REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT: THE SOUND OF LIVERPOOL, 1976 – 1988, VARIOUS ARTISTS, 5CD DELUXE BOXSET
Extensive 5CD/book set exploring the ‘second wave’ of music on Merseyside, from 1976-1988
‘Liverpool is more than a place where music happens. Liverpool is a reason why music happens.’
— Paul de Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place, 2002: 1
Paul Simpson tells it like I remember it:
“Those were exciting, volatile times. We’d just come out of punk, the recession was biting, dozens of Liverpool bands struggling for light like flowers trying to blossom on a bomb site.
It reminds me of that D.H. Lawrence line. – Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are amongst the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.”
In one of his poems, Hugh MacDiarmid reflects on the waste of a life through poverty, saying that pity is not enough, insisting that there must be more to life than that human beings owe “their claim to our sympathy, merely to their misfortune.” There is more to a life than that, and that ‘more’ refers to the potential of each and all to blossom, to become the best of what they could be, affirming that potential for blossoming against the limitations of the conditions which treat them as something much less. “And I am,” MacDiarmid insists, “I am concerned with the blossom.”
"I was there." I heard this music as it was made. I shared in its visions and ambitions. With dreams in my head, hope in my heart, fire in the belly and laughter in the eyes. This music was a blossoming, an affirmation of hope in the apparent ruination of all hope. I’ve been looking for my battered old copy of Story of the Blues, it’s here somewhere. Its message is with me always. Fighting the fight in the teeth of adversity. And finding the joy in the dourness and decay. Dash and danger, swagger, a little (a lot of) bombast, panache and flair, a taste for the flamboyant, a bit cutting, more than a little edgy, quirky, eccentric, a bit flowery too. The Liverpool music scene was rich and diverse.
First of all - we were up against, knew it, and fought back with a massive burst of creativity.
This is the soundtrack of my very well spent youth. 1988 was the year I came bursting out of university, fully certified. The Liverpool of Barnes and Beardsley had just played the best football ever, (Tom Finney said so, so it must be true), I saw Princess Di, and lost my rather attractive white/blue silky/woolly top getting over-excited on the steps at Wembley stadium (best not to ask about that incident), and was guilty of other diverse misdemeanours, most of them mere minor infringements of all that is decent and holy, one or two possibly not.
It’s hard to imagine that this is thirty years ago, though. I remember these years much better than the two decades that came after. The memories are as vivid as was their making. Among the political conflicts, the mass unemployment, the calumny, the deceit, there was a huge explosion of creativity. A blossoming. These people were my John, Paul, George and Ringo. To this day, I listen to them far, far more than I do The Beatles. We share the same concerns, the same ambitions, the same obsessions, the same experiences, the same visions.
It’s no secret that I love this part of the world, and this particular part of its story. So I am biased, utterly lacking in objectivity, although I am quite good at self-examination and self-criticism (which is why I don't listen too much to external voices ...) The city, its story, its music, people, culture ... can all be described as brash, showy, chauvenistic, what’s that other one, that’s right, self-pitying. Oh, and sentimental. And the rest of the insults. I don’t hear it. But I’m biased, of course. Old loud-mouthed sentimentalist as I am. It has a big mouth, some may say. Maybe. It has a much bigger heart, I say.
As to the box set:
The box ..
“A remarkable journey through the music of a generation inspired and enabled by punk rock to step out from behind the shadow to the Fab Four.
Packed with first-hand artist sleeve-notes, insightful essays, imagery and brilliant, essential music, this is a story long in need of telling…”
The background …
“Liverpool was a decaying city in the late seventies to the late eighties…. Businesses saw no future in Liverpool and decamped elsewhere. The people followed. In 1961, the population was well above three quarters of a million. By 1985, with unemployment at 20%, double the national average, it had fallen to less than half a million. As the city shrank, the cold grip of heroin took hold … 1976-1988 has a good claim to be the darkest in Liverpool’s history.”
The darkest? I found the city bursting with energy and life. The article writes of Lord Scarman’s scathing description of Liverpudlians as having an ‘aggressive nature’ and a ‘belligerent attitude’. Well, there was an edge, a spark, a chippiness, a burning sense of justice and a willingness to fight injustice, an independent spirit that prevailed. And hope. The city of hopeless hope. I have a tiny little book that is good on this theme, Edgy Cities by Steve Higginson and Tony Wailey. It tells the truth about the city (find that book if you can).
