by Alex; Ogg
The Fast connection came after Bower met Last when 2,3 supported The Rezillos at a Doncaster Outlook show (Bower would also recommend The Human League to Last, having organised their first show). Although 2.3 were already falling apart internally by the time their single was recorded in Edinburgh, they were rewarded with the NME’s Single of the Week accolade. ‘Where To Now?’ was, like the label’s debut release, notable for its scrutiny of punk’s development. As Jon Savage pointed out, “like Joy Division’s contemporaneous ‘Novelty’, [it] acutely captured the sense of post-punk disappointment.”
The third Fast release was not a record, but a combined press release cum manifesto, ‘The Quality Of Life No. 1’ (FAST 3). The plastic bag contained a nine xeroxed collages, a slice of orange peel and a note stating “… information can only be disseminated via packaging… the initial idea has to be moulded into a package.” It sold for 75p at selected outlets. As Last elaborates, “We were always deadly serious and also making jokes at the same time. ’32 Weeks’ was like that, too. Part of the whole point was to keep people unsure, to tread that line – it was up to you if you wanted to take it seriously, and if you did you’d find things in there, and if you wanted to take it as a joke, you could do. Part of that joke was – you had to be in the know to get it. And that was part of the whole branding thing. There was a whole visual thing I was always interested in, coming from graphics and architecture, so part of that was using the opportunity of that aesthetic. I was familiar with people like John Heartfield, who did the propaganda posters just before the Second World War. I was interested in that. So on one level it was a serious arty project, but we did it behind that jokey element. Notoriously, every one of those bags had something organic in it to make it rot, and so therefore become unique.” It was a wheeze that worked on several levels – surprisingly enough, even financial. “Bob Last is selling bags of old rubbish for 70 (sic) pence,” Jon King of Gang Of Four would later state to Mary Harron of the Melody Maker. “Now, what major record label wouldn’t love to get away with that?”
FAST 4, The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’/’Circus Of Death’, was an enthralling, hypnotic example of early UK electronica recorded on primitive home-assembled equipment. Far from the model of the band that would achieve enormous success in the mid-80s, the initial incarnation of the group combined wry/macabre lyrical concerns with a sound spectrum drawn from Sheffield’s industrial base and increasingly affordable synthesizer technology. Fast was building a winning hand of acts intent on salvaging the initial punk ideal from retrenchment and rancorous conservatism.
That was certainly the case when the roster was augmented by the aforementioned Gang Of Four, a group who boast legitimate claims to being the most inspirational architects of the post-punk aesthetic – insofar as they could without entirely divorcing themselves from rock ‘n’ roll dynamics. What they did eschew were rock ‘n’ roll platitudes – in an almost Stalinist manner; the derision one of their number faced when he placed his foot on a monitor in a suspected ‘rockist’ pose serves as an appealing illustration. Having recorded their first demos (including ‘Love Not Lust’, which would evolve into ‘Damaged Goods’) at the end of 1977, they despatched a tape to Fast. The connection came through The Mekons, who chivalrously told Last that Gang Of Four were by far the better band. The ‘Damaged Goods’ EP emerged in October 1978, but it was to their only release for Fast after an approach was made by – of all companies – EMI. As the band’s Andy Gill later explained to Jon Savage, “It was like a production deal. They gave us the money, we gave them the tapes. We had total control over the packaging and the production of the records. From the beginning, we picked EMI as being a perfect label for us to be on; one of the biggest industrial conglomerates in the UK – a huge multinational, trading in everything from arms to entertainment. If we’d been on Rough Trade, it would have been a far less potent juxtaposition.” If only The Clash had made swiping the swag sound so damned compelling.
