Scritti Politti: Classic Or Dud

I guess the problem is that I've always found that the likes of Scritti and Prefab Sprout musically just TOO close to the middle of the road to grab my attention for long enough.

The VERY early stuff, "Skank..." etc was good.

(i've just heard about Hearsay causing bad vibes by shock appearance at WOW festival on THE ONLY DAY I DIDN'T GO - supposedly lots of drunken aggro ensued )

They are, as you say, fantastic-*sounding* records; among the pop singles which I can listen to over and over again and still expect to be finding something new. I can barely describe the excitement "Wood Beez", especially, inspires in me; it's almost falling over itself with interest in, and fascination with, love and pop.

"Jacques Derrida", "Skank Bloc Bologna", "Perfect Way" (*how* could that single have missed the UK Top 40?), "Oh Patti" and "Prince Among Men" as well. So, yeah, classic in excelsis.

(Actually from my mate Dunc's car, I mean: I was still in transmit...)

I believe this was the last anyone saw of him anywhere ever.

'The Sweetest Girl' is just terrific (although it wouldn't be half as good if Robert Wyatt wasn't noodling away on organ in the background) but most of the rest of the first album is pretty ordinairy.

The other three LPs have all got some shit but the other great songs on them more than make up for the lapses.

I don't know the earliest stuff.

Otherwise? I love the sound of Scritti more than the performances - Green is too dispassionate for me. He should have been funny - a Ferry /Eno synthesis, but as the only romantic new-romantic he took himself far too seriously.

Also like a good solo the Arif Mardin trickbox is in the service of a greater whole - "Wood Beez", though the chorus is a bit coy, *moves* me.

I'm a bit ignorant of the early singles, but what I've heard is appealling scruffy and knotted. After that, of course, Green runs a mighty steel comb through the music and it's all midday sun gleaming off polished girders. "The 'Sweetest' Girl" is magnificent; I've never quite been able to decide whether it's "Wood Beez" or "Absolute" that stands as the asphyxiating pinnacle of 'Cupid & Psyche'. The collaborations and odd singles are mostly terrific; just as I'd never heard of Bermondsey before Peter Tatchell brought it to my attention, I suspect GG introduced me to Miles Davis.

Which leaves 'Anomie and Bonhomie' - which I like more in theory than practise, and a whole lot more than the fellow who lent it to me*. The gas-croon is still intact, and even the guitar-heavy moments have this cut-glass quality. Hyperventilating hyphens! Lysergic dandy axis!

(* - badly structured sentence; I don't like the LP as much as the *person* who lent it to me. He's funnier.)

I quite like the early tracks I've heard ("Skank Bloc Bologna" and "Messthetics"). They sound like a band with *ambition* to move away from the post-punk rabble, and a more precise ambition (not better or worse, just different) than that being displayed at the time by, say, the Fall.

Anyway, Holy shit! It's fantastic. The surface gloss is in fact made up of a billion clever bass 'n percussion 'n keyboard speaker- twisting studio-tricks which sound fresh and fun. Three of the songs (Oh Patti, First Boy in This Town (Lovesick) and Philosophy Now) have better pop hooks than I've heard for years. So, Cupid and Psyche next - might be prepared to spend £1.50 this time!

I love the way that the Mardin productions and the band productions *sound* completely different yet meet the same spec. of precision and accuracy.

i recently burned myself a comp of 15 or so of the earliest SP songs (basically the first 4 singles/peel sessions.) it's been about all i've wanted to listen to while sick. "skank" and "messthetics" in particular have been oddly soothing.

but i think he was just as clever on the first albums/stuff,

i never got to hear the first songs in any form until very recently, except for the poltical excesses of NME interviews circa early scritti stance, which made for entertaining rock stars, and i'm getting my head around those songs and they're sinking in just like the other two records

i think of the 4 A sides stuff as content art-punk, so the beautiful pop charms of the arty '85, not short on content as crafted pop songs with good hooks and construction, i suspect some people find it sexy

Well, I've read every Scritti thread recently so here you are:

The sound of Scritti Politti 1978 to 1985 is essentially the sound of Green Gartside getting better in bed.

