Punk announced itself as a Year Zero
In most other regions throughout the UK, punk plugged directly into pre-existing cultural machinery. In Scotland, punk was required to manufacture the machinery itself. This distinction is crucial. The absence of national media attention, the lack of integration into early punk mythology and the weak linkage to the earlier 1960s counterculture gave Scottish punk an unusual degree of autonomy.
Because it was not being watched in the same way, it was not constrained in the same way. It was free to fail locally, mutate structurally and repurpose itself into something that outlived punk as a style.
From this period came not only bands but an enduring infrastructure: independent labels, venues, promoters, visual designers, writers and organisers. All orchestrated by the young. These did not vanish with punk’s first wave. They became the skeleton on which Scottish post-punk and independent music culture would be later built on – from Fast Product and Postcard onwards – eventually giving Scotland one of the strongest DIY traditions in Europe. Franz Ferdinand and Belle and Sebastian have done far more for Scotland’s worldwide reputation than Scottish Tourist Boards.
The image of Glasgow as “No Mean City” has been firmly replaced in Japan, America and beyond by one of monochrome pictures and shy, late-night coffeehouse-attending youth in their stripey T-shirts, care of Belle And Sebastian album covers and music videos.
This is the central argument of Caledonia Screaming. Scotland’s punk did not fail to exist. It existed differently. Its early invisibility to those outside of Scottish youth was not proof of absence but evidence of incubation.
Because it was not canonised in real time, because it was not folded neatly into the dominant London narrative, it evolved with unusual structural depth.
Scotland did not miss punk. It used its power and energy uniquely. It rebuilt it under conditions of hostility and scarcity. And in doing so, it laid the foundations for a culture of musical independence that continues to define its music to this day.