Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Some of the more (relatively) prominent artists working in this territory include Steve Treatment, Danny & The Dressmakers, The Mud Hutters, Instant Automatons, Thin Yoghurts and The Homosexuals. Trends within trends can be detected. For example, the London squat bands had a more tangible connection to conventional punk dynamics than elsewhere. Those groups that worked around and within the Manchester Music Collective were besotted with the possibilities of electronic gadgetry, while the higher proportion of women reflected the city’s traditions of political activism. There was a leaning towards minimalism in the early South Wales DIY scene and of grittier subject matter in the Midlands. Themes were indeed often colloquial (Grinder’s ‘Wickford’s So Boring?’; Scissor Fits’ ‘I Don’t Wanna Work For British Airways’; Six Minute War’s ‘Giles Hall’, about the civic venue that excluded them in Camberwell), or self-referential (Funhouse’s ‘Teenage Bedrooms’ talked about ‘making your own groove grotto’). Some protagonists had hippy backgrounds, others were art school theorists, but more still were tortured adolescents. Indeed, in terms of psychology, “there are some remarkable things,” Warner notes, “such as the fact that DIY attracted legions of gay teenagers, who could not foresee a career in the conventional music business. You had an artificial pool of over-talented musicians who couldn’t face the treacheries and risks of entering the mainstream music business. So from 1978 until the Haçienda took over, DIY basically had the pick of the litter. Once the Haçienda takes off, and the record companies start to realise you can be gay and fashionable and be promoted, that’s where the legal crap starts to erode too. The market embraced young gay men as a hot new commodity – both as exploitable ‘product’ and as energised consumers.”

  If punk had inverted common music business stereotypes, notably the concept of musical proficiency as virtue, DIY bands took that a step further, to the point where it almost became an abstract. All of the original punk bands, from the Pistols to The Damned to Buzzcocks to the Banshees, would eventually self-define themselves as ‘great musicians’, often with justifiable cause. The fascinating alternative was to have creative minds focus more purely on the ‘idea’, unburdened by concepts of musical progression or material reward. “The one consistent element to everything on Messthetics is that the music is unselfconscious,” Warner asserts. “While they were making this music, they’re not trying to make a hit or be artists, and that’s so freeing.”

  The Desperate Bicycles, Scritti Politti’s ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ and ‘Spiral Scratch’ were “clearly the most important influences, initially,” says Warner. “And the other one would be Throbbing Gristle’s wittily-named debut 2nd Annual Report, especially for the later cassette scene.” But Warner also suggests that records by The Swell Maps, The Raincoats and Subway Sect – all on Rough Trade and widely aired on Peel – “helped make a rougher, more shambling approach to music-making more imaginable to would-be bands. They legitimised and made accessible the sound.” In effect, they served as ‘primers’ to less hidebound aural expectation. In order for the circle to be complete, those records tutored would-be musicians as to what was possible, or perhaps more importantly, acceptable. “People heard those records and liked them, whereas if they’d heard the original DIY singles, they might not have liked them. That said, there’s an entire generation of rock critics and people in the business who have never been able to get beyond the production side. They’re culturally stuck and they need a sheen of studio confidence before they can subjectively enjoy something.”

  “The other real breakthrough,” Warner continues, “was when people realised how simple it could be to put out (and sell out) their own single – despite the fact that it wasn’t that cheap. Not all the bands who could or should have put 7-inches out did, but as soon as The Desperate Bicycles said ‘go and do it’, the floodgates opened. There was a breakthrough realisation, then a flood.

  Something parallel happened on the cassette scene. Although the first cassettes were all referred to as ‘albums’, and indeed, they all contained album-ish quantities of songs, a new species of music expanded to fit the format. There was an appetite for environmental sound and tiny modulations of noise; the ambient thing had been brewing in the background and people were already spending £3.99 on weightless albums. But there was a cult of cool that went along with that, and then people realised they could do it themselves.”

