110. Sugarcubes - Coldsweat (One Little Indian)

Three weeks at number one from 6th February 1988

Sometimes releasing a unique, spellbinding single as your debut can be disadvantageous; it can end up defining a group or an artist beyond reasonable bounds. In the case of The Sugarcubes, “Birthday” may have dominated the indie charts for months and caused Cocteau Twins fans to have spasms, but anyone who bought the twelve inch version will also have heard the extra track “Cat” on side two – a different beast, with hip-wiggling yet irregular grooves revving towards a chorus which consisted of Bjork singing “Cat cat cat” delightedly.

It indicated to anyone paying attention that there were clearly two ways The Sugarcubes could go next – the wobbling, anxious balladry of “Birthday”, which seemed to be what critics expected, or something which was more straightforward, while still not being common-or-garden pop music. “Coldsweat” was the group’s answer, a single which Bjork later vaguely referred to as a “mickey-take” of love songs.

That’s something of an understatement. Ballads typically either represent uncertainty and devastation or celebrate a couple slowly being pulled into their own divine, magnetic forcefield (albeit one which might be peppered with a few complications if the songwriter is interesting enough). “Coldsweat” is having none of this. It presents love as a war, a battle, a conquest – and if you’re smiling knowingly and reaching towards the comments box to mention Pat Benatar’s mainstream hit “Love Is A Battlefield”, it far outguns that. If Pat Benatar presents romance as the theme to an action chase in a Hollywood film, “Cold Sweat” is closer to snuff porn.

The opening lines are “Meat meat blood blood sweat sweat meat”, uttered by the group’s dependable backing growler Einar, before Bjork eventually elaborates “This is hot meat/ This is metallic blood/ This is hot meat/ This is open sweat” and later on warns (or teasingly promises?) “With your own breath/ I’ll tear your lungs” and “I will not finish/ Til I’m fully satisfied”. It makes Depeche Mode’s “Master And Servant” seem delicate; sex and romance here aren’t presented coyly, or even necessarily as (conventionally) fun. Instead, it compares that desire to an almost comical animalistic hunger, where bodies are used like the produce of butcher’s shops, and Bjork is cast not as a fantasy figure or a femme fatale, but a black widow spider devouring her partner once the copulation is over.

The arrangement underneath bares close to no relationship to “Birthday”, unless of course we consider its occasional proclivity to tilt and judder like a vehicle with a warped wheel. Nor, really, is it entirely akin to “Cat”, though its nearer to that song on the spectrum. Instead, almost funky guitar-work and throbbing basslines combine with Bjork’s vocals, which on occasion resembles an almost feline wailing and on others a full-bodied, threatening human snarl.

Her voice dominates Sugarcubes tracks so much that there’s a tendency to overlook what the band are doing, and critics frequently wrote glib lines about The B52s and Talking Heads. Both are clear influences, but is it just me who can also hear the off-kilter funk of Happy Mondays here too? That hesitant, sinister groove belongs to the ill-at-ease likes of “Tart Tart”. Here it’s less spindly and more defined, a harder-edged performance, but the instrumental breaks contain a kind of sinister indie-funk we’ve heard before, just not in this particular context. The paranoid, uneasy romance of Yoko Ono’s “Walking On Broken Ice” is another possible reference point here.

“Coldsweat” is no more commercial a single than “Birthday”, and in its own way, no less disturbing – it’s just that while the former sounded like a colourful and strangely decorated cry for help, the latter casts Bjork as the threat, the wild animal on the prowl, the hunter, not the quarry. 

109. Beatmasters featuring The Cookie Crew - Rok Da House (Rhythm King)

 

One week at number one on 30th January 1988

Casual dismissers of eighties music usually refer to the over-produced “sameyness” of the era. I’ve always been a little bit gobsmacked by that assertion – yes, the MOR and AOR aspects of the decade’s middle period occasionally suffered from a weird, suffocating and dispassionate smoothness, and there was a tendency to either overlook or airbrush guitar sounds in the mainstream, but that was never “it”. Innovation was everywhere. 

“Rok Da House”, for example, is something which was didn't completely take off on its first release for its crossing of two genre streams. In 1987, House Music and Hip-Hop were two different beasts, seldom seen in the same habitats – in some cities they may have attracted similar audiences, but people usually did not rap over a House beat, anymore than they would a Hi-NRG rhythm. House was party music, Hip-Hop was its own, usually more intense area.

