411 Hello Scritti Politti - The "Sweetest Girl"

Chart  entered : 21 November  1981

Chart  peak : 64

Number  of  hits :  14

Though  I  can  enjoy  some  of   his  songs  I  do  think  this  guy  was  seriously  over-rated,  often  by the  same  people  who  knocked  XTC  for  being  too  clever  and  knowing.

I'd  never  heard  of  them  when  this  clocked  in  at  the  bottom  end  of  the  chart.  The  band  was  started  at  Leeds  Polytechnic  in  1976  by  a  fine  art  student  Paul  "Green "  Gartside  ( originally  Strohmeyer )  inspired  by  The  Sex  Pistols. He  recruited  an  old  school  friend Niall  Jinks , who'd  been  his  comrade  in  a   doomed  attempt  to  set  up  a  branch  of  the  Young  Communist  League  in  Wales, to  play  bass, a  fellow  student  who  played  drums  Tom  Morley  and  a  manager  Matthew  Kay  who  could  fill  in  on  keyboards.  During  this  period  they  were  known  as  The  Against.

After  Green  and  Tom  graduated  in  1977  the  band  relocated  to  London  and  moved  into  a  squat. They  changed  their  name  to  Scriiti  Politti  in  a  ( slightly  misspelled )  tribute  to  Italian  Marxist  writer  Antonio  Gramsci  best  known  for  developing  the  theory  of  cultural  hegemony. At  this  time  the  "group"  expanded  to  include  more  people than  just  the  musicians with  assorted  Marxist  squatters  dropping  by  to  discuss  political  theory  particularly  in  relation  to  art  and  culture. They  were  the  product  of  a  febrile  time  when  po-faced  actress Vanessa  Redgrave  could  stand  for  Parliament  for  the  extremist  Workers  Revolutionary  Party  and  cheerfully  reassure  voters  that  their  furniture  wouldn't  be  confiscated.

The  first  musical  product  was  "Skank  Bloc  Bologna"  released  in  October  1978. Simon  Reynolds's   Rip  It  Up  gives  it  more  attention  than  any  other  single  mentioned  in  the  book. The  single  bemoans  the  lack  of  political  awareness  in  a  working  class  girl  while  celebrating  the  fact  that  Communist-influenced  rioting  seemed  to  be  effecting  change  in  the  Italian  city  of  Bologna  and  the  song  is   suffused  with  the  icy  hauteur  of  the  intellectual  left. There 's  a  little  pop  at  The  Clash's  rock  and  roll  romanticism  towards  the  end. The  song  uses  a  loping  reggae  rhythm  cut  through  with  over-loud  abrasive  guitar  and  would  be  a  difficult  listen  but  for  Green's  saving  grace ,  an  underlying  melodic  strength  derived  from  his  love  of  English  folk  rock  and  psychedelia. His  vocal  style  was  derived  from  former  Soft  Machine  drummer  and  fellow  leftie  Robert  Wyatt. The  single  was  released  on  their  own  label  St  Pancras  Records  in  paper  sleeves  with  the  full  production  costs  broken  down  to  encourage  other  new  bands  to  follow  suit  and  cut  out  the  majors. They  went  to  Rough  Trade  for  a  distribution  deal.

John  Peel  picked  up  on  them  straight  away  and  they  did  their  first  session  for  him  in  December  1978. In  1979  they  released  the  EP  "4  A  Sides"  which  ranges  from  the  slinky  left  field  pop  of  "Confidence"  to  the  migraine-inducing  "Bibbly-O-Tek"  which  might  be  saying  something  interesting  about  Wittgenstein's  theories  of  language  but  few  would  think  it  worthwhile  to  try  and  decode  it. In  July  1979  they  did  another  session  for  Peel  then  Rough  Trade  did  a  deal  with  the  BBC  to  release  the  results  as  the  "Work  In  Progress"  EP.  Even  the  adoring  Reynolds  admits   this  sparse, spiky  quartet  of  tracks   is   difficult, quoting  Green  as  saying "That's  a  genuinely  ill  record. As  some  kind  of  index  to  my  state  of  mind  at  the  time, I  find  it  frightening  and  I  can't  understand  it  now  at  all".

Things  got  worse. A  recording  session  had  to  be  aborted  because  nothing  they  did  could  pass  the  overwrought  Green's  quality control.  Things  came  to  a  head  on  24th  January  1980 , the  day  after  Scritti  supported  Gang  of  Four  in  Brighton. Due  to  a  combination  of  stage  fright,  mental  fatigue  and  the  squat  lifestyle  compromising  his  physical  wellbeing, Green  collapsed  with  a  panic  attack  that   literally  paralysed  him. His  parents, reading  about  it  in  the  NME, took  him  back  to  Wales  to  recover. This  brought  the  first  phase  of  Scrtiti's  development  to  a  definite  end.

