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imomusTonight, if you're living in the UK and have digital television, you can watch Caledonia Dreaming, a documentary "defining the sound of young Scotland". It's on BBC 4 at 2100 BST, and it's basically the Postcard Records scene getting the Retro Necro treatment.
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Caledonia Dreaming isn't The Sound of Young Scotland, the Grant McPhee documentary about Postcard that's been in production for what seems like years -- that's supposed to be coming out later this year, but it may well have been shot in the groin by the BBC doc, which inevitably uses a lot of the same footage and the same talking heads.
This being the crazy upside down world of Retro Necro, the sound of young Scotland is the sound of Scotland when people as old as me were young; in other words, it's the sound of old Scotland circa 1980, with a nod to the young Scots in bands like Franz Ferdinand who've revived it. That's how Retro Necro works; the young salute the old, and before long a scene like Postcard gets a sort of total recall media scrutiny. We remember it better than we remember yesterday. (What did I do yesterday? Oh, I gave a long interview about The Happy Family to Fedge Net, a 4AD fan site.)
I'm not interviewed in either of the Postcard docs. In 1980, when most of this stuff is happening, I'm a glaikit wee boy with a pointy chin, studying English Literature in Aberdeen and writing rock reviews for The Gaudie, the student paper. But the most exciting thing I can do, when I go back to Edinburgh between terms, is head up to Clouds or the Art College to watch local postpunk heroes Josef K playing. It becomes my ambition to sign to their label, Alan Horne's Postcard Records. So I make a scratchy, funky postpunk cassette and hand it to Malcolm Ross at what turns out to be Josef K's penultimate live show, asking him to give it to Alan. Instead, when the K split a week or so later, Malcolm calls me up. I'm to be the singer in a new band with Josef K (all of them bar the singer, Paul Haig, who's going solo). It's quite possibly the most exciting thing that will ever happen in my life, on a par with losing my virginity three months earlier. The resulting band, The Happy Family, signs to 4AD and the rest is... well, my story.
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What's interesting to me is how the hierarchies in place at the time are still pretty much in place, 28 years later. I still feel that Postcard was an exciting local scene, but that it never produced anything as artistically important and compelling as Magazine or Talking Heads. Similarly, I still feel like a junior figure, doffing my cap to Edwyn Collins (the lemon-tart grandfather of tweepop) and Roddy Frame (the slightly-vanished boy wonder) although perhaps not to Paul Haig any more. Haig's solo career started promisingly, but -- the odd stylish album like "The Warp of Pure Fun" aside -- fizzled into twenty years of plodding synthpop incapable of setting anyone's heather on fire.
Taking that "intact hierarchies" thought further (and in view of the fact that I've just been given an exciting new job as a columnist at Frieze.com), I'm tempted to say that the Postcard Records story, as it's being told now, works rather like the story of various "peripheral Modernisms" being told in blockbuster exhibitions in the art world at the moment. When you tell the story of Tropicália in Brazil or Fluxus in Japan, you're not overturning the Modernist hierarchy, upsetting its canon or even rewriting its story. You're actually reconfirming Duchamp and Picasso, Paris and New York as the hubs and centres and pinnacles, then adding some colourful local detail in footnotes which jaded gallery-goers, over-familiar with the central narrative but unready to overthrow it, may well find more interesting than the old protagonists. The more local colour (in our example, record sleeves featuring men in kilts, stag's heads, heather, salmon and other Scottish kitsch) the better.
Personally, I think I'd rather watch a documentary about Giles Havergal's great early 80s productions (staged in the Gorbals, and free to the unemployed!) of Jean Genet and Karl Kraus plays at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre. They were just as formative for me as Postcard Records was, just as exciting. There's actually a chapter in my forthcoming novel based on the 1981 production of The Blacks. There are no chapters fondly reminiscing about Postcard, though I do remember it fondly, of course. If anyone's making a Genet-at-the-Citizens documentary for BBC 4, put me in that one!
Perhaps we should give Paul Haig the last word: "You lived in the past, dear, with things we all gave up then."
[Error: unknown template video]
Caledonia Dreaming isn't The Sound of Young Scotland, the Grant McPhee documentary about Postcard that's been in production for what seems like years -- that's supposed to be coming out later this year, but it may well have been shot in the groin by the BBC doc, which inevitably uses a lot of the same footage and the same talking heads.
