Chances are that you won’t remember post-punk band Scars . Their moment in the sun was both tragically and gloriously brief. They stormed out of Edinburgh in the early 1980s possessed of equal parts glam audacity, art-rock solemnity and futuristic zeal. They were roundly hailed as the next great white musical hope. Two Peel sessions and a handful of music-paper covers later, they vanished in a fog of egotism and frustrated desires. But not before they delivered their one and only album, 1981’s maddeningly beautiful Author! Author!
In the intervening years, Scars have been effectively forgotten. Years ago, Mark E Smith namechecked them as his favourite band ("because they were the complete opposite of the Fall"), and more recently, Lemon Jelly briefly raised Scars’ profile by sampling them on their ’64-’95 album. But despite guitarist Paul Research’s sterling efforts to keep the name alive on his Scars website , the band appeared to be permanently consigned to the dustbin of history. Even in Simon Reynolds ’ supposedly "encyclopaedic" post-punk history, Rip it Up & Start Again, Scars merit only the most fleeting of mentions.
Meanwhile, down the last 25 years, every other once-forgotten band of their era has been either endlessly repackaged and/or critically rehabilitated to enable them to enjoy an extension on their fifteen minutes by virtue of their appearance on a thousand and one dodgy service-station compilations.
As for Scars, their fate has hardly been helped by the convoluted copyright situation that has held up the reissue of Author! Author! for all these years. Now that it’s finally out and sounding as edgy and lovely as it always did, maybe the band can finally enjoy some of the critical and commercial acclaim that has long been denied them.
That’s right, ONE POUND to see The Cure and Joy Division. *sigh*