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Music: Blue Monday by New Order
RL - Scratch was a raw critique of the meaning ascribed to the footage we plundered. The lies on TV news were so blatant and yet their authority was unassailable. When I cut Blue Monday there was no such thing as scratch video. As soon as it was shown it became emblematic of the scratch technique of exposing the true meaning within footage by repetition and juxtaposition. I used lots of vintage propaganda images and created a few new ones. It was our first ‘hit’ although it was seen by far fewer people that if it had been the official promo.
Blue Monday was a gift for video theorists, who still write about it. More importantly it was popular with people who weren’t used to video art. It did the rounds of video festivals but it was also seen by some real people due to it’s inclusion on tapes sent to events in support of the miners during the ‘84-85 strike (The Enemy Within - The Days After). It was part of an Arts Council touring show, Subverting TV, and was also, along with War Machine, on George Barber’s compilation, The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video Volume I. It was made ‘video of the year’ in the Virgin Yearbook and screened on Channel 4 in September 1985.
When I’d finished Blue Monday I went to Manchester to show it to New Order but foolishly allowed myself to be diverted into a visit to Ikon who made all of New Order’s videos. They were paranoid that I was encroaching on their territory as they were filming their own (forgettable) promo at the time. The band made a joke about the Duvet’s version in an NME interview.
PBM - While I was getting into shooting (Sid Presley Experience). Rik was getting into the political side and was quite influenced by the people at Diverse. He also had access to their library which had tons of archive of all sorts of stuff. I went down there to talk to him about putting on a multiscreen show at the Fridge club as some guy (Bruno de Florence) had been in St. Martins looking for people to show their work on his bank of monitors. I knew that with the college low band u-matic equipment I couldn’t produce much and Rik was perfectly placed at Diverse with access to all that broadcast gear.
When I went to meet him he was cutting a load of the archive footage of the miners strike to Blue Monday. By putting this footage with the song he had managed to re-interpret the love song and make it into a powerful statement about Thatcher and the 80’s.
This seemed like a great idea and since Rik was totally into doing the Fridge show and making new work we got another political video made pretty quickly based on the War Machine ads. We started with the rythmn of the guns and built up the rest around it trying to make it hit hard.
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