Green Gartside, singer and songwriter with band Scritti Politti
Green Gartside, a Welsh songwriter, singer and musician. He is the frontman of the band Scritti Politti was born on this day, June 22 1955, in Cardiff.
During art school in Leeds in 1977, Gartside formed the post-punk band Scritti Politti with schoolmate and friend Nial Jinks and university friend Tom Morley. After Gartside and Morley had left college, they moved to London, later securing a recording deal with Rough Trade Records who released the first Scritti Politti album Songs to Remember in 1982. However, subsequent Scritti Politti albums featured Gartside with different personnel, with Gartside being the only constant member of the group.
Beginning as a punk-inspired collective of art students and squatters, Scritti Politti released several early post-punkrecordings on Rough Trade Recordsbefore transitioning into a mainstream pop music project in the early to mid-1980s, enjoying significant success in the record charts in the UK and the US. The group's most successful album, 1985's Cupid & Psyche 85, spawned three UK Top 20 hits with "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)", "Absolute", and "The Word Girl", as well as a US Top 20 hit with "Perfect Way".
The band's 1988 album Provision was a UK Top 10 success, though it only produced one UK Top 20 hit single, "Oh Patti". After releasing two non-album singles in 1991, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., Gartside became disillusioned with the music industry and retired to south Wales for more than seven years.[8]He returned in the late 1990s, releasing a new album, Anomie & Bonhomie, in 1999 (which included various rock and hip hopinfluences). In 2005 Rough Tradereleased the compilation Early, which collected the band's first releases. In 2006 Gartside released the stripped-down White Bread, Black Beer.
REVIEW
Hits and anecdotes at Tramshed prove a success for Cardiff's Scritti Politti
Tony Woolway was at the Festival of Voice's Scritti Politti homecoming show
June 2016
It was a long-awaited return to the capital for Cardiff-born Green Gartside.
He's not someone who treads the boards with any regularity, such is his chronic stage-fright - but, for the criminally small crowd who half-filled the city's Tramshed, it was an homecoming like no other as he and his band produced a cracker of a set that featured hits and more.
First up was Alexis Taylor, the Hot Chip front man performing with the aid of just a piano and percussionist.
A friend and collaborator of Gartside's, his solo material is far removed from his heavily synth-influenced band, playing songs from his latest album Piano and featuring a lovely chilled version of James and Bobby Purify's R&B classic I'm Your Puppet.
But it was Scritti Politti and Gartside that the enthusiastic crowd had come to see and, on his arrival they responded with a cheer normally reserved for a Gareth Bale hat-trick.
Looking slightly nervous at first, Gartside quickly showed how pleased he was to be home with a odd fact, that his grandfather had worked at the very same venue when it was a tramshed, with his other job being a city lamp-lighter, and then effortlessly breaking into the excellent Sweetest Girl.
In between songs Gartside regaled the audience with tales about some of the songs. Sweetest Girl was written with a duet in mind including reggae singer Gregory Isaacs and German band Kraftwork.
Whilst Isaacs responded in the affirmative, the was no reply from Kraftwork.
Years later bumping into the band he asked Kraftwerk if they'd heard the song. Yes, Gartside was told, but, “We hate reggae.”
Still the anecdotes were flowing with Gartside explaining the story of one song, Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder.
Pursued by top music manager Peter Asher, a trip to the Hollywood Hills and a meeting found Gartside without a guitar, Asher said he would find him one and produced a guitar belonging to the great Joni Mitchell, a rather surreal moment followed by Gartside started the song, which was later finished whilst sitting above a dentist's in Newport.
It seemed every other song was a hit with The Word Girl, Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) and Hypnotise all sounding as fresh as the day they were released, 30 years ago.
Asylums In Jerusalem, a song Gartside said had only been played once before was quite stunning with the able assistance of his seriously funky band, and, whilst not resting on his laurels, a recent song written with and performed with Tayor, Airforce 2, proved that a new Scritti Politti album would more than a match for anything previously written and on tonight's performance, one certainly to look out for in the near future.
