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Sounds 26.08.78 |
All of the above
factors made a Scars gig an interesting event. On the
occasions when their friends were outnumbered in the crowd they
could also be vulnerable. I saw them canned offstage as many
times as I got to see them play. In 1979 I took a 2-bus,
1-hour journey to watch them play the Anti-Nazi League Festival at
Craigmillar Park. In the event I got to see them plug in but
speedily retreat under a hail of bottles and cans without playing a
note. Admittedly they had made the fatal error of allowing a
friend to introduce them in French, “Messieurs et Mesdames, Les
Ecars…” Bye, bye Scars! They had no chance that day anyway as
front-of-stage was swarming with members of a local biker gang who,
as supporters of the Scars chief local rivals, The Freeze (another
great band by the way), saw the beercan bombardment as a duty.
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| On the Anti Nazi
League Carnival. Paul: "Oh that was great" offers Paul casually,
"there was no way they could possibly hit us, we were 20 feet up.
Everyone was saying there were hundreds chucking cans but there was
only half a dozen". and Bobby continues, "When we were standing
waiting to go on, there were crowds of people standing looking at us
- because we were so good looking, our entire garb looked so great.
I thought we worked well at the carnival, we achieved what we set
out to do." Zigzag 93 April 1979 |
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The “Adultery”
single was a minor indie chart hit – nothing more. As the Punk
Butterfly entered old age everyone scratched their heads and
wondered what to do next. In the Scars case they, inevitably,
threw in their lot with the New Romantics. Briefly, it
appeared that they were headed for the Big Time. A splash of
media coverage, a free flexi-disc given away with the first issue of
“The Face” Magazine, an album deal. The album appeared with
the old brutal sound disinfected squeaky clean, all the mad energy
drained away. Their stage classic “Your Attention Please”, a
setting of a poet’s vision of a Government Broadcast detailing
‘Protect and Survive’ measures in advance of the Nuclear Attack
which is only minutes away, once a chilling threat, now rendered as
lifeless as a Supermarket tannoy announcement of this week’s
special offers. The single “All About You”, a not-unpleasant
pop song, was a minor indie chart hit – nothing more. The last
time I saw them they were running across one of the hills around
Edinburgh dressed as Duran Duran’s little brothers on a local TV
“Yoof” slot, presumably heading for the Elephant’s Graveyard where
the Unfulfilled Potential goes to die.
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So in the end
Punk was all about frustration and loss and unfulfilled potential.
Am I right? I got my Scars album but not the one I needed.
Where’s my Freeze album? Where’s my Black Flag album? (Not the
Henry Rollins mob – this one was a brilliant bunch of Punks who
descended on Edinburgh from somewhere in the back of beyond, blew us
away with a great set of songs and then split, unrecorded.
What became of them? Half of them became the music hall act
The Proclaimers , that’s what!). So many great bands came and
went without leaving so much as a palm-print on the wall of culture
– I know because I was in a couple myself. Was it the same
everywhere?…and if so, does that mean that the handful of great punk
records we have left are like the pieces of broken pottery uncovered
at an archaeological dig? The tip of a huge shining iceberg
that never saw the light of day? Or maybe they’re not!
To end on a suitably Punky note I will just say I don’t care….and
then try to find something worth listening to here in 2001.
R.I.P. SCARS. Gone but
not Forgotten. Robin Saunders
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