-- Tom (ebro...), December 3rd, 2001 7:00 PM.
(Scritti Politti)

yes, i got the impression Green was a fun person to be in the company of -- i read numerous new wave articles in the NME at that age as a matter of daily routine, so it's with some pleasure that i actually remember a particular NME feature (i was very young), since not having had much money as a kid, i'd been handsomely rewarded with both their/his records.

you got it wrong. the most disappointing meeting with someone who was and still remains a bit of a hero of my youth possible. smug and arrogant is the way i'd put it.

was the unpeasantness there in the early phase ? was it bought out later with his subsequent success ? (Michael Jackson associations ?)

(will this gossip just lead to "i didn't want to know that stuff since yeah he was a kind'a cool hero", Dave ?)

If anyway would burn the early stuff onto CD for me I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks, but I discovered I still have them on my iPod so don't bother. What I really need is Soulseek, but I have a mac and limited hard drive space soI'll just have to wait a while.

great news though. RT still has to pay him royalties, right?

can someone email me the first peel session? i accidently deleted them and can't use slsk right now.

According to Green's own sleeve notes, "the masters are long lost".

Tracklisting:

1. Skank Bloc Bologna
2. Is and Ought the Western World
3. 28/8/78
4. Scritlocks Door
5. OPEC - IMMAC
6. Messthetics
7. Hegemony
8. Bibbly-o-Tek
9. Doubt Beat
10. Confidence
11. P.A.S
12. The “Sweetest Girl”
13. Lions After Slumber

Rough Trade, RTRADCD188

According to Green's own sleeve notes, "the masters are long lost".

And for all that this is a pretty good remastering job, sounds just fine -- I'd draw a general comparison to, say, the proper Cog Sinister rerelease of Fall in a Hole + in terms of a vinyl remastering sounding very well. The quieter spaces and minimal touches of the earlier work come through nicely.

and what are the odds that versions on soulseek were digitised by me? see the desperate bicycles thread...

Heh, the Desperate Bicycles are indeed specifically credited by Green in the liner notes as having 'galvanized (the original band) into action,' so there ya go. (Not that this was any shock, I'm sure.)

maybe his paymaster record co. just ain't "commie" these days ?

I think I have only EVER seen this on vinyl and have it on cassette somewhere not available to me at the moment. Wait. Let me think...no I don't think I have this one with me! And guilt will eat my insides like bugs all night. Until I have it again.

Thanks for your help!

I'm pretty sure "Lions After Slumber" is re-recorded, by the sound of it. "The Sweetest Girl" is harder to tell, although it sounds tons better on my remastered Songs to Remember CD. Both versions were recorded by the same engineer in the same studio, though.

Green was one of the rudest, begrudging, non-responsive wankers I ever tried to interview (1985). But then, maybe he was hungover or having a bad day. Of course I can be an asshole at times, too.

In any case, the version of "The 'Sweetest Girl'" heard here is different from the more familiar version heard on 1982's Songs To Remember album, with which every child should be issued at birth. There is a different vocal, though gliding with equal ease from the personal to the political and back again ("She left because she understood the value of defiance") and Robert Wyatt's keyboards are much more in evidence, with greater deployment of dub echo. The rather dry album mix now turns into a hymn whose tender grandeur allows us to forget the persuasive poison in its heart, though it's a shame that the track is faded before Wyatt reaches his dissonant keyboard coda (and how appropriate that Robert Wyatt should now enter the Scritti story in the environment of a song which arguably could not have been possible without the precedent of "Oh Caroline," not to mention "Sea Song").

The original B-side, "Lions After Slumber," is similarly far spikier and far more sheerly danceable than its album version, with slap bass and entertainingly discursive Chris McGregor-ish piano both played by the mysterious "Mike" (does anyone out there know exactly who this was?) backing a far more voluptuous vocal itemising by Green of everything he owns and which defines him, tangible and intangible.

