The weekend of March 19, 1981 was a busy one for Postcard Records, the Sound of Young Scotland. They released the debut single from Aztec Camera, "Just Like Gold" b/w "We Could Send Letters". NME was smitten with the band led by Roddy Frame. Paul Morley writes
"These love songs, that speak of sadness with undefiled integrity, seem closer to the white music of Nick Drake and some John Martyn than the lament-dance of Josef K or the irony pop of Postcard (Records)...Aztec Camera are a smooth and special taste, a smile on their face, tear in the eye".
The B side, featured in an acoustic form on the C-81 compilation, was re-recorded for the 1983 debut album, High Land, Hard Rain.
Josef K : Chance Meeting
Josef K's new single is "Chance Meeting", a re-recording of the song that was the A side of the first single a year ago. Some glorious horns arrive about two minutes in. Early copies came with a free postcard.
We talked for a short while,
while I snuck forward,
and touched your hand.
Smash Hits, 1981
Orange Juice : Poor Old Soul
Orange Juice continues finding the sweet spot between Chic and the Velvet Underground on their 4th single "Poor Old Soul", which also comes with a free Orange Juice postcard in the sleeve.
On January 31, 1981, NME joined Rough Trade in releasing C-81, a cassette made up of songs by a variety of artists... from well known at the time ( The Specials, Buzzcocks, The Beat, Ian Dury) to well known within a year or two ( Scritti Politti, Aztec Camera ). Only two songs from the 24 track collection had been previously available ( Orange Juice's "Blue Boy" and James Blood Ulmer's "Jazz Is The Teacher, Funk Is The Preacher"). An inexpensive way to discover new bands, all you had to do was clip this week's coupon and the one from next week's NME and send them with one pound fifty. More than 25,000 were sold.
In May of 1981 C-81 went on general sale but some labels refused to re-license the tracks.
Who could possible complain? British music writer Simon Reynolds could. He called it "post punk's swan song", noting the appearance of three acts from Scottish independent label Postcard Records (Aztec Camera, Josef K and Orange Juice), the emerging new pop tendency of bands such as Linx and Scritti Politti, and that NME stopped publishing the Garageland column in the very same month that C81 went on general sale, an acknowledgement that the DIY cassette culture movement was on the wane.
In the years that followed many music mags gave away cassettes or CDs as incentives to buy the magazines. Some still do.
Looking at you, MOJO.
Track listing
A1
Scritti Politti - The "Sweetest Girl"6:09
A2
The Beat - Twist and Crawl Dub4:58
A3
Pere Ubu - Misery Goats2:26
A4
Wah! Heat - 7,000 Names of Wah!3:57
A5
Orange Juice - Blue Boy2:52
A6
Cabaret Voltaire - Raising the Count3:32
A7
D.A.F. - Kebabträume [Live]3:50
A8
Furious Pig - Bare Pork1:28
A9
The Specials - Raquel1:56
A10
Buzzcocks - I Look Alone3:00
A11
Essential Logic - Fanfare in the Garden3:00
A12
Robert Wyatt - Born Again Cretin3:07
B1
The Raincoats - Shouting Out Loud3:19
B2
Josef K - Endless Soul2:27
B3
Blue Orchids - Low Profile3:47
B4
Virgin Prunes - Red Nettle2:13
B5
Aztec Camera - We Could Send Letters4:57
B6
Red Crayola - Milkmaid2:01
B7
Linx - Don't Get in My Way5:15
B8
The Massed Carnaby St. John Cooper Clarkes - The Day My Pad Went Mad1:46
B9
James Blood Ulmer - Jazz Is the Teacher, Funk Is the Preacher4:03
In August of 1980, Postcard Records released two singles by two clean cut Scottish bands on the same day. They shared both a release date and a cover. One is "Blue Boy" b/w "Love Sick" by Orange Juice, a Glasgow Band featuring Edwyn Collins on vocals and guitar, James Kirk on guitar, David McClymont on bass and Steven Daly on drums. The first three had been playing together since 1978 as The Nu-Sonics. Collins told NME's Gacin Martin, "We thought we'd like a fresh start and there's nothing fresher than orange juice. Well, we knew all those connotations of it being really fresh and natural but basically we like drinking orange juice and the name seemed pretty weird".
