Felt-Tip Ink Dries, the Scroll Wheel Still Clicks

Mark Perry started a magazine on a children's typewriter. "I had a children's typewriter plus a felt-tip pen," he said later, as uDiscover Music reports, "so that's why the first issue is how it is." That was Sniffin' Glue, the British punk fanzine that hit the street in July 1976 and burned out a year and 12 issues later. Cheap, fast, and ugly on purpose.Fifty years on, somebody's selling a zinc-alloy music player with a scroll wheel and real buttons. The Surfans F20 plays the files you already own and nothing else. Hold it next to a streaming subscription and it looks like a toy. Hold it next to Perry's typewriter and it looks like a question: who gets to stand between you and the music?The Glue and the TypewriterStart with the name. Perry lifted it from the Ramones, "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," Louder reports. The same piece says the Ramones' debut sold about 6,000 copies. Six thousand. Keep that number in your pocket. The record that rewired a genre barely moved off the rack,…