Farewell 1986

If the years 1981-85 have been comparatively predictable affairs, where familiar Indie royalty regularly bagged the number one spot with occasionally mediocre singles, 1986 was when the snowshaker really flurried. Groups on tiny new labels making scratchy sounding singles could, by a combination of press recommendation, fanzine raves and word of mouth, climb to the top with enthusiasm; the underground was beginning to poke its claws into the rubber membrane of pop again. 

The list of nineteen new number ones below feels tells a headline story not just of C86 or indiepop suddenly finding its way to the forefront, but also The Smiths continued dominance and goth's continuing allure.

1. w/e 15th February 1986 (1 week) - Easterhouse - Whistling In The Dark (Rough Trade)

2. w/e 22nd February 1986 (1 week) - The Sisterhood - Giving Ground (Merciful Release) 

3. w/e 1st March 1986 (3 weeks) - Shop Assistants - Safety Net (53rd & 3rd)

4. w/e 22nd March 1986 (2 weeks) - Half Man Half Biscuit - The Trumpton Riots (Probe Plus)

5. w/e 5th April 1986 (4 weeks) - New Order - Shellshock (Factory)

6. w/e 3rd May 1986 (5 weeks) - We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Rules and Regulations EP (Vindaloo)

7. w/e 7th June 1986 (1 week) - The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Rough Trade)

8. w/e 14th June 1986 (3 weeks) - The Mission - Serpent's Kiss (Chapter 22)

9. w/e 5th July 1986 (1 week) - Weather Prophets - Almost Prayed (Creation)

10. w/e 26th July 1986 (1 week) - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Singer (Mute)

11. w/e 2nd August 1986 (1 week) - The Mission - Garden of Delight/ Like a Hurricane (Chapter 22)

12. w/e 9th August 1986 (1 week) - The Smiths - Panic (Rough Trade)

13. w/e 20th September 1986 (1 week) - Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time (Mute)

14. w/e 27th September 1986 (4 weeks) - New Order - State Of The Nation (Factory)

15. w/e 26th October 1986 (1 week) - Half Man Half Biscuit - Dickie Davies Eyes (Probe Plus)

16. w/e 1st November 1986 (1 week) - Soup Dragons - Hang Ten! (Raw TV)

17. w/e 8th November 1986 (3 weeks) - The Smiths - Ask (Rough Trade) 

18. w/e 29th November 1986 (1 week) - New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (Factory)

19. w/e 6th December 1986 (10 weeks) - Age of Chance - Kiss (FON)

1987 is where things start to get confusing and certainties begin to crumble, and the only solid scaffolding you can reliably cling on to is the continued and dogged presence of the goth scene. The best and most robust of the indiepop acts continue to make their presence felt, but the more delicate and less organised ones either inadvisably sign to major labels, or fall away. If 1986 was a free for all, 1987 is the year where any acts with slightly scrappy or flaky ideas start to become dismissed by both the music press and the public (while maintaining their core cult audiences). 

Sample culture begins to make itself felt not just through the grebo bands, who have had a fine line in 3 second distorted vocal interjections so far, but through club culture as expected. The KLF emerge in their first guise to create huge music press headlines but comparatively few sales, and a smattering of club classics begin to nudge around the fringes of the chart, with the exception of one from some surprisingly old and familiar hands which goes stratospheric (and has the video to match its interstellar ambitions). Let's not spoil the surprise for anyone under the age of 45 who may be reading.

A complete playlist of all 1986's chart entries - or at least all that were available on Spotify - can be found below, with 1987's menu on the right hand side of this page. 

91. Age Of Chance - Kiss (FON)

Ten weeks at number one from 6th December 1986

“1) Be L-Louder, 2) Be more beautiful, 3) Be unreasonable.” - Age of Chance, January 1986.

