When Josef K were promoting a retrospective compilation in 1987, they were asked about the title. Why was it called Young And Stupid? “Because we were,” they replied. Since then, the Edinburgh band’s mystique has only grown, and their slim catalogue has been endlessly reappraised. The fact that Josef K’s music was released on Postcard Records has been a help and a hindrance. The group were outshone by the more flamboyant Orange Juice, and the label’s sock-drawer Svengali Alan Horne sometimes gave the impression he had signed them by mistake.
Josef K’s meteoric career is explored in Johnnie Johnstone’s new biography Through The Crack In The Wall, while the broader question of the label’s influence informs Grant McPhee’s book Postcards From Scotland, which builds on the filmmaker’s Scottish indie documentaries Big Gold Dream and Teenage Superstars. For Johnstone, discovering Josef K was “one of those Velvet Underground moments. Why had no one told me about them? Everything about them – the awkward, slightly forced smiles and ill-fitting suits, the oblique imagery of the lyrics, the frenetic angularity of their sounds – seemed completely thrilling. The combination of frantic, dislocated rhythms borne of a desperate anxiety, with existentialist musings – the whole thing shrouded and made stranger by the band’s debonair appearance – made Josef K truly unique.”
McPhee suggests Josef K had “the perfect career – burning like magnesium, disintegrating but leaving a series of perfect singles that sonically had a profound effect on what came later. Look at the later C86 compilation: that has become something that defines an entire genre of jangly ’60s indie bands, but when you actually listen to it, only 50 per cent of the tracks share that aesthetic, with a huge debt to Orange Juice’s first two singles. The other half seem to have their basis in Fire Engines, The Fall and definitely Josef K.”
McPhee’s oral history of 1980s Scottish indie fractures in several directions. The aftershocks extend to Nirvana and Big Star via The Vaselines, Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream. “Postcard was a real oddball label,” says Stephen McRobbie of The Pastels, whose long career surpassed the limitations of C86. “Something like Rough Trade had a tangible legacy across the landscape of British music, whereas Postcard was this micro-moment, a sudden flash.” Josef K had “a very different energy from Orange Juice,” McRobbie suggests. “There’s something quite European about them. I see Josef K belonging to the same world as something like Joy Division. There’s more darkness.”
“We were the misfits in an otherwise more approachable roster of bands,” says Josef K’s lead singer, Paul Haig. “The music that influenced us was probably more angst-ridden and dark. The guitars were staccato and stopped/started a lot – it was no-wave post-punk, I guess. I don’t remember trying to write classic pop, although I think others might have been. Most of us couldn’t play well enough to craft a polished hit tune anyway. Compared to our label chums at the time, we were more of an experimental group.” Malcolm Ross, who played guitar in both Josef K and Orange Juice, is typically modest about their legacy. “I don’t remember our ambitions being discussed much in Josef K,” he says, “but Paul and I agreed we should only make two albums. We didn’t think many bands made more than two good ones, and the first is usually considered the best. We weren’t career-oriented.” In fact, Josef K made only one album, The Only Fun In Town, though they did record it twice. “We were pretty successful in what we intended,” says Ross. “There is still some interest in us 40-odd years later, and I hope there’s a slight air of mystery remaining.”
Through The Crack In The Wall: The Secret History Of Josef K is published by Jawbone Press
Postcards From Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983-1995 is published by Omnibus