“Rok Da House” is widely considered to be the first example of a disc which mixed the two and got away with it. Cookie Crew were a long-standing Hip-Hop duo from South London who grew in prominence after they won a 1985 rap championship at the Wag Club. Two John Peel sessions followed and these are well worth a listen, because despite being quite raw and innocent, they also show how well-developed the pair already were. Despite his support and enthusiasm, though, record label interest appeared non-existent until Rhythm King stepped forward in 1987. 

Beatmasters, on the other hand, were the total opposite of “late night radio”, with two out of the three members having day jobs composing jingles and soundtracks for television adverts. Despite their roles churning out ditties to sell bathroom products to, they were also regular London club-goers who were excited by the scene’s ongoing developments, and keen to get on board. Rhythm King records gave them the job of working with Cookie Crew, and despite the obvious illogic of giving a credible but marginal UK Hip-Hop duo the task of recording with a trio whose interests were geared around House music, “Rok Da House” was born that year.

Interest was marginal at first, with the single bobbing up into the lower reaches of the Indie Top 10 but not quite crossing over. Following its initial release, the decision was taken to give it a fresh remix and relaunch it again into the cold winter snap of 1988, where it shot into the National Top 10 without much hesitation, following the success of other House records during the same period. It had finally found its moment.

While M|A|R|R|S sometimes felt like an uneven collaboration with one artist doing most of the heavy lifting on its most played side, “Rok Da House” is an obvious partnership of equals. If you removed The Beatmasters contributions from this and allowed the Crew to do their usual rhythmic verbal assault over their cutting and mixing technique, the end result would probably have been another cult track for the duo following “Females”. Equally, without the fierce, loud rapping over the backing track here, The Beatmasters work would have been just another club-friendly House instrumental which might have lucked out with a low Top 40 position.

Combined, the two are dynamite. Cookie Crew sell the track awesomely, never ashamed or afraid to acknowledge the track’s instrumental peaks by using those moments to bark and shout the fiercest; listening to this again, it’s astonishing how raw and instinctive but utterly perfectly timed some of their moves seem, shooting off in a quickfire fashion, frequently raising the volume halfway through sentences to emphasise the track’s drive and momentum. There was still a misapprehension in the late eighties among “real musicians” that rap was a dead-end fad (or as Ozzy Osbourne put it “Just talking over a record? It’s a doddle, innit!”) and while there were many short-lived novelty chancers both in the USA and UK, Cookie Crew make it really obvious how they won a competition two years prior to this. Their fluidity makes it sound too easy (try copying them and you’ll realise it’s not). It’s not just the speed of their flow that’s impressive, it’s the charisma and the instinctive use of emphasis, as well as their unapologetic brattiness. It’s the sound of the two loudest women in the room expressing a rush of ecstasy, but doing so with consummate technique. 

The Beatmasters, meanwhile, have provided them with a House track that’s a little bit more restless and scattergun in its focus than most of the crossover records we’ve heard so far. It starts off ordinarily enough with that piano motif, but they then riddle the song with endless extra keyboard runs, what sounds like a prowling bassline sped up five times over, and (one of my favourite bits, and probably yours too) that chaotic, giddy psychedelic keyboard break which emerges just when you suspect they might have run out of ideas (eventually, it does more or less finish the song). If you were being cynical, you could argue that they were professional musicians putting their experience at writing catchy ad jingles over a genre which was booming in commercial and dancefloor popularity - there are a couple of slightly buried elements in the mix which do sound a tiny bit like “brassy synthetic library music” - but then again, why not? 

105c. The Sugarcubes - Birthday (One Little Indian)

One more week at number one on 23rd January 1988

Throughout the Autumn of 1987 and the winter of 1988, "Birthday" was the single which just wouldn't lay down and die - modest sales of the record dripped in week after week, which meant very little in "big chart terms" but remained enough to be a threat to the Indie Number One spot. 

The week it happened to reclaim the top spot in January is also a very quiet one, so sorry, but it won't take us long to peer beneath at the new entries in the lower reaches of the charts.

