1980!

Double crikey, here's a film actually made by Scritti Politti for the BBC program Grapevine,  explaining how to make your own record. Featuring members of The Door and the Window, Desperate Bicycles, and lesser known DIY outfits of the era, as well as Sue Scott from Rough Trade, record engineer and mastering maestro George Peckham of "Porky Prime Cuts" renown. And various Scrits, including a rare sighting of fourth member / organiser Matthew Kay.

Seemingly the "promo" for "P.A.s" in the previous post was made from out-takes from this production. So filmed in 1979, but apparently broadcast in 1980.

There's tantalising references to the guide-to-DIY booklet How To Make A Record that Scritti published and circulated, which the Grapevine presenter invites viewers to write in for. Has anyone got a copy of that?

Stop press 27/06/19:

Found pages from How To Make A Record at this tumblr stillunusual.  It even had a catalogue number - SCRIT 3.

 

                 

1979!

Crikey, look at this - a time capsule of 1979. And a sort of "pop promo", albeit never shown anywhere until now, for "P.A.s" - my favorite tune on 4 A Sides - using a 'single edit' shorter version of the song.

(Tip off from the ever-alert Jon Dale)

A proper good glimpse of the Carol St squat squalor - including a kitchen area that looks manky and mingin.

Means-of-production demystified with scenes of the recording sessions, record pressing, and record packaging (although it looks like they are sleeving the Peel Sessions EP, as opposed to 4 A Sides, which would be the perfectly circular and self-reflexive thing to do. But then in the record store, the young lad flicks 'n' picks a copy of 4 A Sides. Confusing!)

Although the record by itself abundantly demonstrates this, the glimpse of  the three playing together reinforces the sense that Scritti had gone way beyond messthetics by this point - that is some tight white funk.

I wonder if the mysterious Denis Cullum, who posted this on YouTube, but nothing else as yet,  has even more footage of the era up his sleeve.



Said to be the melody source for "Hegemony."

If so, derived most likely from this 1979 release featuring Green's hero Martin Carthy.

going underground

Here's my review for 4Columns of Robert Macfarlane's new book Underland: A Deep Time Journey - in which the renowned landscape and nature writer ventures below the surface in search of a new sublime - experiences so intensely alien they defeat his own eloquence.