28b. Yazoo - The Other Side Of Love (Mute)

 

An additional two weeks at number from w/e 18th December 1982

Here we go again, viewers. The Anti-Nowhere League's "For You" only found sufficient stamina to stay atop the indie charts for one week, leaving Yazoo to take back the throne over the Christmas period. 

Here's what was happening lower down the charts in those festive weeks which, lest we forget, also saw us gaining a national independently distributed number one.

Week One

29. Threats - Politicians And Ministers (Rondolet)

Peak position: 29

Rough-as-fuck Scottish punk which sounds as if it has more in common with American hardcore than a lot of their compatriots. "Politicians and Ministers" is relentless, punchy, and points towards a possible direction British punk could have opted for if everyone hadn't been too busy going on about how it wasn't dead. As things stood, however, this was to be their last recorded offering until 2001, at which point they returned to a level of fringe acclaim they didn't really receive in 1982. 

 

30. Laurel & Hardy - You're Nicked (Fashion)

Peak position: 30

The volume of reggae singles referring to police arrests or troubling encounters with The Fuzz in the early eighties tells a story six hundred newspaper headlines never could. The racist element of the police force, particularly in certain branches and areas, was acknowledged enough to make its way into mainstream comedy sketches, and most of the reggae artists belonged to communities where undignified and poorly evidenced arrests were part and parcel of daily life.

"You're Nicked" caused such a stir in 1982 that major labels became interested in the pair, and the follow-up single "Clunk Click" emerged on CBS as a result. That effort was a rather more establishment pleasing pean to the dangers of drink driving and failing to fasten seat belts, which still wasn't quite popular enough to turn them into major stars. Their dippy stage presentation and cheeky charisma remains fondly remembered by many, though. 

Week Two

18. Dead Kennedys - Halloween (Cherry Red)

Peak position: 3

Surprisingly conventional rant from the Kennedys here about the foolishness of Halloween - "Why oh why do we take Halloween so seriously as a piece of organised fun when we're wearing masks all year round?" they philosophise, while Roger Waters presumably nods enthusiastically and takes notes for a possible concept album.

Still, even if you're left with the impression that Jello Biafra probably went to parties with piles of anti-capitalism leaflets under his arm and was a bit of a buzzkill, "Halloween" has such a mean, snarling intent behind it that you're almost tempted to join in. 

Anyway, in 1982 in Britain barely anyone gave a fig about Halloween, so most of us probably had no idea why he was so het up about this topic. Those were the days. That's probably also why this track peaked in the indie charts at the less than seasonally appropriate period of Winter 1983.

23. Toy Dolls - Nelly The Elephant (Volume)

Peak position: 10

Oh mother. If you think this single is making a somewhat early appearance in 1982, you're only half-mistaken. "Nelly" was originally issued during this year and rapidly gathered steam as a cult novelty punk favourite, played on nighttime radio and beloved by those people who thought that children's novelty songs being thrashed around were a unique and funny concept.

Given that we'll eventually get another chance to consider this one in depth, let's hold fire for now and instead marvel at the sights and sounds of those Toy Dolls. 

24. Clint Eastwood & General Saint - Shame & Scandal In The Family (Greensleeves)

Peak position: 24

Family strife set to a bouyant reggae swing here, which in common with many of the breakout reggae tracks of the early eighties favours nods, winks, and a swing and lightness of touch over anger or deep dubbiness. 

Eastwood was a prominent performer during the early part of the decade, but his visibility weakened significantly in the following few years. 

25. Charlie Harper's Urban Dogs - New Barbarians EP (Fallout)

Peak position: 22

Why yes, it is that Charlie Harper (of UK Subs) on an extra-curricular mission. The Urban Dogs were apparently formed when the Subs began to regard certain minor club gigs as being beneath them, conflicting with Harper's desire to perform to small and sweaty audiences in legendary venues. They slowly evolved into a unit with a purpose of their own. 

Imagine early UK Subs only with a bit more of a whiff of sticky Heineken on a pub floor, and you're there. If anything, "New Barbarians" harks back to the prime punk era unapologetically. 

30. The Vibrators - Baby Baby (Anagram)

Peak position: 13

The Vibrators were always punk's slightly less credible also-rans, initially signing to Mickie Most's glitzy RAK label (more commonly the hangout for the likes of Hot Chocolate, Smokie and Mud). "Baby Baby" sees them wearing their old school rock and roll influences freely and unapologetically, like the pub rockers they were always close to being. 

Despite the fact that they were one of the first punk bands to be whisked off to a recording studio, their records seldom entered the national charts, and by the eighties they were firmly ensconced in the indie sector. "Baby Baby" sounds as if it could have been a possible minor hit in 1976, but 1982 shrugged its shoulders and didn't even allow them entry into the Indie Top Ten. 