And Love of a Lifetime was a great fit for Chaka!

Wood Beez is as fresh today as it ever was. I bought Cupid & Psyche three times as a soulstruck 13 year old (WH Smith was always the master of duff tape copies, so I switched to LP in the end), and picked it up again on CD last year. A couple of years later, Provision was my most anticipated album, and it doesn't disappoint. Anomie & Bonomie is another perfectly produced gem, but maybe a notch or two below the rest. Didn't pick up Songs To Remember until a couple of years back, but it's right up there too- probably the most-played band on my trusty iRiver.

I bought Early the other day, and played it directly after Bloc Party. I don't think bands should bother competing with the original early 80s set.

"It's been a long, long time since i heard this stuff. It sounds like an anti-produced labour of negativity, kind of structurally unsound and exposed, by design and default, If you felt generous you might say it was music with the questions built in and the assurances left out - otherwise you could just judge it gauche and technically unaccomplished. Whatever.

These are the first songs i wrote, recorded by the first Scritti Politti line up of Tom Morely (drums and drum machines) Nial Jinks (bass) and me, Green Gartside (vocals and guitar). We were living in a tiny squat in Camden Town at the time. Tom and I had just left School where the 'conceptual art' thing had led to a deeper interest in philiosophy. Nial and I had been together since schooldays, his marxist background was where our critical thinking began. We were united by our love of pop music (all terms used advisedly here). Inspired by seeing the Clash, Pistols, Damned and the Heartbreakers on night and Galvinised into action by d.i.y. pioneers "The Desperate Bicyles - we formed a group and started to play.

Although this music doesn't seem equal to conveying the ides and influences that informed it, perhaps a gereral drift and shifting of Musical Passions and theoretical passions is discernable, I think in the final minutes i can definately hear one place, one voice, one life being left and another being entered - blimey!

It's murky and frail stuff cut from old vinyl (the masters are long lost) i found it evocative of extraordinary times and a bit wiceworthy. Hopefully you'd find it at least - um - interesting. There's some nice bits especially the drumming and bass playingand Robet Wyatt's keyboards on "The Sweetest Girl" alone are worth your attention.

see you later.

Green Gartside"

i have never seen or heard of him since

Suggestions:

- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.

Say, I have a 7" pressing of "Jacques Derrida/Asylums in Jerusalem", and of "Faithless" (both Rough Trade original pressings) - would they be worth anything at all? I always figured not really.

One of my best memories from my last job (recording studio) was telling Tawatha Agee, Fonzi Thornton and BJ Nelson (background vocalists) how much I loved them on the Scritti records (among others). They seemed pretty amazed I knew about their work on them.

Closer to Steely Dan or something (not exactly of course). The singing is way more palatable than I'd expected.

It's really weird that I somehow never knowingly heard anything by SP, considering how much college radio I was listening to at the time they would have been active.

p.s. Dat Da Dat da do be do hoo hoo

(From the Alex NYC KJ fixation thread.)

How annoying, exactly?

The album hit #50. Provision topped at #113. "Perfect Way" was #11, "Wood Beez" #91 or something like that, and "Boom! There She Was" made it to #54 or somewhere around there.

Is anyone else the proud owner of Scritti Politti - Early. I just picked it up today and it's my first exposure to the band.
Bought it as soon as it came out. Went straight to Vinyl Fever after school and bounced like I was on a pogo stick when I had it in my hands. I ended up buying another copy later on that day at another store (as I had pre-ordered it but they didn't tell me it was in yet) and gave it to my friend Courtney because she is the only person I know around here who'd appreciate it and I wanted to share the experience with someone I knew. She quite loves it. "Doubt Beat" makes her smile.

"Jacques Derrida" sounds like Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles (and others), but also like nothing else.
To me it starts out like a gentler version of The Monochrome Set before exploding into something that seems to have been left off of Prince's Dirty Mind for not being sparse enough.

