12. Toyah - Four More From Toyah (EP) (Safari)

 

One week at number one - 5th December 1981

What a funny, slippery, tricky old business punk rock was in retrospect. If initially it could be categorised as a DIY, breath-of-fresh-air, give-music-back-to-the-kids movement - forgive the inevitable cliches - it morphed very quickly and collected a lot of disparate ideas under its umbrella. We started with The Ramones, The Damned and The Pistols, who all seemed easy enough to lump together, then within a year or two the movement shape-shifted as it was claimed by various weirdos whose musical ideas were a bit more than 1-2-3-4 - so much so that arguments continue about what is and isn’t “canon”.

Toyah is a case in point. While her childhood was troubled with serious physical health problems and dyslexia, and she became a textbook teenage outsider as a result, she initially trained at drama school rather than taking the route of forming an angry punk band. Her small stature and lisp made her the victim of some superficial critical feedback from the school she paid fees to, with report notes stating that she was “not attractive” and had “a lisp”. It’s either a testament to the changing times or her determination and talent (or more likely both) that her career nonetheless took off sharply with roles in the National Theatre, as well as parts in the films “Jubilee” and “The Tempest”.

The music came later with a band being formed in her own name, leading to questions about her authenticity. She had been an on-screen punk rocker in “Jubilee” and to some it seemed as if she had tucked the role under her arm and walked off with it, bringing her acting academy dressing up games into music. While these days around 40% of the charts seem to consist of ex-performing arts school graduates, punks were deeply suspicious of trained media figures moving in on their patch. Having a previous media or recording career didn’t prevent some punks from being credible (Poly Styrene had an interesting background, for example) but it helped if it was very uncommon public knowledge. There was nowhere to hide for an actress with an existing public profile. The proof was there on celluloid for all to see.

Despite this, or perhaps possibly because of her existing profile, the indie label Safari Records were quick to sign her. They began marketing her in some obvious ways, such as using the then-novel picture disc format as a frame for her striking image, plus some stranger ones, such as making her unusually titled debut mini-LP “Sheep Farming In Barnet” a budget seven inch record which played at 33rpm.

Further records trickled out in 1979 and 1980, each creeping closer to the mainstream than the last, before the “Four From Toyah EP” in February 1981 vaulted to number four in the national charts, helped no end by the lead track “It’s A Mystery”. It’s a track she had no hand in writing, but still regularly introduces at concerts as one “which has been very good to me”. Unexpected demand for the EP was such that Safari had to use melted down and recycled vinyl to keep up demand, which led to some copies sounding very rough indeed on people’s turntables; on occasion sudden success comes at a cost to the fans as well as the artist.

From “It’s A Mystery” onwards, Toyah was a huge presence in the media. Colourful and glamorous in an unorthodox way, she could sit on the front page of Smash Hits as easily as the middle of Sounds. Her backstory was a genuine and interesting one of a teenage misfit; such characters seemed two-a-penny in the late seventies and early eighties, but surprisingly few of them could also be trusted to appear on Swap Shop or be interviewed on early evening news magazine shows without causing a ruckus. Toyah, on the other hand, appeared smiling and genial, telling school-going teenagers that of course their Mums would be concerned if they chose to dye their hair exotic colours. She was a Pro at being herself without offending many people in Middle England, doing little apart from cause Mums and Dads to talk about “the state of that” while their children beamed on excitedly.

11. Anti-Pasti - 6 Guns

 

One week at number one on 28th November 1981

There seemed to be a spirit of camaraderie among second wave British punk bands in the early eighties. While the most known of those groups are undoubtedly The Exploited and the Anti Nowhere League, there were a whole brace of other groups welcome inside that parameter fence as the groups all sat on the same bill at numerous punk all-dayers.

With one honourable exception aside, Anti-Pasti didn't get inside the official Top 75, but they were frequently close to dining at the captain's (sensible?) table on the Great Ship Bushell. Their debut LP “The Last Call” got to number 31 on the album charts, and many of their singles also flew high in the independent listings.

Some were ultra lo-fi and bruised sounding, scratching their way around common concerns at the time like audio brillo pads trying to scrape away the shine of capitalism (right kids?). “No Government”, for example, is a pretty straightforward anti-monarchy and anti-Thatcher single which also reminds its listeners that the Queen doesn’t fight in the army, so why should they? The whole thing sounds like one man yelling over the buzzing of a Remington electric shaver which has become embedded in a wasps nest.




