Geographic are proud to announce the expanded soundtrack to Graham Eatough’s Fringe First award-winning stage adaptation of David Keenan’s 2017 cult novel, This is Memorial Device. Written by Stephen Pastel and Gavin Thomson (formerly of Glasgow band Findo Gask and The Pastels’ resident soundman), the soundtrack comes across as a third iteration of the book, establishing a whole new angle on the myth of Memorial Device through reworked home recordings from the era and expanded versions of music originally scored for the theatre production.
Following recent performances in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the award-winning production, starring Paul Higgins (The Thick of It, Slow Horses), is currently showing at London’s Riverside Studios for a run of performances until 11th May.
Alongside the announce today, Stephen and Gavin release first tasters “Introduction To Why I Did It” and “We Have Sex”. Beginning with a solo, lilting piano, soundtrack opener “Introduction To Why I Did It” builds slowly to a beautiful crescendo and combined with Paul’s excitable words of “the future (being) just ahead” ringing in the listeners ears, expertly creates the feel of youthful hope and promise that is explored within the play.
“We Have Sex” was found in an archive of old teenage recordings Stephen made with his old pal John McCorkindale (Corky) and then cleverly re-built with Gavin, adding another drum machine and bass and separating John’s vocal to fit the soundtrack, it perfectly captures the affirmative joy and madman energy of two kids crazed on the possibilities of art, sex and music.
“John was in a local post-punk group called Cheap Gods and I already had ideas for The Pastels. “We Have Sex” is like neither,” says Stephen. “We just plugged in and totally went for it. John had a synth and a drum machine. I had a guitar and a fuzz pedal. John is singing, I think, about being right about art and a platonic love which actually isn’t. We didn’t know it then, but we were already part of what was happening in Airdrie, Coatbridge and environs with Memorial Device and others.”
The video for “We Have Sex” is directed by Julian House. Julian is a renowned graphic designer, film maker and co-owner and artist on Ghost Box - other collaborations include Broadcast and Stereolab. A made by Julian, Alan Dimmick, David Keenan, Steven Gribbin, Martin Clark, Peter McArthur, Stephen Pastel and John McCorkindale and encapsulates the glee of youthful naivety, romance and possibility. vibrant take on the DIY / post-punk era that birthed the song, the video features images provided and “I’m so proud of what we made all those years ago - it’s unrepeatable. You can’t go back to something like that, you become too informed. I asked David Keenan about it… “It’s genius. If the Tate or the Guggenheim truly knew what was up they would purchase it for their archive, amazing.”
Watch the video for “We Have Sex” here.
Listen to “Introduction To Why I Did It” here and “We Have Sex” here.
Stephen Pastel & Gavin Thomson with Unexpensive Superstars feat. John McCorkindale - We Have Sex
Subtitled “an hallucinated oral history of the post-punk scene in Airdrie, Coatbridge and environs 1978-1986”, This Is Memorial Device tracked the joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, of a clutch of musicians and hangers-on centred around the band Memorial Device, as the small town of Airdrie, Scotland, is transformed into a place of endless opportunity and impossible magic by their collective belief in the power of art.
“If you grew up in Glasgow you would probably be surprised to learn that such a vivid, adjacent world existed there, but it did,” Stephen Pastel reflects. “There’s a love in the book, an unreasonableness, and at its epicentre a brilliant original group called Memorial Device.”
Filled with “teenage jams (Stephen) had made all those years ago” and new sounds that were helped shaped by Katrina Mitchell, John Hogarty and Tom Crossley of The Pastels and set alongside contemporary recordings that are thick with small town romance and melancholy, This Is Memorial Device: Music from the Stage Play is a wonderful and fruitful collaborative work of art but crucially, also a standalone listen. It tells the story of the group in episodic flashbacks that run from single-note Industrial scale drone works through caveman punk, lush, cinematic instrumentals, bare spoken word, and a triumphant end piece which imagines the last music which Memorial Device vocalist, Lucas Black, left behind.
“In places it is close to The Pastels, but in places not at all,” says Stephen. “It goes somewhere else - it’s like the train ride to Airdrie - somewhere along the way an invisible line is drawn, you know you’re not in Glasgow.”
This is the lost sound of Airdrie, which is the lost sound of small working class towns and villages all across the UK – and the world – at the moment when post-punk turned the streets into avant garde performance spaces. It captures the bold spirit of tribal musical communities in these small towns, and the daring it took to believe. Because after all, as the book says, “it’s not easy being Iggy Pop in Airdrie