A few weeks back, Zooey Deschanel posted an Instagram photo of herself, face thick with heavy but sophisticated make-up, wearing chic but casual clothes, thoughtfully cradling a copy of the NME C86 compilation in her hands. It was such a weird mismatch of style and media content that it almost felt like an in-joke, or a trolling attempt, or a plug for this blog (it wasn’t, sorry) – a sleek Vogue cover colliding with a spotty eighties teenage underworld. I freely admit I wanted a print of it for my wall.

It led to all kinds of speculation online about what the hell she knew about C86, but she should be given some credit here. She’s a huge fan of Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura, is utterly no stranger to indiepop herself – a few of the She and Him tracks unquestionably drink from that stream, even if they don’t quite get their hair wet – and if she hasn’t encountered Stump and A Witness before now, I’d say that’s more surprising than not. She beat a lot of Nuggets and Rubble heads to the sixties baroque pop group Forever Amber, after all.

It reopened the question of what C86 really was about (if anything) though. Indiepop, as we would now call it, was only one aspect of the compilation. The opening twelve minutes or so lull you into a false sense of security, making you think the whole cassette is going to be filled with naive, untutored British kids searching for sharp melodies. Then, once that’s done, Stump lurch into view with “Buffalo”, then A Witness with “Sharpened Sticks”, and what we’re confronted with is anyone’s guess. It was a compilation which was (and is) perfectly possible to own and only love in part. Some people were broad minded enough to accept the more angular aspects, but a lot weren’t.

There’s a tendency to assume that the harsher edges of C86 were fringe contributions from groups who sold few records, but that would also be a mistake. Stump shifted around 60,000 copies of their debut album, and that year, Leeds band Age of Chance – whose track “From Now On, This Will Be Your God” isn’t exactly the most challenging track, but is also far from the most commercial – briefly became cultishly huge. Unlike a lot of their compilation mates who would blush and apologise about anything that smacked of marketing, the group had a firm and keen style and graphic image; garish, bright and loud, which perfectly matched the metallic flashes of noise in their songs. This made them an editor’s dream, assuring them coverage in magazines most bands of their ilk would never have gained – pages were devoted to their beliefs, their manifestos, and their backgrounds (“We're confronting the area that we live in. The unease, unrest, dissatisfaction, things like that. The element of where we come from is prevalent in our music.”)

Their earliest singles were perhaps a touch too abrasive and combative to find broader public appeal, but their decision to cover Prince’s “Kiss” almost pushed them overground. Taking their cues from their dancefloor memories of the record, rather than actually buying a copy of it and carefully studying its arrangements, they cut, thrash and grind to the song’s hip-hop inspired beats, giving it a strangely accessible ugliness. If Prince’s original version is lipstick and cocktails with just a peppery hint of urbanity, Age of Chance take that urbanity and make it the sole feature – a pair of heavily made up lips graffitied on to a rain-stained concrete wall, or a drunken dancefloor smooch becoming an accidental headbutt.

Guitars grind monotonously, the vocals chant in protest, the song demands rather than seduces. It’s another example of a cover version which is an inversion of the original track, like staring at the negatives of a glamorous night out and trying to make sense of bright hair and white lips.

It’s hard to say how calculated it was. Age of Chance were an incredibly knowing band, also covering the disco classic “Disco Inferno” but bringing its reference to riots to the forefront, and it may just have been that they also heard an aggression in Prince’s work which hadn’t fully expressed itself. Whether accidental or otherwise, though, it was a canny move. Prince was the mainstream artist all groups and performers, whatever their background, could admire without risk. He was as admired in the pages of the tabloids as he was the broadsheets, fawned over in the IPC weeklies as well as Smash Hits and Making Music. A virtuoso musician with perplexing artistic messages and undeniable songwriting talent, he was the complicated pop star it was OK to like in the mid-eighties (a strangely divisive and hostile time).

