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There must have been something in the air in Edinburgh in the late Seventies. How else could you explain a trio of breathtaking bands - Josef K, The Associates and Fire Engines - playing, scheming and dreaming together in the same sleepy city at the same time? ”Boredom or the Fire Engines. You can´t have both,” boasted the latter. That slogan held good for any one of this intoxicating trinity. All recognised that after punk, new languages had to be invented to express those peculiar, brittle feelings that demanded to be sung, to be played. ”Four shadows” was NME journalist and early fan Paul Morley´s description of Josef K. Literate, reserved and more often than not dressed in black, Paul Haig, Malcolm Ross, David Weddell and Ronnie Torrance enjoyed a mystique which had nothing to do with rock ´n´ roll. ”Josef K was like a gang. We would all hang about together,” says Ross, adding that the group would divorce themselves as much as possible from the music business. ”We didn´t like talking to promoters and such. It was snobbish-ness to an extent. We just thought that they weren´t in the gang or on the same wavelength. I suppose we were quite puritanical. We didn´t like sexism or laddishness”. ”We just didn´t care about other people´s opinions,” states Haig, baldly. ”It was us against the world. Nothing else mattered”.
Recalled Edinburgh musician Nick Currie (aka `Momus´): ”I was in utter awe of them all. I remember once running to a rehearsal with Josef K, who had suddenly become my band and tripping in my frenzy, ripping my baggy, waiter-style New Romantic trousers. Will music ever be so exciting again?” Josef K arrived at a point where British pop was redefining itself; a process which involved both repudiating the past and searching around for fellow travellers. ”None of us had ever played in groups prior to punk so that gave us a clean slate,” explains Ross. ”Whereas you could tell the bands who had, because they would chuck in rock guitar cliches here, there and everywhere. We never did. Paul and I were always striving to be, if not experimental, at least not cliched. Pere Ubu were a big influence and the East Coast American art punk scene”. Most obviously, this manifested itself in their guitar playing. Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television and Robert Quine of Richard Hell And The Voidoids had already begun to define an incen-diary, tonal approach which eschewed the blue notes and went for the burn. It was a style which Haig (voice, guitar), Ross (guitar) and Torrance (drums) began to develop in 1977 with their first self-con-sciously named group, TV Art. For the best part of two years they achieved little, even after adding a full-time bassist, David Weddell. But they were on to something. Inspired equally by emerging British acts such as The Subway Sect and Joy Division, they began to inhabit their own dark, intense, well-dressed corner. Ross: ”It was modernist. I was quite interested in the original Mod movement and that was one of the influences in wearing suits. Again, it was a reaction to the whole dirty, long-haired thing that punk reacted to, but punk wasn´t too far off it either. Punks were just as dirty. I didn´t like that; I wanted some kind of dignity. We were forward looking”. Haig: ”It was not a band, it was a way of life”. Things began to fall into place. In 1979, Ross met Glaswegian Steven Daly, a drummer with Orange Juice and The Fun Four (who were fronted by James King) at a Siouxsie & The Banshees show. Daly, ever the entrepreneur, was setting up a label called Absolute and wanted TV Art to be the debut single. The group cut eight songs in one day in a small Edinburgh studio and selected two for release, Chance Meeting and Romance. With label copy due and unhappy about their name, alternatives were suggested. Strawberry Switchblade (an unrecorded Orange Juice song by James Kirk) was briefly considered but was discarded when Ross mentioned a `joke´ group of friends who rehearsed but never managed to play a gig. They were called Josef K, after the central neurotic figure in Franz Kafka´s The Trial, a novel Ross had read and later passed on to Haig. ”It seemed to sum up everything that we felt about alienation and awkwardness,” says Haig. Josef K it was, then. The group played their first date under their new name supporting Adam And The Ants at an Edinburgh discotheque called Clouds. ”There was a large mirror at the end of the hall and it was the first time I´d been able to see the group as we played. We had our Oxfam suits on,” says Ross, smiling at the memory. ”I remember thinking that we looked really great”. Shortly after, Josef K began to pick up their first, favourable reviews. Gary Bushell in Sounds seemed particularly impressed with them when they