“Roger Eagle opened up Eric’s over the road, taking his booking contacts with him from his years at The Liverpool Stadium. Geoff Davies established Probe Records and its associated label, while Bill Drummond and Big In Japan’s David Balfe founded Zoo Records. Young Scouse odd-balls and misfits, with only a dole cheque and plenty of time on their hands, suddenly had somewhere to go, somewhere to exchange ideas, to create and innovative, some place to be part of a ‘scene’, a scene as sparkling and as spectacular as its backdrop was grim and bleak.”
The music …
“Cherry Red have done their usual outstanding job putting together this 100 song, five CD set. Ninety per cent of it is Indie-Pop, white boys playing jangly guitars. The bass lines add a bit of meat and the drumming is invariably energetic, bordering on frenetic. On earlier tracks, there is an organ that sounds, strangely, like a toy, until the synthesisers take over. They aren’t afraid of a horn section either. Mostly, it’s whimsical melodies and garrulous, witty lyrics often drawn from the copious well-thumbed paperbacks that were swapped around at the time. The vocals powerfully emote, even when they are “just messin’”. They took the trouble to learn how to play their instruments. There is very little that is an angry three chord thrashing. That isn’t to say this music lacks passion. In fact it overflows with passion, confidence and swagger. There is a conscious rejection of The Beatles, turning instead to Sixties America for inspiration resulting in a generous sprinkling of psychedelic fairy dust across all five discs. Somehow, it appears the production values of the eighties mostly passed Liverpool by but there is a definite dip into a dull gloom towards the end of CD2 and the politics rudely intrude on CD5.”
“In their heads, these acts were major Pop Stars by simply making a support slot at Eric’s.”
And how I remember it, as one who hungered and hoped, among the joys and the sorrows ..
“Overall, it’s hungry and joyous, care-free, passionate and ambitious, bubbling over with hope. This is everything you could wish for in a box set compilation of the sound of Liverpool 1976-1988, a dark time for the city itself but, for the most part, a bright one for its music.”
A bright time for me, too. I found the whole time and place bursting with energy.
And Liverpool …
“Billed the ‘second wave’ of Merseyside music, it’s an impossible and interweaving scene to pin down properly, but this compilation encapsulates the breathless creative spirit of Britain’s most unconventional city like no other.”
Running quickly through the track listing … (and I could come up with endless alternative lists, the place is a living songbook, song runs through the blood like the river Mersey itself).
Revolutionary Spirit is packed with first-hand artist sleeve-notes, insightful essays, imagery and brilliant, essential music, this is a story long in need of telling… check out the full track list …
And make your own selections.
REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT – Wild Swans
Of Revolutionary Spirit, Paul Simpson says: “the music and lyrics naturally forming some kind of strange manifesto for the times. I never questioned the words. They just came unbidden and I wrote them down as if I’d channelled them.”
And if you want a bit of revolutionary spirit that prevents us being mired in a nostalgia that ossifies the creative edge to deprive us of a future… try
My Town, “the most shamelessly nostalgic paean to the magical charms of Mersey even as he [Paul Simpson] repeatedly reminds us “It’s over now, it’s over now.” (Dave Cantrell).
Is it over now?
WHEN I DREAM – The Teardrop Explodes is a definite highlight but …I love this one (if we want an alternative)
Of course, this one!
Endless youth, the sweetest summer. Nothing more to say. Other than Peter Coyle is still making great music, and challenging music, still very much creative. And a thoroughly nice fellow to boot.
Glad to see these guys included
And I thought I was the only one who remembered this one
But talking about tracks that seem to have disappeared off the radar, this one is not on the box, but is well worthy of being recovered from this time and place. Still very relevant.
This one sounded like a classic from the first, and the passing years have only added to that air. Even when new, it sounded like an old all-time classic, one that defines an era.
JEAN’S NOT HAPPENING – Pale Fountains
Frankly, anything involving Mick Head will do for me, Shack, Red Electric Band, check them out. Still making great music.
I have to make special mention of this one from Thomas Lang:
SONS OF – Thomas Lang
I first saw Thomas Lang supporting Alison Moyett some time December 85 or 86, (Royal Court was it?). “He’ll be topping the bill in his own right soon,” I said. Some great songs over the years. Love “August Day.” Also “The Longest Day.” And many more besides.