Fast’s next release came from The Scars, its first ‘domestic’ signing, in March 1979; Adult/ery’, backed by ‘Horrorshow’. Another band who had made an impressive showing at the Stiff/Chiswick Challenge at Clouds, as well as being the first Scottish act on the label, the Scars also represented a break from the art school milieu that had dominated the label’s output previously. “The initial artists, they did have that background,” admits Last, “the art school dance goes on forever in informing popular music. But then we saw a second generation of kids who were inspired by what we were doing, people like The Scars or Fire Engines. These guys had left school or were labouring on building sites. They had a torrent of ideas in their heads that suddenly they thought they could do something with.”
Partially as an attempt to satisfy that demand, Fast showcased The Prats, The Flowers (Hillary Morrison’s band), DAF and others, including the first officially released recording by Joy Division, across a series of ‘ear comics’; three EPs; two of them 12-inches, the third a double 7-inch. Famously, Earcom 3 featured a track by The Stupid Babies – children (one of whom was actually a young Adamski) complaining, somewhat uharmonically, about their babysitter. “We were making a series of singles that, while rough, were a perfect set of ‘moments’,” Last recounts, “and we were getting massive amounts of feedback and mail from all over the world, and people turning up on our doorstep – all this stuff we seemed to be inspiring. And we did this to create an environment to take the pressure off. And also an environment where it was a bit like a collage thing – four or five things that might not have worked on their own, suddenly had some kind of different property when put alongside each other. I still really like some of the stuff on the Earcoms.”
Fast’s final release was the debut single by San Francisco’s Dead Kennedys, ‘California Uber Alles’, licensed from the band’s own imprint, Alternative Tentacles. “Bob Last of Fast Product saved the band,” says singer Jello Biafra. “We’d done an east coast tour, and gone to New York as total unknowns. It might have been too soon. I went through culture shock. Some of the other guys… you start to learn a little bit more about everybody that way, and I wasn’t liking what I was seeing. The guys who’d played in bar bands were acting like that again. I was like, well, maybe we’re done, but I’ll wait and see if the single goes anywhere. Then it did! Here we’d had this random stroke of luck that had eluded The Avengers, Dils, X, Weirdos on down. I’ve always tried to look at that and keep reminding myself that it wasn’t necessarily because we were the best band at the time, it was just pure, dumb luck. That meant that the horrible east coast tour had not been a complete waste after all. Jim Fouratt of a club called Hurrah’s had hosted Bob in New York and played him a whole bunch of records. The ones that Bob Last liked the most were ‘California Uber Alles’, Middle Class’s debut EP and another San Francisco duo Noh Mercy, some of which wound up on Earcom 3. And ‘California Uber Alles’ already existed as a kick-ass single so he had something to release without having to record or pay for it. I was pretty blown away, because I grasped how important Fast Product was at that time. People were waiting with baited breath for the next Fast single after he’d sprung The Gang of Four, The Mekons, Human League, Scars and others.”
Last isn’t quite sure that’s how it worked out. “Jim Fouratt was a good friend at the time. I went over to New York and stayed with him, that’s true, but actually, Dead Kennedys was completely coincidental to that. Noh Mercy and Middle Class were both things that Jon Savage brought to my attention, as I recall. I loved both of them. But separately to that, I’m not sure if Dead Kennedys didn’t come about through John Peel. At that time we were very close with Peel, and I think I phoned him up during the show. ‘Who the fuck are these people? What’s their number?’ That’s my recollection.”
‘California’ was immediately successful, which might have been enough to cement Fast’s future. But Last was not interested. “It was the perfect single to end that series of singles,” he says. “You couldn’t have a highe
r note to go out on. We did have some discussion or interaction with Jello and Dead Kennedys, or Hillary did, about an album. But I wasn’t interested enough in albums at that time. It wasn’t what the label was about – the label was about special moments.” Last’s rationale for Fast’s briefest of tenures was that the label was outgrowing its original concept. The alarming strike rate of his A&R choices had seen to that. He states now that ‘California’, ‘Where Were You?’ and ‘Damaged Goods’ were all doing brisk business. “We were on the map at that point, but partly why I think we have become iconic as a label is because we did stop.”
