Shop Around … pt 32
It’s odd that I am so keen to get this compilation. I have all the recordings in various forms. I know the songs better than most people on the planet, but I want them all over again. Even more than that, I want everybody to get hold of these recordings.
It’s partly because these recordings are part of one of the greatest stories in pop. Someone should write a book about Postcard Records of Scotland. Information-wise, there’s really only drips and drops, dribs and drabs out there, even on the web.
The challenge for anyone writing the story will be to convey how all the elements that shaped the Sound of Young Scotland, and Orange Juice in particular, were very much against the grain then when now they are almost the norm. I say almost because it oft gets overlooked how influenced the Postcard groups were by the almost contemporaneous Devoto-era Buzzcocks and Vic Godard and different incarnations of Subway Sect.
Anyway, even those overarching influences, like the Velvets, Kinks, the West Coast sound, the old soul, the New York New Wave/No Wave, European cool (an unpublished part of Simon Reynold’s Rip It Up allegedly has OJ’s drummer Stephen Daly explaining they based their image on that of Ze’s Marie et les Garcons), were not everyday currency. At the end of the ‘70s you were not spoiled for choice when it came to record racks filled with rare old Love and Maxine Brown records.
Now it’s a different story. We are absolutely spoiled for choice. In one way that’s a wonderful thing for us as consumers. Even if it’s not good news for my bank balance. But I do worry sometimes that it makes life too easy for us. It takes something of the struggle out of self-education.
So, what did drop through my door this week was a double DVD of Serge Gainsbourg. It’s almost too good to be true. Over four-and-a-half hours of French flair, debauchery, and daring. The best of Gainsbourg, in all his guises, from louche lounge lizard through to seedy hipster. If you love Serge, you’ll need this. The salvaged shoot of the complete Histoire de Melody Nelson will particularly appeal, though the performance of Requiem pour un con wins out for me.
It always seemed the world’s most natural thing how The Fall went rockabilly on Grotesque, revivifying a music of 25 years before. Quarter of a century on I’m not sure of rockabilly’s place in the scheme of things, but it sure as hell is getting my dancing shoes tapping these days. This is mainly because the Ace family has put out lovely reissue of the Rockabilly Kings set. This is an expanded version of a legendary compilation of the King recordings of rockabilly legends Charlie Feathers and Mac Curtis, and it’s absolutely essential. Around the time Orange Juice were starting out, the Mac Curtis flat top was the de rigeur haircut of choice for any rockabilly cub around town. Indeed when Edwyn Collins left behind his fringe he adopted a variation of the Mac Curtis, and looked absolutely adorable. The incidental primitivism of rockabilly certainly was another of the sounds to shape Postcard. Hank Mizell’s 'Jungle Rock' hitting the charts so hard had a lot to answer for.
I seem to recall that around the time of 'I Can’t Help Myself' Edwyn appeared on the cover of Smash Hits, and the same issue may have featured The Fall who had just released Slates. And that summer I was looking utterly gorgeous in a State Arts Scars ski t-shirt, chinese slippers bought for next to nothing in Kensington Market, and jeans from Flip in Covent Garden I got on the day someone asked me if I would be an extra in a film they were making down the road where all I would need to do was sit at a bar and wear a trilby. Typically I said no thanks, and went off down to the Virgin shop at Marble Arch to look for the latest release from Ze.
© 2005 John Carney