What happens when a seemingly larger than life character gets together with several of the brightest young Scottish musical talents of the day? You get the birth of indie music as we know it....
The incredible thing about all of this, is that the record label at the heart of this, Postcard Records, was been and done in two years; never had a hit single; and almost no-one has heard of them forty years later.
Alan Horne was not a particularly rock n roll looking figure, but he was a punk rocker with big ambitions. As John Carney notes;
"Postcard patron Alan Horne liked to boast that he was the first young person, the first out-and-out fan, the first punk rocker, to start up a label. Pre-Postcard all the influential independents were run by people already part of the music industry or media. There were some fine labels, but nothing to feel part of. Paul Morley wrote: “Horne almost goes out of his way to retain punk’s original arrogance. These days his attitude is refreshingly spiteful and unimpressed. He’s been let down a lot. His arrogance comes from a love for pop music and its importance."
The ambition bit is important, he established the label, not to be some sort of obscure cult, but to produce post-punk pop hits. He even stole / adapted the Motown motto for his own - 'The Sound Of Young Scotland'.
THE BANDS:
The label was defined by just four groups who released barely a dozen singles (and one solitary album) between them.
Orange Juice
It all started in 1980 with the Edwyn Collins fronted Orange Juice's single Falling And Laughing, recorded in December 1979 and released in February of the following year. They began their life in the north Glasgow suburb of Bearsden in 1976, as the Nu-Sonics. By 1979 they had become Orange Juice, and their jangly guitar and light lyrics set them well apart from most of their post-punk contemporaries, like Joy Division. In fact, they managed to unite quite a few disparate genres into their sound, like country, disco and punk. They would eventually release two albums, influence bands as diverse as Haircut 100 and The Smiths, and split up in 1985.
Orange Juice: Laughing And Falling (Live on BBCs Something Else, 1981 - what a bass line)
Josef K
Providing a darker tone, Josef K hailed from Edinburgh, consisting of Paul Haig, Ronnie Torrance, Malcolm Ross and Gary McCormack (later replaced by David Weddell). They lasted from 1979 to 1982, and took their name from the main character in Kafka's The Trial. They had put out a single in late 1979, on Absolute Records (ironically run by Orange Juice's Steven Daly, before joining Postcard the following year, where they would release four singles and the labels one album. Haig would later comment that, "He [Horne] never really liked us and I didn't get on with him. He just needed to pad out the label."
Josef K: Radio Drill Time (Audio only)
Aztec Camera
Aztec Camera revolved around the prodigious teenage talent that was Roddy Frame, coming out of East Kilbride in 1980. They released a cassette only compilation on local Pungent Records, before coming to the attention of Horne and releasing just one single with him, 1981s Just Like Gold.
Aztec Camera: Just Like Gold (Audio only)
The Go-Betweens
Perhaps the oddest one of the four, as Robert Forster and Grant McLennan had travelled all the way from Brisbane, like many other Australian bands of the time, to try and crack the British market. They somehow found themselves in Glasgow in early 1980 recording a single for Postcard, which featured OJs Steven Daly on drums and production by Alex Fergusson (of London punks, Alternative TV). I Need Two Heads would make it to number six on the UK indie chart, but unlike Orange Juice and Aztec Camera who ultimately did break the main charts, they would never quite achieve the commercial success they deserved.
The Go-Betweens: I Need Two Heads (Audio only)
Not Much Of A Rise, And A Swift Fall
That Postcard debut single, Falling And Laughing was paid for by Horne and Collins and bassist David McClymont of Orange Juice. It came out in February 1980 and didn't even trouble the Top40 of the indie chart.
One early positive for the label though, was that Horne has somehow managed to negotiate a very good deal Geoff Travis, for distribution through his Rough Trade label, getting a very impressive 85:15 sales split.
Horne had an interesting way of marketing his new protégés. He pitched up one day outside the BBC radio studios where the iconic John Peel broadcast from. Getting right in Peel's face with a copy of this debut single, he allegedly told him, "All these Manchester and Liverpool bands you play; It's all a nice bore. You need to wise up, old man. Forget all that Bunnymen and Teardrops shit. This [Falling And Laughing] is the future. Get wise to it now or you're ging to look really stupid."
Incredibly enough, Peel did actually play the song later that day, remarking how it had been foist upon him by some "horrible, truculent youth!"
