Sprout fan community developed, from fanzines through to the Zorrophonic list and beyond to Sproutnet, we now pass through an intermediate evolutionary step, the Ryan Bassler online Newsletter.
This sits somewhere between the passive nature of a fanzine and the highly interactive “forum” style of fan community which would shortly develop. Bassler invited fans to contribute via a standard questionnaire which is the mainstay of the content throughout and there was a little news here and there, including the odd interview gleaned from obscure corners of the world (for example in Issue 3 there is a short article from the Orange County Register). As ever, the difficulty for a fan doing anything like this – even now – is to find anything whatsoever to report in the dead periods, but it marks time as well as anything.
It’s fair to say that it’s more of a curiosity for browsing than anything else, but it does cover the release of Andromeda Heights and is worth a look through. I think there may have been more issues: there are references in the Zorrophonic archive to later updates, but I’ve not been able to locate any.
- 25th February 1995
- 8th March 1995
- 11th April 1995
- 26th June 1995
- 9th July 1995
- 1st May 1996
- 1st September 1996
- 27th September 1996
- 31st January 1997
- 9th February 1997
- 1st May 1997
- 6th June 1997
- 9th July 1997
- 23rd October 1997
- 31st December 1997
- 21st February 1998
- 7th June 1998
- 30th November 1998
- 1st February 1999