BOOKS
AS many losers have noted, history is written by the victors. In punk rock terms, this tends to result in a process of shrinkage, until all that remains is a handful of gnarled survivors in London and New York, arguing about the origins of a safety pin. To everyone else, everywhere else, punk was not like this. It happened slowly, romantically; in the pages of the music press, on the John Peel Show, in the aisles of record shops and the bedrooms of dreamers. Then, all of a sudden, it was like an explosion had happened, and everything became vivid and more alive.
Scotland is not usually celebrated as a centre of punk creativity. In his films – Big Gold Dream and Teenage Superstars – and books – Hungry Beat (written with Douglas MacIntyre) and Postcards From Scotland – Grant McPhee focused on the brilliant post-punk moment where Scotland’s story expanded to include Edinburgh’s Fast Product and Glasgow’s Postcard Records. Hungry Beat identified Scotland’s Year Zero moment as the White Riot tour of 1977, a formula that required some post-rationalisation. In the puritanical re-telling of that White Riot night, The Clash and The Jam were too obvious, Buzzcocks were pretty good, but the real inspiration came from The Slits and Subway Sect.