Say, I have a 7" pressing of "Jacques Derrida/Asylums in Jerusalem", and of "Faithless" (both Rough Trade original pressings) - would they be worth anything at all? I always figured not really.
Fuck, keep those, they're fabulous. I certainly wouldn't sell them!

Not Even Better Than George Michael

(OK, the "Wood Beez" vocal is pretty good.)

Totally overblown overstatement.

OK, no. Sorry - listening to it for the first times after buying a copy for a dollar. Am not the biggest lyrics guy in the world. Listening to it for the second time while paying attention to the lyrics (which I didn't do first time), the compositions "sunk in" more.

We got a bit carried away (assuming it would sell out instantly and at most one of us would succeed in getting tickets) and bought one more pair than we needed for the Thursday night of this:

http://www.scritti.net/

So if anyone wants two tickets at face value, let me know.

Go on I'll have em...not likely to see Scritti at a venue this small in a hurry...

Cool - webmail sent.

Scritti are playing live with Michael Clarke at the Tramway in Glasgow for his new work.... i got tickets for two of the three nights, i thought all three would be excessive.

The Work is on at the Barbican too from the 17th-27th of october but I can't confirm Scritti's live presence that night.

those nights, rather.

Do you have a link?

via the Tramway facebook page:

Really exciting news just announced: Scritti Politti will be performing live as part of Michael Clark Company’s world premiere performance of New Work 2012 at Tramway next week - can't wait!

http://www.tramway.org/events/Pages/Michael-Clark-Company-New-Work-2012.aspx

no confirmation one way or the other re the barbican shows.

i know that this work has been in development for a while, including a dry-run (sort of) in glasgow earlier this month. scritti composed part of the score for this dry-run but on those shows the score was played over a PA. they'll be playing live in glasgow with michael clarke but (i've just checked) they are on tour at the time of the barbican shows so live sets there on any of the nights are unlikely.

Ah shite, I'm in London then.

When I heard "Perfect Day" on the oldies station a couple weeks ago I made ridiculous hand movements and head thrusts sitting in traffic.

I was thinking The Saints there.

That's not my fault, it's Perfect Way, innit?

He's playing with Saint Etienne in December too, glad to see that he's finally got over his stage fright.

i met GG last night. so cool. he looks truly amazing for 57. if i didn't know who he was and was told he was early 40s i would believe it easily.

Okay so, I know hongro-bashing can seem pretty played-out, but this:

Old music is usually better than recent music. At least it has been during the past 15 years.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 20 March 2003 23:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

Was in the car with a friend (who, in her defense, has a real job and is very busy and hasn't bought new music in 15 years and generally only listens to music in the car on the way to and from important clients). "Perfect Way" came on the satellite '80s station, and she absolutely freaked out ... negatively! She said it sucked, could be Milli Vanilli (name similarity just occurred to me), etc., and I was absolutely floored that anyone could hate that song but also by the difficulty of conveying what makes the band special, how its polish is partly what makes it subversive, how its nods to hip-hop and NYC's avant scene were subtly radical, how the lyrics were sometimes so smart and clever it was easy to miss how smart and clever they sometimes were. All that stuff. Just a tough band to capsule to someone who only knows them from that one song which blends together with all those other one-songs from that period of the '80s.

This bump made me play "Hypnotize" on repeat all day yday

why only yesterday

CONTINUE

I had work today.

I remember my ex flipping out about the video years ago and me thinking "Eh, it's not bad" and then I rewatched it yday and I was like "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME"

I love it when lazy, half-assed stuff winds up being unintentionally brilliant.

even at the time "Perfect Way" sounded baroque: until Jam-Lewis a few months later it was the hardest thing on pop radio. And Gartside snuck "I'll forget how to remember with you" and "I took a back seat/a back hander" into a pop song

My w was "It's a bit too lovey-dovey" but hey. I think she preferred the Skank Bloc stuff, Which is fair enough, I do too.

Wonder if we'll get a new album from him soon? Already eight years since White Bread Black Beer.

