Pop entryism moves in
mysterious ways.
When Lloyd Cole
appeared on televisual cultural relativist musical barometer
Later...With Jools Holland in October 2013, sandwiched between John
Newman and Anna Calvi, the veteran lord of velveteen louche sang a
song called Women's Studies. A typically literate Cole number,
Women's Studies is a song steeped in knowingly half-hidden
references, and given extra swagger by a backing band called The
Leopards.
Towards the end of the
song, Cole sang how 'If Josef K Was From Edinburgh / And Fast Product
From Prague / Well Baby That Would Be Kinda Funny / Or Maybe Not That
Funny At All...'
The Leopards, featuring
former Jazzateers and Bourgie Bourgie guitarist Mick Slaven and ex
Aztec Camera bass player Campbell Owens, have a pedigree which
includes at different times backing separate solo ventures by
guitarist Malcolm Ross and vocalist Paul Haig, both former members of
Edinburgh-sired, Kafka-styled post-punk existentialists, Josef K.
The Leopards' part-time
second guitarist, seen on the small screen to Cole's right, is
Douglas MacIntyre. Twenty years ago, MacIntyre, whose musical life
began by playing in short-lived post-punk combo, Article 58, before
graduating, alongside Slaven, through the Jazzateers and Bourgie
Bourgie, started a record label / ideas factory called The Creeping
Bent Organisation.
Starting with a roster
of fellow travellers that included bands such as Spacehopper, The
Secret Goldfish, and, yes, The Leopards, Creeping Bent picked up the
conceptualist mantle of the original Sound of Young Scotland. This
had been defined by Orange Juice and Josef K on Alan Horne's Postcard
Records, and Scars, Fire Engines and others on the Fast Product label
and it's successor, Pop Aural, both founded by Bob Last and Hilary
Morrison.
As MacIntyre prepares
for a pair of Creeping Bent anniversary shows featuring The Pop
Group, The Sexual Objects, Lloyd Cole and The Leopards and
Jazzateers, the label's past, present and future seems to have
converged into one umbilically connected mass personified by Cole and
The Leopards performance of Women's Studies on TV.
“I've known Lloyd
since before the Commotions,” says MacIntyre, “and he's a big big
fan of Mick's from Jazzateers and Bourgie Bourgie days, and is also a
big fan of Vic Godard. The Leopards did a version of an unreleased
Vic Godard song which Mick wrote with Vic called Rot With Me, which
Lloyd had as his ring-tone on his phone. He'd gone out and bought the
record in New York, and is a big Leopards fan.
“I think when Lloyd
wanted to play with a full electric band for the first time other
than the Commotions reunion gigs since Robert Quine was playing with
him, he thought of Mick,. I guess there's a direct link between
Robert Quine and Mick as guitarists, so he asked Mick to do it, and
they needed a second guitarist, so I ended up doing it.
“I start smiling when
Lloyd sings those lines, because it does remind me of growing up, and
being exposed to all this stuff that would turn you onto things. Now,
it feels like a duty, but a pleasurable duty, to try and turn other
people onto them as well.”
The Creeping Bent
Organisation introduced itself to the world on December 12th
1994 via A Leap Into The Void, a multi-media event named after Yves
Klein's 1960 photo-montage in which the artist was shown leaping from
a wall, arms outstretched, without anything resembling a safety net.
If such an image was the perfect statement of intent for Creeping
Bent, the event itself encapsulated it even more.
“That was amazing,”
MacIntyre remembers, “because I often think we could've just
stopped right there and then after that event. We'd already started
working with the groups and had some stuff recorded, but the idea was
always to make some kind of major statement. There was a great
designer called Paul Sorley, who designed this amazing wooden set for
the event, and that gave things a theatrical feel that went beyond it
just being about a gig, but which turned it into a special event.”
Other Creeping Bent
events have included an end of the century show headlined by The
Nectarine No.9, led by former Fire Engine and current Sexual Object,
Davy Henderson. Called 09 / 09 / 99, the event took place on
September 9th 1999, and featured Josef K guitarist Malcolm
Ross as special guest with The Nectarine No.9. A few years later, the
similarly styled 06/06/06 featured a band called Bricolage, one of a
number of bands who'd picked up on the original Sound of Young
Scotland as well as Creeping Bent's back catalogue.
“The first record we
put out was by a band called Spacehopper,” MacIntyre remembers,
“and the music papers picked up on it straight away.”
7”'s by The Leopards
and The Secret Goldfish were followed by a 12” remix of Suicide's
Frankie Teardrop by an outfit calling themselves the Revolutionary
Corps of Teenage Jesus. The RCTJ was producer and former Article 58
and Altered Images drummer, Stephen Lironi, whose work on Frankie
Teardrop was heard by Suicide's Alan Vega, who was impressed enough
to want to work and record with Lironi on what became the Protection
Rat 12”.
