Read How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 for Free Online Page A

widely read and discussed in the late Seventies and were eventually collected into books. In his breezy texts, York determined to join the dressier, theoretical elements of punk with the other, Peter Jones, end of the King’s Road. He identified what would come to be termed ‘lifestyle’, with its attendant concern for design and consumerism, in the way that previous contributors to Harpers & Queen had written about debs coming out. What threaded the components of York’s idea together was, inevitably, what he called ‘a bit of spare cash’. York’s postmodernism was a way of re-evaluating and reintegrating class distinction with a lowest common dominator of aspirational vim . Everything was of equal cultural value if it was stylish, reasonably pricey and helped guide the consumer towards the required level of product identification. The idea’s effect on the ensuing decade, and how the Eighties liked to talk about itself, often via York himself, was pronounced. For Last, part of a generation emerging from the long shadow of the attritional politics and economics of the Seventies, York’s conceits were, in their novelty, breathtakingly exciting. ‘It informed the brand. And the brand was driven very specifically by what postmodernism did,’ he says. ‘It mashed up populist instincts with classical and theoretical instincts, so that was very much the nexus.’
    The name of Last’s brand was Fast Product, and the name came before any fixed purpose or decision about the brand’s function. ‘It came out of the same zeitgeist that punk emerged from, but as a brand it pre-dated punk,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know about punk; it probably was beginning to happen in London but certainly hadn’t reached us in Scotland. Spiral Scratch was a key moment when my girlfriend Hilary bought it for me, becausethat was what made me think, OK, music is what we should do with this brand.’
    Fast Product eschewed the conventions of record companies. Last had little interest in releasing albums or developing careers. Instead Fast Product released one-off 7-inch singles and compiled bands on to Earcoms, ear comics, which played around with formats.
    A narrative on packaging and consumption, the Earcom series appeared with concentrated rapidity throughout 1978 and featured bands from the vanguard of the more theoretical space that had opened after punk: the Mekons, Gang of Four, Human League. Behind the layers of commentary was some ground-breaking music that proved Last had serious A&R skills and his ear to the ground. The second Earcom featured a nascent Joy Division contributing a track. After little more than a year Last decided to wind down Fast Product and began managing some of the Earcom acts, most notably Human League. The impact of Fast was intense and far-reaching – the iconography and style of the Baader-Meinhof gang for instance, which appeared on Earcom 2: Contradiction , is still being unravelled, co-opted and rebranded today.
    In just over a year Last had packaged and released music by Joy Division, Human League, the Mekons, Dead Kennedys, Scars and D.A.F. in a mess of beautiful texts and signifiers. Last had proved that an artfully constructed label could be much more than the sum of its parts and discerning record buyers were now literate in the possibilities and language of releasing and designing records – none of which was lost on many of Last’s contemporaries. In a matter of months the combination of sharp design, playful marketing, and a broadly anti-industry stance would be the lingua franca of small new record companies.
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    Just as Last had done in Edinburgh, another group of individuals from a similar, if more extreme, non-musical background found themselves turning to music to work through their ideas about society. Like Last they were thinking theoretically, although the theory around Industrial Records is still a shape-shifting point of argument that continues to engage and entrance