Big Gold Dream

TARTAN FILMS/DIR GRANT MCPHEE. DVD

Revisionist history of The Sound Of Young Scotland.

It may be the capital city, but Edinburgh has long shuffled chippily at Glasgow’s heels in appraisals of Scotland’s pop legacy. Hence this Robert Forster-narrated documentary, a partial yet plausible exercise in relocating indie’s post-punk epicentre from Postcard Records to Fast Product, the label established by Bob Last and Hilary Morrison in a flat near Edinburgh Art College. Inspired by The Slits and Subway Sect on the White Riot tour, a clutch of firebrand outsiders fall into the couple’s orbit, but Last’s vision was anti-parochial: “The point of being in Scotland wasn’t to be narrowly Scottish.” Thus Fast releases debuts by Mekons, Gang Of Four and The Human League; under Last’s management the League prove a more viable conduit for his Maoist pop theories than the Scars or Fire Engines. The Postcard story is also told, albeit in gently adversarial terms: Last says he can’t recall issuing a death threat to Alan Horne. A vivid piece of cultural archaeology.