Cut'n'Paste Style
25th March 2020
This is a blog to exorcise my ghosts of being a journalist. It may cover music, football, photography, walking. Either all...or none.
The first post is an interview with my friend from Portree High who started up Skye's first music fanzine with his brother in the 1980s. It may or not form part of a future book about music in the islands.....
The Battle of the Braes (in cut’n’paste style)…….An interview with Andy Goddard, TV & Film Director…………………………07/02/2020
What first inspired you (and Simon) to start a fanzine in the back of beyond?
As I recall, you rolled the first pebble and suggested we start a fanzine called ‘Meat Cleaver’. I think we ran with that title for 15 minutes until I rejected it on the grounds of being too Goth. Some time after that the impetus ran out of steam. But you’d sown the first seed and the idea of making a fanzine wouldn’t quite go away. When I pitched it to Simon it became a recurring topic of conversation. We’d caught the bug and it was a chance to dig deeper into our love of music and music journalism. From then the ‘zine idea took shape again and ‘Jingles the Creep’ was born.
Was being in Skye a help or hindrance to that process?
We were only limited by our imagination and in that dept there was an unbridled belief - almost arrogance - that the whole world was poised to read our purple prose. Had we grown up in Hammersmith I doubt we would’ve had quite the same drive. The comparative isolation of Skye gave us an extra charge: a kind of desperate yearning to connect with the wider popular culture and, by extension, escape.
So no different from a million teenagers growing up, but a rural landscape reminds you of how distanced you are from the things that inspire you. That disconnect lights a fire under your passions - an almost angry kind of energy - and makes you push harder to reach those goals. In that respect, Skye was a help. We may have been less galvanized - more lazy - had we grown up in the city with easier access to record shops and gig venues.
Then again, living on a northerly island was also a hindrance in the unbearable time it took for mail to reach us from London or further afield. This was pre internet and the Royal Mail was the lifeline that linked us to the exciting world of music culture and all things cool. I remember the expectation of seeing the postie van appear over the hill in Braes and the sinking disappointment when no fanzine mail was delivered.
Was there a deliberate push against the ceilidh band mentality of the Highlands?
I think you inevitably push against tradition as a teenager. Ceilidh music stood at a polar outpost of the music spectrum I never wanted to visit. Jimmy Shand was hardly Joe Strummer. But I don’t recall hating it, I suppose it was never threatening to me in the same way biscuit-factory pop or poodle-perm arena rock - SAW, Bon Jovi etc - dominated the mainstream and subsumed the indie culture. At least, that’s how I viewed the state of play through my teen blinkers back in the Eighties. Hilarious in hindsight; a militant indignation that Tiffany had blanket radio approval and Einsturzende Neubauten didn’t! But I didn’t hate ceilidh culture, I’ve always found that Brigadoon schtick vaguely comforting. A sort of guilty pleasure.
There’s a rich history within the indie sphere of artists leaning into the trad and couthie and playing with those juxtapositions - think of Postcard Records or Jessie Rae - and I feel that may have a lot do with its weird appeal. There was always something unavoidably tartan and bagpipey about Big Country. Dunfermline Athletic walk onto the pitch at East End Park to ‘Into the Valley’ by Skids and the crowd ebb away post match to Jimmy Shand’s ‘Bluebell Polka’. The fact these apparently twee aspects of the culture you’re trying to escape are braided into the culture you want to embrace is an endless source of fascination. When you’re young you think life is black-and-white and moves in a straight line. You learn over time it’s more circular and grey - always shapeshifting - and even the most polarized opposites are somehow connected. I think the truly great artists explore these counterpoints - think of Brian Eno or Damon Albarn - and those that don’t are entertainers rather than artists - trading on repetition in a monoculture - like Liam Gallagher.
The last word on ceilidh? I’m now the proud owner of a button accordion - never played - and Jimmy Shand’s relentless tour diary would have broken the hardest of metal bands. Never judge a book by its cover.
Were people surprised Camustianavaig was a font of indie knowledge of the ‘80s?
I think most people have never heard of Camustianavaig. John Peel was quite enchanted that a punky indie zine was being produced on the Isle of Skye. I think that was our USP. We just weren’t smart enough to monopolize on that. We wanted to be the NME.
Did you sell many/any in Skye itself?
Not many, it was mostly mail order relying on small ads in the music press and DJ shout-outs on the radio. We expected an endorsement from Peel would boost sales. How wrong we were; kudos far outweighed commerce. Here was another example of Skye being a hindrance, the local avenues of stocking and selling the fanzine were limited - no record shops - salesmanship was never our strong point.
