Swerve. Dub Sex & Other Stories, Mark Hoyle (Route)
Dub Sex are one of the great forgotten bands of post-punk, although the late 1980s – when their music was released – is kind of too late for that genre. But it’s hard to know what else to call their fiery, clattering, layered rock, filled with angry, poetical lyrics, dubby layered guitars and punk attitude. Lead singer Mark Hoyle gets to tell his story now, in a chunky 400 page autobiography, that will hopefully send readers to search out the music, especially the easy-to-find 2019 compilation Searching for the Right Words, which gathers up all the studio music along with some Peel sessions. It’s essential listening.
Biographies are funny things… Why do we assume band members, film stars or artists have interesting lives? What has that got to do with great songs, sculptures and paintings or good acting? Well, nothing really, although Mark Hoyle does sometimes tie himself into knots as he insists that his songs are good when they are ‘true’ and ‘honest’, as if anyone knows that apart from him.
Having said that, this book is great because as Jon Ronson on the back cover says ‘Mark Hoyle was there for everything’, everything being the music scene in Manchester. Hoyle’s life is a hard one – orphaned, poor, council care, shift work, rundown lets and squatting – along with amphetamine or doped-out all-nighters, but over the years he gets to know everyone, initially via the Manchester Musicians Collective, then through gigs with his first band Vibrant Thigh, later by working behind the bar at The Hacienda.
In fact, one of the faults of this book is how Hoyle tries to give everyone a mention. I don’t mean in a namedrop way, I mean in an egalitarian, credit-where-credit’s-due way. Great idea but not in practice, there are simply too many people appearing and disappearing here. In a similar way, Hoyle tries to not be too judgemental of anything, be that fucked-up junkies or music industry dickheads. The only times he actually gets truly emotional is when he comes back to find his flat meticulously and thoroughly vandalised, and when two of his friends kill themselves within a short time span.
Vibrant Thigh get a few gigs but don’t last. With his new band, however, Hoyle is in for the duration: through several line-ups, endless practice and the refinement of their songs live and in the studio, Dub Sex become the tight, brilliant unit that recorded several 12″ EPs and a mini-album. It is now that Hoyle’s connections come in really useful and that, without being too cynical or needy, he uses them to record demos in studio downtime, get some support gigs and publicity.
John Peel would pick up on the band via a fanzine flexidisc, their first release, giving them their first radio play, and the band would go on to record four Peel Sessions in London. On the back of this and some brilliant support slots, Dub Sex got a tour of Germany; Hoyle’s wide-eyed delight at being in a new country, being paid, fed and put up in nice hotels makes for engaging reading as the band go down a storm. The band are on fire but seem to run out of steam at the end, overtaken in the fame stakes by the ghastly likes of the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and The Smiths, and having a run in with Martin Hannett, who by that time is no longer the master producer he once was. Hoyle would carry on making music, but by the 90s Dub Sex were basically no more, although they would briefly reform and play a few gigs in the 21st Century.
This book could do with a good edit: it’s too detailed and sometimes repeats itself, it meanders away from music too much into discussions of the state of the nation, state of the city, state of the drugs market, state of the music industry. But it captures 1980s Manchester’s underbelly, or perhaps heart would be a better term, in all its decadent, grimy glory. Zines, record stores, unknown bands and stray individuals are all here in a highly readable mix of remembering and storytelling. It’s good stuff.
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Rupert Loydell