Scottish bands - late 80's

[ChrisA]

What with Deacon Blue being in town, got me thinking 'bout the great Scottish song based bands around in the late 80s.

Deacon Blue, probably sold the most records, but in my personal opinion, Ricky Ross' outfit took third place behind two really great songwriters ...

Firstly, Steven Lindsay, AKA 'The Big Dish'. Produced some sublime pop songs, that were criminally overlooked in the UK. Beautiful, melodic tracks like, 'Prospect St' 'Christina's World' and 'Faith Healer', amongst many other gems, can be found on this essential retrospective.

Do yourself a favour and pick it up.



Then, to my fav ever Scottish band - Danny Wilson. You may know them for 'Mary's prayer', a great song no doubt, but there's even better stuff on their first album. 'Lorraine Parade', 'Five Friendly Aliens', 'Davy' and the almost anthemic 'Aberdeen'. Class songs by any standard, combined with great musicianship and a great voice.

Their second album - 'Be Bop Mop Top', was even better, showing signs that Gary Clark could go on to become one of Scotland's finest ever writers.

Listen to 'Loneliness' or 'The Ballad Of Me And Shirley Maclaine', and hear a writer mature beyond his years, fusing soul with big band orchestrations, and knocking up tunes that would stand out on any Ratpack album.
Listen to 'Never Gonna Be The Same' and hear a song that basically, any writer from ANY era would have been proud to put their name to.

There's no bad track on this album, yet ironically, perhaps, the weakest track was the biggest hit 'The Second Summer Of Love', after which the band split up, and disappeared back to Dundee to work on solo projects. A travesty, AND a tragedy.



Finally, a shout goes out to 'Love And Money' who's main voice and writer - James Grant, is a great musican, a great poet (Listen to 'You're Beautiful' and an immense vocalist.

... And Hipsway, who also had A) A great vocalist (Skin) and B) a few decent tunes.

No-one touched the Dannies though. Not fer me.

[Wee Toon Ajax]

Must admit that went back to listen to James Grants stuff the other day after you mentioned it and how good it sounds. Other scottish bands from that period I got thinking about were The Blue Nile, whose first 2 albums, are amazing, the Jesus and Mary Chain, who were just immense, and Cocteau Twins, a totally unique band and a band I still play to this day.

Other I would mention would be Primal Scream, Goodbye Mr McKenzie(shirley mansons pre Garbage band), Teenage Fanclub, who started then, BMX Bandits, Captain America and a good few others

Was not a bad scene at the time. Scotland every now and again is the hub of the British music scene. In my time started with the Postcard label and bands like Orange Juice, Josef K, Fire Engines etc all of these being huge influeces on Franz Ferdinand.