That Melodic *Thing* in Scottish Pop

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.