This being the crazy upside down world of Retro Necro, the sound of young Scotland is the sound of Scotland when people as old as me were young; in other words, it's the sound of old Scotland circa 1980, with a nod to the young Scots in bands like Franz Ferdinand who've revived it. That's how Retro Necro works; the young salute the old, and before long a scene like Postcard gets a sort of total recall media scrutiny. We remember it better than we remember yesterday. (What did I do yesterday? Oh, I gave a long interview about The Happy Family to Fedge Net, a 4AD fan site.)
I'm not interviewed in either of the Postcard docs. In 1980, when most of this stuff is happening, I'm a glaikit wee boy with a pointy chin, studying English Literature in Aberdeen and writing rock reviews for The Gaudie, the student paper. But the most exciting thing I can do, when I go back to Edinburgh between terms, is head up to Clouds or the Art College to watch local postpunk heroes Josef K playing. It becomes my ambition to sign to their label, Alan Horne's Postcard Records. So I make a scratchy, funky postpunk cassette and hand it to Malcolm Ross at what turns out to be Josef K's penultimate live show, asking him to give it to Alan. Instead, when the K split a week or so later, Malcolm calls me up. I'm to be the singer in a new band with Josef K (all of them bar the singer, Paul Haig, who's going solo). It's quite possibly the most exciting thing that will ever happen in my life, on a par with losing my virginity three months earlier. The resulting band, The Happy Family, signs to 4AD and the rest is... well, my story.
[Error: unknown template video]
What's interesting to me is how the hierarchies in place at the time are still pretty much in place, 28 years later. I still feel that Postcard was an exciting local scene, but that it never produced anything as artistically important and compelling as Magazine or Talking Heads. Similarly, I still feel like a junior figure, doffing my cap to Edwyn Collins (the lemon-tart grandfather of tweepop) and Roddy Frame (the slightly-vanished boy wonder) although perhaps not to Paul Haig any more. Haig's solo career started promisingly, but -- the odd stylish album like "The Warp of Pure Fun" aside -- fizzled into twenty years of plodding synthpop incapable of setting anyone's heather on fire.
Taking that "intact hierarchies" thought further (and in view of the fact that I've just been given an exciting new job as a columnist at Frieze.com), I'm tempted to say that the Postcard Records story, as it's being told now, works rather like the story of various "peripheral Modernisms" being told in blockbuster exhibitions in the art world at the moment. When you tell the story of Tropicália in Brazil or Fluxus in Japan, you're not overturning the Modernist hierarchy, upsetting its canon or even rewriting its story. You're actually reconfirming Duchamp and Picasso, Paris and New York as the hubs and centres and pinnacles, then adding some colourful local detail in footnotes which jaded gallery-goers, over-familiar with the central narrative but unready to overthrow it, may well find more interesting than the old protagonists. The more local colour (in our example, record sleeves featuring men in kilts, stag's heads, heather, salmon and other Scottish kitsch) the better.
Personally, I think I'd rather watch a documentary about Giles Havergal's great early 80s productions (staged in the Gorbals, and free to the unemployed!) of Jean Genet and Karl Kraus plays at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre. They were just as formative for me as Postcard Records was, just as exciting. There's actually a chapter in my forthcoming novel based on the 1981 production of The Blacks. There are no chapters fondly reminiscing about Postcard, though I do remember it fondly, of course. If anyone's making a Genet-at-the-Citizens documentary for BBC 4, put me in that one!
Perhaps we should give Paul Haig the last word: "You lived in the past, dear, with things we all gave up then."
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 10:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 10:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:00 am (UTC)I know which side of the fence you fall on, you know which side of the fence I fall on.
I also think if you're looking for something a little bit different, the mainstream media is the last place to look -- youth culture isnt what it was, it's been disbanded (for better or worse) thanks to technology, which I've also touched upon. With the gatekeepers of pop gone and youth culture disbanded, what does the mainstream have left but to cling to the authenticity of the past?
Dark corners of the internet are where you should be looking (HERE BE DRAGONS!) not the BBC. Infact I think I said that before also.
Just out of curiosity, in what direction would you personally like to see the mainstream "evolve"? I'm talking specifics here, not answers like "somefink different, innit?"
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:06 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:35 am (UTC)Europe's been there and done that already.