In that sense, you could cover “Kiss” and only risk the wrath of a few of the man’s most eager fans. Music journalists would applaud your impeccable taste, major labels would note your pop ambitions, and you had nothing to lose. And Age of Chance certainly didn’t lose, at least not in the short-term. Partly bolstered by the slow movement of the indie charts around December and January, but mostly enabled by constant waves of impressive sales, “Kiss” managed a chart-topping run only rivalled by the likes of “Blue Monday”. John Peel listeners also showed their appreciation by voting it number two in the man’s Festive Fifty; an impressive result for a song released late in 1986, which started to gain traction after the ballots opened.

90. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (Factory)

One week at number one - 29th November 1986

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is an unusual phrase for New Order to use. In the eighties in particular, the tabloid press used it quite freely, being obsessed with the idea of “love rats” in their “secret love nests” who were having adulterous affairs with a priest/ biscuit factory magnate/ headmaster. Hopefully also, these affairs would involve a significant age gap and/or some form of sexual deviancy.

A big reason these stories are so enduring is partly judgement – people seem to love being shown the failings of their fellow humans so they can feel better about themselves. Another, I think, is that extra-marital affairs, and especially “bizarre” ones, are not something we encounter as often as the tabloid press lead us to believe; in my own social circle, I can only think of a couple of examples over the last few decades. Even if their marriages are failing, people tend to not want the added stress and burden of the double-bluffing, fake diary appointments and secrecy affairs seem to involve. They’re usually too busy dealing with their kids and demanding spouse, and scrolling through their phone contacts wondering whether they should start speaking to a solicitor now or give marriage counselling yet another crack. I’ve encountered more frail marriages where a spouse has been wrongfully suspected of having an affair than those where one has actually been taking place.

This is true for those of us who have average jobs and ordinary lives. For successful musicians or actors, however, temptation is a constant risk. If you’re continually away from home, living in a bubble and constantly being flattered in an over-familiar way by people who not only find you attractive but have idealised notions about you – that’s a problem. Bernard Sumner probably knew that. Ian Curtis definitely did, as is well documented. And while most of us will never be idolised in that strange way, there’s still a chance that at some point in our lives, we might briefly be thrown into dangerously prolonged proximity to someone who finds us as alluring as we find them.

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is lyrically slight, but seems to exist in that dim reverie, that fluttering queasiness which comes from a magnetic pull that is never allowed to resolve itself. You can hear it in the arrangement, which is excited and buoyant but never quite lets go, the unreleased tension of the idea of adultery never letting it rip out of its shell. The chorus is elated, but it doesn’t feel like proper joy – those twinkling keyboards and soaring strings are pure fantasy, total idealism. In a proper love song, such effects would seem tacky, almost Disneyesque in their overreach, but because Sumner is singing about a possible affair, we accept the fairy lights and the pink backdrop. It’s a dreamworld. “I’m waiting for the final moment/ you say the words that I can’t say” he sings, but you get the impression that what he wants is never going to happen. Stasis is going to be the only result.

Elsewhere in the song he circles round the idea, gibbers a bit about the elation (“I feel fine, I feel good/ I feel like I never should”) then about the regret (“Why can’t we be ourselves/ like we were yesterday?”). He also has a moment of rare, direct honesty and borderline profundity when he sings “I do admit to myself/ that if I hurt someone else/ then I’ll never see/ just what we’re meant to be”. There’s the rub. Love triangles rarely result in anything positive. They’re bound up in chaos, guilt, and at least one person (and very often two) feeling betrayed and cheated. They’re not a great springboard for a successful new relationship – they involve messiness and an external judgement few would willingly entertain.

Nonetheless, New Order create a cocktail of confusion, guilt and airy fantasy which is intoxicating to the listener – just like the tabloid press stories, these experiences are always more enticing when they’re being communicated to us, one step removed. The strings hold a continual tension, the rhythms propel, seemingly egging Sumner on, the synth hits bark out their warnings, and it sounds like a massive hit single. The group were always prone to ruining their chances with over-long tracks, flat vocals or coldness in the past, but everything holds in place so well on this that you would clearly have it pegged as a serious commercial contender.

