IN MUSIC, as in comedy, timing is everything. There was little point in calling your band Glencoe and standing on the stage of Edinburgh's old Empire Theatre, all long hair and legs-apart heroic, evoking an image of a country on the march with pumped-up passion in its breast... and doing all of this a full nine years before the closure of Ravenscraig.
Orange Juice at the start of their association with Postcard Records
Glencoe, as the warm-up for Argent, were the very first band I saw perform live. They had a big sound and – though I can't be sure on account of being drunk on two pints of lager and lime – I think they were quite political. But at that time Scottish audiences didn't want politics from its indigenous acts. If the charts were any guide, they wanted Neil Reid, Lena Martell and – soon to stomp over yonder glen, plaided up to the hilt – the Bay City Rollers.
No one remembers Glencoe now. You can't buy their two early Seventies albums on Amazon. They don't rate a mention in Brian Hogg's definitive book, The History Of Scottish Rock And Pop. And a new BBC Scotland documentary, Caledonia Dreamin', can find no room for them.
This is a strange programme. Nothing to do with the Glencoe omission, but it can't seem to work out what it's trying to be. Then again, maybe that's deliberate. For this wouldn't be an entirely inaccurate description of Scottish music. Are we macho or are we fey? Are we bedsit-scratchy or are we over-produced? Do we sing in Scottish accents or warble in American ones? What's the link, apart from Scotland itself, between Lonnie Donegan and Franz Ferdinand? Does a native sound exist or is that just too salmon-slippery a concept?
Caledonia Dreamin' starts off as a profile of Postcard Records, the independent label run from a second-floor Glasgow tenement flat by Alan Horne, Scotland's Andy Warhol. Then it gets bogged down in politics with contributions from singers who, railing against Thatcherism, allowed their music to get bogged down in politics.
Fearful of missing anyone out, it mentions as many acts as possible, losing focus. And it still ends up neglecting some bands: Fire Engines, Aztec Camera and Big Country, from different sections of the documentary. It tries to be a broad history of our music. But you can't do that in an hour. So why wasn't this a series? If we self-important hacks can hog screen-time for six weeks – last year's Deadline: The Story Of The Scottish Press – then why not our bands?
Caledonia Dreamin' is a missed opportunity and a frustrating one because all the participants speak well. Justin Currie of Del Amitri recalls the schoolboy thrill of spotting Orange Juice's Edwyn Collins from the top deck of a bus. "It was like seeing Elvis," he says. "I wrote 'I love Edwyn' on my schoolbag in fourth-year and got called a poof."
Pre-Edwyn, Scots rockers were ancient. Maggie Bell looked like your mum, Dan McCafferty of Nazareth must have been 70 if he was a day and everyone knew that Alex Harvey was 108 and could remember a world without Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Postcard billed themselves the "Sound of Young Scotland" and sparked a pop goldrush among London talent scouts. "You just had to wear the right trousers and you got yourself a record deal," recalls Altered Images' Steve Lironi.
There's great archive footage of Horne, then a student, conducting a tour of Postcard's "HQ" – an imitation-teak wardrobe – and in sandals and Argyle socks, swinging an ankle grandiloquently. But apparently he couldn't be persuaded to reflect on those heady days from the perspective of 2008. Doubtless that's a Warholian stance, although it's to the documentary's detriment.
In strict business terms, Postcard lasted as long as it takes to choose a sea view and write "Wish you were here". Just 13 singles. Suddenly in Scotland, skinny boys and ironic playfulness were out and ambition and ideas in widescreen were in. "We just realised we were a commercial entity," says Justin Currie. And Pat Kane of Hue And Cry adds: "It (the 1980s] was a time for ambitious young men and women to get to the place they wanted to get. Suits were worn and grandiosity was embraced."
This was the decade when schizophrenic Scotland swapped credibility for popularity. Simple Minds and Deacon Blue sold more records but interested pre-eminent pop pundit Paul Morley less and, according to author Christopher Brookmyre, Wet Wet Wet suffered a peculiarly Caledonian fate: "In Scotland there's an enduring hatred of people who are too successful."
All of this is fascinating and deserves a fuller debate than is afforded here. The same could be said of the risky business of mixing pop with politics – not in song but on the soapbox, and not in accents that on record, as the documentary points out, were "more Memphis than Motherwell". The Proclaimers, of course, were consistently more Muchty even than Motherwell.
But there isn't enough room in a one-off programme, and by the time it reaches Memphis, or mock-Memphis, you almost forget that it began at 185 West Princes Street in Glasgow with Collins hiding behind his floppy fringe and Horne, in the words of another contributor, "sneering at everything".
Alex Kapranos returns us to Postcard when he recalls his excitement at discovering the band who would go on to influence Franz Ferdinand after finding two old Orange Juice singles in a market-stall. "They were quite expensive – a pound each. But I was like: 'Why had nobody told me about this stuff before?'"
Stuart Murdoch was another who was too young to appreciate the Alan Horne aesthetic first time round, but when he formed Belle And Sebastian he wanted them to be "Son of Postcard". There's enough material for an hour entirely devoted to Postcard, and more than enough for another edition of Caledonia Dreamin' on just politics.
So why isn't it a series? All the bands missed out – and they include Primal Scream, Jesus And Mary Chain and the Cocteau Twins – could fill another hour. Without trying too hard, we've just assembled a four-and-a-half-parter and maybe, because we're Scottish and a bit perverse, that would do nicely. There might even be room for a snippet about Glencoe.
The documentary, as it currently stands, ends with a roll-call of the contemporary acts, such as KT Tunstall, the Fratellis and the View, who show Scotland in a confident light, a country "more at ease with itself".
What a pity that someone at the BBC – either in Glasgow or London – didn't have the same confidence in making more of such a cracking yarn. But that's typically Caledonian too: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Caledonia Dreamin' is on BBC4 on Friday at 9pm
Edwyn Collins on a nostalgia allergyEdwyn Collins sheds some light on the mysterious non-appearance in Caledonia Dreamin' of Postcard impresario Alan Horne. "He hates nostalgia," says Collins. "As far as I know, he's living quietly in Glasgow and no longer involved in music – but we've fallen out."
Collins' wife Grace adds: "Edwyn felt Alan crossed the line. My reaction was: 'Alan Horne is a scheming mixer – hold the front page!' I didn't think he'd behaved any worse than before. He got in touch when Edwyn was unwell (having suffered two brain haemorrhages]. I miss Alan: he could be very funny, and when I think back, the pair of them were arrogant so-and-sos."
"Ach, I suppose we were," says Collins.
Orange Juice inspired countless Scots to pick up a guitar. Collins acknowledges his Scottish roots, but is not a fervent flag-waver for his homeland. "I've always called myself an internationalist," he says. "Yes, I look to Scotland, but I also look to Europe, America and the Far East. I don't like parochialism, the 'Wha's like us?' stuff."
Nevertheless, he says the Scots pop heritage is vivid and important enough to merit a series. "I was too ill to take part in this programme but I'm surprised it's only a one-off."