Remember when men were able to wear lace in their hair and still look masculine? Neither do I.
and I'm not an expert on Japan or anything but I'm sure the Heian period happened over a 1000 years ago. So much for originality, but I like it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:38 am (UTC)Alas, poor Yorick
Date: 2008-02-23 01:12 am (UTC)http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0264-9381/21/11/002/
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 07:19 pm (UTC)perhaps a minstrelsy of youth.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:26 am (UTC)Yes, it's all Retro Necro. But you can't really distinguish between the pop music and the Genet, the band and the play. If you watched the Sound of Young Scotland clip at the top of this entry, you'll have heard Grant MacIntyre ending it by saying "there just seemed to be an interest in art and literature as much as the Velvet Underground". That defines the era -- the Penguin-Modern-Classic-in-greatcoat-pocket era -- and I exemplify it in my work just as I do in this entry.
click
Date: 2008-02-22 01:54 pm (UTC)There's a post on ballardian.com (http://www.ballardian.com/ballardian-music-mike-ryan-interview) about a DJ set inspired by JG Ballard. It mentions the Banshees in an NME interview dropping Ballard's name. It heralded the almost sensual change in their music on A Kiss In The Dreamhouse. It also mentions the need back then to make music informed by books and art.
My hazy memories of old young scotland (and other recession hit urban art cliques) was that an Art Rock(that unnameable genre)sensibility walked hand in hand with young kids wanting to jump up and down to art school dance acts like The Rezillos, The Valves or even pre Simple Minds. People wanted to explore their post VU fetish with outsider and marginal euro literature and art, while the catholic grammar school set intersected with their literature of political resistance.
While all that was going on there was still pop. I think Fast/Postcard was like a move from art rock to art pop.
Speaking of The Simple Minds I first saw them and other artrock bands in venues that were essentially theatres. George Sq, Traverse, Netherbow. The Clash and others were playing at the cinemas.
I look forward to this show to see if it can shine any new light on the Glasgow/Edinburgh divide.. Good to see Bobby Scar again!
I know you probably won't see it this way, Eustace, but it was worth a shot!
Date: 2008-02-22 12:49 pm (UTC)Of course I agree that contradictory political, sociological and economic phenomena condition one another. As do opposing intellectual theories. Actually, it's a coincidence that you mention a 'huge effort not-to-be-Nazi': yesterday I watched a late interview with Jean-Luc Godard in which he mentioned that the use of anything resembling German field grey was scrupulously avoided in French film immediately after the war. And as you know, and more to the point, the switch from Surrealist pre-war playfulness to politically-engaged (and more often than not Marxist) Existentialism in post-war France is conspicuous.
(Incidentally, I'd say that the hippie liberalism of the 60s was really an American thing that grew out of the work of Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg, which in turn had its stimuli in the philistinism and political, social and spiritual oppression they found themselves unable to endure - yes, in itself a kind of totalitarianism. The horror of the European experience doesn't feature in their thinking: perhaps it's just as well; if they had been infected by Adorno's dictum, then the poetic – and peculiarly American – optimism of Ginsberg and Kerouac would have been stifled.)
I have no truck with the idea that the West’s naughty ways informed Islamic fundamentalism; of course I don’t! If you remember, it was just the thing you did of placing Islam qua Islam into the category ‘postmodern’ that bothered me. It’s exactly the same as the Victorian anthropologist Tyler placing old world tribal societies into the category ‘primitive’. Like the Victorians, you are implying a superiority in knowledge and, implicitly, power over the objects of your taxonomy. For my part, I think that superiority is bogus. You don’t, because you are sure that the religious worldview is incorrect; therefore any knowledge which you posses as a scientifically enlightened man contains and limits any knowledge they believe they possess. And it works both ways of course.
Here is our irrevocable divergence. Irrevocable at the moment anyway. You write of
the binary way we form concepts. Our ideas, and our ideologies, depend on a close relationship with their opposites.
I think it’s interesting that you speak of concepts, ideas and ideologies. It reveals a rational way of making sense of the world. It is through the apparatus of dialectical thought that you try to possess the world, tame the horrible mystery of it. Everything is conditioned by its opposite, and with that you rest satisfied. It’s interesting that it was two female philosophers who were prepared to look at the mystery of the good and the beautiful last century: Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. They come back with their corneas burnt but they are content with that wound, because they know it is a final one. There are perceptions the truth of which strikes one before we attempt to formulate a theory to explain it. I’m sure you’ve had them yourself, you mystic you.