Any media coverage?
Muriel Gray was tickled by the title of one of our compilation cassettes, ‘Dougie
Donnelly’s Robot Pants’ and gave us a nod in the papers: Glasgow Herald or Daily Record, I can’t remember. Would anyone south of the border even know who Dougie Donnelly is - then or now? - and god knows what kind of fever dream threw up that title? Maybe we were playing around with Costello style wordplay or Bowie-ish cut-up techniques? I was incredibly pretentious as a Skye teenager. Peter Easton of Beat Patrol on BBC Radio Scotland was always good to us and would often big-up ‘Jingles’ and its accompanying tapes on the Scottish airwaves. He even played our Close Lobsters track. The highlight was John Peel. He marveled at the Skye connection and called us ‘very enterprising’.
I think it was ‘85/’86 that you did this – how was the technology then?
This was pre internet so no email or social media. No cellphones. Royal Mail was our sine qua non. Sometimes we would use our mum and dad’s land-line telephone. I remember phoning Portsmouth punks Red Letter Day and trying to coax them up north to play the Skye Gathering Hall based on little more than thinking it might be a good idea. No money or booking agent or venue liaison. We were just kids buying into the mythology promised by the NME and all our favorite records.
I’m sure if there are teens out there today growing up on Skye, Benbecula or Shetland - with the same insatiable ambition to connect with the world outside - they’ll just be a few clicks away from sharing Tweets with someone in Wisconsin or producing a website or digi-zine. Compared to these dot com whizz kids we were troglodytes armed with sellotape and Sharpie pens. Very analogue. We even used a typewriter to bang out our state-of-the-nation polemic. No PCs or laptops. The smell of Tipp-Ex corrective fluid is a presiding memory from those days.
You did a couple of compilation cassettes, how did they come about?
We expanded our enterprise... haha! We always loved flexi discs and musical giveaways in the music press and the tapes were our crude way of grabbing a piece of this pie. The cassettes became Simon’s labour of love. I was always opinionated about the covers and layout and we’d spend long summer days over Fanta and bacon crisps debating the track listing. But the mechanics of making the damn things very much became his pet project.
I think we began ‘by ‘dubbing’ them ourselves or keeping a master copy and doing a tape-to-tape as/when demand came in. We eventually sourced cheap blank cassettes in bulk and would knock up copies and labour over stickers and typeface - again, Simon’s patience outranked mine - it became quite monotonous and labor intensive ‘mass producing’ these compilations even though we hardly broke into the hundreds. Alan Sugar would fire us in a heartbeat. Peelie may have called us ‘enterprising’ but we never made a dime. Just kids.
The sound quality on the first tape was poor but we improved - thanks to Simon - with further issues of ‘Jingles’. We even gave away a vinyl seven-inch on one occasion. A band called The Sun who sounded like a kind of Cure-Lite circa ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ kindly have us a joblot of sevens to shift. Looking back, maybe they’d split up? But we were thrilled and felt we now had the chops to take on ZigZag and Melody Maker!
Did you sell many?
I could sell you a line and create a myth but, honestly, I doubt we sold more than 40-50 over all three editions. I’m probably being generous too. We sent batches of up to a half-dozen to a Glasgow record store to stock. I can’t vouch for the success of sales there but I don’t recall retail cheques appearing through our letterbox. The tapes sold better, hardly surprising since we were presenting something tangible - music - rather than adolescent ramblings and lists of our favourite things.
When you were doing the ‘zines, did you entertain ambitions of rock’n’roll debauchery yourself?
I naively (arrogantly) thought it would set me up for a life as a London rock ‘n’ roll scribe hanging out with the punk literati. I probably thought I was Skye’s answer to Lester Bangs and that ‘Jingles’ would be my entree to a life in the fast lane. I’d soon be propping up a bar in Fitzrovia drinking absinthe with Nick Kent swapping war stories about touring with The Damned. I think perhaps secretly I felt fanzine culture would be some kind of stepping stone towards the Holy Grail of actually joining a band - regardless of my abject laziness and lack of talent in the presence of musical instruments. C’est la vie.
Tell me the highlight of that period, and was there anybody or band you really wanted to interview, but didn’t manage to?
John Peel’s patronage was definitely the highlight. The Peel show on BBC radio was a mecca for the punk/indie music we loved. Like God giving us a lofty thumbs-up it was the apex of that time. That aside, and with the advantage of age, I can see now the real highlight was the process of actually doing it: the journey. It was a teenage passion that became a hobby-horse and an obsession and, perhaps towards the end, a bit of a chore. It was really just a way of orbiting the things you loved - all that great music - and finding ways to connect to it when you’re at that impressionable age. I’m kind of proud we at least did something creative with our time and didn’t waste those Skye summers in telly-watching inertia.
