The Next Big Thing

D.I.Y. and (very) indie post-punk from Scotland, ’77-81

Messthetics’ first Scottish installment focuses on a brief, intense scene of ardently independent bands who got started rubbing shoulders with 1977 punk then paid no attention at all to London after that. (London returned the favor.) The sound was based on guitars of all sorts, ingeniously skewed melodies and unashamed local accents. Naturally, it all fell apart as soon as “The Sound of Young Scotland” became a marketable commodity, but they left behind a rich cache of lost ‘alternative’ hits. Plenty of ‘traditional’ D.I.Y., too…

24 songs on the CD plus nine bonus MP3 tracks. 90 minutes of music.
24-page booklet, lovingly documented with histories & photos galore.

Messthetics #105 features rarities by the Fire Engines, Scrotum Poles, 35mm Dreams, The Exile, Commercials, Fakes, Metropak, Tony Pilley, Visitors, Article 58, Radio Ghosts, Rapid Dance, Strutz, Vertical Smiles, Restricted Code, Brills, Rhythm Method, He's Dead Jim, Paul Reekie, and Friction.

Unreleased first recordings by The Dirty Reds [who became the Fire Engines], 35mm Dreams, Jazzateers, International Spys [pre-Radio Ghosts, Wee Cherubs, Bachelor Pad] and Edinburgh’s legendary Ettes. Plus other never-before-released material from the Scrotum Poles, Commercials, Tony Pilley, Article 58, Radio Ghosts, Vertical Smiles, and Restricted Code…

Mess+Aesthetics. Between 1977 and ’83 hundreds of U.K. bands put out their own records and tapes –on the cheap and utterly without apology. With “D.I.Y.”, Punk and everything that came before it collided gloriously with D.I.Y.’s fresh aesthetic of making and sharing music without any pretension to popular success. There’s no common style: instead these songs are united by wit, enthusiasm, musical risk-taking …and a conspicuous lack of pose.

More about this later... blimey, this jump-started what is left of my recall...