Not Smoke, But Fire
By Mandy Todd

Picture the scene: It's dark, the few coloured spotlights bathing the stage provide the light. Your backside has gone numb from sitting on a hard, uncomfortable surface for an hour or more. If you don't watch it, you might find yourself bathed in stale, stinking beer someone spilt from a bottle before you arrived.

The volume is so loud, you can't hear yourself think and will most likely suffer temporary deafness for the next 24 hours. But what do you care? Your attention is entirely focused on the band on stage. The bass and drums fuse together to form a strong, heart-stopping backbeat and the guitar tears into your unconsciousness backed up by the barely audible vocals.

You could be in the London Astoria experiencing the best gig of your life. Or perhaps not. Maybe you're down the 13th Note Club in Clyde Street, Glasgow, witnessing Cayto, one of the city's best unsigned groups They are also one of the acts involved in the Smoke album project, designed to showcase the talent present in Scotland's vibrant underground music scene.

The project is the brainchild of Paul McGazz lead singer of Glasgow act My Legendary Girlfriend. It all came about after he posted a notice about the idea on an Internet forum. A few tweaks here and there later, the Smoke album was born.

"It means that rather than bands sending out individual demos, you're pooling your resources into the one thing - which means a bigger budget," explained McGazz. "It looks smarter and spreads the word a bit more."

How exactly does a project like Smoke work? Bands involved chip in with £70 and a track each. Eighteen bands participated in the project, which provided a budget of £1260, enough to get about 500 CDs professionally pressed and employ an artist to provide the front cover. Originally, the plan was to only use Glasgow bands in effort to showcase the area's talent, but then it was thought that as there were other good acts from elsewhere, it would be worthwhile to include them.

What does McGazz want Smoke to do? "Well, at a very basic level, create a bit of camaraderie locally," said McGazz, "Get bands talking to other bands, get bands organising gigs together, get bands who see one band to go and see other bands. More than that, get press exposure for bands - even if it just looks good on the CV, it's something."

Smoke isn't the first compilation album highlighting Scottish rock, pop and indie; it certainly isn't going to be the last. However, it goes someway towards dealing with the centralisation of the music scene in London. This has caused many problems for Scottish acts sending their demos to A & R men down south. Quite often, they don't get heard. It also costs the bands a fortune to produce their own CDs, which don't do much the majority of the time.

Glasgow act Kasino's lead singer Gary Marshall is part of Smoke, "Doing it yourself is really expensive," he explains. "We did an EP last year and it cost somewhere in the region of £4,500 - we're never going to see the money again.

"From the point of view of Smoke, you're basically talking pocket money. The bands will get thirty copies of the CD."

Smoke is quite ambitious for a project involving local bands. To coincide with the albums July launch, a weekend of gigs has been arranged at the 13th Note Café in King Street, Glasgow. The Press have also been involved.

Marshall added, "We're actually making an effort to not just have something that's going to sit in peoples garages and gather dust. People are going to hear it."

Furious Styles recording studios, based in Glasgow's West End, gave Smoke free studio time to record some songs. Andrew Manson explained why the studio got involved, "I find it a good thing. There were a lot of local bands, which I rate quite highly, involved. The promotion of the whole thing seemed a good way to keep music in the public eye in Glasgow."

There are many small projects which people in Scottish music do to promote their scene. It is something they are passionate about and will not stop fighting for. Some might argue that the scene suffers from a lack of funding compared to what music based in London receives. "The funds are there," said Jim McKnight, manager of well-known act, The Breeze. "It's a lack of knowledge of how to get funding, and knowledge of how to advertise properly - no one seems to know how to do it."

He describes the music scene in Scotland as 'quite healthy'; "A lot of people are putting on live bands. It used to be dance orientated - I think people are getting fed up with all the Hear'says and are getting more into live music, " he said. "The promoters have taken it in hand. We've got them aware of what's going on up here, it's quite healthy."

There may be some interest in the Scottish music scene, but it's not as great as it was five years ago with the emergence of Belle and Sebastian and Mogwai. "I don't think it died down, as much as people stopped talking about it, " explained Gary Marshall. "If you look at the situation a couple of years ago when they were going - you had the NME, the Melody Maker, you had a whole network of fanzines and all the rest of it.

"Some of the magazines have closed. The ones that are still going: NME is more interested in what's on peoples' ringtones on their mobile phones than new music that is coming up."

Marshall believes that the underground scene is healthier than ever. The constant changes in the music industry and press may mean that it isn't receiving the coverage it once got. Geography, however, could also be a major factor in making it seem quite obscure. The issue constantly rubbing most acts is the fact that A&R people aren't willing to come up north just to see a band play.

Many's the story of a band whose hopes are built up by an A&R person who promises to come to a gig and then doesn't bother to show up. More often than not, groups have to make the long trek down to London to be heard by the 'right' people - and London isn't exactly welcoming to out of town bands.

It might be argued those small Scottish labels like Creeping Bent and Bosque could help get bands that all-important deal, but they just don't have the resources that the London labels have. An organisation such as New Music In Scotland (NEMIS) may help make up for the shortfall, along with various little courses run by colleges and councils and people 'championing the cause' like Gary Marshall, Paul McGazz and Beat 106s Jim Gallately. But compared to the major British music scene, Scotland still has a long way to go in terms of development.

And Smoke might just be the next phase in that development. According to Gary Marshall, people are waiting to see what it has to offer, "With this - largely through McGazz networking - we're starting to get requests from A&R people who have heard about it, saying, 'when this comes out, I want to hear this,' he said.

But the question is, can Smoke cut it in such a tough industry? There is no clear cut answer to that, but according to Danny Wylie of The Cosmic Rough Riders, if you're determined enough, you'll get there, "You really have to be confident in your own material and know that it's as good as what you like to listen to. You have to believe in it a million percent.

"Listen to the competition, like the top hundred albums and ask if your stuff is as good as those groups. It takes a long time, but if you believe in yourself enough, you will eventually get there."

And how talented are Cayto, Troika, Pentothal, Lapsus Linguae and the other 14 acts appearing on Smoke? According to Paul McGazz, "Everything we've got has been really good. A couple of people I asked, I hadn't really heard - and they came up with something cracking!"