“6 Guns” is surprisingly commercial and almost first wave by comparison, consisting of the kind of anthemic punk chorus neither Sham 69 or UK Subs would turn their noses up at. There are no surprises or red herrings stylistically here, with the group not being even vaguely tempted to acknowledge post-punk or the more rockist leanings some of their heroes were beginning to lean towards; it really is brittle, immediate and tight punk rock, and as such it’s difficult to find anything new to say about it.

10. Pigbag - Sunny Day (Y Records)

 

Number one for two weeks from 14th November 1981

Well, this is a sticky situation. The indie number one we’re tackling by Pigbag is not the track for which they are best known – that single (“Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” if it really needs to be spelt out) has spent months dithering around the indie charts, selling out, being repressed or reissued then selling out again, and has yet to reach the summit. This means we’re discussing the group’s other minor hit before we come to their biggie, which was recorded and released before it. Confused? I will be.

Obviously, there should be little doubt that “Sunny Day” made it to the indie summit (and the middle reaches of the National Top 75) on the back of the goodwill created by its older brother. “Papa” had been played on evening radio and in clubs for months on end and the group’s name had gone from being an ultra-underground concern, a vague rabble of jazzy post-punk garage jammers from Bristol, to a promising, potentially mainstream act.

On paper, a group creating wigged-out instrumental post punk records seems like a deeply unlikely commercial proposition, but 1981 was a time where normal rules didn’t always apply, and Pigbag’s sound wasn’t as isolated as it might appear. Other groups such as Rip Rig and Panic were blasting out their own ramshackle bedsit party soul-jazz sounds to a curious public, so even the denser, harsher aspects of their style wouldn’t have felt like a bolt from the blue. For all their angularity, Pigbag also swung like demons when they wanted to, the sheer size of the band membership allowing for various instrumental grooves to thread their way through the mix, from hooky brass riffs to clattering carnivalesque drum patterns.

“Sunny Day” is good evidence of this. What’s surprising about it is how much more of a fluid funk groove it seems compared to “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag”. That single regularly took shrieking and jarring slip roads away from the motorway of the track’s central riff before rejoining it, whereas “Sunny Day” is actually more radio-friendly, less of a racket and frankly less likely to confuse Dave Lee Travis. It almost has as powerful a hook as “Papa”, and doesn’t veer too far way from it, augmenting it with funky guitar riffs and elastic basslines.

The group and label could perhaps have been forgiven for expecting a proper breakthrough hit, but its comparative conventionality may have been a curse. These days you’ll struggle to find many people who respond to it. I used to carry a vinyl copy of “Sunny Day” in my DJ’ing box, but quickly removed it when I realised the only reactions it got were requests for “Papa” to be played instead (“Haven’t you got their other one?”). Pepped up audiences know what they want to hear, and it’s the group’s anthem, however jagged that was.

9. The Exploited - Dead Cities (EP) (Secret)

 

Two weeks at number one from 31 Oct 1981

Intro/disclaimer – I walked into this with a crate full of simple ideas about The Exploited, who they were,  and what they stood for, but every time I attempted further research on the group a contradiction exploded behind me like a flash bomb, and I had to rewrite the entry slightly. Then it would occur again, and again, until I began to give up on any fixed ideas about the band at all. Were they misanthropic dumb-asses pretending to be anarchists, or were the neck pains I was getting from being pulled one way and then another proof that they were anarchists after all? Don’t answer that question. Just read on and hope for the best.

As a kid growing up, I became very aware of the slogan “Punk’s Not Dead” sprayed on brick walls in a wide variety of locations. At the time, I was (like most eight year olds) broadly ignorant of youth cults and subgenres and assumed that this slogan had emerged organically like a football chant, as if all the leftover punks in the eighties had hit upon the same idea at the same time. It seemed like a quick and simple way of saying “There are fewer of us, but we’re still here, and we need to let the world know in case they’ve stopped noticing the occasional flash of a spiky barnet in the local High Street”.

I didn’t really know anything about The Exploited and was therefore ignorant of their enormous cult LP “Punk’s Not Dead” which reached the mainstream Top 20 in 1981, selling tens of thousands of copies. Then one day, while watching Top of the Pops on the cheapo portable black and white television in the bedroom (the TV in the front room must have been reserved for whatever drama serial my parents were insisting on viewing in those pre-VCR days) the group appeared for two short minutes to deliver “Dead Cities”, a surprise Top 40 hit in 1981.

This didn’t feel like long enough for my eight-year old brain to process what was happening. I was very aware of punk rock, and even liked some of it – you couldn’t survive your infancy in the late seventies and remain ignorant – but this felt rougher, harsher, more threatening somehow. A rush of noise hit the television’s speakers accompanied by a hard, heavy looking group whose lead singer had a bright mohican, then there was a hyperactive flash of studio lights, a shot of a few game members of the TOTP audience pogoing, then it all seemed to be over as soon as it started. I never saw or heard from the group on the television or radio again. It felt as if a very strange mistake had occurred, an unauthorised interruption, a 1981 styled precursor to the Max Headroom incident.