I saw Thomas Lang sing “Sons Of.” It’s a powerful song with a huge emotional charge. It was an incredibly moving experience, so I had to find out where the song came from. “Sons Of” is the English language version of “Fils de.” This was my introduction to the great Jacques Brel, who is in a category and class all of his own. I remain eternally thankful to Thomas Lang for this introduction.
COME HOLY SPIRIT- Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus
I don’t quite know what to say ... I think Paul Simpson says it best:
“The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus. They were fearless. I think they only ever had two fans; Will Sergeant and myself. They reformed a few years ago and played a one-off candle-lit gig in Liverpool. It was incredible and just like the first time around, only a handful of people were there to witness it.”
I’ll just say “wow” then. Just listen, and you will know.
The Bunnymen are on the box, of course.
Robin Surtees on Echo and The Bunnymen. “Four lads who shook the world. The first four albums are pretty flawless. I used to love watching them live. Will is a superb guitarist.”
I spent the night of my 50th birthday dancing the night away to Echo and the Bunnymen, live in Sefton Park. I can still believe it when Mac says that The Killing Moon is the greatest song ever, with the greatest line ever: “Fate, up against your will.” Talk about writing the cheques that your bank balance may never be able to cash.
In 2014, Ian Gittins wrote that Echo and The Bunnymen, a band who have “routinely and relentlessly trumpeted their self-diagnosed peerless magnificence throughout their 35-year career,” “are now not raging but sighing against the dying of the light.” I heard plenty of the old rage that night in Sefton Park. But a little sighing too. “Nothing ever lasts forever,” accompanied by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, was the perfect way to (nearly) end the perfect day. And I’d say that the Bunnymen’s “peerless magnificence” is based on more than self-diagnosis, too. I always rated them highly. And so did Phil B my old mate from school.
Some more of my own personal selections.
It was the kind of time when the determination to live a normal life could take an act of revolutionary courage and will. Mass unemployment didn’t just impoverish people materially in the present, it took away hope in the future.
This was the anthem of the class of '88, by the scandalously overlooked Phil Jones and Up and Running. It's a maddeningly catchy and infectious tune, with the repeated line 'go, go. go Johnny, show them what your made of Johnny'. It made no impression anywhere except here in Liverpool. Everyone knows the problems of unemployment and inequality etc on Merseyside in the 1980s, but that spirit of doing something with the future was never lost. Never has been. Not sure what happened to the class of '88, whether any of us ever really did shake the world up as we promised (or threatened!), callow youths as we were. But I've been singing this for years, am still singing it, and am very much still going.
A lot of people will remember just how good this band were. I kept watching throughout the eighties waiting for the great breakthrough. They had the edge about them.
Liverpool has always been a musical city. Like Paul de Noyer said in “Liverpool: Wondrous Place,” Liverpool isn’t a place where music happens, it is the reason why music happens.
“That this five disc set merely scratches the surface of the city’s vast musical history is proof that something extraordinary has taken place in Liverpool. The sheer number of bands and the quality of the music they made is something that this writer believes is unreplicated in any other city. Liverpool was and is a city that punches well above its weight.”
Punk and post-punk revitalized the city and Liverpool took up its call to arms enthusiastically. Within months of its shock waves hitting the city, bands were formed and a generation was again galvanized into action.
“This compilation highlights the fact that Liverpool has always had an impressive broad sweep of talent and vision. And all of it filtered through Liverpool’s own sense of how things should be done.”
What if any of these had been huge hits …?
“If There She Goes by The La’s had been at number one for twelve weeks, would it still be regarded as the authentic and credible record it is today? It would still be regarded as a great pop song, but possibly not held as close to the heart in Liverpool as it is today. We feel like we still own these songs.” (Paul Simpson)
These are our songs. They should have swept the world, or at least the country. They didn’t. So they are still very much ours.
As to the line that divides success and failure …
Mike Badger: “It’s a lottery as to what gets through. It certainly isn’t just about talent. It helps if you’ve got a great product but you need to have the luck of the draw too. I think most of the musicians on here will be proud to have been represented though because we all know how many others were out there. One thing Liverpool has done and always will do is have music busting out at the seams.”
China Crisis had more hits than most. And deservedly so.
Wonderful live rendition of this classic hit.
Icicle Works are in there, of course.
I always loved this one, from the early days.
Sefton Park, Larks in the Parks.
Ian McNabb: “I haven’t got a copy of the box yet but the inclusions look fair. It’s a shame Pete Wylie wouldn’t participate, you can’t really talk about Liverpool from that time period and not have a Wylie tune. Of the other acts I always love It’s Immaterial and never felt they got their due.”