“We had to get
clearance for the track,” MacIntyre remembers, “and I got this
fax off Marty Thau. It's weird to think now how everything was done
then by fax, and even weirder that I was getting one off the guy
who'd managed the New York Dolls and produced the first suicide
album, but he said Alan Vega's heard the track, he loves it and wants
to join the band.”
Frankie Teardrop was
single of the week in the NME, “when the NME could still sell
records, “ as MacIntyre puts it, “so after that we effectively
became a business of sorts.”
Ex Primal Scream and
Spirea X guitarist Jim Beattie's latest project, Adventures In
Stereo, with singer Judith Boyle, were the next band to join Creeping
Bent as the label developed into a flame-carrying bastion of
underground cool.
“High points since
then would be John Peel picking up on the label pretty quickly, doing
loads of sessions with Creeping Bent bands, and giving the label a
night at his Meltdown festival.
“That was the first
time I met Vic Godard,” MacIntyre says. “He was going to come on
and do a version of Nobody's Scared with Adventures in Stereo, and
when we met him he was still wearing his postman's uniform.”
Creeping Bent went on
to forge a working relationship with Godard, who is arguably the
unofficial guru of Postcard, Fast and everything in Scotland that
followed his band Subway Sect's support slot for The Clash on the
1977 White Riot tour at Edinburgh Playhouse.
Creeping Bent has
released two albums as well by Pop Group guitarist Gareth Sager, aka
CC Sager, who also recorded with Fire Engine Davy Henderson'[s pre
Sexual Objects band, The Nectarine No.9. Tellingly, while Fire
Engines few releases had been on Bob Last's post Fast Product label,
Pop Aural, the first Nectarine No.9 releases appeared on Alan Horne's
second incarnation of Postcard, while their later material appeared
on Creeping Bent.
“A lot of the time
with Creeping Bent it's been about meeting people you like and
putting out records that you like,” MacIntyre says. We've never
tried to be a proper record company in terms of business. At one
point it did become full time, with everything that entails, and I
didn't like that.”
MacIntyre now divides
his time between Creeping Bent and teaching cultural studies at the
University of West Scotland, where “I talk about Adorno and play
them some Aphex Twin.”
Corrupting young minds
in this way has brought its own rewards, and led to Scandinavian
twins Bjorn and Erik Sandberg to found We Can Still Picnic with
MacIntyre.
The Sandbergs play in
Glasgow-based Sound of Young Scotland inspired band, Wake The
President, who once put out a single called Bill Drummond. We Can
Still Picnic may be a record label, releasing records by the latest
generation of Scottish acts who include Casual Sex and Post, but,
like Creeping Bent, they put out zines and run club nights and radio
shows, continuing the Scottish art/pop lineage.
“I tend to point
anything new towards We Can Still Picnic, because that's more of an
active label,” MacIntyre says. “They tend to deal with the new
bands, and I do what I suppose you'd call the heritage stuff. I
suppose I'm a kind of conceptual adviser, conceptual dictator, they
would say. Bjorn and Erik signed Casual Sex, and I pointed them in
the direction of Post, but it's their baby. It's more about passing
the baton on. Also, they've got less responsibility's than me, so
they can make things happen, rather than me talking about things that
happen that only happen 15 years later.”
As MacIntyre is happy
to admit, Creeping Bent as a concept couldn't have existed without
Fast Product.
“In 1994 when
Creeping Bent started,” MacIntyre points out, “Postcard had
started its second phase, putting out records by Vic Godard, The
Nectarine No 9 and Paul Quinn and The Independent Group. But Fast
Product didn't really have any currency, and it's only recently that
people are beginning to realise how important it was.
“The Scars single on
Fast Product, Adult/ery and Horrorshow was essential. For me that was
the record that kicked off Scotland,. A lot of people say it was
Blueboy, by Orange Juice, which was also wonderful, but after
Adult/ery, everything seemed to move forward.
“I always remember
how excited I was going through to Edinburgh to see all these bands.
Article 58 supported Scars, A Certain Ratio, Josef K and all these
people, but because I was a couple of years younger, it almost felt
like I was like the wee brother of all these bands. There was an
element of fandom there, and I was in awe, so when I decided to do a
label, it was a conscious decision to try and recapture the
excitement I'd felt during that era, but at the same time moving
forward. There were so many labels around then, like Ze and New
Hormones, that burned briefly and brightly, and that's maybe part of
the magic as well.”
All the labels
MacIntrye cites, which include Factory and Zoo, put as much emphasis
on packaging as much as music, effectively releasing one work of art
wrapped inside another. In the case of Bob Last, who founded Fast
Product before going on to become a successful film producer behind
the likes of animated feature, The Illusionist, such conceptualism
extended to infiltrating the mainstream.
