The Currency Of Pop. Week 1. Ep 5.

I wrote the piece below about 10 years ago. Have left it as it is, unedited, hence it is a bit out of date (before Edwyn's illness). I guess it is about quite a bit more than just a few singles but hey ho...

PS - quick update. The only copy of this I can find for sale on the internet is going for $650, on Discogs. Crikey.

                   

I first heard a “Postcard Record” while listening to John Peel one evening in 1980. The great man played Orange Juice’s debut single Falling And Laughing. I had been curious about the band for a few months as a small buzz was developing about them. But then there were so many buzzes going around about almost every new post-punk band that was emerging (and there were a lot of them!) that I had no reason to suspect these guys would be anything special. Having said that the number of ‘special’ bands emerging in that period was quite spectacular. The Fall, Echo and The Bunnymen. The Teardrop Explodes (and the rest of the Liverpool scene) The Scars, The Sound, The Pop Group et al…..most doing great Peel sessions and all releasing similar quality singles.

But for me Falling And Laughing really stood out. It had a gawky dumbness to it musically – mainly due to the guitars sounding ever so slightly out of tune. To quote Edwyn Collins:-

“We tried for a sound that was part The Pop Group's "She is Beyond Good and Evil" part Sheila B. Devotion's "Spacer".
We Failed!”

But lyrically it was poetry.

“No I’m not saying that we should build a city of tears/All I’m saying is I’m alone and consequently/Only my dreams satisfy the real need of my heart”.

To a love sick 18 year old this was just perfect - and gave me all the fuel I needed to confirm that the world was a desolate place when it comes to matters of the heart. You guessed it – I wasn’t getting any!

Anyway this one little piece of 7 inch vinyl had to be hunted down – along with every single bit of information I could find about the band who created it. Which is how I came to find out it was more than just a single band – it was part of a record label set up by a man called Alan Horne.

Alan Horne was a visionary. By all accounts a stubborn, tunnel-visioned kinda guy – but with a real love of original, challenging music. Of the people I would love to meet (and actually have a realistic chance of doing so on the basis that they are in the UK and not dead yet) then Horne is pretty much at the top. He formed Postcard Records initially as a vehicle for his friend Edwyn Collins’ band the Nu-Sonics. Formed after Edwyn and fellow Glaswegian Velvet Underground fans James Kirk (guitar) and Steven Daly (drums) had seen The Clash’s seminal White Riot tour in Edinburgh (with Buzzcocks, Slits and Subway Sect – all bigger influences on our heroes than the headliners). The Nu-sonics (named after the Burns guitar owned and revered by James) gigged around Glasgow a little, adding David McClymont on bass – and changing their name to Orange Juice as a protest against the increasingly one dimensional punk band names. Steven liked it because he thought there was going to be a psychedelic thing and you could “wash away the acid trip with Orange Juice”.

Falling And Laughing made Melody Maker single of the week – but was a complete bastard to get hold of as less than 1000 copies were pressed. It came with a postcard and flexi-disc with the track Felicity - another lovelorn classic. I got one mail order from Rough Trade and bought a second for £60 off eBay a couple of years ago. It is my favourite single ever – and also my most valuable in monetary terms. According to Record Collector there were 963 copies pressed – so only 961 available out there for any prospective collectors! RC value it at £70 – but I think that must be understating it as it very rarely comes up for sale.

Horne then really began to develop Postcard – releasing records by 2 other Scottish bands, Glasgow’s Aztec Camera and Edinburgh’s Josef K. The resulting records were pieces of art in their own right with free postcards and unique sleeve designs – all featuring the Postcard cat – pinched from drawings by Louis Wain in a 1900’s children’s book .

The next 2 Postcard releases were as a result of a joint recording session between Orange Juice and Josef K.

Blue Boy backed with Love Sick, produced by ATV’s Alex Ferguson, followed on brilliantly from Falling And Laughing – unwittingly defining an ‘indie’ sound that many would copy/be influenced by (incidentally the A-side featuring an organ borrowed from a 19 year old Alan McGee).

