That Melodic *Thing* in Scottish Pop

Why? As someone from Scotland, this widely held impression of what constitutes Scottish Pop really does get right my nose, as it appears to construct a direct lineage from a cliched version of Scottish Folk music to an equally cliched version of Scottish Pop, that's actually based on a small subset of the full range of Scottish Pop, who just happen to have "Scottish" references. Not only is this a patronising view of Scottish Folk, which at times could be quite radicial in it's politics, but ignores the rest of Scottish Pop, particularly from urban Central Scotland. What about The Sweet? Nazareth? The Incredible String Band? Alex Harvey? 1979-81 Simple Minds? Cocteau Twins? Kelly Marie? The Almighty? Primal Scream? Scott Brown? The entire 1990-1995 Scottish Rave scene? None of these ever feature in any pet theory about pop music from Scotland, but they're all pretty influential. (Scott Brown and the Scottish Rave scene in particular had a massive influence on the development of what we now call trance.) It's just there's no allusions to shortbread tin images of Scottish folksy past.

I might as well add here that the main culprits for this Scottish Folk/Pop theory are actually Scottish pop writers themselves, who are by and large completely hopeless, with an impenetrable aire of stereotypical studenty coolness, combined with a desire to ape London hacks, that leads to a fatal detachment from their subject. Most of them are pretty anti-pop too, except in a nauseatingly twee nostalgic manner. (Oh, it's okay to like the Proclaimers again- but only in a "Weren't we strange back then" type of way...) But you can guarantee reviews and interviews every time Gary Clark (of one hit wonders Danny Wilson) or Kevin McDermott release a record. And Belle & Sebastian always get 5 stars. The only reason this ridiculous situation exists is because the writers are sheilded within larger publications geared to non-pop audiences- the two broadsheet newspapers (Herald and Scotsman), and The List (Scotland's answer to Time Out).

It's worth noting that any attempt to actually create a successful magazine which reflects this style of writing has been a complete failure. Usually this has been blamed on the Scots not caring enough to buy the magazine, etc., ... But no one has suggested that this might be because the magazine is usually filled with sub-NME doggerel which simply does not cover what is actually going on in Scotland, preferring instead to pander to a myth of Scottish contemporary music which is actually hard to cover given that only so many bands can be shoe-horned into the myth. So coverage generally boils down to the usual Runrig/Wet Wet Wet/Travis triopoly, already covered far better in Q, etc. (Franny, watch out- it used to be Runrig/Wet Wet Wet/Del Amitri!)

On the other hand, look at the example of M8 magazine, which actually started out as another Scottish rock 'n' pop listings/reviews mag. But within 6 months it was dominated by the burgeoning Scottish Rave scene, and within another 6, it intiated a special "dance music issue", which has in effect lasted to this day. In the next 2-3 years, it became Scotlands most popular youth culture magazine, precisely because of it's fanzine style enthusiasm for the Scottish Rave scene, which was only really being covered by M8 whilst the rest of the rest of the Scottish media ignored or villified it. Of course, as the Scottish Rave scene died down M8 quickly realigned itself within the UK house and trace market, but the early 90s back issues of M8 are a fascinating historical record of a uniquely Scottish music that was hugely popular and influential amongst the young, (eg It invented Neds!) but owed little to traditional folksy myths of Scotland- which is probably why you won't see a thing about it in the mainstream Scottish press- and if the mainstream Scottish press won't cover it, why should the press elsewhere? Gah- sometimes we're our own worst enemies...

(I notice the mention above of the Radio Scotland programme featuring folk records. There has also been in the past an electronica and Peelie type show on Radio Scotland, although they seem to have been lost in Radio Scotland's Radio 4 style makeover recently. It must be mentioned here that Radio Scotland doesn't particularly cater towards a mainstream pop audience either.)

Also, with reference to the original post: "A lot of Scottish Pop [...]"- I would argue that the bands mentioned are actually not that representative of the diversity of Scottish pop, but of the usual suspects constantly drawn up by Scottish hacks as mentioned in my previous post, and this tends to colour the debate outside Scotland.

I suppose what I was trying to explain with my previous post was the reality behind the context in which this whole thread is taking place. As you do...

Of the other folks you mention, Simple Minds especially circa 81/82, while outwardly making a *big* sound, create melodies which are often *small* in the way that Alexander suggested, or difficult to tease out of a veil of sound (dare I suggest a *drone*) as I tried to get at in the orig. question. Of course they spent a fair bit of time ripping off Magazine too ;)

This was never meant to be a grand unified theory of Scottish music, so as you say it leaves out much more than it includes.

Old Fart - fantastically eloquent post: from an English perspective I think the reason why the folk-pop connection gets made is that in England you're never that far away from a big city, and the population is much more evenly spread out, whereas the more rural parts of Scotland, geographically, *are* more isolated, and this leads to all sorts of lazy generalisations. Also the age-old English problem with reconciling modernity with their narrow idea of being Celtic: Celts generally don't see it as a contradiction, English people unfortunately tend to. I'm sure there *is* an urban / rural divide though - how else could the Scottish Labour Party have started calling the SNP "Tartan Tories" when the SNP's central principle is anathema to the Conservative and *Unionist* Party?

With early Simple Minds I could always sense an obsession with Europe and travel: the lazy critical line here is that this was a desire to escape and get away from English dominance. Am I right or is this another myth?

Every single one of these bands should have their musical instruments taken away and thrown into the Firth of Forth.

BD: No, I suspect it's probably more of a desire to emulate their heroes, Berlin era Bowie, Kraftwerk and anything coming out of Conny Plank's studio.

are there any other bands which have come out of glasgow (??) which have an obsession with the 'berlin set'? I know yummy fur are big on it. (any others?) I'm curious as to what makes that era of music (roxy, eno, bowie, iggy, lou, nina hagen, liliput) seductive to glaswegians if it even does.

one of the reasons yummy fur never cut it fr me (and this harks back to the fiery furnaces thread and numerous smiths threads) was what seemed to me an almost puritanical approach to iconography and images. look at how delicious a range of 'influences' they have, it could have been put to so much more affect, which wd perhaps helped mobilise thr magic a bit more. I bet they wouldn't have sneered at video installations.

"We Could Send Letters" clearly has a chorus, and a great one at that.