This week's literary headline...

TURN OF THE SCRITS

-- Sounds, December 8, 1979

Scritti Politti are the Henry James of rock says DAVE McCULLOUGH

THE JOURNALIST

A PHONE conversation.

Me: "I really like Scritti Politti, yeah, there's definitely something about that band, there's real kind of spirit there..."

Other voice: "Yeah, it's like Green's voice, every time I hear 'Confidence' I feel like crying..."

Me: "I'd never have expected them to do something as downright commercial as that."

Other voice: "They sort of remind me of Robert Wyatt, Hatfield and the North, do you remember them?..."

Me: "Yeah! There's definitely that kind of folkiness in Green's voice..."

Other voice: "How did you get on with them?"

Me: "Aw, it was good. But...the trouble was we found we agreed on so many basic important things it ended up quite bland. We both tried to start an argument, but we couldn't."

Other voice: "Yeah, they're very wary, very careful about what they say, it's amazing they're so careful..."

The day after I've spoken with Green, Tom and Nial of Scritti Politti I feel unsure and hesitant about writing something on them, how to begin and shape whatever I want to say, how to avoid traps, how to assimilate what they said to me, how to match that diligence of thought and manner with my own particular style of writing.

But to begin: if parallels between r'n'r and literature are useful, and I don't see why they shouldn't be, then Scritti Politti must be Henry James. Scritti, you see, are difficult, intricate, fastidious (most of all fastidious in fact), in a way impenetrable, coy, intense and scrupulously honest.

In a way they strike you as being obsessive towards their rock and roll and in a way they strike you more as being totally realistic towards it, like they don't want to lose grip of what they feel they truthfully SHOULD be doing. They live their art every single second of every single day.

I visited Scritti Politti, peculiarly enough, almost precisely one year after I first did a feature on them in Sounds. I liked them THEN because of a startling, enigmatic first DIY single, 'Skank Bloc Bologna', on their own St Pancras label, and they struck harder than the average THEN in a vague, impressionistic way, as if a spirit came through in what they said to me, a spirit of something special.

A year later I saw them on the Red Crayola support tour, and I liked them though I remember I wrote something about them having 'too many friends, too many reasons for losing touch with their reality' which never got in print.

Nothing was heard until much later in the year when they surfaced as support to the Fall at the Peter Purvis YMCA gig in London, where obviously half-crippled by one of lead singer Green's seemingly interminable illnesses, they played what was quite candidly, probably the best set I've seen this whole year.

Around 20 minutes of weaving, skanking, startling music, tight and solid and memorable, a rich original sound, that seemed to attack you with something real and tangible that I hadn't witnessed at a gig for ages and ages, namely pure emotional force. It came in great big WAVES to the back of the hall, the feeling made all that more special by the enforced brevity of the set.

A month later and the band send me a tape of newly recorded material which is to go out on two singles any time and which, again, is stunning, and so I step along to their Carol Street lodgings in dingy Camden Town, and we talk and talk and they tell me they want to help me use the space in Sounds to say something 'useful', 'worthwhile' and different to the stock pop press banter, and we all agree to push and push and TRY.

THE PROBLEMS

SCRITTI'S VIEWS and my own views merge, I think, on the main issues, namely that we both consider ourselves in opposition to the Music Biz (as an offshoot of Show Biz). Where they differ from mine is I think in technique.

Scritti Politti have a fastidious CONSCIOUS sense of alternative reasoning, they talk about 'responsibilities', they suggest that five-hour-long interviews over five nights a week might have made this article more profitable for everybody concerned, whereas my attitude is I think less calculated, less planned, more balanced by the necessities of time-space, of preventing a loss of perspective, of juggling so many eggs to keep this paltry little D. McC show going.

What I'm talking about is the fineries of interpretation, and I think it's much more useful initially to illustrate the differences between Scritti's attitudes and my own in terms of 'telling you who the band are and why I think they are worth this Sounds-space', than diving into a routine, detached count-down on the band.

In fact, that latter route would be the worst thing I could do, because it would neatly 'ghetto-ise' the band, dump them into 'another weirdo-type band', another 'Dave McCullough-type band', meaningless category.

Much more to the point is the fact that Scritti Politti are the only band EVER to request to see my copy on them before it's printed. They did it before and they're doing it again. Apart from the Fall, who take care with photographs and record company 'favours' (paid trips to interview them etc) or Crass, who in polite and friendly manner recently did the unheard-of by declining Sounds coverage (which I loved, incidentally), Scritti Politti are the only band I've ever confronted who take actual, physical CARE of themselves and in doing so reveal a kind of wary integrity.

Three bands out of every three hundred? Yup, and like the Fall, Scritti have the musical force to parallel their fastidious attitudes, and both that music and those ideological stances have in the year since I last visited Carol Street gone through what we'll call...

