POPFESSIONS

Dorian Lynskey

My relationship with pop started well. My first single was the 12-inch of A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and my first gigs were Pet Shop Boys and the Jesus & Mary Chain. My more erratic decisions came later, due to a constellation of factors that must be unimaginable to any 21st century teenager with a broadband connection.
 
Firstly, none of my friends had much money for records so we forged a kind of consensus taste. Each one of us would buy certain albums and tape them for everyone else. Secondly, none of us had a hip older sibling to expand our horizons, so we relied on the music press – specifically the tastes of a handful of Melody Maker writers. Thirdly, this was a time before reissues, reunions and Mojo magazine made the past more accessible, while acid house and hip-hop were busy making the present seem revolutionary.
 
It’s weird now to recall that at the dawn of the 1990s even The Beatles were very unfashionable and Bob Dylan, long past his best, was just one of the old guys in the Traveling Wilburys. My dad’s excellent record collection was at my disposal, but I adopted the same militant stance on past greats as Chuck Berry in ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ or, more recently, the Reynolds Girls in ‘I’d Rather Jack’. I remember arguing about Pink Floyd with someone at school and declaring, “I just don’t see the point in listening to anything recorded before 1980.” Put together, these factors narrowed the field somewhat.
 
Sometimes my group of friends converged on a truly great band — Public Enemy, Nirvana — but we often agreed on lesser lights just because they seemed to tick the right boxes, mainly industrial bands with, I realised in retrospect, questionable political views. Sheep On Drugs, a duo calling themselves King Duncan and Dead Lee, combined Soft Cell, Nitzer Ebb, goth and dance music, and I liked all of these things so why wouldn’t I like them? They also had drugs in their name which, though my lifetime intake at the time consisted of a single joint at the Reading Festival, was a point in their favour. I should make clear that they did not, as far as I know, have questionable political views.
 
They weren’t the worst band of that phase but I’ve singled them out for a reason. I suffered from depression throughout my teens (why yes, I did like the Cure) and if I wasn’t enjoying a gig I tended to think it was my fault rather than the band’s. Midway through an early Sheep On Drugs show at ULU I remember thinking, “Why aren’t I having fun? Everyone else seems to be having fun. This is a seemingly fun thing. Will I have more fun if I get more drunk?” Then it dawned on me, slightly guiltily: “Maybe it’s not you, it’s them.”
 
A few months later I went to university and found a whole new set of friends’ record collections to plunder, some of which even featured albums recorded before 1980.  Dozens of doors began to open. In that first term I also started thinking about music journalism and conducted my first interview for the student newspaper. The interviewees were immensely charming and tolerant of my fumbling inquiries, and made me think that this was something I could pursue. These gracious souls were Sheep On Drugs.