The full charts can be found at the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Renee and Renato: "Save Your Love" (Hollywood)

This also peaked at number 5 in the indie chart during the same period. Its lower position in the indie charts can doubtless be explained away by the fact its fondest purchasers were more likely to be buying copies in Woolworths rather than Rough Trade and Volume, so we've had a very lucky escape here.

29. Anti-Nowhere League - For You (WXYZ)

One week at number one w/e 11 December 1982

If you’d taken me to one side years ago and told me I would spend 2024 writing thousands of words about The Anti-Nowhere League, talking about their relevance to the early eighties and the dying embers of British punk, I wouldn’t have believed… well no, actually I would have believed you. I probably would have replied “Oh, OK. And this would be for some niche blog I started, I suppose?”

Entries about the group are among the least-read on here so far, but ironically, that’s the inevitable price of writing about the movements of sales charts rather than the enduring influence or critical acclaim artists have. The Indie Chart may be seen as a safe ghetto for innovation, but in reality it was as susceptible to fleeting novelty, hype or shock tactics as any specialist chart – and just as Motley Crue and Limp Bizkit were cartoonish fratboys who burnt rock and roll down to its basic chemical property of loud, brash oafishness in the Rock Charts, ANL did the same for punk rock in 1982. Their schtick wasn’t “for everyone” back then, and it certainly isn’t now.

Despite this, for anyone who didn’t want to be troubled by politics, anarchy or evidence of the lead singer’s impeccable collection of reggae and krautrock records, to those who just enjoyed records that were loud and offensive, and also to impressionable teenage boys who were sorry they were in Junior School when punk broke, they filled a void. The word “edgelords” comes up time and time again on social media when I mention them, except ANL were being offensive contrarians before that insult even existed.

It's slightly surprising to discover that their fourth indie number one of 1982, and indeed the final new indie number one of the year, is probably the only genuinely surprising step outside their usual zone so far, and fittingly it seems to be a basic justification for their stance. “For You” isn’t even particularly punk rock; it’s an anthemic pub rock chugger which might have been heard in a Camden boozer circa 1975, only lyrically speaking the song speaks to the multitudes of fans most of those bands never had:

“We laugh… but no-one's laughing/ We kiss… and no-one cares/ So we shout… but no-one's listening/ So we live… like no-one dares” sings Animal, before launching into a chorus about the remains of punk rock before him, his own army of droogs: “For you/ Well I'll be your soldier/ For you/ I'll bury friends”.

As we’ve established, trying to get under the skin of The League is a fool’s errand, like trying to understand why the old biker in your local Railway Tavern is such a rude bastard. Nonetheless, “For You” is as close as we’re ever going to get to a ‘tell’. Unlike Crass, the group were never going to go on a political crusade for society’s marginalised, but they speak volumes about the mindset of the second wave punk audience here; it afforded a safe space in economically troubled, conservatively minded times, a club to make friends when the rest of society had written you off as an oddball or a failure. In that sense, it served the same purpose punk always did, it’s just that this group, for a whole host of reasons already explored, are an outlier and really don’t fit the modern critical overview of what punk was and should be. History is written by the winners and ANL were only the victors in one largely forgotten year at the arse end of everything.

28. Yazoo - The Other Side Of Love (Mute)

Number one for one week from w/e 4th December 1982

By 1982, it was becoming unusual for artists to issue singles which weren’t tracks on their current or subsequent albums. The major labels in particular had begun to work to a very simple and successful model, which saw singles as potentially loss-making promotional devices for the albums. As well as forking out for expensive videos, they were even happy to bundle expensive free gifts with singles in chart-return shops; famously, there’s the case of Rod Stewart’s single “Baby Jane” potentially reaching the top spot in ‘83 thanks to the free Adidas t-shirt that accompanied it in the “right” stores.

Indie labels couldn’t afford to play those kinds of games, and besides the financial constraints, Indie artists often had ideas of their own, asking to put out stand-alone singles which didn’t appear on any of their studio albums. There were a number of motivations for this – perhaps they were sitting on something which didn’t fit thematically with their current LP, but felt too good to be left cooling on the shelf. Maybe they wanted to experiment with a new direction, or had enough similar ideas for an EP but not a whole album. Possibly they felt that making fans pay for the same songs twice was just a rip off. Or sometimes… and this is harsh, but hear me out… perhaps it dawned on them that the track just wasn’t good enough to put on their next 33rpm platter.

“The Other Side Of Love” is an example of one of these orphaned singles. As the first piece of fresh Yazoo material to emerge since the release of their debut album “Upstairs at Erics”, it should have created much more of a buzz than it did, but the end result was a number 13 national chart placing, their only single to fail to reach the top three in the UK. When the group reformed in 2008 for some live shows, Alison Moyet was asked why it had no place in their set list. She described it as “A bit wank. It’s my least favourite track”.