89. The Smiths - Ask (Rough Trade)

Three weeks at number one from 8th November 1986

(Note – this blog entry contains some personal information from my past. If anyone feels tempted to send virtual hearts and flowers, or worry about my state of mind, please don’t. I was a kid. It all happened another lifetime ago. It weren’t for this record’s release coinciding with an unfortunate life choice, I’d probably never have felt compelled to write about any of it).

Ask, they always said. Ask. What have you got to lose? If nothing else, it will allow you to put everything behind you. Once you know for sure, you can either claim the victory or just move on. Better than stewing and giving yourself a nervous breakdown, like Frank down the road.

“Shyness is nice,” also sang Morrissey, “but shyness can stop you/ from doing all the things you’d like to”. And make no mistake, I was a shy thirteen year old when this was released. I was spotty, had thick, unruly hair, wasn’t remotely tough, wore glasses, and had a certain undisciplined intelligence but felt bored and unsatisfied at school and struggled to focus. My (bad) school reports were overly personal in their tone, and could be summarised quite neatly as “struggles with other people, struggles with his work, we don’t know what to do with him. Even open ridicule doesn’t seem to be having any positive effect”.

Amidst all this mess, most of which was just me struggling with a bleak home-life (my parents marriage was stable, but we had two very ill grandparents living with us and a heavy air of stress and hopelessness lingered) and surging hormones, there was one bright spot. I’d been friends with a girl we’ll call C since the last year of junior school, who due to weird boundary rules had been one of the handful to follow me to secondary school. Even in the last year of juniors, she was cooler than most of the children, with a blue leather jacket and a fringe she dyed like Marmalade Atkins. She was also quite pampered, openly talking about the clothes budget her parents gave her (“Don’t you have one, Dave? You should talk to your parents about that, it’s not on”) and her trips to the USA where her Dad had familial connections.

So of course, in secondary school I developed a raging crush on her and asked her out. What an idiot. If this were a work of fiction, there’s two distinct routes the above plan could take – the fairytale one, where we forged an unlikely formative alliance and amazingly ended up becoming the weird boy and girl who necked and mated for an entire year, or the one where I got rejected and ultimately mocked by the school. There’s no other possible outcome. We were friends. Friends already know they get along; you don’t need a couple of dates at the local Wimpy to work that one out. Talk to your High Street bookmaker about the odds now (“No teenage love affair, friendship shattered”: 1/4).

The fact that The Smiths “Ask” landed at this particular point in my life felt taunting, even though I now understand that while the song is lyrically simplistic, it’s also open to wider interpretations. “If there’s something you’d like to try,” sings Morrissey, which seems to be almost suggestive (how strange for him) and could even be hinting at homosexuality. “Nature is a language/ can’t you read?” he also protests, like Dudley Moore desperately hinting to an oblivious Eleanor Bron in “Bedazzled”.

Behind all this is a surprisingly unSmithsian jaunty major-chord single; a wiggling, skipping, hats-off-to-the-passing-policeman ditty which almost winks at the listener as it passes. The wheezing, chuffing harmonica beneath the melody makes the whole thing sounds like an exile from one of the last mid-sixties films made by a popular British beat combo – the central number where everyone leaps out into the street dancing. Derek Jarman directed the music video and seemed to hear that himself, creating a scratchier and more modern take, but falling back on the spinning umbrellas standby at a key moment anyway. 

The rest of the arrangement gets ambitious, the group seemingly realising that if this isn’t going to be a mere Mighty Mighty styled throwaway, they’re going to have to pile one idea on top of the other like a musical jenga tower to give it tension. Marr’s guitar explores a multitude of elaborate jangles and the rhythms almost clatter in the chorus (there’s just a micro-dose of Depeche Mode industrialism in the mix here, enough to pass unnoticed). The instrumental break, such as it is, is a slow ambient intake of deep breaths, two chords struck slowly, before the whole jig starts up again.