appeared at George Square Theatre, Edinburgh, well down a bill with The Scars, Another Pretty Face and The Visitors. Dressed all in black, with hair slicked back, the group came on stage to a soundtrack of psalms and blinding white light. Ross: ”People kinda liked us. The audience responded well. Paul never spoke, so there was a kind of alienation thing. I remember the first time we played Glasgow when no one clapped and a glass was thrown. So this felt like a big step forward”. Chance Meeting sold slowly. ”More effort,” urged a tongue-in-cheek Danny Baker of the NME on their debut single. Absolute would release no further records. It didn´t matter; Josef K already had another label, Postcard Records, run by Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice and his friend, Andy Warhol wannabe Alan Horne. By turns inspiring and infuriating, Horne was brim full of ideas and cheek. The Postcard house style was arty and camp, in marked contrast to the colourless independent labels of the time. In Orange Juice he had his Lovin´ Spoonful, in Josef K his Velvet Underground; his West Coast (of Scotland) group and his East. In April 1980 Josef K and Orange Juice with Alex Ferguson of Alternative Television recorded Radio Drill Time and Blue Boy respectively in one day at Castle Sound Studios outside Edinburgh. (Originally it was intended that Ferguson would produce the sessions. Recognising that Josef K knew what they wanted regardless, he went uncredited). The flipside of Radio Drill Time, Crazy To Exist, pretended to be live. It wasn´t, having been recorded in a cottage in Fife. The two singles shared a reversible sleeve, hand-coloured by the bands themselves and their friends as they lay around Alan Horne´s Glasgow flat. Both records picked up excellent press and launched the cult of Postcard. Important as the single was to Josef K, it was only half the story. ”Recording was sometimes problematic,” says Haig. ”Playing live was more important”. Since their early shows with the likes of Echo And The Bunnymen, The Cure, Magazine and The Clash (where they were heckled for being `mods´) they were now becoming formidable live performers. ”The next quantum leap was supporting The Scars at The Venue in London,” recalls Ross. ”Radio Drill Time would have been out by then. When the stage curtain opened I looked out and the place was just packed; people were right down the front and a great cheer went up. I was, like, `What?´ Totally unexpected”. In concert was the place to truly experience Ross and Haig´s sensational guitar work. Ross´ lead playing in particular was inspiring. Fiery, committed and ringing, it was a key element in the group´s `sound´. On stage was where Josef K made most sense. Says Ross, ”We always wanted to sound extreme”. ”How the hell did we play so fast?” asks Haig, incredulously. ”Because we certainly weren´t taking drugs. People felt they had to stand still and be serious to watch us, but sometimes I´d be rolling on my back playing a guitar solo, getting feedback from my amp”. It
was becoming increasingly apparent that Josef K weren´t the
serious young men that they first appeared to be. A penchant for psychedelic
shirts, the occasional kaftan and liquid light projection was their
tongue-in-cheek way of repudiating their monochromatic image. Because
Haig refused to talk to audiences (part of their anti-showbusiness
stance; neither would they play encores or sign auto- Their next Postcard single, It´s Kinda Funny, remains one of their most moving and memorable songs. Many years after its release, Haig found himself in a bar standing next to Vic Reeves. He was shocked when the comedian turned to him and sang a chorus from the song. In November 1980, the group returned to Castle Sound for ten days to record their debut album, Sorry For Laughing, which was scheduled for release early the following year. It was not to be; the sessions were scrapped. ”It was up to us, ” explains Ross. ”There was something lacking in the sound. The album just seemed too clean. Looking back on it now, I think it sounds a lot better”. Horne spread the bad news to the NME, resulting in the whole affair being blown out of perspective. It hinted at his uncertainty about Josef K. ”I think he felt ambiguous about us,” says Ross. ”We were always doing things which he didn´t like. Alan´s a real controller and I think he felt he could control Josef K. Maybe that would´ve been good, but that wouldn´t have been Josef K. But Alan had good ideas. Once people said that Josef K were great, he was fine”. Both Ross and Weddell got on well with Horne. On the other hand, Haig and Torrance didn´t. ”He never liked me and I never liked him,” says Haig, who once had a screaming match with Horne during a recording session. ”I never had time for the guy”. Irritatingly for Horne, the