I wasn’t impressed so much as stunned and dumbfounded, though other older people apparently complained to the BBC. I quickly forgot the name of the band, and there were moments in the pre-Internet years that followed where I wondered if it might be a false memory and I was actually recalling a performance on The Tube or another Channel 4 programme.

If the BBC complaints might have seemed petty to anyone not in the know (and I’m sure a great deal of them were from irritated Mums and Dads in St Albans who were equally ignorant of the band) the fact remains that The Exploited were not entirely unproblematic. They began pressing their own records back in their home city of Edinburgh in 1980, and immediately set out their stall with the debut EP “Army Life”, which came with the message “To all the Edinburgh punks and skins – keep on mod-bashing!” on the rear of the sleeve. Later, when performing a gig around the corner from a Jam concert, their lead singer Wattie suggested on-mic that their audience should kick a few mod’s heads in outside the venue. A number of them did as he wished, leading to street battles between Jam fans (many of whom probably weren’t mods anyway) and The Exploited’s following.

What’s fascinating about this incident is it reveals how polarised the punk scene had become. Deeply fundamentalist attitudes were beginning to slip in as interest declined. The Jam and their fans began in the seventies by reasonably comfortably co-existing with the rest of the movement, then eventually became pariahs, too successful, too clean-cut, not enough of a threat to society, in need of something to worry about.

8. New Order - Everything's Gone Green (Factory)

 

Number one for three weeks from 10^th October 1981

Note – this was technically a double A-side with “Procession”, but the NME chart only listed “Everything’s Gone Green”, so that’s what we’ll be focussing on.

So, there was this thing called punk rock, and that was very important… and also this band from Manchester who emerged from punk rock, but were financed by a newsreader, and overcame tragedy when… and you probably know this already… but... oh fuck it.

It’s unprofessional of me not to begin this entry with the backstory of New Order. The problem is it would feel either cliche-ridden or strange to bother. Who is reading this right now who doesn’t know their story, or about Ian Curtis’s suicide, or the legend of Factory records? Even the most poorly programmed AI bot in the world could spew that stuff back at you to perfection.

If I had something new to add to the thousands of pieces of work out there (not least a whole motion picture) I could try, but by this point my angle remains as typical and as factual as any Wikipedia entry. So you’ll hopefully forgive me for not starting right at the beginning, for not mentioning Warsaw, The Sex Pistols, Tony Wilson doing regional news on the television, or any of that hoopla. There are ways out of this jammy fix, admittedly; if I wanted this entry to be both original and clickbait friendly I could claim that it was all over-puffed and silly and everyone involved should be regarded as a footnote in any story about British independent music, especially while Toyah Willcox had records out at the same time and was higher up in the actual proper grown-up charts, but I’m not here to play those games.

Except… what can get overlooked in the aftermath of Joy Division is how confused New Order initially seemed. Their debut single “Ceremony” was a recording of an unreleased Joy Division song issued after Curtis’s death, and sounds exactly as you would expect – a continuation of the story rather than any kind of new project. If other groups had been faced with a similar situation, it could also have acted as a full stop, a short tribute before everyone agreed that nothing would ever be the same again and all went their separate ways. That would have provided a way out which would have denied New Order years of trauma at live shows as punters cried out for Joy Division songs which were too painful for the band to perform.

It was not to be, though. “Everything’s Gone Green” – named after a flippant, stoned remark in a recording studio – followed and sounds like the first true New Order single, the one where they’ve found a voice which isn’t purely an imitation of Ian Curtis’s, and yet it’s a strange, uncomfortable hybrid, at moments sounding like a rough 1977 Giorgio Moroder demo of a remix of an unfinished Joy Division song.

In the jokey IPC comics I was bought as a child, the future of all factories and technology was usually portrayed in slightly overblown and monstrous ways, often featuring giant metallic robotic crab shaped machines who tinned food, built cars or even operated on people. The people in these comic strips would generally be cowed by the shiny beast, quivering in corners, stammering or insisting that it was out of control and everyone concerned should step away from it. In “Everything’s Gone Green”, New Order are those visitors to an evil genius’s factory, backed into a corner, surrendering nervously to the electronics but not surfing their waves entirely successfully. The pulsing nature of this single seems like an unnatural fit at certain moments; they sound swamped in places, and in others just a fraction of a beat behind the mechanical precision. The ending is the most revealing aspect; the machines get the last word via some polite digital burbling, not the group.