24. 2 Bad 2 Mention - Do It (In Touch)

Peak position: 24

Another House record in the indie charts, although not one which received a great deal of commercial attention. "Do It" on first appearance feels as if it has a steady, minimal groove going on, but then it stammers, splutters and jerks rhythmically while super-random samples vomit all over the vinyl. While it on occasion has a creeping rhythmic propulsion and casual scratching similar to "Pump Up The Volume", it's ultimately more hyper than that - and I struggle to believe that Michael Jackson sample got cleared, but I'm not his lawyer, so what do I know?

28. The Boy Hairdressers - Golden Shower (53rd & 3rd)

Peak position: 28

Three future members of Teenage Fanclub (Blake, McDonald, McGinley) gather together with Joe McAladin for this solitary release under the Boy Hairdressers name. 

While the title promises smut and innuendo, "Golden Shower" really does sound like a Baby Fanclub record with a strangely festive melody, angelic vocals, and under-produced, naive jangles. While it would be tempting to file this under C86 if you were only halfway paying attention, there's already a clear Big Star and Byrds influence running through this which goes above and beyond its underproduced nature; while many of their labelmates were scuffing and scratching away, "Golden Shower" is trying to commit to classic songwriting standards, and managing far better than most. 

For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth (Virgin)

108. New Order - Touched By The Hand Of God (Factory)

Three weeks at number one from 2nd January 1988

While we were discussing the entry for “True Faith” on Bluesky, a number of followers jumped in to offer early praise for this follow-up single. This caught me off guard. I have a rule to myself that I won’t discuss future blog entries on social media; for one thing, I don’t want to pre-empt the contents, and for another I’m conscious of ripping other people off; after all, if somebody comes up with a particularly insightful, red-hot take, it’s going to be really hard to ignore it and stick to my own path – and in the end, it might seem as if I should have asked them to write about the record instead.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the vocal support this single seemed to be get. In my mind, it’s always been one of the weakest New Order 45s – a strange cut from the tail end of one phase of their career, a stand-alone single which half-heartedly drifted mid-way into the 1987 Christmas charts and was then largely forgotten. I was so concerned I might have got it wrong that I took the unusual step of putting it on a playlist and listening to it again for a couple of weeks, living with it and trying to find a fresh way in. A fortnight later, I am still none the wiser.

It’s not that “Touched By The Hand Of God” doesn’t have some appeal to me. There’s a brightness, a burbling, grumbling charm right from the off, which ensures it’s truly not a bad single. The rhythm tracks rumble and the orchestral hits act as the fireworks every time Bernard Sumner sings “touched”, suggesting that he’s possibly not singing about a woman here, but potentially a drug. The synth lines slowly and airily drift skyward, creating a strange kind of electronic gospel feel (this stuff would become increasingly common across the board as 1988 progressed).

The problem is that once it sets out its stall, it barely progresses. The rhythm track is embedded from the first ten seconds, the central riffs are unyielding, and despite trying to convey the sensation of elation, it starts to give the impression of being stuck in a rut. A couple of Bluesky users also pointed out its similarities to mainstream synthpop, most specifically Ultravox – while New Order may have drifted close to these domains in the past, this is the first time it feels as if they’ve truly rooted themselves there.

It also put the group in the strange position of putting out another non-studio album single straight after “True Faith”. “Touched” sits as part of the soundtrack to Beth B’s black comedy film “Salvation!”, a film about a televangelist which was almost universally critically panned and appears to have fallen into a strange cultural oubliette since – I’ve never seen it myself, and if it’s mentioned at all these days it seems to be in reference to this one single and some New Order obscurities the soundtrack spawned (the album also contains their tracks “Salvation Theme”, “Sputnik”, “Let’s Go” and “Skullcrusher”).

Given their heavy involvement, a hit album should have been guaranteed despite the general disinterest in the film, but it sold poorly and left behind a series of New Order tracks which even fans seem strangely incurious about; though only “Hand Of God” itself offers anything more than instrumental decoration or ambience, so this is easily explained.

Goodbye It's 1987... (or it was)

There's a pattern to 1987's indie chart I've appreciated experiencing slowly, and in depth, as I've written this blog. It starts with business as usual and lots of abrasive indie guitar bands topping the listings, then slowly morphs as sample culture and hip-hop and House music take hold - firstly in subtle ways, such as through the various Grebo crossover artists, then eventually with "Pump Up The Volume" acting as the final bucketload of water which broke the dam. The list of new number ones below doesn't quite give you a full impression of that, but the lower half of the indie chart really saw club sounds slowly beginning to ferment. 

