REFLECTIONS ON IN(TER)DEPENDENCE-- New Musical Express, November 1978 Words: Ian Penman
The friends are part of an important balance. Just think of other bands who've become steadily more self-absorbed, aggressively so sometimes, losing all perspective. You can't blame those bands: the 'new wave' was, is, or ought to have been about, if anything, a better access to and understanding of the ways and means of our jolly recording industry. But instead of them using it, it has used them. Scritti Politti have decided to approach the problems and potential of useful action with and in rock music in a discursive, critical, certain manner. One tangible result is a self-financed three-track EP. On the sleeve (self photographed, developed and designed) is a breakdown of every financial expenditure incurred in the recording, manufacture, packaging, and distribution of the record. The Desperate Bicycles are another 'rock' group who have made this particular form of helpful, provocative information available, and Scritti Politti acknowledge, and were indeed encouraged by The Desperate Bicycles. "Why can't Western rock bands work like jazz musicians -- sharing equipment and ideas, helping each other at just that basic level of co-operation. We certainly got that from the Bikes, and from people at Rough Trade. If we'd moved straight into 'The Biz', we'd almost certainly have become a very insular band, seeing ourselves as The New Thing, trying to compete with other bands. That sort of idea would have been foisted onto us, by a manager... "If any information comes out of this article and makes it a little more clear why we had to conduct it as we have, that's the realisation of the bankruptcy of a formalist approach..." "You'd better explain what you mean by that..." "What I mean by a 'formalist' approach are the ways of going on and the meanings of different ways of going on and statements you make, which are sorted and are understood and have meaning only by reference back to earlier developments in the same sectional, phenomenal history. "It's a bit like the way a lot of modern art works. It's meaning is because it acts, purportedly, critically back on earlier modern art. But, I mean, that's bankrupt...all the formal limitations of the traditional idea of how to make art ran out, formally expired. "And I think the same thing has definitely happened in music. But rock'n'roll is a different business because a lot of people like to pretend that rock'n'roll never changes, and that the conditions that inform it are a lot more attuned to everyday life and everyday needs such that it cannot expire formally; but if that were so then I don't think we'd be hearing Bo Diddley riffs on the new Clash LP, 18 years after Bo Diddley played them."
All that's necessary for a viable alternative is a synthesis of information, considered commitment, and an aesthetic stimulation -- and a real 'complete control'. Control over interviews, for instance, as opposed to walking blindly with no idea of what is to be communicated. Artists and the press are drawn together and drawn apart by excesses of either out-of-hand emotion or reserved, unbudging function (it's just a job, man). People's expectations are lovelessly manipulated in the press -- without any understanding of just exactly what we're all supposed to expect from new rock bands, and what they expect from their potential audience. Above all, any new band trying and testing things outside all the ususal, used structures, images, reasons, and reactions, deserves not to be massively 'built up' -- whether through misplaced enthusiasm or muddled hype. SP: "We don't want to go into any tedious attempt at grand plans and strategies. Our way of going through the Rock Biz is very much bit by bit. It's of no use to anyone if the same old chat, the same old justification are trotted out. "The rock press really fails to take any account of their own position." An eager and not over-educated Scritti Politti. Three or four young musicians from various parts of the country, now centred in London, living in a squat, (no great shakes, they say). They don't need to be spoilt by any squashed image of each or all of them. They're activley concerned with establishing some way of working with rather than through the press, the companies, the promoters. A public language rather than image. SP: "We don't think there's a great deal of use in personal biographies."
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MEET SCRITTI Politti: three or four young musicians (one is a floating member),
and equally important, a large circle of close friends who provide help,
disruption, money for drinks, encouragement and criticism.