Convalescing  in  Wales  Green   listened  to  his  sister's  mostly  black  record  collection  and  his  choice  of  philosophers  to  read  veered  towards  French  post-Marxists  like  Jaques  Derrida   and  ideas  of  deconstruction. He  renounced  doctrinaire  Marxism. The  old  Scritti  had  corrected  themselves  into  complete  paralysis; his  new  idea  was  to  become  the  ultimate  subversive  pop  group, deconstructing  all  the old  tropes  as   they  went  along.  He  summoned  his  colleagues  to  Wales  and  secured  their  agreement  after  presenting  them  with  a  lengthy  essay  to  read. When  he  returned  to  London  there  was  to  be  no  return  to  the  squat ; Scritti's  shadow  members   just  evaporated.

At  this  point  in  the  story  I'm  going  to  have  to  tackle  the  question  of  "New  Pop"  as  we're about  to   enter  that  movement's  ( if  such  it  was ) annus  mirabilis.  I  think  the  term  has  some  value  in  describing  a  discernible  shift  towards  accessibility  and  commercial  success  around  the  beginning  of  1982  but  I  don't  regard  it  as  the  apogee  of   British  pop music  like  some  writers  of  these  parts. It's  certainly  not  worth  arguing  whether  The  Nolans  counted  as  "New  Pop"  a point   on  which  Marcello  Carlin  recently  corrected  Bob Stanley  on  Popular.

The  "New  Pop"  era   is  generally  said  to  begin  with  an  article in  the  NME - and  its  champions  are  all  NME-readers  - by  Paul  Morley  at  the  very  end  of  1980  championing  ABC  in  particular  as  a  new  act  directly   aiming  at  pop  stardom  with  an  intelligent  knowing  approach . Morley's  reputation  had  been  made by  spotting  the  potential  of  Joy  Division  very  early  and  he  now  foresaw  that  following Curtis's  death, post-punk  austerity  was  going  to  hit  the  buffers. In  the  autumn  of  1981  it  did  with  a  dismal  first  LP  from  New  Order  and   a   final  Joy  Division  album  Still   which  confirmed  that  we'd  already  heard  their  best  work. In  the  next  few  months, other  doom  and  gloom  purveyors  like  The  Cure  and  Killing Joke  found  their latest  efforts  rejected  ( though  both  would  recover ).

 There   were  two  main  strands  to  "New  Pop". One  was  writers  like  Morley  giving  good  reviews  to  previously  despised  acts  like  Dollar  and  Bucks Fizz  even  where  their  music  hadn't  appreciably  changed. Tony Wilson, outside  the  tent, described  this  as  "Raiders of  the  Lost  Ark Syndrome"  whereby  anything  that  was  well  done  was  valid  no  matter  how  vacuous.  The  other  was  the  seemingly  simultaneous  conversion  of  previous   icons  of   the  alternative  to  the  idea  of  making  chart-friendly  music. Scritti  Politti  fall  into  this  category  but  were  by  no  means  alone.

"The "Sweetest  Girl" "  was  the  first  product  of  the  new  approach. It  was  first  released  on  the  NME's  C81  compilation  in  March  1981  but  not  as  a  single  until  November  by  which  time Niall  had  quit  the  group, unable  to  stomach  his  friend's  dictatorial  behaviour. It  utilises  a  rhythm  from  the  soft  variant  of  reggae  known  as  "lover's  rock" , largely  played  on  an  oddly  squelchy  synthesiser. Green  sings  in  what  was  to  become  a  trademark, slightly  needling  high  register  which  raised  the  question  of  whether  it  was  being  doctored  in  the  studio. My  mate  always  reckoned  they  didn't  play  live  because  he  couldn't  reproduce  that  fey vocal  sound  on stage.  Green's  idol  Robert  Wyatt  plays  the  jazzy  piano  that  fills  all  the  musical  gaps  on  the  track  and  his  return  to  recording  his own  material  ( on  Rough  Trade ) after  a  six  year  hiatus  was  largely  through  this  patronage.

The  song  is  split  between  Green  hymning  the  language  of  love, hence  the  inverted  commas , and  then  gradually  unveiling  his  subversive  intent  -  "The  weakest  link  in  every  chain  I  always  want  to  find  it".  I  didn't  like  it  at  first  but  gradually  got  to  appreciate  it. As  it  didn't  break  out  of  night  time  radio  play  it  was  only  a  minor  hit  for  Scritti  Politti  but  unfortunately  attracted  a  dreadful  cover  by  the  declining  Madness  four  years  later  which  did  break  into  the  Top  40.