British singer Mark Stewart, who passed away last Friday (the cause is unknown), was a radical spokesperson for the outcast. On stage at performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he stood bent over the microphone and fulminated with his mouth wide open under permanently furrowed brows. Mark Stewart was 6 feet 10 inches of rebellion.
His bands, first The Pop Group and later Mark Stewart & The Mafia, both expressed injustice and social resistance. Stewart sang through a half-broken megaphone, with a tinny sound, about the global corporate and government conspiracy that grips us. The music of post-punk group The Pop Group, founded in 1977, was even more chaotic than that of their contemporaries. One of the most famous songs became ‘We Are All Prostitutes’ (with the fatalistic second line ‘Everyone has their price’), an album was called For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? (1980). He later wrote songs like “The Paranoia of Power” and “Learning to Cope with Cowardice.” Stewart incorporated his protest into every song, every title, every performance.
His tall body had brought him to music. As a twelve-year-old in hometown Bristol, he was already so big that he was allowed into clubs and concert halls. There he fell under the spell of reggae and soul, and later punk. He formed The Pop Group, in which those styles came together. Mark Stewart & The Maffia would experiment in the early eighties with electronic dub and hip-hop, a new style at the time. After his bands broke up, Stewart never stopped making music and performing, including in Japan.
In 2015, The Pop Group decided to record new music. Citizen zombie was produced by Paul Epworth, known for his work with Adele. When asked if Epworth wanted to work together, Stewart replied that it would be “an honor” for him.