I‘ve been in something of a fug recently. Mostly I think it’s to do with the mid-holiday lull; that period of time where you’re just about relaxed out and you start to fret about all the things you need to prepare for the new term but can’t quite bring yourself to actually start doing. So you end up kind of just doing nothing. And doing nothing is a horrid disease that self-perpetuates itself so successfully.
It’s also probably been down to the fact that I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of seeing people. It’s been good then to have got out and up to London, even if only briefly, and to have engaged in some social interaction. I met Kevin and we predictably spent most of the time discussing the film about underground music of the ‘80s, the thought of which excites me more and more. It’s a story that hasn’t really been told fully, and whilst I’m quite sure the film will inevitably leave out parts that some feel should be there, and vice versa, it’s important to realise that whilst it’s A story of those times, it’s not THE story. For THE story would be immense and require a multi-part series at the very least. And lots of money.
It should be a fascinating story though, and it will be interesting to see how the film comes together as a visual artefact, given that there is most likely very little contemporary footage of the bands. Even photographs seem to be ludicrously rare. It’s a great shame. But Paul Kelly does have a fine, fine eye for rich visual treats, and it’s sure to come together.
Interestingly, one of the things that Phil Wilson was saying was how important things like fanzines, tapes and letters were in spreading the word. It’s so true. One of my lasting memories of the time is of the anticipation of the post. For someone stuck out on a limb in the sticks, the postal service was so powerful. Darren Hayman once wrote a song called ‘A Hymn For The Postal Service’ and that’s so apt because it was a religious experience. The thought that one could be linked together with like minded souls the length and breadth of the country was inescapably important, and people were using fanzines and tapes and letters as a means of communicating ideas and music for which there was no mainstream media outlet. The same thing essentially continues, of course, but it is significantly changed; the act of exploration is so much easier today and I often wonder if that very fact dissipates some of the thrill of discovery. And if that in itself then means the culture is shallower and less interesting. I’m open to debate on that one.
One of the potential threads for the film seems to be about how certain characters could have failed to become bona-fide Stars. It’s an interesting one, and all about the context. Looking back from now, it’s blindingly obvious why the underground groups would not become globally, or even nationally huge. For there was simply too strong a mainstream culture. The prevailing political culture was one of hyper-capitalism and greed. Artifice was all. The only way to set oneself up in opposition to that was to not play by those rules, to invent one’s own. The independents did not necessarily have a natural tendency to be ‘underacheivers’. In many cases it was quite the opposite, but it was perhaps true that there was an aesthetic of underachievement when measured by the mainstream qualities against which people felt they were in opposition to.
The brilliance of things like Postcard and people like Michael Head and Lawrence was that they were investigating new ways to do things, putting together disparate Pop elements to try and make a sense of both the future and the past. They were great adventurers and they believed that their visions were the ones that would prevail. The problem was that the mainstream didn’t agree with them. For mainstream culture seldom sees eye to eye with the true mavericks and the real risk takers. Which is perhaps why it was the more easily marketable Rock structures and strictures of the Mary Chain, for example, who emerged from the pack ahead of the likes of Jasmine Minks and the June Brides. Which isn’t to deny in any way the brilliance of the early Mary Chain, but… well, you know what I mean I’m sure.
Kevin told a great story about when the Minks were making their second album for Creation. Someone heard the tapes and asked, apparently aghast ‘are you trying to sound black?’ It’s an interesting comment, for at the time of course there was very much a schism being enacted by the UK music press, who were presenting a conflict between ‘black’ music (Hip Hop) and ‘white’ (Guitar Pop). Didn’t we call them the Hip Hop Wars? And clearly I am talking from personal, hazy memory here (someone else less lazy can do the research!), but with hindsight that point seemed to create some kind of watermark in the development of what some now like to call ‘indie’ music.
As a reference point to the film project, Kevin and I talked about the Downtown 81 movie, to which we both seem to come back again and again. For really, although it is in certain cinematic terms an excruciating movie, it also perfectly captures a moment in time where cultures were clashing and making beautiful chaos. Here was a multi-culturalism where the feed seemed to be genuinely and equally spread between the disparate centres of activity. There was no apparent distinction between which source was more or less ‘authentic’ than any other. And this is what seems to have been lost as the eighties progressed, although you could argue that people like the Wild Bunch were continuing with that tradition out in Bristol, and underground elsewhere the likes of the On-U Sound were doing intriguing things, but that’s for someone else to write about. Also I would argue that in those cases the flow of inspiration was not equal, and that they all ignored the core of what has always intrigued me about what developed as ‘indiepop’, which is the aesthetic of the suburban (white) middle classes.
Maybe the Hip Hop Wars were the point at which cultural fundamentalism really put down its roots. Maybe the mid 80s were the point at which everything began to break apart again after the coalescing moments of the 70s and early 80s.
And maybe this all just shows that in the end, the UK is still irrevocably tied up in its history of Class struggle and conflict. That somehow culturally is still cannot deny its guilt at never having had a successful Revolution, which is to be intentionally flippant of course, but still…