  However, lest you imagine that such practices result in an audio experience that is unwelcoming, there is a warmth and uncontrived innocence to these bedroom communiqués. And, as Warner insists, “everything on Messthetics is at heart a pop record. Everything has a hook.” He accepts that reflects his own tastes; further, that the series merely tracks certain themes across a much broader spectrum. “Messthetics represents a false centre, the idea that there’s some convergence of a DIY sound; whereas most of the bands, if they were evolving at all, were evolving outwards. There were musical trajectories that spiralled outwards far more than they spiralled in, toward something, say, akin to the Desperate Bicycles.”

  Perhaps the ultimate expression of the DIY ethic, however, eschewed vinyl completely. The development of the compact cassette made low-tech re-recording of music far cheaper and more affordable than even the Desperate Bicycles had envisioned. “What happens with cassettes,” Warner elaborates, “is the band becomes a completely optional arrangement; you don’t need to have a going concern, it’s more up to individuals, and you can record under 40 or 50 different names. The range is expanded by overdubs in addition to electronics and more recording home gadgets. And instead of the 7-inch, you have the yawning C90 format that encourages, or permits, extended experiment, at best, and at worst a tremendous amount of padding. Thus the way that DIY sounded different on cassette was driven more by the format and the number of people involved than by any particular divergence of agenda or interest. Now, unfortunately, it’s entirely possible to pick up ten really interesting-looking tapes from back in the day and not hear anything I like. Overall, I guess I’m interested in reissuing not more than 5% of maybe 5% of releases, so a lot of what’s on Greatest Hiss [The Messthetics ‘cassette’ sampler] needs to be understood as accidental pop. It might be the only three or four-minute song on the tape.”

  One of the first cassette bands were South Humberside’s Instant Automatons, whose Radio Silence – The Art of Human Error album was yours if you sent them a C90 and stamped addressed envelope. A profusion of cassettes, and subsequently vinyl, followed on their Deleted label. Like so many other bands of their ilk, their musical foundation, alongside adolescent poetics, was fumbling electronics fashioned from physics lesson discoveries, home-made synthesizers and drum machines. And yet they were able to write songs that were hugely charming; like ‘Peter Paints His Fence’ (dub reggae from Scunthorpe?) or the punchy skiffle of ‘Short Haired Man In A Long-Haired Town’.

  Fuck Off Records, established by former Here And Now member and International Times writer Keith Dobson (aka Kif Kif Le Batteur) took the Automatons’ example and established a chromium dioxide cottage industry. Run from his Street Level studio, which he’d inherited from Grant Showbiz, on Portobello Road, Fuck Off issued dozens of short-run cassette releases, made available to the world at large by Joly MacFie’s Better Badges. Located in an office above the Street Level studio and then best known for fanzine distribution, Better Badges offered a unique twist on the 50-50 deal – the number of fanzine copies returned to the author or band was equivalent to those it retained to sell to cover costs. Fuck Off’s first release was 012’s Back To Sing Again For Free in 1979; which featured Dobson himself on guitar (he would later form World Domination Enterprises). Afterwards came a slew of compilations, with some of the most prolific artists including Danny & The Dressmakers (who featured future 808 State member Graham Massey and released more than 20 cassette albums), Wilful Damage, Missing Persons and Digital Dinosaurs. These and other releases were profiled in columns written in Sounds and NME by writers such as Mick Sinclair (himsel
f a DIY recording artist under the guises of Milkshake Melon and Funboy Five).

  The DIY boom period probably lasted from 1978 to 1982, after which some of the major players either stalled, went to college/work or moved on to more professional musical ventures. But in the blurred majesty of their xeroxed or hand-drawn 7-inch covers, scrappy musicianship and unbridled will to communicate something, the Messthetics cast, grasping for anonymity rather than posterity, can be seen as the quintessence of a truly independent spirit. ‘There’s no pictures, no pictures of us,” Harlow’s Sods sang back in September 1979, documenting their unwillingness to have their faces on the cover of their 7-inch single, “There’s no pictures, it’s too much fuss.”

