Glasgow kiss

Grant McPhee’s second volume of oral history, after 2024’s Postcards From Scotland, chronicles the emergence and development of a distinctive Scottish music scene in the 1990s, at some remove (geographically, sonically and ideologically) from Britpop and its creative sterility, vacuous jingoism and ladsladslads loutishness. Along the way, Scene Within A Scene: Scottish Independent Music 1992-2001 tells the origin stories of beloved bands such as Belle & Sebastian, as well as piquing the reader’s interest in the likes of Lung Leg, the Yummy Fur, Pink Kross and the Poison Sisters, none of whom found mass success.

The inclusion of “Scottish” in the book’s subtitle is perhaps slightly misleading; aside from short sections on outfits such as the Beta Band, Dundee’s Spare Snare and Edinburgh eccentrics The Male Nurse and Country Teasers, the focus falls predominantly on the capital’s great Central Belt rival Glasgow. And understandably so. Vic Galloway, formerly of Huckleberry/Hail Caesar! and now a BBC presenter, explains Glasgow’s gravitational pull with reference to its sizeable population, its general music culture and its independent infrastructure. However, what McPhee’s book perhaps most powerfully underlines is that this infrastructure had to be built, painstakingly, by those with both vision and determination.

Take Craig Tannock, for instance. In a city where pay-to-play policies abounded and pubs were largely only interested in covers bands, Tannock was heroic in understanding the fundamental importance of providing young musicians with access to dedicated performance spaces as well as instruments and gear. Venues need enthusiastic promoters, of course, and Tannock’s 13^th Note had Alex Kapranos and RM Hubbert, whose Kazoo Club nights dispensed with “musical gatekeeping” in favour of a principle of open-mindedness.

Hubbert comments: “I joke about it sometimes but it gave us all a place to go and be shit at being in a band. And the opportunity to get good at it.” Sandy Black of the Poison Sisters similarly recalls revelling in having “finally found somewhere to play that would tolerate (and actively encourage) our shenanigans”. He adds: “It really was wonderful to see these bands transforming before our very eyes and ears in such a comparatively short period of time.” For Kapranos, “[t]here’s nothing more thrilling than knowing something exciting, something with substance is happening, but you don’t know what it is yet”. The man who subsequently found fame as the face of Franz Ferdinand expresses a measure of guilt that not all alumni of the Kazoo went on to receive the wider recognition they deserved – but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he personally did all he could to promote their cause.

One of the bands to benefit from stage time at the Kazoo was Urusei Yatsura, whose only previous performance had – according to guitarist/vocalist Graham Kemp – taken place “at a house party in a deconsecrated nunnery”. They were one of the first outfits to graduate to actually making a record (a split single with Kapranos’ the Blisters) – and then published a handy “how to” guide in the form of a comic strip in their fanzine Kitten Frenzy. Like Urusei Yatsura, the Delgados also founded a label and put out a single, but the scale of their ambition for Chemikal Underground appears to have been far greater than Urusei’s for Modern Independent. Despite being (in the words of vocalist/guitarist Emma Pollock) “so inexperienced”, they were nevertheless “very principled”, appreciating from the outset the need for both clear and consistent branding and an effective distribution deal.

As in any burgeoning scene, serendipity played a key part. The unprecedented platforming of a supposedly “unsigned” band on Top Of The Pops brought bis into the nation’s living rooms, and subsequent sales of The Secret Vampire Soundtrack EP, which was just Chemikal’s third release, raised the fledgling label’s profile as well as its bank balance. Further good fortune was to come in the form of a loan from drummer Paul Savage’s dad, which enabled them to buy their own studio, christened CHEM19. Resources were duly invested in promoting two of the finest acts ever to come out of Scotland, Mogwai and Arab Strap. Delgados bassist Stewart Henderson confesses that “Mogwai have extended levels of courtesy and patience to us as a record label that frankly we wouldn’t have been able to survive without” – though Savage diplomatically ventures that both Mogwai and Arab Strap profited from Chemikal’s propensity for “taking the eye off the financial ball”. Friendships were inevitably strained when creative decisions were restricted by budgetary constraints, and especially when both bands left for major labels – but there were no hard feelings (Arab Strap were soon welcomed back into the fold) and mutual respect endures.

Generous support for Glasgow’s scene came from further afield too: from Dutch punk band The Ex, who awakened a number of musicians to the possibilities of DIY collectivism; from record labels based outside Scotland (in particular, Slampt in Newcastle and Guided Missile in London); and from John Peel, who championed countless bands through regular radio play and session invitations.

The value of Peel’s patronage draws attention to the fact that this is a story set in a different time – a pre-digital, pre-social media age when airplay and physical distribution were critical. Henderson hints that had Chemikal launched five years later, in 2000, its existence would have been far more precarious. Meanwhile, Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch was among those who benefitted from the government’s New Deal for Musicians, which massaged the official unemployment statistics while incentivising participation both financially (housing benefit paid, an extra £10 a week on top of dole money) and through access to local studio Beatbox. But, as Lung Leg’s Annie Spandex laments, the scrapping of the scheme as well as enforced job searching, arts spaces losing funding and the introduction of university tuition fees have had a detrimental impact on people’s ability to make music.

Nevertheless, the lessons we can learn from the Scottish scene remain relevant today. McPhee concludes by insisting that the book’s message “is neither nostalgic nor cautionary. It is practical. You do not need to be chosen. Scenes still grow from contact, friction, shared spaces and stubborn belief.” Tom Worthington of Bosque Records puts it even better: “Do it yourself, with friends, and don’t wait. If there’s a door, open it. If there isn’t, put a hinge on a wall and call it a door.”

(An edited version of this review originally appeared on the Buzz website.)