Listening to songs like "Is and Ought the Western World", whose lyrics oscillated line by line between the prosaic details of everyday oppression and the abstract contours of deep political structure, it was clear that Scritti had moved as far beyond Gang of Four's schematic case studies as that band had advanced upon Tom Robinson's tell-it-like-it-is protest songs.
Scritti Politti - Is and Ought the Western World 1978
In the chorus of "Messthetics" Green declares 'We know what we're doing', by which he meant that the music was fractured on purpose. But in a larger sense Scritti managed to convince many people that they did - or at least were thinking more rigorously about the crucial quandaries than anybody else.
Scritti Politti - Messthetics 1979
Prominent among the ideas whizzing about was Gramsci's concept of 'hegemony' - a catch-all term that covers the official ideology of state, Church and other institutions, along with the more diffuse and subliminal 'commonsense' assumptions that hold together a social system. In Scritti's brittle ditty of the same name Green personifies Hegemony as 'the foulest creature that set upon a race'. He sounds racked, as if he's desperately struggling to free himself from Hegemony's mental tentacles: 'How do you do this?/How can you do it to me?' At the chorus, the group derisively recite the sort of platitudes that seem pre-political in their 'obviousness' but actually work as hegemony's glue: 'an honest day's pay for an honest day's work'; 'you can't change human nature'; 'some are born to lead and others born to follow'. At song's end, Scritti mocks the clichés that preserve rock's own stasis quo: 'rock 'n' roll is here to stay' 'but can you dance to it?'; 'walk it like you talk it'.
Scritti Politti - Hegemony 1979
On the sleeve of the group's third release, the Peel Sessions EP, a page from the imaginary book Scritto's Republic proposes the idea of language as a sort of conductive fluid for power - permeating our consciouness and constructing 'reality'.
In "P.A.s' - the last track on 4 A Sides - Green sings about Italy in 1920 and Germany in 1933 as moments when 'the language shuts down'. In his most honeyed, airy tones, he ponders the mystery of popular support for totalitarianism - 'How/Did they all decide?...What was irrational/Is national!' - then imagines mass unemployment making the same thing happen in eighties Britain.
Scritti Politti - P.A.s 1979
In these conditions, despair is always just a heartbeat away. The fraught energy of 4 A Sides' "Bibbly-O'Tek" fades with the bleak aside, 'Which reminds me, there's no escape', before rallying itself for the struggle.
Scritti Politti - Bibbly-O'Tek 1979
Throughout 4 A Sides, the sheer joy and fervour of music-making itself triumphs: "Doubt Beat" sounds resolute, with Tom Morley's driving drums and Nial Jinks' wriggly, melodic, funk bass conjuring what Gramsci called 'optimism of the will' sufficient to counter the lyrics' 'pessimism of the intellect'.
Scritti Politti - Doubt Beat 1979
'There must be harder than this', Green pleads in "Scritlocks Door", meaning harder than the flabby thinking and 'ill-sorted' ideas of rock culture.
Scritti Politti - Scritlocks Door 1979
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