Hungry Beat

Two independent record labels that operated well outside the mainstream, Fast Product and Postcard, deserve more credit than they usually receive. In Edinburgh, Bob Last and Hilary Morrison started the first; in Glasgow, Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins ran the second. Together they gave Scottish musicians a new belief that they could make pop music on their own terms, something that had been largely missing before, and their uncompromising approach stamped their releases with a clear sense of seriousness and wit. Their example also encouraged other regional independents and provocateurs, including Rough Trade, Factory and Zoo.

This book is an oral history of those two labels and of the post-punk scene in Scotland between 1977 and 1984. It opens with the Subway Sect and the Slits playing Edinburgh on the White Riot tour and follows events until Bob Last guided the Human League from experimental electronic performers on Fast Product to a number one hit in both Britain and America with Don't You Want Me.

Much of the material comes from interviews gathered for Grant McPhee's film Big Gold Dream, conducted with Last, Morrison, Paul Morley and members of the Human League, Scars, the Mekons, Fire Engines, Josef K, Aztec Camera, the Go-Betweens and the Bluebells. Together these accounts offer a broad survey of an important period in Scottish cultural output and of the two labels that reshaped British music.