Friday 25th March 2011

OLD MONEY 2: VIC GODARD & THE SUBWAY SECT – “MAKE ME SAD” (1980)

Tracing the story of punk usually runs down paths littered with references to anarchy, nihilism, three chords and the truth. I can accept a few of those things, but the truth? I find that hard to stomach. For all their disheveled allure, the poster boys of punk mainly smacked of posture and artifice. Punk in its populist form was theatre in a way that its canonised status as a rebellious subculture doesn’t always acknowledge. Since ideology often lags behind reality, it’s not that surprising, but if punk’s ideal were to be truly realised, I often think that Vic Godard would represent the quintessential embodiment of what its UK derivation promised.

“Make Me Sad”, recorded by a newly assembled Subway Sect line-up in 1980, is a few steps removed from the accepted punk form, but it reeks of its singularity, feels unruly in its cutting ramshackle charm. Tenderly poised, unlike so much of punk’s scrawl, it’s built around the autodidactic charm of its author, who recalls a down-home Lou Reed sans the louche king’s reptilian demeanour. Despite the similarities, Godard never comes off as anything other than himself. I believe that’s what all postcard punks futilely dreamed of.

The transgressive qualities of “Make Me Sad” lay not so much in Godard’s speak-sing delivery or the jangle of those proto-indiepop guitars, but in its distinctive poetry. Godard understood language expertly enough to reach through conventional form and pull out that rarest of things: a hidden truth. And it’s in the oblique phrasing of “Make Me Sad” that he signals the real failure of punk, acting as an allegory for failing love: “you need a change from chasing this chimera of content”.

By 1980, punk was long dead and gone, and Britain was about to get a whole lot worse. Godard told us why, while pointing towards a fractured and wobbly future coming out of the rubble. Yes, there was a future, even if it was way more fucked than anyone saw coming. And doesn’t that feel highly relevant right now?

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Vic Godard and the Subway Sect – “Make Me Sad”

(Photo: Super Bomba)