Sock Free Hideaway

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

13. MATERIAL POP GENIUS: DENIM.

PART 1

SO FAR Lawrence's most definitive story is told in David Cavanagh's My Magpie eyes are hungry for the Prize, but there is talk of an autobiography. All I will say is if you know his singular treatment of popular music, you're blessed. His bands were conceived, and it's comforting to hope he's still writing his Berlin under the Denim moniker while still keeping Go Kart Mozart alive. (I was going to review a 2018 Hebden GKM show but decided it wasn't SFH enough. I was wrong.) Felt is dead in the water, which is why it's consequently the most fashionable.

Denim is my favourite conception and is the real deal. And a total break from art-school pretence, being both ridiculously brave and earnest. Lyrically, his genius is unsurpassed.

Juxtaposing weighty themes like the I.R.A and homelessness with the cold brutality of everyday trivia elevates him to the level of a cutting satirist or protest writer. They bankrupted their label Boy's Own. Denim's what happens when John Peel doesn't like you and in his quest for a more popular synthetic sound, Lawrence created novelty rock. But by the time it arrived, it felt relatively normal. As he explained to the music press on why it didn't happen on his debut, "I had studio trouble...Big trouble. I fell out with John Leckie - I wanted to make plastic music...I wanted to make music that had no roots. In the end, I was banned from the studio. I had to sign a contract saying I wouldn't go near Abbey Road."

They also had a loose manifesto to boot: being bored rigid with the canon they offered up 70s kitsch as pop art, knowingly lambasted 70s pub rock because it drew parallels with Brit-pop and engineered novelty slogans which have got far more bizarre. He also unwittingly created the perfect soundtrack to Trainspotting on his sophomore album Denim on Ice with its odes to drug addiction, joblessness, and stifling routine.

PART 2

BEFORE BACK in Denim was finally unleashed outside of demo-form, The World of Twist had already made an ill-fated move on the charts, with one of their number playing swirls and sea noises. In comparison, Lawrence's 70s session players felt relatively normal. As he succinctly noted to the music press at the time,

"The idea of using The Glitter Band had a value it wouldn't have now. And if I decided next week to get Jeff Wayne in to produce an album, I don't think anyone would bat an eyelid. "

I inhabited a club scene that comprehensively understood pop-cultural heritage. Lawrence really believed DJs would get him in the charts instead of live performances.

What made Jockey Slut so great was they understood that Pete Wiggs records were every bit as important as the Dust Brothers. It's what made their club nights eclectic and colourful. By comparison, the indie-circuit was narrow minded and much more stifling, so, after losing money trying to tour with Pulp (after realizing DJ's couldn't get him in the charts) on the tired circuit, Denim retreated back into being a studio-band. Back to the imagination.

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Lawrence's lyrics are often cruel, but don't make a point of being clever. He writes from the protagonist's perspective. Articulating, in his art at least, in a few choice words, that life's cruel. I Will Cry at Christmas is conjured from deep within those spheres of our lives we try to airbrush away. Our own cruelty and our own inflated sense of self.

I assumed the role of club-stalker but in reality I was trapped, just walking around town in a plastic coat, my head full of broken biscuits. Falling a-fucking-part. New Potatoes made perfect sense to me coz after a decade of repetitive factory work, nicotine, prescriptions, lager, and cheap drugs, I was a fucking New Potato. Only, I lived in a shared studio flat and not a tin.

Summer Smash is Lawrence's own EMI moment. The pinnacle of his artistic achievement in atypical throwaway fashion was given to Chris Porter (of Chris De Burgh fame) to produce in anticipation of signing with the major-label. It's a blatant pastiche of the sugar-coated synth-pop that Steve Wright raved about in the golden age.

I am absolutely hopeless at reading people. I walked into the work office proclaiming 'Happy Do-Di-Die-Day' before registering that everybody was crying. Lawrence cried the following week, when, because of their car-crash, his genuine stab at chart action got melted by the pressing plant because of its unfortunate title. His major-label dream was in tatters.

When the world finally reappraises these folk, (which Lawrence prophesied in the mid-80's would happen), he will finally be elevated to the realm of poet. Morrissey and Doherty and all the other po-faced pretenders will be mere footnotes. AND I'M SERIOUS.