Scars lineup ca. 1981
Origin	Edinburgh, Scotland
Country	United Kingdom
Years active	1977 - 1982
Genres	punk post-punk New Wave
Labels	Fast Product Charisma Records
Members	Robert King Paul Research John Mackie Calumn Mackay Steve McLaughlin
Website(s)	The Scars' website

Scars (originally known as The Scars) were a post-punk/New Wave band that hailed from Edinburgh, Scotland, and were a part of that city's bustling music scene of the late 70s - early 80s.

History

The original Scars lineup performing live at the Meadow Festival in 1979, featuring original drummer Calumn Mackay.

Fronted by Robert King and featuring Paul Research on lead guitar, John Mackie on bass, and Calumn Mackay on drums, the band's original sound was a gritty, punky one, as evidenced by their 1979 singles for "Horrorshow"/"Adult/ery" and "Your Attention Please". That last song would later be included in the band's 1981 (and sole) album Author! Author!, but in the meantime the group maintained an ever-mounting momentum and attention via singles releases and constant touring, and soon they were noticed by John Peel. Peel invited the band to record two of his legendary Sessions, once in February 1980 and another in May 1981. Another notable event in the band's history happened when i-D featured the band's musical adaptation of the Peter Porter poem "Your Attention Please" as the first free flexi disc offered by the trendy London-based style magazine.

By the time the band started recording the aforementioned album (Author! Author!), their sound had matured from being rough and punky to something more classically post-punk and melodic. From that album sprang perhaps the most recognizable Scars song out there, "All About You", which was the only single launched directly from that album. Calumn Mackay left Scars the year prior to the album's release, so Steve McLaughlin took over drumming duties for the band at around this time. The band continued to receive positive attention and increase their fan base as they were first able to co-headline gigs with the Comsat Angels, then headline gigs with Josef K as their supporting act. Scars even managed to land a full-page spread in Smash Hits. By that time, the band was headquartered in London

In the summer of 1982, Scars landed a supporting slot with Australia's The Church as the headliners. This was to be the beginning of the end for the band. Having been together -- and constantly playing live gigs -- since they were all teenagers in 1977, the glue that held the band together started to weaken. Robert King left the band and the rest of the band members, in turn, tried to keep the band going as a cohesive unit with Paul Research taking over lead vocal duties. The band recorded a song called "Bone Orchard" for a planned second album that never materialized; at year's end, the Scars were no more. King would soon go on to modest but temporary success as a solo artist (the synthpop-ish "Paper Heart" being the most notable of his recordings), but by the mid '80s the various Scars bandmates have been content to continue being musicians and pursuing other interests beyond the glare of the limelight.

Post break-up

There has been a recent resurgence of interest and attention on the Scars ever since electronica artists Lemon Jelly elected to use samples of "Horrorshow" at the urging of band member Fred Deakin, who was a huge Scars fan in his youth. The samples were utilized in their song "79 - The Shouty Track", for inclusion in the album '64 - '95. The song was also the second single released from that album. When it came time for Lemon Jelly to tour in support of '64 - '95, they invited a partially reformed version of Scars (that included original drummer Calumn Mackay) along to play live the sampled parts of "79 - The Shouty Track" (or "The Shouty Track" for short) in selected dates, including in the Scars' former home base of Edinburgh.

Guitarist Paul Research is the most visible former member of Scars and maintains a de facto official Scars site.

Author! Author! on CD

The Author! Author! LP, produced by punk band Penetration's Robert Blamire, is now available on CD. Due to a history of stalled negotiations with reissue companies and the difficulties involved in "disentangl[ing] The Scars copyright spaghetti", the complications involved in releasing an official CD version of that album have historically been far too much for even the former band members to overcome. Nevertheless, now that they have been overcome, a new generation of fans is enjoying Scars music again.

In October 2006, small events that had been put into motion thanks to the Lemon Jelly-driven Scars renaissance began to coalesce. It was announced at that time that Author! Author! would be remastered and finally released on CD format with additional tracks added in. In December 2006, the tapes were fully restored to playable mode at Abbey Road Studios by EMI, the record company that currently has ownership of the album masters, with an anticipated release date of sometime before the end of 2006. However, the remastering and CD transfer processes were put on hold pending an ISRC issuance.

The tapes were remastered by Steve McLaughlin and transferred to CD format, and the original artwork was also remastered by John Mackie. The CD is now available at Paul Research's Scars Moments site.

The CD is also available on Amazon UK[1]. All versions include bonus album tracks and remastered versions of the band's various PRE/Charisma Records singles releases.

Scars appeared on BBC2's TOTP2 on 3rd March 2007 (live version of "All About You" from 1981).

Discography

• "Horrorshow"/"Adult/ery" (7", Fast 1979)
• "They Came and Took Her"/"Romance By Mail" (7", Charisma 1980)
• "Love Song"/"Psychomodo" (7", Charisma 1980)
• "All About You"/"Author! Author!" (7", Charisma 1981)
• Author! Author! (LP, Charisma 1981)

Trivia

• Steve McLaughlin, the band's second drummer, was previously in Edinburgh punk band, The Cubs, where he was known as Chic. He is currently working as a wildly successful producer and film scorer. He won a Grammy for engineering a Tom Petty album (1994's Wildflowers) and has worked with such artists and Sting and Badly Drawn Boy, the latter as a co-producer for the About A Boy soundtrack.
• John Mackie, who currently owns a design company in the London area, is the younger brother of Paul Research (né Paul Mackie). John's stage name was originally John Doctor, because his and Paul's mother was a GP.
• Robert King went back to school, and he is now a professor of ancient languages whose specialty is the languages of the Bible.
• Calumn Mackay, the band's original drummer, presently lives in Grenoble, France and drums in various musical groups, including a rock group called XLFive [2] and a blues group called the Pinetop's Boogiemen. [3] He has been a member of the latter group since 1986. He is also an engineer and a member of the international engineering organization IEEE.
• Mark E. Smith, leader of The Fall, once stated that the Scars were his favorite group as they were "the complete opposite of The Fall".
• According to a comment Paul Haig of Josef K left on Paul Research's MySpace profile (link below) on March 10, 2006, TV Art, the group that became Josef K, "were inspired by Scars". The two groups coexisted as part of the same literary art-punk scene that centered around a location called the "Tap o' Lauriston Pub", along with The Fire Engines and The Cubs.
• The Scotsman ranked Author! Author! number 75 in the list of the top 100 Scottish rock and pop albums of all time. In the blurb, the newspaper states that the Scars were "one of the youngest punk bands active in Edinburgh in 1977".

References

External links

• Paul Research's Scars site
• The Scars on the BBC's official John Peel Sessions site
• The scarsauthor Yahoo Group (run and frequented by ex-band members Robert King, Paul Research, and Calumn Mackay)
• The Scars' MySpace profile
• Paul Research's MySpace profile
• Calumn Mackay's MySpace profile
• Steve McLaughlin's music production company