IN THE studio to record his first band’s debut single, Douglas MacIntyre recalls being handed a poster for new outfit Orange Juice, who were on the same label.
“I remember thinking this is amazing,” he recalls.
“I got the bus from Glassford to Hamilton, and then the train to Glasgow, and went round all the record stores to try and get this record.
“I just loved the idea of new music, a whole new culture shift, happening right on our doorsteps.”
The band was Article 58, and the label was Postcard, which, with fellow maverick Scottish independent Fast Product, changed the face of music in Scotland in the late 70s and early 80s.
Douglas has teamed up with Grant McPhee and Neil Cooper to write a book about the impact these labels had in the Scottish post-punk period.
“I was already a fan of Fast Product, the Edinburgh-based label which was home to bands like The Mekons, the Gang of Four and Scars, and the early singles from the Human League,” adds Douglas.
“The way you found out about new bands back then, was by going into Impulse record shop in East Kilbride and buying fanzines, or listening to John Peel on Radio 1.”
Douglas is one of Scotland’s best-known musicians, having performed with everyone from Lloyd Cole and Vic Godard & the Subway Sect to The Bathers, James Grant and Love and Money, The Secret Goldfish and The Bluebells.
In 1994, he set up The Creeping Bent Organisation, which has released more than 100 products, and in 2019 he established Frets, an acoustic concert series at the Strathaven Hotel in Lanarkshire which has featured Lloyd Cole, Altered Images, Ricky Ross and more.
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Hungry Beat looks at how Fast Product’s Bob Last and Postcard’s Alan Horne helped to create a confidence in “being Scottish” that had not existed in pop music (or the arts in general in Scotland) before.
The book is based on interviews Grant carried out for his awardwinning 2015 documentary Big Gold Dream, with, among others, Bob Last, Hilary Morrison, Paul Morley and members of The Human League, Scars, The Mekons, Fire Engines, Josef K, Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and The Bluebells.
“Grant also interviewed me for the film, and it was interesting, because we were both coming from different perspectives. His was archival, because he’s from a younger generation than I am,” says Douglas, with a laugh.
“Whereas I was at these gigs - I saw Josef K and The Fire Engines and Orange Juice. I went to see Orange Juice every time they played.
“So we thought it would be a good idea to use his interviews and create an oral history of the period. Lots of people know and appreciate the impact of Postcard, but Fast Product is perhaps the ‘forgotten story’ in all of this. They were incredibly important.”
Hungry Beat starts on May 7, 1977, explains Douglas.
“It was the Clash’s White Riot tour, and on the bill were Subway Sect and the Slits, and an audience of 16 and 17-year-olds were suddenly galvanised to start thinking about their own music scene, making their own music and starting their own bands,” he adds.
“I found it fascinating that the Human League were on Fast Product, making what was essentially electronic music with no commercial value whatsoever, and two years later, Don’t You Want Me was a number one hit in the UK and in America.”
In Glasgow, Postcard’s first release, in spring 1980, was Orange Juice's Falling and Laughing, which was jointly financed by Horne and band members Edwyn Collins and bass guitarist David McClymont.
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“Postcard, and Orange Juice in particular, had a huge impact on Glasgow. The city changed, in terms of the way people looked and dressed and behaved, and people’s perceptions of the city changed,” explains Douglas.
“Edwyn Collins’s contribution to Scottish culture is massive.”
Hungry Beat is being launched at Mono in Glasgow on Tuesday, September 20, from 7.30pm.
Douglas and Grant will be interviewed by BBC Radio Scotland’s Nicola Meighan followed by a live set by the Hungry Beat Group (featuring members of Josef K/Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Bluebells, and Article 58) of songs by artists associated with the Fast Product and Postcard labels.
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