Big Gold Dream - Scottish Post-Punk and Infiltrating the Mainstream

Big Gold Dream is the everyday story of how a group of disaffected youth in search of the only fun in town went on to change the world.

High on theory and with only cheek, cheek-bones and cheap guitars to get them through between dole cheques, they took a set of hand-me-down reference points plundered from second-hand books, late night TV and subtitled films, created a scene and transformed it into ART.

As was typical of the times, entryism was in and subversion was from within, but like all great movements, it was never going to last.

Except everything you hear today, tomorrow and knocked into the middle of next week started here.

Indie-Disco, Art-Rock and Difficult Fun are all in the mix.

Big Gold Dream is as much about Now as Then.

Sound and Vision are everything.

Welcome to the Future.

This is Big Gold Dream.

This is Pop!

January 2017

This was written for the back cover of the DVD release of Big Gold Dream, Grant McPhee's documentary history of how Scotland's post-punk music scene developed through Fast Product and Postcard records and went on to change the world. The DVD was released on Tartan Features / Year Zero Film-making early in 2017, just before it was shown on BBC2. The BBC even nicked most of the above for their online programme listings. I have taken the liberty of adding a couple of adjectives which I should have thought of earlier. The front cover of the DVD features a quote from Mark Cousins.

ends