THE CHANGES

CH CH CH change change! Keep on learning and moving forward, that's the central feature of the last twelve months for Scritti Politti. Before, they struck me as interesting but a little placid perhaps, a little stationary and comfortably revolutionary. Green puts the new approach like this: "The new ideals are much more to do with dealing with specific problems here and now...it's a bit like a parallel with a political decision. It's the kind of person who thinks the revolution is coming, and that's what we've got to fight for, so we can gear everything we do today to the revolution. We go around agitating, militating, you go without this and that because you think historically you're heading in the right direction towards the revolution, which is parallel to what we originally thought.

"The other way of thinking about it is much more a 'jam today' situation. 'Here we are, we're being shit all over left right and centre,' and the focus for us is now much more on that as opposed to the 'golden tomorrow'. There's much less thinking 'what it would be like', and much more thinking about today. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not the 'glorious future', but NOW...it's to do with making sure we're not kidding ourselves and not kidding anybody else..."

So the Scrit's emphasis is on attack, the kind of attack that clearly came across in one form or another at the YMCA gig, the attack that bristles throughout the new music, as we shall soon see.

Green again: "The important point about this swift move away from being so idealistic is that it did harden us up. It didn't mean that we retreated to any extent, it just meant that in some senses, you know, 'cut the idealistic cackle and sort the problems out.'"

Two problems of which appeared and were resolved earlier this year; one, the sickness which eventually floored all three band members for a time, the other, as Green reflects, was less easily resolved.

"The thing was at the time, after the Red Crayola tour, I'd just recovered from pneumonia, that was around June or something, and we booked a fair bit of time in the studio with a view to recording something, but because we didn't have too much money, because of the pressures on us, we fouled it up. Which meant that just about everything we recorded was rubbish, it just didn't work. We salvaged some of it, and did our second Peel session. A lot of people thought it was good, including Rough Trade (and including ourselves), so we thought we'd put out some stuff, but we didn't have the money..."

Thus followed what Tom described as 'an extension of the support we'd had from Rough Trade in the past', the fruits of which shall soon appear in the form of a twelve and a seven inch singles, from the Rough Trade/St Pancras collaboration, both of which, as Nial says of the way the Raincoats often affect him live, just CARVE ME UP! So onwards, past the cackle to...

THE MUSIC

THE KIND of euphoria that Scritti Politti's new stuff will unfailingly generate is best estimated by that phone conversation at the start, where two strangers rapped frantically at each other for the best part of fifteen minutes over its merits. The two choice items are likely to need re-pressing, which could mean the pair shall have to await release after Christmas, but no matter, each is worth hibernating until then for.

The twelve inch boasts 'Confidence', a touching, strictly orthodox mid-paced piece. A strange move, one would have thought, for the band that said to me last time that after 'Skank Bloc' their music could well drift into darker, more complex areas.

'Confidence' in a way brings all the prominent Scritti influences together. There's still that loose, brusque Tom-Nial rhythm section chopping out a pure concrete bass, hinting at jazz and chiefly reggae influences, above which Green's wonderful voice and guitar playing presents a genuinely original focal-point, making me think of rock-based folk influences, like Richard Thompson, or other great obscure voices like Robert Wyatt or Hatfield and the North (now THERE'S a strange one) or Family.

Green reacts to my surprise at the commercial slant of the new material. I'd never have expected it: "No, a lot of people didn't, and I think that's quite interesting. 'Confidence' is about being stuck in a personal relationship, because it's the only space you can be yourself. People only confide in the people they live with, they wouldn't DREAM of telling their mates..."

'Messthetics' is self-explanatory, in part attacking higher education, featuring what sounds like a backing vocal chant of 'UCCA UCCA UCCA' (the system that battery-hen-like allocates students to universities).

The seven inch single also includes 'Scritlocks Door', which leaves you in no doubt concerning Scritti Politti's current ATTACKING idealism:

"the problem at hand at Scritlock's door/the issue on your airway/because out in the world the beatie groups and the market forces play/no wishing, no arty, no grab-it-and-run/will rid us of this disease/it lays down the laws the will and the wants and it fucks up liberties..."

Fighting stuff, but what does it all mean, what about...

THE EFFECT

THAT'S EASY, and then again it isn't. Scritti Politti are one of the most vital and subversive/alternative forces in the music scene, with a vastness of mind and spirit, and a vastness of music, to match the vastness of their ideals. This is a VERY hot 1980's band is what I'm trying to say, this is THE beat! Nothing is distorted, everything is confronted.

I have trouble writing about them because they're so tight, so attentive to detail. You wanted advice, Scrits? Maybe you should loosen up a little, count more on spirits and chance. That's the REAL nitti gritti!