There's been a touch of c86 and mid 80s Scottish indie- pop in the breeze recently- two weeks ago Stevie at Charity Chic Music blogged about Edinburgh's The Motorcycle Boy and last week Brian at Linear Tracking Lives was writing about early Primal Scream (early Primal Scream, none of your Loaded Scream, not even your Ivy Ivy Ivy era Scream but All Fall Down Primal Scream). At the weekend Sky Arts showed Teenage Superstars, a documentary about 'the golden age of Scottish indie', The Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits, The Jesus And Mary Chain and all he rest of it.
As an archetype of this sound you can't go wrong with this 1986 single by The Shop Assistants. In fact, this song on 7" might be the best song of the entire scene.
Cavernous but lo fi drums, the low rumble of bassline, cheap buzzsaw guitars, handclaps, sing song female vocals, deliberately borrowing from the Reid Brothers in style and by pinching a 'trip me up' line and everything smothered in reverb, it is wilfully and brilliantly amateurish. Safety Net sounds like it exists solely to take up the two minutes twenty three seconds it takes to revolve around your stereo at 45rpm before you flip the needle back to the start and play it again.
Sadly, it slipped out last year that Alex Taylor, singer of both The Shop Assistants and later The Motorcycle Boy, had passed away back in 2005. RIP Alex.