The ones that got away? The ace in the holes we never interviewed? I guess any member of The Clash. Significantly Joe Strummer who was revered as a demigod back then. Strange to think a memorial forest in his name now stands on Raasay within view of Camustianavaig. Again, those curveball connections you don’t expect. Who else? Adam Ant would’ve been a coup for me - I was always a closet pirate! - and John Lydon was and is always good interview value for shits and giggles.
It was the age of a real outpouring of Scottish Indie music (Close Lobsters/Primals/Shoppies etc). Did you try and tap into that?
Yes, definitely. Though I nurtured a love-hate thing with the Scottish scene - biting the hand that feeds! - I loved the more abrasive sound of the Shop Assistants but the early Scream we’re lost on me and I loathed the twee-ness of Strawberry Switchblade, Tallulah Gosh et al. But the buzz about Scotland and Scottish bands at that time definitely gave us a push and a sense of entitlement to crank a fanzine out into the world. We gave column inches to The Big Gun from Irvine whose single ‘Heard About Love’ is one of the great underrated Scottish indie gems of the Eighties. The Tremens from Glasgow also graced our pages with their auld Scots lunatic asylum punk. We were thrilled to get Close Lobsters on our tape compilations and I even see they’ve reformed. Again, the circle of life. The past catches up with you in ways you don’t expect.
Finally – who was better, Suspect Device or Leapfrog the Dog!? (as a refresher, I’ll end with a quote from a certain R. MacKenzie esq. ref Suspect Device ‘We were kind of jealous you had a band going. But the music was shite’. Critically harsh methinks, but ultimately fair….
Back in the day I’d have a forthright opinion on this but now I guess I look back and acknowledge we were all kids carving out our identities by being creative. I can’t even remember what Leapfrog the Dog sounded like - just that they’re named after an Adam Ant lyric - I think the demo tape designs came before the music. Very Malcolm McLaren. I think I always harbored a secret desire to play maracas at the back for Suspect Device. Anything to be a part of the scene and stay connected to music. I guess in lieu of that - or throwing shapes like Bez - the fanzine was how I found my voice and made my own ‘sound’.
The first post is an interview with my friend from Portree High who started up Skye's first music fanzine with his brother in the 1980s. It may or not form part of a future book about music in the islands.....
The Battle of the Braes (in cut’n’paste style)…….An interview with Andy Goddard, TV & Film Director…………………………07/02/2020
What first inspired you (and Simon) to start a fanzine in the back of beyond?
As I recall, you rolled the first pebble and suggested we start a fanzine called ‘Meat Cleaver’. I think we ran with that title for 15 minutes until I rejected it on the grounds of being too Goth. Some time after that the impetus ran out of steam. But you’d sown the first seed and the idea of making a fanzine wouldn’t quite go away. When I pitched it to Simon it became a recurring topic of conversation. We’d caught the bug and it was a chance to dig deeper into our love of music and music journalism. From then the ‘zine idea took shape again and ‘Jingles the Creep’ was born.
Was being in Skye a help or hindrance to that process?
We were only limited by our imagination and in that dept there was an unbridled belief - almost arrogance - that the whole world was poised to read our purple prose. Had we grown up in Hammersmith I doubt we would’ve had quite the same drive. The comparative isolation of Skye gave us an extra charge: a kind of desperate yearning to connect with the wider popular culture and, by extension, escape.
So no different from a million teenagers growing up, but a rural landscape reminds you of how distanced you are from the things that inspire you. That disconnect lights a fire under your passions - an almost angry kind of energy - and makes you push harder to reach those goals. In that respect, Skye was a help. We may have been less galvanized - more lazy - had we grown up in the city with easier access to record shops and gig venues.
Then again, living on a northerly island was also a hindrance in the unbearable time it took for mail to reach us from London or further afield. This was pre internet and the Royal Mail was the lifeline that linked us to the exciting world of music culture and all things cool. I remember the expectation of seeing the postie van appear over the hill in Braes and the sinking disappointment when no fanzine mail was delivered.
Was there a deliberate push against the ceilidh band mentality of the Highlands?