Scratched in the vinyl of the 45 is the question "When is an artist at his most dangerous?" flipped with "...when he's drawing a gun".
Fold the sleeve in another way and you come up with:
This is the single "Radio Drill Time" b/w a live version of "Crazy To Exist" by the bookish Edinburgh band Josef K featuring Paul Haig on vocals, Malcolm Ross on guitar, Ron Torrence on drums and David Weddell on bass. The two bands had formed an alliance, promoting each other in their hometowns, while Postcard Records owner Alan Horne promoted them as the second coming to varying degrees of success.
On February 1, 1980 the Glasgow band Orange Juice released "Falling and Laughing", their debut single and the first release by Postcard Records. Melody Maker named it Record Of the Week. Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens remembers hearing it for the first time in his memoir Grant and I:
The record didn't sound like an indie single of the time, particularly those from London, which tended to be drilled and tight. This was not that--there was a demo-ish quality to the recording as the band shifted through an unusual set of influences, including funky bass lines and country and western guitars. Riding high in the mix was the singer, his heartfelt croon pushing the boundary usually held between listener and vocalist, and a lyric that added a new word to the rock lexicon, "Consequently".
"None of us drank alcohol at the time," singer Edwyn Collins would say later. "Orange Juice seemed perfect because that's what we drank at rehearsals." In contrast to the dark overtones of their contemporaries, and things would get very day in 1980, Orange Juice played happy, wholesome love songs with a sound inspired by late-era Velvets, early Talking Heads and Chic.
The thing about us blending Chic and Velvets, it sounds really audacious on paper, but if you listen to Live 1969, the double-time rhythm guitar on "Rock and Roll" is not a million miles apart from Nile Rodgers's guitar playing in Chic. Very clipped. Not jangly, which is the cliche journalists always applied to Orange Juice. The strings are actually being damped, so it's more choppy than jangly.
Consider the pop-song lyrics :
You say that there's a thousand like you Maybe that's true I fell or you and nobody else So I'm standing here so lonely What can i do But learn to laugh at myself
The single was only partially financed by the band's friend, Alan Horne, who decided he would be both the manager of Orange Juice and the man in charge of Postcard Records. Taking cues from punk-era managers like Malcolm McLaren, Horne tried to use intimidation to get Orange Juice on the charts.
Alan Horne
He once ambushed John Peel, handing him the single “This is Orange Juice, from Glasgow. All those Manchester bands you play, it’s all a nice bore.” and warning him that Postcard Records was "the future and either you'll get wise to that or you'll look very stupid". Peel played "Falling and Laughing" only once on his show.
Orange Juice ushered in a new era of life affirming pop ( inspiring bands like Haircut 100, The Bluebells, and Altered Images). Postcard added more bands to its label including Aztec Camera, Josef K and The Go-Betweens, while turning down Claire Grogan's Altered Images.
"The Sound of Young Scotland" became the label motto ( never mind the fact that the Go-Betweens are from Australia). They had become the most trendy label in the land but would Postcard become a hit factory?
No. By the Summer of 1981, after a flurry of 14 releases, the label would end. But the singles have all become rare and valuable collector's items.
Six months after his ex-girlfriend scalded him with boiling grits and then shot herself, Al Green released a single that seemed to say he still believed in the power and glory of love. He would later admit that this was a very lonely and unhappy time. He had a lot of questions, telling Ebony Magazine "What is happiness? To understand the reasons of life itself...things beyond my control. I have been in an arena with 40,000 people, but I was the loneliest man in there." t would find his The extended version on Soul Train is worth seeing for the drummer's theatrics in the final minute. Later covered by Edywn Collins and Orange Juice.
