Form & Function #7

Form & Function is the latest edition of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded as a free pdf here. Sudden Sway are right at the heart of this issue, mainly because they did more than anyone to mess with traditional ideas of 'form' and 'function'. Where some artists may do something different as a promotional exercise Sudden Sway did things differently pretty much each and every time. Much of the Sudden Sway related material featured in this issue is collated from a variety of sources. And I was delighted to stumble across an entry on The Sound Projector site where Ed Pinsent refers to buying a copy of Sudden Sway's To You With ReGard 12" and finding tucked inside a review and a Sudden Sway interview by Dave McCullough in Sounds. This was a pretty special discovery as it was Dave's enthusiasm for the group in print that pulled me in. And it should be remembered that Dave was THE top pop writer of the time, reGardless of what the history books say, so his enthusiasm carried considerable weight and was certainly a considerable factor in Sudden Sway getting signed to Blanco y Negro (with whom DMcC was involved early on). I always liked the way Dave disappeared after a brief stint at City Limits (the London listings mag), and never resorted to appearing as an irritating talking head on TV documentaries, joining the Oxbridge brigade as an over-revered Guardian columnist, or as a panellist at a Simon Reynolds book launch. I wrote something about him a few years ago, and failed to mention that he actually took the time and trouble to write encouraging words when I first started dabbling in writing about pop music. That meant a hell of a lot at the time. I can recall the impact Dave's words on Sudden Sway had on me. The music itself just improves with time. One of the Sudden Sway critical default positions is that they were about style over content. But this destroys that line completely ...