Vinyl words
In the late 80s and early 90s, Andrew Smith and his band Remember Fun slogged around the foothills of pop, not so much the nearlys of the Scottish indie scene, but the nearly nearlys. Now 35 years later, they have what they always dreamed of – a record de
Acollective Caledonian cuddle was projected toward Mogwai the other month when those prime purveyors of guitar thrash scored a first number one album 25 years on from starting out.
Never mind 25 years for a scalingnew-peaks album, how about 35 years even for one such release merely to make the foothills? Because that is how long it has taken for my band Remember Fun – a musical passion formed in 1986 with my school chums – to have an album to call our very own.
For the past three decades, I had become resigned to the fact that I never would have a vinyl record or CD filled with the songs I wrote and sang with buddies responsible for so many of my most treasured, thrilling times.
Active for about six years, Remember Fun seemed destined to be not so much the nearlys of the Scottish indie scene, as the nearly nearlys. While most of our contemporaries would go on to have multiple releases, and careers of sorts, we lurched from almosts to disasters.
Essentially, we were a five-piece but in reality seven-strong. We were a collective, too, in which our friends/ flatmates/family werefundamental elements. My brother John didn’t play on stage, but as our manager, van driver and letter-writer (in those pre-internet days days a network of fanzines, in which we regularly featured, brought exposure and gig opportunities) he was a main man.
Our other non-playing associate was Martin Boyce. We used to joke that in him we had our Andy Warhol. Only for it to sort-of come true. Martin was the arty one who produced all the covers for our demos and concert posters. Back then, he was a struggling student. Now, he is an internationally-renowned Turner Prize winner and has designed the cover for our anthology Contentment for Firestation Records.
The German label is devoted to reissues and retrospectives of British guitar, jangle and indie pop from the 80s and early 90s meeting a demand, particularly from Japan, for music from the scene. They got in touch about 18 months ago and so the Remember Fun story has an unexpected and welcome extra act.
There was musicianship, kinship and camaraderie in the band, all alumni of Holy Cross High School in Hamilton. Our most settled lineup was rhythm guitarist and fellow songwriter John Eslick, lead guitarist Raymond Macdonald, bass Mark Kane and drummer Steven Dunbar.
It was never about the money, or any glitz. Which is just as well. We were prepared to hire a van, throw our living-room couch in the back, and drive down to Exeter for a £50 gig in the local art centre because we loved playing music and hanging out. Yes we harboured ambitions, but those possibly were thwarted by the refusal to be other than products of our place and time.
We were children of the 1980s, politicised and pissed off about the ruthless destruction of our industrial communities and the lurch to the right. We mainly sang songs about hate, not love, in part because my early romantic liaisons were practically non-existent. The one woman who featured, obliquely, in my songs more than any other was Margaret Thatcher. We permed love of The Monkees, The Smiths, Orange Juice and Simon and Garfunkel into a sound and produced five demos, a flexidisc featuring our song Hey Hey Hate, a series of tracks on compilation albums, and played the length and breadth of the country.
We trawled the London majors for a couple of humiliating afternoons – EMI contacted us for a demo after we were bigged up in Record Mirror as early Del Amitri-like – and did the obligatory hanging around outside BBC Broadcasting House at midnight to foist a demo into the hands of John Peel. It is to our eternal regret that we passed up his offer of a lift to our
friend’s house in Streatham. The same trip we went to see a promoter about a gig, but we declined when he told us it would be backing up some no-mark band called the Happy Mondays. Later we did play with them in Glasgow, only for the organiser to moan it hadn’t been the expected money-spinner and promptly cut our fee. This happened about a week before the Mondays exploded on the scene.
We were responsible for a number of cottage-industry labels curdling just after they got behind us, with a few others buttering us up to then drop us face down. A club even burned to the ground in Newcastle when we had been lined up to play. Forever having club-night promoters renege on promised payments, we thought we would take our revenge when it happened at a Birmingham bar where our dressing room was the kitchen. We raided the fridge to nick a three-foot long industrial block of cheese, reckoning we could buy a loaf and live off it for the rest of our four-date ‘tour’. We soon realised that you can’t share the tiny environs of a transit for days on end with a massive, sweating hunk of cheddar.
My brother worked for a building firm in the latter years of the band, and was able to ‘borrow’ crew vans. He did so for a gig in Lancaster where the pimply youth putting us on said it would be heaving with students. On that Friday night, only two wearing Shop Assistants T-shirts showed. It turned out Annie Nightingale was doing a student-union organised DJ set next door. As a result, he said we didn’t need to play; the subtext being he didn’t want to pay. But we rocked out for half an hour to earn our travel costs, headed over to catch the Annie vibe and then proved so sleepy on the overnight return that we filled the tank with petrol instead of diesel, and had to fork out double our earnings to have it flushed out.
We were heckled remorselessly in Aberdeen, had a pint thrown at us in Gourock, and told we weren’t part of the bill when we turned up to support The Soup Dragons – as they had requested – at Strathclyde University, my then home turf. We did play eventually (for half the original fee). The weeks before I had been cultivating a cracking bowl cut. When I walked on stage someone shouted “F*** me, it’s Henry the Fifth” and I never recovered.
Our cause was taken up by a Liverpool promoter. He managed to get us on a multi-artist anti-poll tax LP called Rise of the Phoenix. Our song Doze Off Them, about the death of socialism, appeared between tracks from The Proclaimers and The Levellers. The cover art was by Jamie Reid, responsible for the iconic Never Mind The Bollocks sleeve. It seemed a big deal. Except by the time it was released, the poll tax had been abolished.
Pasty-faced fanzine editors putting
We declined a gig when the promoter told us we would be backing some band called the Happy Mondays
us on at their club nights sometimes would allow us to bunk up at their houses. With mixed results. The offers did help us play in almost every major city across the UK, and a few odd other locales too. Yet, amid the calamities, many moments together we will delight in for the rest of our days. What we were about is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that, across the band’s lifetime, we had no fewer than four sets of siblings involved. We were the Lanarkshire Beach Boys on that score.
I loved the identity being in a band gave me across my late teens and early 20s, and the creative outlet it provided for my rages against the machine. I love now that I have something truly meaningful to show for it. As the memories have flooded back listening to Contentment, after 35 years I feel that at last.
Contentment by Remember Fun is available on Firestation Records, as a 14-track vinyl or 18-track CD. It can be ordered via www.firestation-records. de, or via e-mail info@firestationrecords.de