I think you inevitably push against tradition as a teenager. Ceilidh music stood at a polar outpost of the music spectrum I never wanted to visit. Jimmy Shand was hardly Joe Strummer. But I don’t recall hating it, I suppose it was never threatening to me in the same way biscuit-factory pop or poodle-perm arena rock - SAW, Bon Jovi etc - dominated the mainstream and subsumed the indie culture. At least, that’s how I viewed the state of play through my teen blinkers back in the Eighties. Hilarious in hindsight; a militant indignation that Tiffany had blanket radio approval and Einsturzende Neubauten didn’t! But I didn’t hate ceilidh culture, I’ve always found that Brigadoon schtick vaguely comforting. A sort of guilty pleasure.
There’s a rich history within the indie sphere of artists leaning into the trad and couthie and playing with those juxtapositions - think of Postcard Records or Jessie Rae - and I feel that may have a lot do with its weird appeal. There was always something unavoidably tartan and bagpipey about Big Country. Dunfermline Athletic walk onto the pitch at East End Park to ‘Into the Valley’ by Skids and the crowd ebb away post match to Jimmy Shand’s ‘Bluebell Polka’. The fact these apparently twee aspects of the culture you’re trying to escape are braided into the culture you want to embrace is an endless source of fascination. When you’re young you think life is black-and-white and moves in a straight line. You learn over time it’s more circular and grey - always shapeshifting - and even the most polarized opposites are somehow connected. I think the truly great artists explore these counterpoints - think of Brian Eno or Damon Albarn - and those that don’t are entertainers rather than artists - trading on repetition in a monoculture - like Liam Gallagher.
The last word on ceilidh? I’m now the proud owner of a button accordion - never played - and Jimmy Shand’s relentless tour diary would have broken the hardest of metal bands. Never judge a book by its cover.
Were people surprised Camustianavaig was a font of indie knowledge of the ‘80s?
I think most people have never heard of Camustianavaig. John Peel was quite enchanted that a punky indie zine was being produced on the Isle of Skye. I think that was our USP. We just weren’t smart enough to monopolize on that. We wanted to be the NME.
Did you sell many/any in Skye itself?
Not many, it was mostly mail order relying on small ads in the music press and DJ shout-outs on the radio. We expected an endorsement from Peel would boost sales. How wrong we were; kudos far outweighed commerce. Here was another example of Skye being a hindrance, the local avenues of stocking and selling the fanzine were limited - no record shops - salesmanship was never our strong point.
Any media coverage?
Muriel Gray was tickled by the title of one of our compilation cassettes, ‘Dougie
Donnelly’s Robot Pants’ and gave us a nod in the papers: Glasgow Herald or Daily Record, I can’t remember. Would anyone south of the border even know who Dougie Donnelly is - then or now? - and god knows what kind of fever dream threw up that title? Maybe we were playing around with Costello style wordplay or Bowie-ish cut-up techniques? I was incredibly pretentious as a Skye teenager. Peter Easton of Beat Patrol on BBC Radio Scotland was always good to us and would often big-up ‘Jingles’ and its accompanying tapes on the Scottish airwaves. He even played our Close Lobsters track. The highlight was John Peel. He marveled at the Skye connection and called us ‘very enterprising’.
I think it was ‘85/’86 that you did this – how was the technology then?
This was pre internet so no email or social media. No cellphones. Royal Mail was our sine qua non. Sometimes we would use our mum and dad’s land-line telephone. I remember phoning Portsmouth punks Red Letter Day and trying to coax them up north to play the Skye Gathering Hall based on little more than thinking it might be a good idea. No money or booking agent or venue liaison. We were just kids buying into the mythology promised by the NME and all our favorite records.
I’m sure if there are teens out there today growing up on Skye, Benbecula or Shetland - with the same insatiable ambition to connect with the world outside - they’ll just be a few clicks away from sharing Tweets with someone in Wisconsin or producing a website or digi-zine. Compared to these dot com whizz kids we were troglodytes armed with sellotape and Sharpie pens. Very analogue. We even used a typewriter to bang out our state-of-the-nation polemic. No PCs or laptops. The smell of Tipp-Ex corrective fluid is a presiding memory from those days.
You did a couple of compilation cassettes, how did they come about?
We expanded our enterprise... haha! We always loved flexi discs and musical giveaways in the music press and the tapes were our crude way of grabbing a piece of this pie. The cassettes became Simon’s labour of love. I was always opinionated about the covers and layout and we’d spend long summer days over Fanta and bacon crisps debating the track listing. But the mechanics of making the damn things very much became his pet project.