I met him, did i mention that? ha. he was huge and beautiful.

i came to scritti long after the fact, after years spent ignoring pop music of all stripes. i was aware of them through occasional mentions in the uk music press, what with their history as a post-punk band. about ten years ago when i started getting interested in new pop stuff like "lexicon of love", scritti were on my mind as something to look out for and eventually i found a cassette of "cupid". after years of being into the likes of beefheart and krautrock it sounded like the most "80s" record i'd ever heard, as much of a shock to me as listening to, say, merzbow might be to someone else. it soon became one of my favorite records.

just learned original drummer tom morley does drum circles for corporate events now

http://www.tommorley.com/sessions

get bent tackles Cupid and Psyche 85

http://consequenceofsound.net/aux-out/cupid-and-psyche-85-the-unspoken-influence-of-scritti-politti/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3B8J1a2lwY

a friend just posted this the other day, so wonderful!

The idea of being thrilled by Arif Mardin's production touches seems just as 'muso' as enjoying a John Squire guitar solo. No doubt someone will tell me it's not.

― Dr. C, Tuesday, May 29, 2001

ah old ILM

I dunno I'm with the Dr. there to a large degree.

Must we parse "thrilled"? To explain how Mardin's production works isn't muso -- it's what we do.

30th anniversary expanded "Cupid & Psyche". It must happen. You need all those remixes.

the production on this (and david gamson's fairlight programming) is sublime.

i mean, to me, it just completely sparkles. it captures a moment in a bottle in a really thrilling way.

also, i know people accuse green of having done the careerist-auteur thing when he broke off with the original scritti bandmates, but there's something about the collaborative approach to cupid that reminds me of eno's anti-auteurist "scenius" philosophy -- it comes from a very english, humble, social-democratic mindset. pop as (expensive) populism.

C'mon, he INVENTED um... all that.

I don't think Dr C was disparaging explanation, Alfred, I think that comment was part of the ongoing old-ilx discussion of the value of "chops". If someone back then had pitched up and said "I like record X because that dude is so good on the guitar" they would have been disparaged, so the Doctor was asking why it's better to say "I like record Y because that dude is so good at using the studio."

I think its the lack of explanation he's pointing out - what he wants is "this production is great because it does this and this and that ends up doing this and this to me when I listen to it".

The nearest old-ILM came to a consensus, I think, was that no-one wanted to value technique for its own sake, thinking end product more interesting.

old ilm = old punks.

Here they come,
shalalala laa laaa,
shalalala laa laaa,
The part time ILXors

They post on Tuesdays...

(etc)

the production on this (and david gamson's fairlight programming) is sublime.

In 10 years time this will be "ah old ILM".

I remember when "Cupid" came out and thinking it was just the thing I'd been looking for - "new wave" people doing r & b. Recently this promoted me to listen to all of the late seventies & early 80's funk I could find, it goes better with that music.

is this the most delightful bedroom guitar youtube of all time??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPClpdbnbk0

chik-kahhhhh

hey so i will be at the show this friday if any of you will too

:)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/01056/97120514-cb58-11e5_1056010b.jpg

following the recent white-person-with-dreadlocks conversation, I was wondering if scritti's original drummer tom morley was the first white-person-with-dreadlocks pop star? I'm probably forgetting someone really obvious

he still has dreadlocks btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EG3LO3i4FI

Wonder if we'll get a new album from him soon? Already eight years since White Bread Black Beer.

― Kitchen Person, Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:35 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Weird to think that he's in his 60s now.

he is appearing at the 'end of the road' festival later this year, so perhaps there is new material to showcase.

he's been threatening a new album this year, but who knows

he played new stuff in February!!

Screeetti Poleeetti's guide to DIY record releasing (from 1980):

https://twitter.com/MusicLikeDirt/status/756564212760084484

My favorites. They make my heart invincible.

alfred can i just say how much i love your blog?

Echoing that completely (your aloneness piece was great as well). I'd probably pick the same 15 tbh.

thank you both!!

