Be honest now; if I were to say to you “Scottish punk rock in the 70s”, what would you think? If you replied the Skids, The Rezillos, The Jolt, The Valves, Johnny and the Self Abusers - maybe Matt Vinyl and the Decorators - I’d probably think, “Yep, that’s about it”.
But if you shot back with The Exile, 8 Miles Out, Ths Zips, The Drive, The Pencils, The Trendies, The Hormones – Scotland’s first female punk band – or the brilliantly named Beez Neez I’d think either, A, you were in one of these bands, or, B, you’ve read Caledonia Screaming, the new book from this week’s very special guest Grant McPhee.
The cultural force behind acclaimed music documentary Big Gold Dream, Grant interviewed more than 200 stalwarts of the emerging punk and post-punk scene in Scotland for the book and joins Scotpop this week to tell us the inside story of the music-obsessed upstarts who blazed a trail across Scotland in the late 70s and paved the way for Scottish globetrotters such as Simple Minds, Skids, Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Edwyn Collins, Texas and Big Country. Effectively, they created the Scottish music industry we know today.
Other topics under discussion in this episode include:
- The unlikely tartan-clad Scottish pop group that inspired the Sex Pistols (spoiler alert - the Bay City Rollers).
- The tragic story of the enigmatic SAHB and Nazareth manager who was on the verge of taking on the London music industry when he was killed in a plane crash.
- The Scottish band who have done more to promote a positive image of Scotland than any tourist office.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Grant heroically battled traffic jams, failing batteries and irate car park security guards to come on the show this week we were ultimately beaten by technical gremlins so the interview is audio only.
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