In a break with independent label tradition both past and present, Last actively encouraged his (predominantly English) bands to leave the label if better offers came around. Which is exactly what transpired with The Mekons, Human League (both Virgin) and Gang Of Four (EMI). But he also maintained links with the bands. “Bob was well into us climbing into bed with Virgin,” recalls Langford. “He produced the single ‘Work All Week’ and the first album up at [Virgin studio] The Manor. I had breakfast with him and [Richard] Branson one morning – very weird. I thought he was the gardener.”
Last did set up a second label, pop:aural, inaugurated in December 1979 with the release of The Flowers’ ‘Confessions’. Boots For Dancing, Restricted Code and Drinking Electricity all recorded for the label, though with less impact than the Fast generation of artists. “We never quite got it right,” admits Last, “though I think some interesting things came out of it. The Flowers was almost right, same with Restricted Code. It just never quite clicked.” However, for David Rome of Drinking Electricity, at least the release gave him the opportunity to quit the legal profession. “We sent out our cassette to all and sundry,” he recalls, “and got a reply from Bob Last. He rang up and said he’d like to release it. Bob was great – but we didn’t meet him until the day we went into the studio. We signed the contract and then drove up to Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. I arrived early and started to record the b-side, having never been in the studio or done anything like this in my life before. Then Bob turned up a couple of hours later. And we did the vocal on the track in a couple of days. He produced the tracks and designed the artwork. The artwork was great; he had a really good visual sense. It was his chance to be the producer as well, I think.” Last concurs. “That’s true. I became very interested in the studio and the sonic elements, from a technical point of view.” Rome thereafter decided to form his own record label, Survival, announcing the fact to Lord Denning’s surprise on the receipt of his practitioner’s certificate at the Law Society.
Probably the band with the greatest potential on pop:aural, however, was the Fire Engines – much admired by the likes of botany student Alan Horne, who would subsequently form Postcard Records. But the breakthrough never came. “The record we put out, ‘Candy Skin’, did fantastically well, and it still holds up,” says Last. “But then we tried to get more serious about Fire Engines in terms of poppiness, and we did ‘Big Gold Dream’, which some people like, but I still can’t listen to. It frustrates me enormously, because we were just on the cusp of getting them to do something else, but it just didn’t work. By then, also, the whole management thing was really taking off, because we took The Human League to Virgin. Rather than trying to continue to put Human League records out, I became their manager because we were really ambitious for them. So they were on a big label and I had to make a decision whether I was going to go with that.” Last would continue in management until moving into film projects in the late 80s. “The last band I managed was Scritti Politti, and I resigned some time after their third album. Then I started working on music with film – I’d always been a fan of film, and now I had some music skills to bring in, in terms of sound. I was able to use that as a platform to get into producing.”
When Ian Ballard started his Leytonstone record label, later to unearth Manic Street Preachers and become the long-term partner of Wild Billy Childish, he entitled it Damaged Goods in tribute to the record Last released as FAST 5. “I loved Fast Product,” he confirms, “it was short-lived, but every record Bob Last put out was fantastic. The first Mekons and Human League singles are to die for. I just fell in love with the style of it, too.” Fast’s influence is, indeed, widely acknowledged. Tony Wilson was candid about its (self-evident) impact on Factory. In fact, had circumstances been different, Joy Division might have stayed with Fast. “We decided not to sign them,” Last says, “because we were worried about their playing around with certain political imagery. We were uncomfortable about that. Warsaw had supported Rezillos a few times and we knew them, and they came up to meet us, and we knew Rob (Gretton). We decided not to go ahead. We talked to Tony [Wilson] a few times about how to run a record label – not that we really knew anything about it!” It’s diverting to ponder how different history might have been, but even without Joy Division, the Fast catalogue remains a model of, as one commentator put it, ‘how to do things right’. “To my mind,” reflects former Zig Zag Small Labels Catalogue editor David Marlow, “Fast, as an enterprise, although it was all slightly art school, was the spiritual foundation of the whole independent movement.”
