John McKay’s Sixes and Sevens and the Misplaced Aspiration of Put up-Punk
By Neil Davenport
There’s one thing thrilling about listening to John McKay once more in spite of everything this time. Sixes and Sevens, launched from the vaults a long time after it was first conceived, arrives not as a nostalgic artefact however as a vivid reminder of a second in music the place ambition wasn’t simply allowed—it was anticipated. Greatest identified for his time with Siouxsie and the Banshees, McKay was instrumental in shaping their early sound: fractured, febrile, fiercely clever. His abrupt disappearance from the scene in 1979 solely added to the mystique. And now, with Sixes and Sevens, we’re given a glimpse into what might need been—and what we’ve since misplaced.
This isn’t a B-sides assortment or an prolonged footnote. Tracks like “The Blessed West” and “Flare” really feel like alternate futures. Their inclusion on Be part of Fingers would have basically altered that document’s tone—increasing it from stark confrontation into one thing extra expansive, even visionary. Because it stands, Sixes and Sevens stands by itself: brooding, cerebral, and eerily up to date in its temper.
What’s most putting is how of its time and forward of its time the music feels. The instrumental prelude to “Sacred Measure” unfolds with a proper magnificence extra harking back to Bach than Buzzcocks. It’s a reminder that, for all their iconoclasm, many post-punk artists didn’t reject excessive tradition—they repurposed it. They noticed the museum not as a mausoleum, however as uncooked materials.
Simon Reynolds, in his important textual content Rip It Up and Begin Once more, noticed that the most important affect on post-punk wasn’t one other band—it was a well-worn library card. McKay’s work is a part of that lineage. His music emerges from the identical ethos that drove so a lot of his contemporaries: autodidacts, grammar college youngsters and working-class visionaries who believed that tradition—actual tradition, troublesome tradition—could possibly be reappropriated. It was much less about insurrection than reinvention.
There’s a specific rigidity on this historical past that feels particularly related right this moment. Within the late ’70s and early ’80s, the embrace of excessive tradition by artists like John Lydon, Ian Curtis, or Inexperienced Gartside wasn’t about deference—it was about subversion. Quoting Kafka in a pop track, referencing Constructivist artwork on a document sleeve—these weren’t elitist gestures. They had been declarations of mental independence, a refusal to simply accept that literature, philosophy, and design belonged solely to Oxbridge graduates or Radio 4 producers.
But when post-punk was pushed by the idea that anybody might entry and rework excessive tradition, right this moment’s cultural panorama tells a distinct story. The concept that complexity is exclusionary has taken root in schooling, media, and the humanities. Establishments are more and more anticipated to melt the sides of what they provide. Syllabi are rewritten. Canonical works are reframed—or eliminated. Cultural capital, as soon as a subversive instrument, is now a goal.
What will get misplaced in that shift is the sense of artwork as an act of defiance. Put up-punk musicians didn’t wish to burn the canon—they wished to remix it. They assumed that working-class youngsters had been curious, succesful, and artistic. That tradition could possibly be a ladder out of the gray conformity of the post-war consensus. That Adorno and guitar suggestions didn’t cancel one another out—they amplified one another.
In the present day, the prevailing cultural temper feels extra defensive than transformative. Phrases like “security,” “hurt,” and “illustration” have changed older touchstones like “revolution,” “danger,” and “transgression.” These considerations are official, even crucial—however in addition they mirror a broader lack of confidence in artwork as a power for change.
McKay’s Sixes and Sevens reminds us of what that confidence as soon as seemed like. It’s an album that assumes its viewers is curious. That they’re able to be challenged. That it’s okay to be cryptic, literate, unusual. That that means may emerge solely after repeated listens, or in no way. It doesn’t apologise for its ambition. It simply will get on with it.
This issues as a result of ambition—particularly cultural ambition—is more and more uncommon in well-liked music. When John Harris in contrast the post-punk period to the Britpop years, he famous that the ’90s stopped providing cultural doorways. Bands led to not books, however to different bands. The ladder that when led from Wire to Wilde to Warhol collapsed right into a cul-de-sac of self-reference. What was left was a form of populist retreat: music that comforted quite than provoked.
That retreat has solely deepened. When references to excessive tradition are made right this moment, they’re typically accompanied by a self-aware wink or a disclaimer. There’s a persistent nervousness that invoking issue is inherently alienating. However what if the actual elitism lies within the assumption that some folks can’t deal with complexity? That Mozart or Mondrian or Merleau-Ponty are just for the already-initiated?
Put up-punk didn’t ask whether or not excessive tradition was patriarchal or colonial. It assumed that it typically was—after which got down to discover it from inside. That’s the power we’ve misplaced. Not the intellectualism, however the irreverence. The sense that anybody might tackle something. That the purpose wasn’t to be right, however to be harmful.
If Sixes and Sevens tells us something, it’s that there’s energy in refusing to apologise for being good. That quoting Artaud in a track doesn’t make you a snob. That aesthetics could be revolutionary. That artwork issues—not as a result of it displays id, however as a result of it creates risk.
On this sense, John McKay’s long-lost document isn’t only a curio—it’s a provocation. A reminder of what’s potential when musicians deal with tradition as a web site of battle quite than a set of permissions. A name, maybe, to make issues tougher once more. To be difficult. To be formidable. To consider, as soon as extra, that nothing is simply too good for the widespread man.
Watch! John Mckay interview with John Robb right here
John McKay
John McKay
John McKay
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