Meet Sam Knee. Writer, blogger, digger, designer, historian & record collector! Sam is fascinated with the indie music scene from 1980s Britain & has become a world authority on it!
Check out his Instagram @sceneinbetween where he features obscure archival treasures from the 1960s-80s underground guitar scene. Collected straight from the scenesters, fans, band members and amateur shutterbugs of the time.
His beautiful books include A Scene in Between (Cicada 2013), The Bag I’m in (Cicada 2015), Untypical Girls (Cicada 2015), Memory of a Free Festival (Cicada 2017), and A Scene in Between USA (Cicada 2023).
Double spread from A Scene in between: Tripping Through The Fashions Of UK Indie Music 1980-1988, Revised edition, Cicada Books, 2021.
On his NTS radio show Sam navigates the sounds & stories of lost underground counterculture diving deep into the sub-scenes, regions, timeframes and labels of mythical 80’s post punk DIY indie guitar and beyond, tracing it all the way back to the basement punk of the 1960s! Go listen.
Beat drops Meets is a series of interviews with the folks we like that work on the records, in the grooves, behind the covers, at the stores or in the crates.
Double spread from Untypical Girls: styles and sounds of the transatlantic Indie revolution, Cicada Books, 2015.
Name some of your favourite books about music
Mods – Richard Barnes
Owning Up – George Melly
Cranked Up Really High – Stewart Home
Labyrinth: British Jazz on Record 1960-1975 – Richard Morton Jack
Among others…
Could you please tell us a bit about your latest project?
It’s the Scene In Between – Styles of the American Garage Band phenomenon 1965-67
I’ve been working on it quietly for a few years now amassing previously unseen photos of criminally obscure suburban punk groups, so definitely one for the nerds out there.
It’s by no means finished so no publication date foreseeable at the mo.
Absolute garage punk unknowns 66/7 from a slide excavated by Andrew MK Warren (Photo and caption from @sceneinbetween).
What was the last lp you bought?
Georgie Fame – Rhythm & Blues at the Flamingo – Columbia records 1964.
I picked up a copy from a charity shop in Kent near where I live this morning. It cost £1. I have two other copies in similar Vg condition already but don’t mind having duplicates especially at that price. It’s a first pressing mono with the blue text label. My favourite thing about the lp is Georgies jacket on the front sleeve. It’s a sublime American madras sports blazer I imagine he picked up from somewhere like the Ivy Shop in Richmond at the time who specialised in the American college/ ivy look so revered here by the early modernists.
Do you also make music?
I jam with my son Herbie whose thirteen.
He’s a great drummer, with natural swing and solid groove.
A bit Mo Tucker esque in style or the guy from the Sonics perhaps.
I’m pretty minimal on the guitar and we get locked in on riffs with an at times almost subliminal sense of timing together which is quite otherly.
Sam and Herbie. Photograph by Violet Kidner Knee.
Tell us about the last gig you saw
Last gig I attended was the American indie jangle outfit Smashing Times in my hometown Southend at a little arts space on the seafront.
I went with my sister Sarah who I used to go to lots of gigs with when I was a teenager. It almost felt like we were back in the 80s, and time had stood still as the Smashing Times sound is so evocative of that era.
Moi making the Southend Sonic Youth scene summer 85 with sister Sarah (Photo and caption from @sceneinbetween).
In which way do you order your record collection?
My records have no filing whatsoever.
Apart from those downstairs next to the turntable are records I’m currently listening to or have acquired recently.
The rest upstairs are in cabinets and boxes. I can loosely recall each and every whereabouts of every record but can’t translate that to anyone else. It’s a madness in itself in its most unintelligible nonsensical form.
The record you are most proud to own
My Muddy Waters ep on Uk London which originally was my late mums when she was a bold blues and jazz loving bohemian teenager growing up in east london in the 50s. It instantly makes me think of her and how much i miss her.
Do you have a favourite record shop?
Carmel Records in Westcliff on Sea
the Little Record Shop in Hornsey
Pressing Matters in Hastings
Where do you usually buy your records from?
I advertise locally for Records Wanted, so get the odd phone call every now and then from people ready to sell off their collections. So I have acquired quite a few for myself that way over the years.
Jumble sales, car boot sales, trades with people on instagram and occasionally Discogs.
Bohemian youth waiting to see Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall May 65 (Photo and caption from @sceneinbetween).
What’s the first genre rack you go to when you enter a record shop?
60’s beat, garage & psychedelia
80’s indie
Loop, Bristol 87, Photo by James Finch (Photo and caption from @sceneinbetween).