Yes! on Wylie, and YES!! on It’s Immaterial. This was a band that always lightened the mood, odd and quirky and offbeat, at a slight angle to the everyday world. The masters of their art.
(“Pete Sounds” is just out, and made my 2017, one of the records of the millennium. “I Still Believe (Love And Soul And Rock And Roll)” Now then, when will this new It’s Immaterial album finally see light of day?
Anyone remember The Better Idea? Lord, how the young are so headstrong.
This one has the brilliant Christians on it on backing vocals .. where dreams are born.
The Christians are not on the box either. They were a big, big favourite of mine.
And they still make great music.
Pete Wylie is a big miss on the box, though. I was in Sheffield when I heeded the call to “Come Back.”
There’s a lot of interesting music that is made in the margins.
Yorkie: ‘I feel that although times are difficult for musicians at the moment, Liverpool still has, has always had and, indeed will always have a thriving music scene. It’s in our hearts.
Joe McKechnie: ‘Liverpool music has never been livelier, groups, venues, media, festivals all kinds of everything, I’m still as pick choosy as I’ve ever been, & I can’t be doing with groups who have, what I’ve come to call, the ‘LIPA Beat’. I’m talking about groups who come across all excitable, when they clearly have nothing at all to be excited about.’
Yorkie: ‘This box set is a snapshot of a very wonderful time in the city’s musical history, but I am confident there will be many more wonderful times to come.’
Paul Kelly:
“Liverpool is still one of the most musically active places in the country, with old hands and new bands keeping the momentum going and keeping the city’s flame burning.
What we see in the Revolutionary Spirit box set is a solid foundation that people can build on. It is a foundation that was built by years of creative toil carried out by people who, in the main, were more interested in the art of what they were doing than chasing commercial success, people who have added to the city’s individual creative core rather than conforming. And we salute them all.
Maybe that’s what Liverpool’s real revolutionary spirit is.”
“Liverpool is an anarchic place where spontaneity and flamboyant gesture are preferred to the disciplines of tactical thinking and planned interventions. Liverpool is an organizer’s graveyward.”
Communist Report, 1935
Many of us still reminisce on being part of something special. That’s I remember it, finding the bloom among the gloom. In My Town, Paul Simpson refers to ‘the Thatcher years of Purgatory.’ It could have been frozen in Hell, with no way out. But this creative outburst affirmed alternate possibilities. They found hope among the ruins; they found the bloom among the gloom; they found the way out.
So here’s to the ever insurgent, ever-resurgent Liverpool, this most spirited city. I read critics talk of swagger and style without substance, big mouths writing cheques the actual music could never quite cash. But making the attempt brought entertainment enough. You really should have seen us – and heard us!
And the missing Wylie? He’s still at it. His new CD “Pete Sounds” was a welcome Christmas present.
So here’s to the survivors. And to remembering those we lost along the way.
Two years ago I attended I attended the memorial service of Colin Vearncombe, one of the finest singer-songwriters there ever was or could be. In the sleeve notes to his final CD, Blind Faith, Colin wrote of the community he came to find through his music: "In the modern world it is all too easy to feel alone in a crowded room. I don't feel alone anymore." I never felt alone in the midst of this music.
So that was thirty years ago, then. 1988. Thirty years from now, we’ll all be dead. So I read someone commenting on this box. Everyone who made the music and the memories will be dead, and none of it will matter anymore. It mattered then, though, and it matters now. “Fate, up against your will.” Whether we rage or sigh against the dying of the light, there's value in looking at it all like a true Bunnyman. Was Mac having us on? Nothing ever lasts forever.
In the end, insofar as there could ever be an end, it is the blossom that matters most of all. And the blossoming that takes us there. (I'm reading that the building of stonehenge as a ceremony was as important to its builders as was the finished ancient stone-circle itself.)
There’s no signs of that revolutionary spirit ebbing. The Swans finally came good and completed their 'unfinished business.'
Robin Surtees: “I was always surprised that The Wild Swans weren’t huge.”
They were immense in my eyes and ears, and remain so. My anthem of 1988 was the Swans’ Bible Dreams, forever pondering as I did that closing line: “For God has left, this world bereft, and the scars remain.” I thought they were huge, for all the indifference of the wider world. And Paul Simpson and the Swans came back in 2011 to vindicate every claim I’d ever made for them.
