From The Vault: Scars' Author! Author!

I've been incredibly derelict with this blog lately, so I shall have to play catch-up.

What I've been listening to recently: I don't know, a lot of stuff really. I suppose the most recent CD I spinned could be a start, and that would be the utterly brilliant reissue of the Scars' Author! Author!. Now I know they don't necessarily fit into the overall schematic of this blog because they were highly critically adored throughout their existence and have continued to receive positive attention from All The Right People, but the simple fact that I discovered them through the New Wave Outpost's "Song Of The Week" super-obscuro New Wave feature will lead one to believe that they were at least COMMERCIALLY underrated.

Seriously, babes. They should have been Scotland's answer to Duran Duran. From me, that's a massive compliment, as I view Duran Duran to be the absolute gold standard acme of what is great about catchy pop music. The Scars performed music quite like that, with a little more of an anarchic punk spin; their songs were a little more primal and urgent and raw. But their last and most well-known single "All About You" wouldn't have been out-of-place on a compilation next to Simple Minds' "All The Things She Said" and "China" by Red Rockers, which is why that is the song most NWO regulars and others coming across that band from a New Wave standpoint remember that song.

I, however, think that only partially tells the musical story of a band whose extraordinary precociousness is rivaled only by their drive, passion, and determination in all they did and have done. With the average age of the individual band members not even 18 at the time of the band's 1977 formation, all four bandmates brought with them impressive resumes. Lead guitarist Paul Research and bassist John Mackie (both brothers) were both classically trained musicians before getting into rock music in their early teens, lead singer Robert King started his music career at the tender age of 12, and teenaged Calumn Mackay was already a veteran of various bands. Immediately upon the band's formation, all four boys committed themselves seriously to writing music and performing gigs and soon began attracting a small but loyal fanbase as they almost singlehandedly established punk in their native Edinburgh.

By the time the band got started on writing songs for the album Author! Author! their sound had mellowed and matured into something more authentically post-punk -- a comingling of raw punk verve and catchy disco grooves. And that's what most of the music on the album sounds like. However, with "All About You" the band landed on a new, even poppier sound, something with all the passion and intensity one might expect from a Scars track but with a preternatural maturity in its execution and delivery. Had the band continued on this musical track for a followup album, their fanbase would have grown exponentially, and had they released yet another album no one would have dared forget them. After five albums, people would be calling them "Scotland's answer to Duran Duran" and they, not the Simple Minds, would have become the biggest Scottish pop group of the '80s. Which could've turned out to be not quite as good a thing as that seems.

See, the individual band members (including second drummer Steve McLaughlin) have managed to do very well for themselves post-Scars, continuing with their lifelong pattern of impressive accomplishments. Robert King, who learned Greek at the almost literally unbelievable age of 10, has continued to showcase his talent for languages as a Ph.D. holder/expert on ancient languages. Paul Research is continuing to make and perform both popular and classical music, runs marathons, and works a decidedly white collar IT job. John Mackie owns his own design firm. Calumn Mackay is a physicist and engineer who continues to play drums in blues and rock bands in his Grenoble (France) home. And Steve McLaughlin is an in-demand record producer and engineer, working with artists such as Sting and Badly Drawn Boy and winning a Grammy (of all things) for his work on a Tom Petty album.

Perhaps it might have been a curse for a group such as this to have become wildly popular. Maybe they would have felt an intense frustration from the constraints such a life trajectory would have provided. But it would've also meant people such as myself, living an ocean, several thousand miles, and decades away, would have been able to get aboard their fan train a lot easier. I know, I know, that's selfish thinking, but after becoming very acquainted with the band's music, I am puzzled as to why a group with that amount of talent should have had to lie dormant at the bottom of the music history ravine. The fact that they were only there because of the brevity of their recording history is a consolation.