  Post-Script

  Where Do We Go From Here?

  What’s in a word? Well, ‘indie’ music has become the stodgy staple of the charts, a generic for anodyne guitar-based music of middling pace with certain pre-defined characteristics; a flat-pack rhythm section, verse-chorus-verse mechanics, and an angsty vocal. In 2007 the NME conducted a poll on the Greatest Indie Anthems Ever. Only just over half of the selections were actually released on an independent label. Oasis were all over the shop. Buzzcocks, Scritti Politti and The Desperate Bicycles were predictably absent.

  The concept of ‘indie’ has become almost meaningless beyond branding.

  In the period under discussion, ‘independent’ meant The Cocteau Twins and Discharge, Big Flame and Yazoo, Annie Anxiety and The Durutti Column, The Marine Girls and The Birthday Party, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and Orange Juice, Test Department and Swell Maps. Pick your own exemplars.

  Meanwhile, among the slurry of ‘indie’ comps released in 2005 (through BMG, natch) was one carrying the foreboding title Revolutions: Alternative Bands, Radical Music. Here comes the promo copy: “The 2CD Revolutions is an up-to-the-minute collection of the hottest cutting-edge sounds from the likes of the Kaiser Chiefs, the Bravery and Bloc Party. Join the revolution, or be first against the wall.” See you over at the wall then, chaps, and I’m packing heat (OK, a thermos flask).

  It would not be too much of a stretch, although arguably a convenience, to lay this retrenchment at the door of the early 90s when major labels started to incorporate their own ‘indie’ dependents (tautology noted) such as Hut, Nude and Dedicated. It’s not the case that no two records from the original ‘independent era’ ever sounded alike. If all the Fall and Joy Division copyists had jumped up and down at once, tidal waves would doubtlessly have engulfed Japan. But there was also massive creative dissonance and variety; records not just influenced by the Pistols and Buzzcocks but by Zappa and girl groups and Stockhausen and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The fact that the ‘indie’ diminutive now expresses a musical template highlights both artistic retreat and the final rite of homogenisation of this particular cultural cycle.

  Many of the dramatis personae of the original independent label boom were record store employers and employees. A few came from within the mainstream record industry, but were by nature greater risk-takers than that environment could tolerate. Some were artists themselves, or philanthropists helping friends. Many emerged from the 60s counter-culture and others still were long-standing bootleggers. In short, there is no over-arching rationale or single determining characteristic to the leading players – even a ‘love’ of music is not universal (though in the case of best practice, it certainly is).

  And yet the demographic is quite defined. The characters in this story are predominantly, but not exclusively, middle class. With the exception of Alan Erasmus at Factory, they are exclusively white. Until Jeanette Lee joined Rough Trade, and overlooking the part played by Pete Stennet’s wife Mari at Small Wonder and members of the Crass/Rough Trade co-ops, the independent boom was astonishingly male. Viewed kindly, that simply reflected an extension of the ‘record collecting nerd’ mentality. A more biting critique might be that it constituted one of the last dominant ‘boy’s clubs’ to survive 70s feminism (perversely, the likes of Ivo Watts-Russell, Daniel Miller, Geoff Travis and Mike Alway are among the least ‘blokey’ sorts you could wish to meet). The debate over whether punk truly provided a new space for women to express themselves in art is seemingly endless (and I’ve decided that it did, so y’all can stop now). There are just as many texts devoted to its attendant psychological and societal ramifications; the subtext being ‘punk changed everything’. Well, perhaps not everything after all.