I think we began ‘by ‘dubbing’ them ourselves or keeping a master copy and doing a tape-to-tape as/when demand came in. We eventually sourced cheap blank cassettes in bulk and would knock up copies and labour over stickers and typeface - again, Simon’s patience outranked mine - it became quite monotonous and labor intensive ‘mass producing’ these compilations even though we hardly broke into the hundreds. Alan Sugar would fire us in a heartbeat. Peelie may have called us ‘enterprising’ but we never made a dime. Just kids.
The sound quality on the first tape was poor but we improved - thanks to Simon - with further issues of ‘Jingles’. We even gave away a vinyl seven-inch on one occasion. A band called The Sun who sounded like a kind of Cure-Lite circa ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ kindly have us a joblot of sevens to shift. Looking back, maybe they’d split up? But we were thrilled and felt we now had the chops to take on ZigZag and Melody Maker!
Did you sell many?
I could sell you a line and create a myth but, honestly, I doubt we sold more than 40-50 over all three editions. I’m probably being generous too. We sent batches of up to a half-dozen to a Glasgow record store to stock. I can’t vouch for the success of sales there but I don’t recall retail cheques appearing through our letterbox. The tapes sold better, hardly surprising since we were presenting something tangible - music - rather than adolescent ramblings and lists of our favourite things.
When you were doing the ‘zines, did you entertain ambitions of rock’n’roll debauchery yourself?
I naively (arrogantly) thought it would set me up for a life as a London rock ‘n’ roll scribe hanging out with the punk literati. I probably thought I was Skye’s answer to Lester Bangs and that ‘Jingles’ would be my entree to a life in the fast lane. I’d soon be propping up a bar in Fitzrovia drinking absinthe with Nick Kent swapping war stories about touring with The Damned. I think perhaps secretly I felt fanzine culture would be some kind of stepping stone towards the Holy Grail of actually joining a band - regardless of my abject laziness and lack of talent in the presence of musical instruments. C’est la vie.
Tell me the highlight of that period, and was there anybody or band you really wanted to interview, but didn’t manage to?
John Peel’s patronage was definitely the highlight. The Peel show on BBC radio was a mecca for the punk/indie music we loved. Like God giving us a lofty thumbs-up it was the apex of that time. That aside, and with the advantage of age, I can see now the real highlight was the process of actually doing it: the journey. It was a teenage passion that became a hobby-horse and an obsession and, perhaps towards the end, a bit of a chore. It was really just a way of orbiting the things you loved - all that great music - and finding ways to connect to it when you’re at that impressionable age. I’m kind of proud we at least did something creative with our time and didn’t waste those Skye summers in telly-watching inertia.
The ones that got away? The ace in the holes we never interviewed? I guess any member of The Clash. Significantly Joe Strummer who was revered as a demigod back then. Strange to think a memorial forest in his name now stands on Raasay within view of Camustianavaig. Again, those curveball connections you don’t expect. Who else? Adam Ant would’ve been a coup for me - I was always a closet pirate! - and John Lydon was and is always good interview value for shits and giggles.
It was the age of a real outpouring of Scottish Indie music (Close Lobsters/Primals/Shoppies etc). Did you try and tap into that?
Yes, definitely. Though I nurtured a love-hate thing with the Scottish scene - biting the hand that feeds! - I loved the more abrasive sound of the Shop Assistants but the early Scream we’re lost on me and I loathed the twee-ness of Strawberry Switchblade, Tallulah Gosh et al. But the buzz about Scotland and Scottish bands at that time definitely gave us a push and a sense of entitlement to crank a fanzine out into the world. We gave column inches to The Big Gun from Irvine whose single ‘Heard About Love’ is one of the great underrated Scottish indie gems of the Eighties. The Tremens from Glasgow also graced our pages with their auld Scots lunatic asylum punk. We were thrilled to get Close Lobsters on our tape compilations and I even see they’ve reformed. Again, the circle of life. The past catches up with you in ways you don’t expect.
Finally – who was better, Suspect Device or Leapfrog the Dog!? (as a refresher, I’ll end with a quote from a certain R. MacKenzie esq. ref Suspect Device ‘We were kind of jealous you had a band going. But the music was shite’. Critically harsh methinks, but ultimately fair….
Back in the day I’d have a forthright opinion on this but now I guess I look back and acknowledge we were all kids carving out our identities by being creative. I can’t even remember what Leapfrog the Dog sounded like - just that they’re named after an Adam Ant lyric - I think the demo tape designs came before the music. Very Malcolm McLaren. I think I always harbored a secret desire to play maracas at the back for Suspect Device. Anything to be a part of the scene and stay connected to music. I guess in lieu of that - or throwing shapes like Bez - the fanzine was how I found my voice and made my own ‘sound’.