Similarly to “Panic”, though, it feels lyrically like a series of catchphrases in search of a T-shirt or bedroom poster to be printed on. “If it’s not love then it’s the bomb that will bring us together” feels like another mid-eighties Paul Morleyism, and only “Spending warm summer days indoors/ Writing frightening verse/ To a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg” captures the old Morrissey richness of both witty and wordy – rather than solely dynamic - wordplay. One of the big, noticeable changes in the group’s style from 1986 onwards isn’t just the fact that their sound gets tougher and more brittle (largely thanks to Gannon) but how Morrissey’s lyrics, in turn, forsake beguiling imagery for immediacy.

88. Soup Dragons - Hang Ten! (Raw TV)

One week at number one on 1st November 1986

The Soup Dragons were one of those peculiar groups who seemed to go through several distinct phases in their career, to the point of feeling like multiple different acts. The period most people reading this will remember is their early nineties indie-dance/baggy phase, which saw them getting a top five national chart hit in the UK with a swaggering cover of the threadbare Rolling Stones B-side “I’m Free”.

If we’re not vaporised in some kind of nuclear war or I don’t get sick of writing this blog in the meantime – two big ifs – I’m sure we’ll get to that single in a few years time, but suffice to say it was written off by many journalists as a cynical attempt to score a hit. It also feels as if it’s disappeared from view in the years since; it dragged 1990’s kids on to the dancefloor, but didn’t necessarily convince the children of the future. Something about that Happy Mondays-aping lurch and groove just hasn’t proved durable.

Following that success, the group managed a minor scuff with the American mainstream with “Divine Thing”, which actually resulted in a number 35 Billboard hit, after which the line-up collapsed and interest was lost both at home and Stateside. Their final album “Hydrophonic”, issued in 1994, was one I had entirely forgotten existed until doing research for this blog entry.

Phase one of their career, though, is the one we’re dealing with here, and the period that gets me most excited. It begins with a broke group from Bellshill, Scotland (home of the hits) hanging around their local scene and pressing demo tapes into the hands of likely compatriots. One such early supporter was Bobby Gillespie, who offered them a gig supporting Primal Scream. Following this, the NME picked up on an early flexidisc the group pulled together, then John Peel threw his hat into the ring and offered them a session, though the band had to borrow £150 from him to make it down to London to record it. All extremely thrifty and earthy beginnings.

If the latter-day Dragons were louche with lots of slow, lazy movement around their hips, the band that emerged in the mid-eighties were taut, spring-wound and hyper, spitting out their pop songs so fast that they were usually all over just after the two minute mark. The Soup Dragons I knew and loved didn’t pout or dreamily sing “yeeeeah” liberally throughout their singles; they gnashed, crashed and raced towards their conclusion, not in a chaotic, ramshackle C86 fashion, but with a tight, orderly and tense drive. The closest point of comparison in 1986 would probably be The Wedding Present, but while Gedge’s group moped and stretched their ideas, The Soup Dragons had a quick, explosive fizz. As a result, they began to command numerous music magazine front covers, seeming young, spotty, naive and a bit ungainly in all of them, but with delicious grins pinned to their faces.

“Hang Ten!” is one of their finest singles, immediately thudding into life with irresistible hooky vocal harmonies, before filling every second of the two minutes on offer with blissful melodies married to a thrashed guitar scramble. The lyrics seem to be about a relationship falling victim to the other party discovering Christianity – “I don’t care whose up there” sneers Sean Dickson – but are far too flippant and clumsy to be deemed a serious protest. What the song appears to be most in love with isn’t any kind of moral or political point, but what it can achieve in its short life; the stomping chant of the chorus, the dorky retro vocal harmonies, the simple but instantly memorable guitar riffs and the ascending climax. All of it remains superb.