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Vic Godard and the Subway Sect/The Sexual Objects - The Sound of Young Scotland Revisited

If Subway Sect hadn’t supported The Clash at Edinburgh Playhouse on May 7th 1977, it’s unlikely Postcard Records, Fast Product and Fire Engines would have happened. Thirty-one years on, Vic Godard’s latest Subway Sect is sharing a bill with Henderson’s new incarnation as The Sexual Objects. For Douglas McIntyre, boss of the Fast/Postcard styled Creeping Bent label and in the thick of the original Sound of Young Scotland since year zero, these two dates (Glasgow also features The Leopards, whose guitarist Mick Slaven recently guested with ex Josef K front-man Paul Haig) are a match made in rock n’ roll heaven.

“To me,” says McIntyre, “Vic Godard is undoubtedly the best writer to come out of the whole post-punk movement. I remember the words on the back cover of the single ‘Ambition’ blowing my mind. It was full of literary references, and you knew there was something mysterious going on. Then later, seeing Fire Engines play two fifteen minute sets, it was incredible. These people had ideas.”

With a lineage that can be heard from Belle and Sebastian to Franz Ferdinand and beyond, Godard’s Scots links strengthened when an album produced by Edwyn Collins was released on a reactivated Postcard label. The Sexual Objects, meanwhile, have thus far released a trio of 7-inch singles. The last of these, the boogie-friendly ‘Here Come The Rubber Cops,’ was produced by Boards of Canada.

“It’s like Sun Ra,” McIntyre says of these rapid-fire releases. “He’d just record this doo-wop from outer space and put it out. That’s the spirit we want. Abstract and immediate.”

Citrus, Edinburgh, Fri 14th November; Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 15th November. Both shows 7.30pm-10.30pm.

The List, November 2008

ends

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