  Beyond that observation, the story here is of circumstances conspiring; what Watts-Russell equates as the ‘stars being aligned’ and Iain McNay characterises as a ‘window of opportunity’. As extolled earlier, the geography of the UK played no small part. So too the shift in musical culture from a hippy to a punk ethos, with many participants shipping sizeable philosophical baggage across the divide and back again. As with punk era musicians, there were few label heads who jumped straight into the melee without some kind of back-story in music (in a further blow to the repeatedly debunked ‘year zero’ theory). But all felt empowered and energised by punk’s DIY ethos. Others saw the potential for exploitation of same, and several had a foot in both camps. The subsequent giddy acceleration truly was an outstanding feature, however – like buses, you wait for one independent label to come along (let’s say Ace, 1975-6) and then two hundred arrive at once.

  In almost every case, the men behind independent record labels (now we have satisfied ourselves on the gender business) had a thorough grounding in music and usually fully-formed tastes. Others, whose roots were in administration or business affairs, brought to the table their knowledge of the workings of the record industry; be it from retail, from bootlegging or from inside the heart of the beast itself. Most were in their late 20s or significantly older. Good Vibrations’ Terri Hooley’s assertion, that he’d ‘been ‘waiting for this all my life’, is not uncommon. The advent of cheaper technology and manufacturing capabilities, a ready audience primed by punk for almost anything released (particularly) on 7-inch vinyl by an independent record label and the majors’ sloth in responding are all contributory factors. And, while it’s always dangerous to talk about ‘auteur’ labels for want of dismissing the considerable labours undertaken backstage (this is a story with its fair share of credit-hoggers), to a certain extent the catalogue of those labels reflected the interests, personalities and tastes of a handful of individuals. Behind whom circle a thousand one-shot iconoclasts – which would have been Mute’s destiny had it not been for wholly unforeseen commercial approbation. Pure chance and timing also plays its part.

  The legacy of independent retail and record shops such as Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet and the various Cartel members hangs heavy throughout. With that sector of the industry currently decimated, it’s hard to see how anything similar – in terms of the unifying, us against them esprit de corps of the independent heyday – could happen now.

  In August 2006 it was announced that Beano’s, sited across three floors on Croydon’s Middle Street and probably the country’s most famous collector’s shop, was on the brink of extinction. There’s been an incremental thinning in the number of record shops on London’s former vinyl oasis Berwick Street, immortalised on the cover of Oasis’s What’s The Story Morning Glory. Sister Ray, which itself had taken over the ailing Selectadisc outlet, went into administration in the summer of 2008 (though original owner Phil Barton would buy it out). Cardiff’s Spillers Records, the oldest independent record shop in Britain, established in 1894, is still around – but only after intervention from the Welsh Assembly opposing the move to ‘clone cities’. Helical Bar, the property developers concerned, threatened rent hikes of up to 100% unless the store relocated. “If you walk down Oxford Street,” wrote investment director Michael Brown, “you do not see niche record stores among the chains. We warned [Nick Todd: Spillers’ owner for the last two decades] that he is standing in the way of progress.”

  If you take record shops out of the picture, a vital conduit in terms of the community that underpinned the
‘golden years’ of independent music disappears from the equation. The distribution of end product is the most telling and obvious feature, but record stores like Spillers also served as a hub for the culture of independence – flyers for gigs, distribution of local fanzines, musicians’ wanted adverts – as well as a place where music fans congregated. That is not to suggest that music cannot thrive and prosper under altered conditions, but by its very nature it will be a different beast, not grounded in the spirit of mutual co-operation that governed the original independent ethos. MySpace is great ‘n’ all; in its own way democratising and empowering. And in many ways it’s ripped apart the old indie/major conundrum, offering an alternative means to distribute and market music (though ‘selling’ seems somewhat more problematic), and destroying any need for an infrastructure like the Cartel. But digital transactions, paid for or gratis, lack the layer of discovery and adventure that the traditional record shop once nurtured and which in turn fed the artistic diversity of the independent boom. It’s a remote process in contrast to the intimacy and community of old. It’s also legitimised soul-sapping insincerity.