‘Jam Science’ by Shriekback
It’s Christmas 1986. I’m twenty years old and I’m on holiday from my university course in Liverpool. In order to clear my overdraft, I’ve once again taken holiday employment with Oddbins, who bought out Gough Brothers, the off-licence chain that I worked for in my last year at school.
I wouldn’t say I’m a great employee; I spend a lot of my day listening to music and reading, but then again there aren’t that many customers and I keep the shelves stocked. In my favour is the fact that I’m punctual and I don’t ever nick anything. It is these qualities, I’m told by one of my managers, that put me in demand each holiday and have seen me moved onto the ‘secure staff’. As a result, this time I’m deployed in Carshalton, whence the regular staff have recently been dismissed.
I no longer have a car, which made life simple when I was working in locations like Kingston, Hampton, Shepperton and Barnes. Nor is it within cycling distance as the Lower Morden branch was. No, this time I have go by bus and not just one; I have to take the 213 up to North Cheam and then take the 152 to Carshalton*. My constant companion for the last 15 months has been my Walkman and at this time, the Christmas holidays 1986, the only cassette that I play on it is Shriekback’s 'Jam Science’.
I don’t know how long I’d had the album but I hadn’t played it much at first. The single, ’Hand on my Heart’ had promised the kind of electro-pop that I loved at that time and I had been initially disappointed by the album. However, my first year at university and, particularly, my new friend Ash, had opened up my ears a bit.
At the start of the year, I’d joined Ash’s band, The Zane Gray Incident, which was the first proper band I’d been in. However, the members of the band were all great musicians and at least two of them were better singers than me, so a lack of self-confidence had led to me leaving that summer, fearing I’d soon be ejected from their admirable ranks.
This had led to a miserable period lasting a few months but, that autumn, I’d met another musician, Simon Foster, and formed a new band named after the comic book character, Halo Jones. With a very melodic yet groove-loving bassist lined up to play with us, too, 'Jam Science’ was suddenly my manifesto. Not that I wanted to copy Shriekback, but there was something about the album, something unpolished and visceral, yet still electronic, that I hoped we might emulate.
OK, so 'Hand on my Heart’ was kind of slick sounding but the rest of the album was a rich, complex, unpredictable world of clattering Linn drums and funky bass iced with synthesisers used in a way that was different from anything else I’d heard. Plus, I loved Carl Marsh’s lyrics, which sounded like a field report from a world tangential to my own.
And no two songs were the same, so there was the angular 'Partyline, followed by the gliding, sultry 'Midnight Maps’, and the syncopated glory of 'Suck’ that led into the fragile falsetto of 'Hubris’. On the stale nicotine-stained upper decks of those cold bus journeys between Carshalton and Worcester Park, I lost myself in this other geography that Shriekback had mapped out.
Now, twenty-eight years later, the album has been remastered and reissued along with a recording of the 1984 gig at Hatfield Poly. (There are even a couple of tracks that have never been formally released.) My copy arrived today and it’s sat on my desk as I write. Tomorrow night when I’m on my own, I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine and let myself be transported back to that Christmas, still redolent of musical despair and aspiration, on the verge, although I didn’t know it at the time, of making some brilliant music. Tinged with nostalgia, these are happy memories.
*I think that’s right: it’s been nearly thirty years.