“Bob really did
invent pop entryism,” says MacIntyre. “To take an experimental
synthesiser group who played in front of films like the Human League
and make them number 1 in America in a couple of years, that's the
ultimate pop entryism. In a lot of my lectures I talk about the fact
that Alan Horne, Bob Last, Bill Drummond, Tony Wilson, they were all
leftist peoples with ideas.”
It's telling too that
both Last and Drummond started out as stage designers who worked in
fringe theatre. Drummond worked on Ken Campbell's legendary
twelve-hour production of Illuminatus produced by the Science Fiction
Theatre of Liverpool, while Last worked at the Traverse Theatre in
Edinburgh, where he designed another science-fiction play, The
Android Circuit.
“It felt like there
was more to it than just a record,” MacIntyre says. “To me, all
of these people were artists, and part of an art movement. It wasn't
about commerce. It was art. Anything I've ever trued to do is an
expression of the stuff I like, and the art I like, and is more
oriented towards that idea rather than about selling records. As long
as we can sell enough records to avoid going bankrupt, which we've
managed to do, then I can keep on feeding my habit.”
A more recent example
of pop entryism has been Franz Ferdinand, who took the art/pop
jangularness of Fire Engines and Josef K into the mainstream in a way
which Creeping Bent and all the bands mentioned have benefited from.
“I think that was the
awakening of recognition for that era,” MacIntyre says. “After
the glossiness of the 80s, with Davy Henderson doing Win and
everything, it probably felt when Franz came through that they came
out of what went before, with Fire Engines and everyone. I thought it
was great, and Franz paid their respects to Fire Engines and asked
them to support them, then released a cover of Get Up and Use Me, so
there was a real acknowledgement there.”
Any accusations of
magpie-like plundering from the original Sound of Young Scotland
isn't something MacIntyre is overly concerned about.
“Everything gets
recycled,” he says. “If it's a good idea, keep using it.”
Such a post-modern
aesthetic is something a post Franz Ferdinand generation of bands
such as Bricolage and Wake The President certainly took on board
“It's all cyclical,
isn't it,” MacIntyre observes. “We've had post-punk, so now
people are starting to look at C 86, which I suppose is something
Creeping Bent came out of as well, with Katy from The Secret Goldfish
being in the Fizzbombs. So now you've got the Scared To Get Happy box
set, and there's a triple CD of C86 apparently coming out shortly as
well. There was one that Bob Stanley did a few years ago called CD
86, which had a picture of Katy taken from a fanzine when she was in
the Fizzbombs on the cover, so it all connects up. You can see the
different strains of where everyone comes from, and that's not a bad
thing. It happens in art, so there's no reason why it can't happen in
pop music.”
When MacIntyre was
publicising A Leap Into The Void back in 1994, an interviewer asked
him who Creeping Bent's influences were. His reply name-checked Fire
Engines, Suicide, Subway Sect and The Pop Group. Since then, Creeping
Bent has released material by key personnel of all those named.
Such
inter-connectedness and inter-twining of aesthetic is reflected in
the origin of the label's name.
“I've told millions
of lies about this,” MacIntyre admits, “but it's a grass. Not
drugs, but a binding wild grass that grows in the Highlands. I think
it was the first day of the year in 1994, and I went for a walk in
Queen Elizabeth Park in Aberfoyle. There was all this information
about squirrels and so firth, and I noticed this information about
creeping bent being the predominant grass that was important to the
landscape, because it tied everything together. I thought that was a
nice metaphor, and something I can steal. Up until that point, the
working name for the label was L'age D'or. Thank Christ I saw the
creeping bent sign.”
As well as the
twentieth anniversary events, the last year has seen Creeping Bent
put out Rough 46 by post-Postcard act, Jazzateers, originally
released by Rough Trade in 1982. There have been live collaborations
too between Vic Godard and The Sexual Objects, who did a selection of
shows to play Godard's 1980 album with Subway Sect, What's The Matter
Boy?, from start to finish.
For the future,
MacIntyre cites album releases by Port Sulphur and The Secret
Goldfish, the latter's first since 1999. There will also be a second
Sexual Objects album. “at some point,” as well as potential
reissues of long-lost Creeping Bent albums by CC Sager, Scientific
Support Dept and Alan Vega.
“We're also looking
at releasing the Jazzateers Postcard archive, which never came out
and nobody's ever heard. We might do some kind of exhibition at some
point as well. There's no great masterplan. It's a funny one. Because
we're not a commercial organisation, it still feels quite normal
putting records out. It doesn't feel like twenty years – obviously
– but it still feels exciting, because it's just sporadic projects
that we've engaged with and been involved with. I've always seen
Creeping Bent as an arts organisation, so really it's about ideas,
and making those ideas happen, in whatever form we see fit.”
To celebrate Creeping
Bent's 20th anniversary, The Pop Group and The Sexual
Objects play 02 ABC Glasgow, January 18th, while Lloyd
Cole & The Leopards and Jazzateers play the same venue on January
29th. Both shows are part of Celtic Connections.
The Quietus, January 2014
ends
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