Yet Last is well aware of the pitfalls of mythologising the independent label boom, or any suggestion that such enterprises were inherently superior. “It’s much more nuanced and complicated than that. We always stated that we never claimed to be an independent label – we were more dependent, because we didn’t have any money. The idea that independent is better – it’s a much more complex picture. There was a certain moment where a gap opened up in the media world where you could get attention for things you were doing. For a while, the major companies lost the plot and lost control. There’s a modern day parallel now where the multinationals don’t have things locked down. But one of the reasons we finished the label was because we didn’t see any point, in and of itself, of building it as an independent business. It was about the products we made, not about the label structure. That was almost coincidental. Independents just become bigger independents. If you’re working within a capitalist economic system, they’re all on a continuum in the same sort of process. And the less capitalised you are, it’s perfectly arguable, the less independent you are. Part of the jokeyness we got involved in was because we didn’t want to claim ethical superiority. Yes, we really believed in things that we were saying, we thought it mattered, and we were excited and energised about it. We hoped that people listened to the records and bought them and saw the bands. We wanted to change people’s lives, but we never, ever claimed any ethical superiority over anyone on EMI or whatever.”
One of Britain’s finest contemporary songwriters and soon to be the short-trousered, fringe-shrouded doyen of the fey indie crowd, Edwyn Collins, from Bearsden, started out in the aftermath of punk. The son of an art lecturer father, he formed the Young Beats, alongside Alan Duncan, in 1976, aged 17. The Nu-Sonics, their title taken from the make of Burns’ guitar that Collins had purchased second-hand, came into being with the addition of civil servant cum drummer Steven Daly and guitarist James Kirk, formerly of the Machetes. As Daly recalled to Alan Horne in the sleevenotes to The Heather’s On Fire, “‘I can’t imagine that we did more than six gigs as the Nu-Sonics. At one point we had such problems finding a drummer that I took up the drums and Edwyn graciously agreed to sing. Which was fine because they were his songs anyway.” They were formed prior to attending the Clash’s White Riot gig at the Edinburgh Playhouse on 7 May 1977, but seeing that band up close helped cement their resolve. The other key moment, as Collins revealed to Mike Cimicata, was the release of ‘Spiral Scratch’. “In the immediate post-punk period it was very much a feeling of DIY, and the pivotal single was ‘Spiral Scratch’ by Buzzcocks. It had a breakdown of the recording costs on the sleeve, and it was on their own label New Hormones. And that made us realise, well, that kind of thing was possible.”
The Nu-Sonics’ half dozen appearances included one at the Silver Thread in Paisley as well as
a support to the Backstabbers at Maryhill Borough Hall in Christmas 1978. Simon Goddard recalled the gig for Uncut, with the Nu-Sonics set abridged after two numbers when a member of the infamous Maryhill Fleet grabbed the microphone from Collins and demanded the band ‘Gi’ us some fuckin’ Showaddywaddy’. “We just had to run to the dressing room,” Collins told Goddard, “lock ourselves in and call the police.” The imagery is pure World War II submarine drama, a distressed captain flooding the torpedo room and its crew to save the ship. “There was this one guy who didn’t make it in time. We were too scared to open the door and help. I still remember his screams as they kicked the fuck out of him.”
The Nu-Sonics set eventually embraced covers of the Velvet Underground’s ‘We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together’ (rescued from a 1969 live album) and, more perversely, the ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ theme and Chic’s ‘Dance Dance Dance’. The latter consisted of an improvised jam on stage while guest vocalist Andy Shoes shouted ‘Yowsa’ repeatedly into the microphone. Aloof and camp, Collins took to the stage wearing a sling, which most thought was arty affectation, but actually resulted from having cut his hand with a Stanley knife. A disbelieving audience repeatedly chanted “You fucking poofs” at the ensuing spectacle.