Josef K’s debut for Postcard however was something quite different. Radio Drill Time was much harder and more inward looking than either of the Orange Juice singles – the lyric, seemingly a hazy definition of how we perceive pop music, burrowing its way through an attempt to merge Joy Division with something altogether dancier.

As I recall the music press’ response to these releases was mixed. Some immediately saw the unique but raw talent that was emerging here – but equally Horne and his band’s attempts to out cool everyone who they met and were interviewed by was not to everyone’s taste. As Alan Horne later reflected: “When you’re that age the only thing that’s important to you is to be hip. And we had that in buckets. That’s what we became....soooo smug.”

An antidote to the smugness was Roddy Frame’s Aztec Camera. Roddy formed the band when he was just 14 – with bass player Campbell Owens. He became, for me, the most talented musician of his generation. By the age of 16 he had written most of what became the High Land Hard Rain album. For most musicians writing those songs during the entire course of your life would have been an achievement!  Their debut single on Postcard was Just Like Gold/We Could Send Letters. Both songs a sublime mix of acoustic 12 string guitars, splashing cymbals and romantic lyrics. Breathtaking in its ambition – it was light years ahead of the other young bands of the era – added to that this young guy was a genuinely great guitar player. A second Aztec Camera single followed - Mattress Of Wire/Lost Outside The Tunnel –  more of the same, but in common with Orange Juice, a yearning soulfulness that made you wonder how a boy so young could have experienced all this heartache to write these songs. Major labels were salivating and a proposed Postcard album never materialized.

In addition to the 3 Scottish bands – Alan Horne released one single on Postcard by Australian band The Go Betweens, I Need Two Heads/Stop Before You Say It. A perfect fit with the rest of the roster – however the GB’s moved on to Rough Trade.

Josef K and Orange Juice released further singles on Postcard during 1980 and 1981. All total classics.. Both bands recorded debut albums (albeit OJ’s was a demo) that weren’t released at the time. Josef K’s Sorry For Laughing became one of the great ‘lost’ albums – and on its eventual CD release proved itself to be every bit as good as its reputation. The band had purposely aimed for a lo-fi sound and weren’t happy with the results of the original attempt – deeming it too ‘professional’. Hence they went back in the studio and came out with The Only Fun In Town. Still a great album but not a patch on Sorry For Laughing – a case of the Postcard ‘hip-ness’ getting the better of them..

Orange Juice eventually signed to Polydor and released their debut album You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever in 1982. In 1992 the demo album Ostrich Churchyard was released. The comparison between released/unreleased was the other way round than with Josef K. The rawness of Ostrich Churchyard being considerably preferable to the slick Adam Kidron produced Polydor album.

By 1982 Postcard was no more as OJ and AC moved onto majors and Josef K split up. Alan Horne did re-emerge with the label again in 1992 – releasing records by some good bands like Nectarine No. 9 and Paul Quinn and The Independent Group (their Will I Ever Be Inside Of You album is excellent) but somehow it wasn’t the same. Music had changed  - The Smiths had been and gone and dance and Madchester were the flavours of the era.

The music left from that original 2 year period is, to me, astonishing. 3 very different bands led by 3 very different but hugely talented men – Roddy Frame, Edwyn Collins and Paul Haig. To list the bands they influenced would be very long and very boring – but would include almost all the non-heavy metal guitar-based music of the last 25 years…..but just to be hip (!) Franz Ferdinand are a prime example.

Quite why it still means to much to me is probably 50% down to the music and 50% how it affected me at the time. It showed me that these hugely talented people actually thought the same as me in terms of doing something new and original (just I didn’t have the talent!). Most guys like these would previously have found themselves in some run of the mill group rehashing old styles or more likely developed their creativity in the art world. I guess punk opened music up for so many people to express themselves; musicians and artists alike.

Last year I met Edwyn at a small pub gig in the north of Scotland. He played a short set for a Radio Scotland programme – including the classic Orange Juice song Consolation Prize (“I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn’s/I was trying to impress/So frightfully camp it made you laugh/Tomorrow I’ll by myself a dress”) and Ewan MacColl’s Love’s Been Good To Me. After all these years he still looked like a naïve young guy who had accidentally written a few brilliant tunes and found himself on the stage. Accidentally brilliant – that about sums up Postcard Records.