The Incestuous World Of Scottish New Wave, Part 1 (Possibly)

First off, a moment of silence for the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. Especially for Dr. Liviu Librescu, who lived and died the very definition of the word "hero". I won't admire very many people the way I admire him.

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In the wise words of my friend Chelsea, "the music business is incestuous".

Last night I listened to this wonderful, anthemic, powerful track, but the problem was, I didn't know who performed it or what the name of the song was. Today, after doing some research, I found out the name of the song was "The Glory Of Love" and it was performed by a group called The Armoury Set. After searching for information about The Armoury Set, I was surprised to find that it was a group featuring the lead vocals of Richard Jobson (formerly of The Skids) and the lead guitar work of the late John McGeoch (of Magazine and Visage and other groups/projects). The Skids immediately connect me to the obvious: the late Stuart Adamson, The Skids' lead guitarist before he left to form Big Country, a group that was one of the more popular Scottish artists in the States. It also leads me indirectly to the Scars (see my prior post about them), whose bandmates deeply admired The Skids and whose lead guitarist was directly influenced by Adamson.

The McGeoch/Magazine connection leads me to the recently departed Colin Thurston, best known for his engineering work with David Bowie and for producing Duran Duran's first two studio albums, but whose first production work was actually Magazine's Secondhand Daylight. It also leads to Howard Devoto and The Buzzcocks, of whom he was their first lead singer. (After Devoto left to join Magazine, the band's lead guitarist Pete Shelley stepped up to lead vocals.) The McGeoch/Visage connection leads me directly into the world I know best/most about, the late '70s/early '80s New Romantic scene, with Steve Strange (Visage's lead singer/public face) playing a key role in the scene and former Scottish teen idol Midge Ure joining forces with Ultravox's Billy Currie on the Visage project, then joining up with Currie and the rest of the John Foxx-less band and guiding them into a more electronic, NuRo sound. Ure and Duran Duran would later be bandmates of a sort on a different project: 1984's Band Aid, whose "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was penned by Ure and Bob Geldof and performed by a host of predominantly British musicians, including all the members of Duran Duran.

Backing up a bit, the song by The Armoury Set that captivated my attention in the first place reminded me a lot of Simple Minds, with its sweepingly melodramatic atmosphere and grand, majestic scope that attracted me to the song. The Simple Minds were the first taste of Scottish New Wave for me and for a lot of others here in the States. The Simple Minds lead me, as has been stated before on this blog, to Endgames, whose drummer Brian McGee was one of the founder members of Simple Minds (even having been friends with Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill from early childhood), and who utilized the saxophonic talents of Paul Wishart of Endgames for an early '80s tour. And reading an interview done of Richard Jobson, with his mentioning his Irish Catholic roots and his childhood insistence of supporting the "right" Scottish football organizations (shades of Northern Ireland and Protestant vs. Catholic struggles here), reminded me of another Scottish musician whose music I discovered via the New Wave Outpost, Steven Hale of the London-based Language, whose heritage is similar to Jobson's, but who refused to be a fan of football/soccer precisely because of those Protestant/Catholic struggles. (I would go on about how those Protestant/Catholic struggles remind me of those I see evidenced throughout my very American life, but that's for another kind of blog.) And Steven Hale connects me to Gang Of Four via GO4 lead singer Jon King's sister Debbie, a backup singer in Language and a lead singer in another project the percussionist Hale was in, and Eddi Reader, another backup singer (and Scotland native) who went on to score big with Fairground Attraction ("Perfect").

Oh, this is all very exhausting and circuitous, but it does prove Chelsea's point that the music industry IS incestuous, especially when it's concentrated in particular focal points such as Scotland. A country as small as that, with just over 4 million citizens/residents and an area size roughly 1/10 of my home state's (I'm a Texan), will be bound to have quite a lot of connections amongst its musician citizenry. But to see them all evidenced in such a small time frame (the action happens from 1977 - 1984, roughly the life span of the original New Wave movement) is breathtaking, especially when all of them apparently created such high-quality, wonderful music.