The contradictions the mind comes up against – these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity. I believe that, sure. But I believe that beyond that there is mystery: the real, that which is. Accept it Momus! Accept it like Iris and Simone did. Accept it like the gay Wittgenstein did! Stop being so male! The world is very much a woman of refinement: she will not allow you to possess her with your grubby binary conceptualisation!
Re: I know you probably won't see it this way, Eustace, but it was worth a shot!
Date: 2008-02-22 12:51 pm (UTC)Bowler
Re: I know you probably won't see it this way, Eustace, but it was worth a shot!
Date: 2008-02-22 12:56 pm (UTC)Art's a bit like Christianity -- every loser wins.
is a cheap shot, and totally misguided. The poor in spirit being blessed and that the humble should 'inherit the earth' are ideas you have apparently understood only very superficially.
Re: I know you probably won't see it this way, Eustace, but it was worth a shot!
Date: 2008-02-22 05:14 pm (UTC)Re: I know you probably won't see it this way, Eustace, but it was worth a shot!
Date: 2008-02-23 11:12 pm (UTC)Scotland doesn't care.
Date: 2008-02-22 02:14 pm (UTC)wewillbecome.com
Leicester's not exactly scottish...
Date: 2008-02-22 04:00 pm (UTC)Re: Leicester's not exactly scottish...
Date: 2008-02-22 05:31 pm (UTC)Alan Jenkins? I don't know anything about him. The poet feller? When I was starting out as Momus it was all about Peter Porter. I used to spend NME interviews where I should have been talking about myself talking about him (http://imomus.com/index11.html) instead.
Re: Leicester's not exactly scottish...
Date: 2008-02-29 05:49 pm (UTC)Alan Jenkins? I don't know anything about him. The poet feller? When I was starting out as Momus it was all about Peter Porter. I used to spend NME interviews where I should have been talking about myself talking about him instead.
Err, no the songwriter of Deep Freeze Mice fame (well, not exactly fame, but you must have heard of 'em).
http://cordelia.stayfree.co.uk/Pages/Mice.html
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 07:21 pm (UTC)don't ever make music again!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 04:36 am (UTC)in a completely unrelated..
Date: 2008-02-22 07:39 pm (UTC)http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/
totally random insertion of momus
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 07:46 pm (UTC)"I DIDN'T USED TO READ FRIEZE.COM, BUT I WILL NOW, BECAUSE MOMUS IS WRITING THERE."
you can tell them that.
you were lost in translation
Date: 2008-02-22 08:55 pm (UTC)"Daylight shines in or lamplight down..." A vintage 1930s photograph of the ballroom in James Merrill's childhood home. Cover illustration for The Changing Light At Sandover (1982)
The opening lines of the poem describe the library where the young Merrill took his lessons. He describes the scene as if an eight- or nine-year-old boy were seeing it:
A card table in the library stands ready
To receive the puzzle which keeps never coming.
Daylight shines in or lamplight down
Upon the tense oasis of green felt.
Full of unfulfillment, life goes on,
Mirage arisen from time's trickling sands
Or fallen piecemeal into place:
German lesson, picnic, see-saw, walk
With the collie who "did everything but talk" —
Sour windfalls of the orchard back of us.
A summer without parents is the puzzle,
Or should be. But the boy, day after day,
Writes in his Line-a-Day No puzzle.
...
Out of the blue, as promised, of a New York
Puzzle-rental shop the puzzle comes —
A superior one, containing a thousand hand-sawn,
Sandal-scented pieces. Many take
shapes known already — the craftsman's repertoire
nice in its limitation — from other puzzles:
Witch on broomstick, ostrich, hourglass,
Even (not surely just in retrospect)
An inchling, innocently-branching palm.
...
But nothing's lost. Or else: all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it...
And in that loss a self-effacing tree,
Color of context, imperceptibly
Rustling with its angel, turns the waste
To shade and fiber, milk and memory.
_VRSKY
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 09:06 pm (UTC)He loves China even more than you love Japan
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-22 11:18 pm (UTC)Anonymous Smoker (Canonmills)
fame
Date: 2008-02-22 11:20 pm (UTC)Re: fame
Date: 2008-02-23 04:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 12:38 am (UTC)thanks much
Date: 2008-03-24 03:31 am (UTC)