Tensions seem to have been a regular part of the set up. Roddy Frame, from very working class East Kilbride, was not all that impressed with what he saw as the posh boys - Horne and Collins - who would apparently make jokes about eating "peasant food" when out in the local cafes. It also seems apparent that he was probably signed because of his young age (16) and how good that looked, as Horne wasn't much of a fan of the music.
But as mentioned earlier, Horne had dreamed of Postcard becoming some sort of indie Motown label, churning out multiple hits. But of the dozen singles that ended up released, only half made the Indie chart Top10, and none troubled the main charts anywhere. Collins was in it for the success too, but came to realise that he was being held back by the small scale and limited budget of the operation.
Douglas MacIntyre (of Creeping Bent Records) notes two major issues that were holding the label back; "Alan was never a people person" (see John Peel anecdote) and the distribution set up was such that, "Rough Trade were never going to deliver Top40 service."
Things may have turned for the better, because in 1981, Horne was trying to get the licence to distribute O Superman by avant-garde New Yorker, Laurie Anderson. Postcard didn't get it, and it would become a surprise UK number two.
As it is, Mattress Of Wire by Aztec Camera came out in August 1981, becoming the labels last release. Orange Juice would move on to Polydor, Aztec Camera to Rough Trade, Josef K split up - and Postcard was done (The Go-Betweens, for the record, would turn up on Rough Trade and Beggars Banquet over the years).
Aztec Camera: Mattress Of Wire (Roddy Frame plays it live in Germany, 2015)
Horne would set up Swamplands records, distributed via London Records, which put out eight singles between 1984-85, by the likes of Paul Quinn and Patti Palladin. There would also be a brief resurrection of Postcard in the 1990s, when he would put out a few records and compilations by Quinn, Orange Juice and punk veteran Vic Godard (Subway Sect).
Was it really the birth of indie?
Well, clearly the concept of independent record labels was nothing new, but is there an argument that Postcard, and its measly handful of unsuccessful singles, really gave birth to the type of music that we would later strongly identify as being 'indie'? Yes... and maybe no.
It's all bit subjective, but there are indeed strong links between these few records in early 80s Glasgow and much of what would form the bases of that mid-to-late 80s indie scene.
The Guardian points out that these bands "became accidental architects for much of what would later become known as indie pop." This was all in the jangle of the guitars, the lyrics and the art-school attitude - which were all a strange fit with the Glasgow scene of the time, marked by violence and alcohol.
Josef K's dark and funky approach paved the way for the Wedding Present, and later on, Franz Ferdinand. While Orange Juice's purer pop sensibilities influenced the likes of Teenage Fanclub - and arguably what would become known as the C86 Movement. This came from a cassette of guitar based music given away with the NME in 1986, full of those jangly guitars and power pop tunes. It included bands like The Might Lemon Drops, The Pastels and The Shop Assistants, not to mention an early version of Primal Scream.
The irony of the C86 bands, is that many of them were happy, almost willing, to be no more than cult indie bands - an attitude that would have been unthinkable to those Postcard artists, who were all about the pop and the success.
The Mighty Lemon Drops: Happy Head (Live from the Very Rare Indeed EP - a good excuse to play the Drops)
The Herald, when discussing Simon Goddard's 2014 book, Simply Thrilled: The Preposterous Story of Postcard Records, said, "Imagine for a moment that Postcard Records had never existed; that label boss Alan Horne never met Edwyn Collins; that Orange Juice never got beyond Bearsden Academy; that Roddy Frame never got out of East Kilbride."
Would there have been a difference?
"Would Scotland have managed to be so central to British pop in the 1980s? Would indie music have developed the way it did? And, the biggest question of all, would Glasgow matter to anyone beyond the G40 postcode."
It is all hypothetical anyway, and a touch overblown - because while it seems clear there is a strong link and bond with much of what follows, it is probably a touch disingenuous to say that none of it would have happened without those twelve Postcard singles.
But the foundation it laid was clear, as Douglas MacIntyre (who was actually there) puts puts it, "When Postcard first started, it really did feel like it was the first good thing that had ever happened in Scotland to my ears in terms of being directly influenced by punk."
And Goddard is happy to link these foundations to what would follow. "In 1980, indie music didn't exist as a concept. In a way, Postcard was the Book of Genesis of what would become indie music in the 1980s."
If nothing else, as MacIntyre notes, it created a buzz and got Glasgow on the UK music map. "It was through Postcard and the hype it created in the London music press that suddenly A&R men began to take Glasgow seriously as a place to find bands. Postcard and Orange Juice were the ones that shook the bottle."
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