Do fans of this group like these songs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RydKrJo0mko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJkvyZ73kZ0

This is what it sounds like to me.

i do

Obvious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuWE26Qwqdg

I wanted to post this live recording up as I was going back through hard drives and have been listening to it quite a bit recently.

It's from The University Of London 11-16-1979, pretty fascinating, in my humble.

I had read that they made songs up on the fly during performances and was always a bit sceptical, but this recording bears that out and the whole gig seems, well really quite fraught but compelling.

It's interesting to hear them pull a song out of thin air and there's also a song that I can't find any mention of on Google called "John's on the dole' (the notes call it 'drums on the door' though) which is pretty great despite equipment problems and what sounds like some very vocal, smart alec-y mates in the audience.

https://we.tl/t-SzlTBDz7zf

Great in depth interview by Trevor Jackson with Green Gartside on NTS

https://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/trevor-jackson-green-gartside-29th-october-2019/

THANKS!!!

somehow it's amazing to hear GG talking like a normal person thinking about things. I have actually met and spoken to him irl, fwiw, but the meeting is a blur. We talked about the fact that we were both wearing very similar yellow jackets. It's honestly the only thing I remember other than how tall he was (I'm tiny and was overwhelmed)

Yeah, this is really fascinating. (Just getting to the end right....now!) Thanks!

Thanks for sharing that, lovely stuff.

I can feel a Scritti jag coming on, where nothing else will do for a week or so.

this is a phenomenal interview

:O @ that early version of "wood beez"

That early version is as great in its own way.

waiting to see if Green pops up at all in the Henry Cow book.
Heard taht chris cutler was less than complementary about the early Scritti stuff he was played.

awesome

I love how Trevor Jackson played the System and Robert Palmer's "You Are in My System" and forced Green to choose.

Goodness -- I didn't know about this Pete Rock remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywr4GN6DS5E

Kraftwerk saying they hate reggae vs. Robert Palmer calling while swimming with dolphins.

Green's the 600th person to insist that Palmer's appetite for music was at odds with his image.

No RP was a total music nerd...just look at his choice of covers...he even covered Husker Du...ps the story of his mum smashing the Beatles 7” was utterly heartbreaking...

ICYMI, two new Green songs (a single, in fact) released yesterday:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0kSN6bCRIdNskZmOlQhnVg?si=jksozpT_QbCSJWogjUBrtw

I've been dealing with Anomie and Bonhomie the last week. What an album. It doesn't work, but this collaboration between Gartside and Mos Def, Ndegeocello, etc is fascinating for its era. The rock guitar is a bit much.

imo it totally works

green is ashamed of the foo fighters worship tracks but i love them, great power-pop

"Brushed With Oil.." ranks among his best too, and I love the remixes.

Still thinking about it.

yes "brushed with oil" is gorgeous

i think "umm" is one of my top five scritti songs

I bought Anomie and Bonhomie not long after it came out. It was a complete WTF for most people, myself included. But even before it aged well—and that’s maybe a bit debatable and he sounds a bit like a guest at times—you had to tip your cap to the fact that the guy just gives no fucks and does what he wants, whether it’s the rap metal and fey grunge of this or the I’m-gonna-carbon-copy-my-best-album-and-top-it of Provision.

Interested in the new single.

https://scrittipolitti.ffm.to/reissues

vinyl reissues of cupid & psyche and anomie and bonhomie

yes i bought both immediately

https://pocketmags.com/mojo-magazine/jun-22/articles/1133453/he-s-back-after-16-years-green-gartside-readies-scritti-politti-lp-six

just stumbled over this - didn't read the actual article but it sure sounds promising!
fingers crossed...

Still can't get over the name Green Gartside, I love it

There's a great recent episode of the Martyn Ware podcast with David Gamson as the guest. Some funny stories about the recording of Oh Patti and a surprising citing of 'We Don't Talk Any More' by Cliff Richard as a big musical influence. And it's led me to Hannah Diamond's music (Gamson is producing her new LP) and made me wish Green would make a hyperpop record - something that pushes 21st century sound design possibilities like C&P did back in '85.