Mark Stewart gives us five songs that were inspirational to the band in their early years.
In the late 1970s, British punk band The Pop Group personified everything vital and exciting in punk music. Their innovative and experimental music twisted and turned in surprising and unconventional ways.
SoundcloudThe Pop Group's version of punk was open-ended. They distilled dub influences from their home town of Bristol, no wave from New York, classic '70s funk and psychedelic jazz into an urgent, convulsive musical stew.
Lead singer Mark Stewart is not what you would call a conventional vocalist. Part poet, part orator and political agitator, his lyrics railed at society with a singular style against the band's taut musical interplay.
The Pop Group began as teenagers in 1976 and released two albums before splitting in 1981, remaining very much a cult underground band. But their influence has been widely felt. From Nick Cave and The Birthday Party, to Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, Massive Attack, Nine Inch Nails and the more recent ‘punk-funk” sounds of !!!, The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem.
Now, 35 years since their last recordings, The Pop Group have reformed. They have recorded a new album, Citizen Zombie, and updated their sound while retaining their eclectic musical influences.
Mark Stewart talked to me about some of the band's early influences.
Gil Scott-Heron – 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' (Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, 1970)
When I first heard Gil Scott-Heron I was really into beatnik poetry- like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs. Gil Scott Heron came along and put really cool politicised street poetry over a really funky beat.
Listening to Gil and the Last Poets really influenced my ideas. Especially with the second Pop Group album, For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder, because a lot of the black radical poets were working with funk music. It was proto rap for me.
Devon Irons/The Upsetters – 'Vampire' (produced by Lee Perry, 1976)
Somehow being a 14-year-old kid in Bristol I started discovering dub music. Every day I had to listen to uplifting dub, it was like having my breakfast. There is something about Lee Perry's productions which transported me to another world and he did it all on a tiny little 8 track machine in Jamaica.
I had the pleasure of working with Lee Perry a few years ago and it was such an honour. He's a mystic. I was in the garden with him and he was burying some pebble. He's like a shaman.
Jacques Brel – 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' (La Valse à Mille Temps, 1959)
Jacques Brel is a French chanson singer from the 1950s and early '60s and I love that he is a man being deep and emotional. You don't really get it in rock music that a man can stand on a stage and really bare his soul. But if you ever watch his performances you can see he is tearing every shred from his body with emotion. He is dripping sentiment, it is amazing.
Don Cherry – 'Brown Rice' (Brown Rice, 1975)
'Brown Rice' is funky as hell. The production techniques used on Miles Davis' On the Corner and on Don Cherry's Brown Rice blew our heads.
For The Pop Group it was like psychedelic funk. Some of the effects and the dub techniques he was using on his trumpet were amazing. We used to play this song at parties and dance to it. At the same time I meet Sun Ra at a jazz festival and just thought he was one of the most alive people I had met. He is an absolute role model for me.
In the late '70s Don Cherry's step daughter Neneh Cherry came over to England when she was about 15. She became a roadie for The Pop Group and The Slits for a while. We became a good friends and later she recorded her own music in Bristol with The Wild Bunch who became Massive Attack. So with our love of Don Cherry it was a circular kind of thing.
Cockney Rebel – 'Sebastian' (The Human Menagerie, 1973)
I think Cockney Rebel were the most intelligent of what the press called "glam". There was Bowie, Roxy Music, funny bands like The Sweet and Alice Cooper which was the first thing I got into. But Cockney Rebel was squeezing in so many interesting ideas and words – they were full of intellectual nutrition.
This song really changed me when I was 13. You can hear Steve Harley from Cockney Rebel just tearing his heart out over this amazing Jacques Brel kind of song. The guy is a poet.