Scars

Scars (as opposed to The Scars like Buzzcocks) made their first appearance in October 1977. Originally playing Blitzkrieg Bop like a thousand other hopefuls they clearly had that indefinable something that set them apart. Their style was a mixture of glam, art and punk not towerblocks and R&B. Their first single was far removed from punk music wise, but in those shards of trebly spikey guitar it bristled with its energy and attitude.

Unfortunately the rigid punk straightjacket that so often preached individualism on one hand while denying anyone who dared to be different did for Scars at home. Ahead of their time, it’s ironic that they would have probably remained undiscovered if it hadn’t been for punk. Sadly the goods promised by their early gigs, debut single and songs failed to materialise. Another story of what could have been.

Robin Saunders give us his view on Scars 2001.

Edinburgh, like most other major cities in the UK that are not London, is a small pond when it comes to music. The Punk Scene was late in taking off here (1978 – it takes a long time for the ripples to reach us in the frozen North). Everything quickly divided into a number of warring cliques. There were the Pub Rockers trying to play their Stones-derived R & B fast enough to keep up (The Valves were the top dogs in that kennel. Not a patch on Matt Vinyl & The Decorators but whatever happened to them? Exactly!)

Then there were the Thug Rockers flirting dumbly with fascism (no names but you know who I mean). There were the lumpen Punks like myself soon to become short-haired hippies and hitch up to the Crass bandwagon. Biggest of all was the Art College trendy crowd. The Rezillos went for the lowest common denominator here and made some money out of it. The rest of the Arties would soon have to make the choice of either the Peacock Display of ‘New Romanticism’ or the Gloomy Raincoated-ness of pre-Goth misery. Thus in the midst of an explosion of creativity and freedom we all found our little pigeon-hole and played the Safety in Numbers game. Scars however, despite being a part of the Art crowd, always managed to be a little different.

Standard drill for Punk gigs was to get on stage (if any) in your Sunday Worst and be loudly incompetent for 20 minutes while drowning in friendly phlegm. Not Scars – they had ‘Stage Gear’ – there was even a suspicion of make-up, the hairdos were not regulation, they were out of uniform, they could play their instruments and not in the accepted 1234 Ramonic style. They did not obey the ‘1977=Year Zero’ Command paying explicit homage to old “Glammies” such as Mick Ronson and Cockney Rebel. They were openly literate looking to poetry, smart authors like Ballard, Burroughs and Burgess and Hollywood Film Noir for inspiration.

They had a sense of the theatrical – their gigs were worth looking at, not just another bunch of ugly scruffs feigning boredom. At times they could be terrifying. The song “Crash” featured a real treat with singer Rab rolling around on the stage, jerking and screaming like a torture victim having a seizure. Musically they specialised in short guitar figures played over thunderous bass riffs – in the same vein as late Joy Division and Crisis but with real power.

Paul the guitarist even indulged in the heretical (for the time) practice of improvising on stage. Many years playing classical guitar gave him a range that was astonishing – sudden explosions of screaming, grating factory noise. After 50 years and more the electric guitar is a tired old cliché. It takes someone special to make it interesting again. For me there is only Hendrix, James Williamson the Stooge, Steve the Pistol and Geordie from Killing Joke. Paul from the Scars really was in that league.

On the Anti Nazi League Carnival. Paul: “Oh that was great” offers Paul casually, “there was no way they could possibly hit us, we were 20 feet up. Everyone was saying there were hundreds chucking cans but there was only half a dozen”. and Bobby continues, “When we were standing waiting to go on, there were crowds of people standing looking at us – because we were so good looking, our entire garb looked so great. I thought we worked well at the carnival, we achieved what we set out to do.” Zigzag 93 April 1979

The “Adultery” single was a minor indie chart hit – nothing more. As the Punk Butterfly entered old age everyone scratched their heads and wondered what to do next. In Scars case they, inevitably, threw in their lot with the New Romantics. Briefly, it appeared that they were headed for the Big Time.

A splash of media coverage, a free flexi-disc given away with the first issue of “The Face” Magazine, an album deal. The album appeared with the old brutal sound disinfected squeaky clean, all the mad energy drained away. Their stage classic “Your Attention Please”, a setting of a poet’s [Peter Porter] vision of a Government Broadcast detailing ‘Protect and Survive’ measures in advance of the Nuclear Attack which is only minutes away, once a chilling threat, now rendered as lifeless as a Supermarket tannoy announcement of this week’s special offers.

The single “All About You”, a not-unpleasant pop song, was a minor indie chart hit – nothing more. The last time I saw them they were running across one of the hills around Edinburgh dressed as Duran Duran’s little brothers on a local TV “Yoof” slot, presumably heading for the Elephant’s Graveyard where the Unfulfilled Potential goes to die.

So in the end Punk was all about frustration and loss and unfulfilled potential. Am I right? I got my Scars album but not the one I needed. Where’s my Freeze album? Where’s my Black Flag album? (Not the Henry Rollins mob – this one was a brilliant bunch of Punks who descended on Edinburgh from somewhere in the back of beyond, blew us away with a great set of songs and then split, unrecorded. What became of them? Half of them became the music hall act The Proclaimers , that’s what!). So many great bands came and went without leaving so much as a palm-print on the wall of culture – I know because I was in a couple myself. Was it the same everywhere?…and if so, does that mean that the handful of great punk records we have left are like the pieces of broken pottery uncovered at an archaeological dig? The tip of a huge shining iceberg that never saw the light of day? Or maybe they’re not! To end on a suitably Punky note I will just say I don’t care….and then try to find something worth listening to here in 2001.

R.I.P. SCARS. Gone but not Forgotten. Robin Saunders

---

Scars Facebook