Cheekbones and Speed

As part of Fire Engines Week —all week in Outsideleft. Tim looks at another influential band from the era, Josef K...

JOHNNIE JOHNSTONE
Through The Crack In The Wall: Josef K biography
Jawbone Press

Sometimes reading about a band or singer can be more entertaining than listening to them, especially when you can feast on the conceptual hunger of young people desperate to not be a part of something discernible whilst harbouring a desperate need to be accepted by a small but key elite of their peers.

Meet Josef K, too young to be original punks (by crucial months) and yet old enough to have been bitten by the glam rock and older siblings and friend’s record collections that birthed what UK punk became. Too far from London and Manchester to be a part of the rapidly transforming scenes of punk to post-punk as it happened, but holding on to the dangling ratchet straps of the stinking articulated lorry of punky progress as it zoomed past them on a circular tour of Britain, finally losing grip on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where they started after two and a bit short years.

Johnnie Johnstone’s loving bio tells a very classic post-punk story, how The Clash came to town with Subway Sect in tow, how the world turned briefly day-glo and then sodium-lit grey very quickly afterwards, how New York’s needle prick glamour was more alluring than the parade ground bombast that English punk became and how important it was for a group of young male friends to be different, in any, every way, without actually blowing anything up to achieve the effect. A subtle difference that could, nevertheless, get you beaten up on Edinburgh’s staid streets because of a quiff or a paperback in your demob suit pocket.

holding on to the dangling ratchet straps of the stinking articulated lorry of punky progress

Infused with the writer’s own cultural prejudices and presumptions, the book reads like a cracking, drunken night of specialist conversation, the post-punk equivalent of talking golf. Fascinating to participants (me! Me!) but largely irrelevant to everyone else. If the fan’s perspective means there’s a certain amount of gush, Johnstone can be forgiven, after all, who but a fan would write this book?

Seen as Edinburgh’s other could-shoulda’s, along with fellow angulars Fire Engines and Scars, Josef K were probably just weeks, even days too late and miles too far away to exploit their smart, hipness. But with the passage of time and the strange survival of ever-immature boomers who revel in nostalgia, their story is added to the post-punk pantheon of other suburban boys with vintage guitars and Camus in their pockets.

IT'S FIRE ENGINES WEEK
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Everything Happens So Fast
Cheekbones and Speed
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