independently-minded Josef K struck up a relationship with another label. In December of 1980 they accepted an offer from Michel Duval of Les Disques Du Crepuscule to travel to Brussels to record and play a New Year´s Eve concert at a warehouse club in the docks called Plan K. Josef K headlined this strange evening which featured silent films, a jazz band, Crepuscule act Marine and Orange Juice. The concert was invaded by a group of inebriated punks, one of whom threw a plate of food in Edwyn Collins´ face when he was on stage. The Orange Juice singer retaliated with a kick. By the time Josef K appeared feelings in the crowd were running high. A fight broke out in front of the stage and the group had to stop playing while the promoters attempted to sort things out. The recording went significantly more smoothly. A single, Sorry For Laughing, still one of Josef K´s finest achievements, was the result. Because of the positive experience of recording with engineer Marc Francois at Little Big One Studios, the group returned to Brussels in April to record their debut album once again. The resulting album, now titled The Only Fun In Town, was an improvement, not that the group were entirely happy with it either. ”I think we committed commercial suicide,” admits Haig of the sessions. ”When we were mixing the album, we wanted it to sound like a live concert, because we were so into playing live. I purposely mixed down my vocals. God knows why. I regret that”. As the first album on Postcard, expectations were unreasonably high and when influential journalists such as Paul Morley expressed some disappointment, it set the tone for reviews to come. The Only Fun In Town might not have been everything Josef K promised, but its abrasive power was still bracing. Unlike label mates Orange Juice, who never again played outside of the UK, Josef K began to find an audience in Europe, returning later in the year to tour Belgium and Holland. At one Dutch show they were billed as `Depressi Wave´, a term which seemed to tickle Haig. (”I laughed like a drain when I saw that”). By now, it was an inappropriate description. Besides the group´s subtle, quirky humour (which largely went over the audience´s head) they were also experimenting with elements of dance music, occasionally using disco basslines. Malcolm Ross, for example, particularly liked Sly Stone. Although they never played the song live, Josef K rehearsed I Spy (For The FBI), originally a nugget of funk by Jamo Thomas And His Party Orchestra. Live,
Josef K were playing better than ever, as a UK summer tour with Aztec
Camera proved. Two unreleased songs in particular stood out in their
set: Heaven Sent (only ever recorded for a John Peel ”We just wanted it to last as long as it was good,” explains Haig. ”Malcolm said to me once, we shouldn´t carry on like other bands do and make crap music just for the sake of it. I didn´t want to do anything my heart wasn´t in, just for the money. We were very, very stupid about our principles. We didn´t want to sell out”. Josef K had always threatened to break up after two albums. Like their short sets, they believed in burning brightly, if briefly. That night in Maestro´s before a capacity audience, the band was back dressed in black. ”I remember we had to jam a bit because Davey had broken a bass string,” recalls Ross of that last date. ”But it was a really good show and a very emotional evening. Paul was quite upset”. A final single, The Missionary - one of their best - was released by Crepuscule to remind people just what had passed. ”I´m proud of what we did,” says Haig. ”It seems like a dream now. When you´re there and it´s happening, it´s so intense. It´s in retrospect that it hits you”. This anthology represents the finest, most intense moments that Josef K recorded. Glorious and frenzied, these songs still sound out of step with the times, just as they did when they were first played. Josef K inhabited their own world, which probably explains why, almost 20 years later, their music still holds up. ”I was doing Paul Haig´s solo tour,” says Ross, trying to put Josef K´s achievements in perspective. ”And I was talking with some fans afterwards. This guy said, `It´s Kinda Funny - me and my girlfriend used to listen to that and cry´. I thought, that´s it, that´s what it´s about. In Nausea, Sartre´s existential novel, that´s the conclusion the guy in the story comes to. He wonders what he is doing in the world and why he´s here. At the end of the book he listens to a jazz record from America of a woman singing and it just moves him so much. I thought, that´s what I could do, create something which would move people. That´s what music is capable of; communicating something which cannot be communicated purely in words”. Allan Campbell |
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