I don’t know.  It just feels like the end of something.  There was the General Election, and the people’s emphatic endorsement of the current Conservative government.  And what looks like the rejection of the old intellectual left.  We’ll never see the likes of Michael Foot in positions of power again.  It will be all gloss and gleam.  And Kinnock will never connect.  People won’t trust him.  And now the Undertones disappearing quietly into the endless night pretty much without anyone even noticing.  I see it all as part of the same thing. 

At least when The Jam called it a day people sat up and noticed.  But with the Undertones?  Well, even the end of the Birthday Party generated more column inches than the passing of the Undertones.  And what have we got now?  Dexys have disappeared.  Wah! are where?  The Bunnymen are a stadium rock act like any other.  The Teardrops imploded.  The Fall stalled. The Associates becalmed.  Pale Fountains faltered.  There was an old Shane McGowan quote about singing about being bored in ’77 when there was so much going on, and now when there’s nothing we’re all pretending to be having such fun.  But the cocktail party’s over.

We didn’t even hold a wake for the Undertones.  People didn’t even seem to notice that, despite all the inner tensions, they split at the absolute top of their game.  For The Sin of Pride was such a fantastic record.  It was pure punk rock.  Pure soul.  Total pop.  Everything new pop was meant to be about.  Everyone goes on about Teenage Kicks and My Perfect Cousin.  But they’re from another world, a different place, somewhere I don’t really want to go back to.  We’ve all got to grow up sometime, and The Sin of Pride seems the way to do it with some style.  It’s surely no coincidence that the records initials are TSOP!

All last year we heard how the world belonged to Trevor Horn.  It was an illusion we bought into.  But thinking about it, well the best of the year’s pop records were produced by Mike Hedges.  Namely The Associates’ Sulk and The Story of the Blues by Wah!  Even the Banshees’ Kiss In The Dreamhouse.  They were so far ahead of everyone else.  And it’s no coincidence in my mind that TSOP has turned out so magnificently because of Hedges’ involvement.  I’ve no idea what the brief he was given said, but he’s produced something that is so completely modern but with traces of so many great things, from Motown and the West Coast summer of Love to Dexys and Scritti Politti.  It’s beautiful.

Trevor Horn.  Martin Hannett.  People go on about these names.  But Mike Hedges seems to be in a better place.  Don’t forget he sprinkled gold dust over The Cure, and made magic, and as I said rejuvenated the Banshees.  They’re not everybody’s cup of tea, but they are almost without precedent.  And it’s great that he brought those self same left field populist techniques to someone like the Undertones who everyone thinks they know what they should sound like.  But listen to a song seemingly thrown away like Window Shopping For New Clothes.  It’s as intricate as something by the Beach Boys or Mamas and Papas. 

And now they’re gone, and what do we have?  It’s like that song by The Jam.  “At the moment there’s nothing so there’s nothing to lose.  Lift up your lonely heart and walk right on through …”  I used to read the old punk stuff, and people would talk about being filled with disgust for what was around, but that kind of lost me because I went straight from loving ELO and Showaddywaddy to loving The Jam and Generation X, and it was all great pop to me.  But this year I can understand what people like Joe Strummer and so on were talking about back then.  I’m like them now.  I want to destroy.  I want to tear it all down.  Burn it down.  I look at Top of the Pops, Smash Hits, the music papers, and I feel total hate.

So much for the new pop revolution.  It allowed the door to be closed on the Undertones.  And opened its arms for Kajagoogoo, Duran Duran, the Eurythmics and Wham!  In the meantime the underground’s become a breeding ground for new hippies.  Positive punk or whatever.  Sex Gang Children.  Southern Death Cult.  Sisters of Mercy.  Horrible.  And I don’t want to be drawn into the trap of slagging off kids with synths, because I loved Thomas Leer, Robert Rental, Silicon Teens and Cabaret Voltaire, but what’s around now is so vacuous it hurts.  And Cherry Red just has no vision or identity.

I was trying to go along with the Jamming! way of thinking the other day, and talk in terms of a sense of optimism.  There is good stuff around.  I made a list.  The Prisoners are fantastic.  Their A Taste Of Pink LP was like a blast of fresh air, and their DIY up-yours attitude is spot on.  The Go-Betweens’ Before Hollywood is a total triumph.  Cattle and Cane just makes me cry.  And there’s Hurrah! and Felt.  The Marine Girls and the High Five.  But what else?

You can see why The Smiths seem to be attracting so much attention.  Maybe in the land of the blind, and so on.  I’m watching developments with interest.  Dave McCullough is doing his John The Baptist thing again.  And I went out and bought Hand In Glove on his recommendation.  I have to say I was expecting more of a Nightingales-style clatter and racket, but it all seems quite structured and sleek - like early-U2 in a way - though I hate to say it because that’s not a good thing.

It’s easy to see why quite a lot of people I know seem to be immersing themselves in older sounds like ‘60s soul and beat noise.  These sounds may belong to a different age but they seem so fresh and vital.  I would rather go for anything on Kent Records than have to endure the March Violets or whatever’s in at the moment. 

© 2007 John Carney