92. 14th February 1987 (4 weeks) - The Smiths - Shoplifters Of The World Unite (Rough Trade)

93. 14th March 1987 (1 week) - Wedding Present - My Favourite Dress (Reception)

94. 21st March 1987 (3 weeks) - The Primitives - Stop Killing Me (Lazy)

95. 11th April 1987 (1 week) - Rose of Avalanche - Always There (Fire)

96. 18th April 1987 (1 week) - Wire - Ahead (Mute)

97. 25th April 1987 (4 weeks) - The Smiths - Sheila Take A Bow (Rough Trade)

98. 23rd May 1987 (3 weeks) - Gaye Bykers On Acid - Nosedive Karma (In Tape)

99. 13th June 1987 (2 weeks) - Pop Will Eat Itself - Covers EP (Chapter 22)

100. 27th June 1987 (5 weeks) - Soup Dragons - Can't Take No More (Raw TV)

101. 1st August 1987 (1 week) - All About Eve - Flowers In Our Hair (Eden)

102. 8th August 1987 (3 weeks) - New Order - True Faith (Factory)

103. 29th August 1987 (1 week) - The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma (Rough Trade)

104. 19th September 1987 (6 weeks) - M|A|R|R|S - Pump Up The Volume (4AD)

105. 31st October 1987 (2 weeks) - Sugarcubes - Birthday (One Little Indian)

106. 14th November 1987 (1 week) - Fields Of The Nephilim - Blue Water (Situation Two)

107. 21st November 1987 (3 weeks) - The Smiths - I Started Something I Couldn't Finish (Rough Trade)

From here on, nothing would be the same again. This is something which may sit uneasily with a lot of our more conservative readers. I'm also painfully aware that fans of some of the artists who jumped on board the groovy train remain bitter (We can all see the snarky comments under their YouTube videos mentioning "stupid dance music for sheep" and "selling out" - I bet you're all a wow at parties). 

As I'm fond of repeating ad nauseam, though, the UK indie chart wasn't just there for the lo-fi guitar-based things in life. While Morrissey may have fought tooth and nail to suggest it was an enclave for misunderstood lonely white boys, this was (like so many of his views) always patent nonsense. Anyone releasing a single through an independent distributor could sneak in, and anomalies have already made themselves known - reggae singles, funk records, psychedelic reissues, and then (at the more commercial end of the spectrum) the novelty discs de jour and unexpected commercial victories of the disco and holiday camp kind. Black Lace have entered more than once, and Renee and Renato managed to top the national chart while simultaneously sitting in the indie listings.

1987 also saw several House or House adjacent records enter, some by unlikely friends such as old school goths Danse Society. This should give you an idea of how much House and Acid House culture were beginning to slip into the creative processes of even the most unexpected songwriters and musicians; if even goths (never the biggest 24 hour party people) were starting to wave their arms around to the sound of a Roland TB-303, frankly all bets were off. Something huge was bound to happen in 1988.

Except House music was far from just being it. As Pye's messy replacement PRT slowly expired with serious cashflow issues and smaller labels saw Pinnacle as a safer, more credible option for distributing records, anything and everything started to qualify for entry to the indie charts. Australian soap stars, Radio DJs doing rekerds for charidee and club DJs aiming for exposure beyond Mixmag   - all these suddenly got in the listings, and some ended up being the biggest mainstream victors of the year. In 1988, our work will meet with the National Charts surprisingly often and to a degree we've never seen before, to the point where we'll be occasionally crossing paths with Tom Ewing's "Popular" project. The NME Indie Charts tended to give these people less of an easy ride to the top than other rival listings, but it couldn't entirely prevent the inevitable. 

That's not all there will be to it, obviously. The old guard will continue to hold their own, with "indie" as a genre rather than a distribution choice remaining largely dominant - but for once, the charts start to become a very broad buffet, a celebration of entrepreneurial spirit and club culture as well as the noise of disaffected kids with guitars. 

The new 1988 playlist of chart entries is opposite and, if you click on the link through to Spotify, runs to over 200 available tracks. Listen to it on shuffle and try not to gag on the taste of iced doughnuts next to sauerkraut, potatoes and pineapple. With a big rustling bag of acid drops for dessert, obviously.

The 1987 playlist appears on site for the last time below. Use this as an opportunity to kiss goodbye to everything you know, and get used to the idea. I can't rewrite history for you.