Dave Cantrell asks:
‘Wild Swans always attracted a devoted fan base and those repackagings turned still more ears and conjured a new crop of listeners that eagerly added their tacit voices to a whispered chorus of “What if?” What if The Wild Swans reformed and were given a shot to deliver on that magnificently swooning promise, make that definitive album that’s always lurked teasingly behind the two gallant but underperforming LPs of yore? And whattaya know, after this seemingly interminable – and to some excruciating – hiatus, they’ve done just that. So, cut to the quick, you say, did they succeed?’
His answer, and mine, is a very emphatic YES! “The Coldest Winter for a Hundred Years” is one of the best albums of that hundred years, redeeming every promise they’d made in the 1980s. I just hope that that old business isn't finished, and the band don't disappear into the sunset.
Because there’s no signs of that revolutionary spirit ebbing.
“Liverpool was an industrial town, a poor town. The people fought hard for what they wanted to achieve and there was a hunger there, and that hunger has remained with the musicians.”
Pete Best, Original Beatle
What's life to you? For me, it's the hunger and the laughter. And it's here in this interview with Peter Hooton of The Farm. Politics, religion, football, music, culture, war and peace, love and violence, loss and redemption, tragedy and comedy ... it's all here in spades. It's my story too, with the usual variations. I write a lot, create my own worlds that way .. but here's the life I've lived. I'll keep going in to bat for this place, it's the pool of life, the place that makes to live. A place for trying, doing, striving, creating, changing.
'Liverpool is a city known across the world because of four lads, who did change the world in terms of music and later on ideology, I am sure they do not need an introduction. The Beatles’ original drummer Pete Best didn’t follow them on their journey, yet he did have his own unique journey and is enjoying life in "The Pool of Life" to the fullest, all bitterness and resentment has gone, due at long last to recognition for his part in The Beatles’ history, a huge unexpected royalty pay out in the mid 90’s from The Beatles Anthology and his own passion for life. Passion is something that is associated with Liverpool, along with music, football, wit and determination. Be it Liverpool FC of the late 70’s and early 80’s, Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from The Blackstuff, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, James Hanley's Boy, the classic soap opera Brookside, the pool has always produced a significant role in the cultural history of Great Britain and beyond, Paul, John, George, Ringo and Pete certainly saw to that. Events and people, which were inspiring at the time and continue to inspire people today.'
'Peter Hooton is a born and bred Liverpudlian who was born in September 1962 in Mill Road Hospital in the Everton district of Liverpool. Hooton was certainly influenced by his city, in particular his beloved Liverpool FC, local music and that famous razor tongue humour of his hometown, to create a fanzine, entitled The End. With no journalistic training or experience in publishing, other than he felt that Liverpool, in particular the fans, needed something witty, warm and intelligent to read on match day, his drive was passion, that’s it and to be honest that’s all you need in your first step of a thousand miles, thanks Lao Tzu.'
From the documentary "Liverpool: The Singing City".
‘These people here, they had largely to make their own enjoyment, and one natural way of enjoying yourself is to sing. They are the secret people that Chesterton mentioned in his poem. “There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise; there is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes”. That’s not true now of the hunger, but there is still the laughter in the eyes of these people round here, and in their hearts.’
My personal views and recollections.
BILLY FURY - PETE WYLIE - TEARDROP EXPLODES - ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN - IAN MCNABB AND THE ICICLE WORKS - UP AND RUNNING - ELVIS COSTELLO - ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK - COOK DA BOOKS - THE CHERRY BOYS - MICHAEL HEAD AND THE PALE FOUNTAINS - CHINA CRISIS - A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS - PETER COYLE AND THE LOTUS EATERS -ALTERNATIVE RADIO - BRIAN ATHERTON AND THE LIGHT - THE REVERB BROTHERS - IT’S IMMATERIAL - THE CHRISTIANS - THOMAS LANG - FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD - THE WILD SWANS - COLIN VEARNCOMBE AND BLACK - LIGHTNING SEEDS - CAST - PETER HOOTON AND THE FARM - THE BOO RADLEYS - THE LA’S - SPACE - KATHRYN WILLIAMS - CANDIE PAYNE - IAN PROWSE, PELE AND AMSTERDAM - MILES KANE - THE CORAL - THE ZUTONS.
“I don’t think you’ll find many people arguing with the view that Liverpool is the perfect home for the British Music Experience,” says curator and ex-music journalist (NME etc.) Kevin McManus.