Scars - Picture House, Edinburgh, 28/12/2010

  by John Clarkson

published: 21 / 1 / 2011

intro

At their first show in nearly thirty years, John Clarkson is unconvinced by local post punk act the Scars in a gig at the Picture House in Edinburgh

At £20 a ticket, prices for this reunion concert are expensive. The Scars were for a long time the forgotten men of the Edinburgh post-punk movement. Their singles, ‘Horrorshow/Adult-ery’ and ‘All About You’, won airplay from John Peel and brief music press interest. ‘Author! Author!’, their only album, however, sold poorly and any final sense of momentum and continuity was lost by the departure of vocalist Bobby King shortly after its release in April 1981. The Scars limped on for a few months after guitarist Paul Research (now Mackie) took over King’s place as singer before breaking up in early 1982. While other similarly short-lived local post-punk bands of the era such as Josef K and the Fire Engines have been the subject of reissues and gone on to attract some notoriety, the Scars until recently remained little remembered. Recent times have, however, been kinder to the Scars. Fashionable electronic act Lemon Jelly’s heavy sampling of ‘Horrorshow’ on their 2007 song, ‘79’, and the re-release of ‘Author! Author!’ for the first time in a CD edition later on that year has earned them some late acclaim. Reformation is also big business these days and an hour before the Scars are due on stage at what is their first gig with King in nearly thirty years the Picture House is surprisingly busy. The Scars’ hometown gigs in their initial lifetime at the long closed Tap O’ Lauriston and Wig and Pen pubs attracted tiny cult audiences, but tonight’s crowd, even despite the exorbitant ticket prices, must extend to perhaps five or six hundred. Undoubtedly some of this will be down to post-Christmas boredom, a need to get out after four days stuck inside the house. The audience is also predominantly middle-aged. While there will be some there who can say that they saw them first time around, others will be fans of other bigger name post-punk bands of the period and have just turned up to see what the hype surrounding this “lost band” they initially missed is about. There are also, however, several young people in the crowd, who weren’t born the last time the Scars trod a stage together and it seems that Lemon Jelly’s influence has also had an effect. Ironically much like the reformed Sex Pistols and Stooges, whose audiences were similarly small first time around, the Scars thirty years late find themselves playing to the biggest crowd of their career. The support bill line-up has been through a lot of changes. Former Josef K guitarist and one time stage mate Malcolm Ross pulled out the week before because of illness, as has his replacement Kid Carnaveral as a result of their drummer’s partner going into labour the day previously. Last minute addition Shock and Awe, the current band of the Rezillos and Human League guitarist Jo Callis, who have been drafted in that morning and which this reviewer arrives too late for, are, however, by all accounts superb. Much of ballboy singer Gordon McIntyre’s fey in-between banter is drowned out by poor acoustics and audience conversation, but his group’s form of abrasive Wedding Present-style indie pop also has its moments. Main support act TV21 are outstanding. Another Edinburgh-based act, they have a similar symmetry to the Scars. Formed in the late 70’s, they split up in 1982 after releasing a string of singles and a solitary album, ‘A Thin Red Line’. Despite supporting the Rolling Stones on the Scottish dates on a European tour immediately prior to their break-up, TV21 were for many years again largely forgotten. Since reforming in 2005 initially for a one-off gig in tribute to John Peel, they have, however, met with fresh acclaim. Both a Cherry Red compilation, ‘Snakes and Ladders’ and a self-released second album, ‘Forever 22’, which was released twenty eight years after the first one, have been well-received. Singer Norman Rodger has one of those anthemic voices that fills a room, and the band, who in their early incarnation were produced by both the Teardrop Explodes’ Troy Tate and the Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie, combine catchy, loud new wave chords with inventive hooks. There is a good balance of new and old songs with ‘A Thin Red Line’ album track ’What’s Going On?’ being especially memorable. The last few numbers see them bring on stage with them for what they tell us is the first time in their thirty year history a brass section. This is a group that despite its many years apart has not just remained stuck in the past, but which has moved on and evolved. And this is where it all starts to become unstuck for the Scars... It is not that they are terrible. Paul Mackay’s spidery guitar work has a wiry muscularity and the rhythm section, his brother John on bass and drummer Calumn Mackay, create at points an appropriate sense of doom and menace. But they haven’t progressed in the last thirty years at all. For all of the fuss surrounding this gig, for all of the talk of their originality, and with copies of the ‘Author! Author!’CD which has been deleted currently selling on-line for £50, there is very little in the Scars’ fifty minute set, which begins with ‘Horrorshow’ and concludes with a cover of Cockney Rebel’s ‘Pyscho Modo’, that seems innovative or unique. They come across as somewhat passé, a little too reminiscent with their spiky, angular guitars and paranoiac sound of other acts of the time, in parts ‘Kaleidoscope’-era Siouxsie and the Banshees, certainly Josef K and above all Magazine. The bulk of their songs were written when the Scars were still in their teens and it all also somewhat sixth form. Shaven-headed Mekon lookalike Bobby King certainly works hard. He stomps about the stage, dark visor sunglasses plastered across his white face, leather jacket open displaying an equally pale chest, howling his songs about grubby sexual liaisons and the Bomb and the Apocalypse. He is no longer though 19 or 20, but a man of approximately 50 who has spent much of the last three decades working in universities and who is now a professor in ancient languages. Although he is polite and earnest between numbers, he has none of the irony that, say, John Lydon has shown since the Sex Pistols started going back on the road after their own long absence. While perhaps it could be argued that it has done the ilk of Liam Gallagher no real harm, King should really be above such posturing now and it all seems shallow and somewhat forced. There will be some who, because of the nature of this event, will make it out afterwards to be some kind of second coming. It is not, merely an over-hyped show by a recently over-hyped band that might have been better remaining more elusive. The Picture House gig is being promoted as a strict “one off”. These things, of course, however, have a habit of expanding and Paul Mackie has already been hinting in interviews in the local press about doing more. To be fair to them, the Scars have had one show rather than five years to get it right. Where they go from here, however, remains debatable. If nothing else, tonight’s show proves that reformation gigs should be more than a simple act of trying to evoke memories.

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