In truth, “The Other Side Of Love” isn’t terrible but it’s certainly the pair’s weakest single. Built on a backbeat of cheapo electro-bongos and Binatone bleeps and trills, and fleshed out with a repetitive, “Just Can’t Get Enough” styled riff, it feels as if Clarke was reaching backwards for inspiration rather than looking forwards. Moyet does her best to insert some passion into her delivery, but for the first time it sounds mismatched – the song needs lightness of touch to succeed as a piece of bright synthpop, and instead gets a treatment that’s almost too loaded for it to bear.

At the risk of sounding like a Disc and Music Echo critic from 1965, the main thing the track has in its favour is an upbeat, catchy charm that slowly becomes more appealing after the first few listens. Speaking purely from personal experience, though, “The Other Side Of Love” is the only Yazoo single whose melody you can’t recall if it’s been a few years since your last listen. It sticks to an extent, and the central riffs are naggingly insistent, but it never burns itself into your brain, forever remaining one of those forgotten singles whose contents are doomed to be on the tip of your tongue until you press “Play” on Spotify.

26b. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding (Rough Trade)

 

Number One for a further week on 27th November 1982

As the shock and appeal of Crass's single "How Does It Feel To Be The Mother of a Thousand Dead" subsided, Robert Wyatt managed to push himself back up to the number one spot for a further week. Rather than discuss the Falklands War yet again, let's take a peek lower down the chart at the new entries, including one extremely significant one:

21. Blue Orchids - Agents of Change (Rough Trade)

Every Fall member who has either been dismissed from the group or wandered off to chart their own course has never quite hit the same creative highs, whether it's Marc Riley's Creepers, Brix's Extricated, or this lot. Having Martin Bramah, Una Baines and Rick Goldstraw in their ranks, Blue Orchids should have been a serious, organised force away from the alleged chaos of Smith. 

"Agents Of Change" is a fascinating track, but even by Fall standards it's barely a single. The celestial backing vocals mix and merge prettily with lo-fi post-punk riffs and rhythms, but the end impression is subdued and beguiling rather than offering an immediate impression; and as uncompromising as much of The Fall's output may have been, they excelled at grabbing you by the throat on 45.

22. Andy T - Weary Of The Flesh (Crass)

Another ranter from the live poetry circuit sneaks into the Indie Top 30. "Weary Of The Flesh" is 14 poems on a 45rpm 7" single, backed with ambient noise and sound effects. Andy T is an aggrieved man whose delivery nonetheless never rises above dour, letting the force of his words do the bulk of the work; not for him the shock theatrics of some of his peers. 

In honesty, it's hard to hear what sets him apart aside from that, but the increase of poets suddenly diving on to live music stages to give audiences pieces of their minds became increasingly prevalent in the early eighties. Had Craig Charles not jumped on stage at Club Zoo just before a Teardrop Explodes performance, it's entirely possible he wouldn't be gracing our television screens today. Andy T, however, would have to stay underground and far away from soaps, sci-fi comedies and BBC funk radio shows.

23. The Lurkers - Drag You Out (Clay)

25. Renee and Renato - Save Your Love (Hollywood)

There's a cliched belief that the independent music sector is there for the marginalised performers, the punks, the innovators, the folkies, the weirdos with ideas above their station. This misses one crucial point - some of the sector's biggest customers throughout the seventies and beyond were social club performers or cruise ship entertainers. Their management would occasionally press up a few thousand copies of them covering an oldie, keep some for selling at Butlins and the local clubs and bars, and try to get a small distributor to take on the rest. 

Rarely did this ever pay off. Local charity shops are littered with shrapnel from provincial entertainers who may have given their community a few good nights out, but never stood a hope of going national. The singing Italian waiter Renato Pagliari was a rare and strange exception. After he was spotted on "New Faces" by songwriter Johnny Edward (also the creator and voice of "Metal Mickey"), the song "Save Your Love" was handed to him and Hilary Lister (aka Renee) to record for Edward's tiny and inappropriately named Hollywood label. Instead of just shifting a few hundred copies in the Midlands, it exploded. 

To my ears, and to the lugholes of anyone who has spent most of their lives listening closely to music, this is actually inexplicable. The production and arrangement of "Save Your Love" is cheap, claustrophic and uninspired, the sound of some musicians trapped in a wardrobe desperate to get out of the closet and on to the next decent paying job. The vocal performance is also gimmicky, with Renato bellowing and showboating for all he's worth; this contrasts interestingly with Lister's more subdued approach, which sounds like muted sarcasm in response. 

Renato's one appearance on "New Faces" had occurred in 1976, and this single also seems like something which had been gathering dust from the light entertainment world of the previous decade. The video even manages to look more faded and distant than that, the staged romance feeling like a promotional video from some particularly obscure Communist bloc country. 

It's an utterly dreadful record, but unlike the work of other singing bus drivers or hoteliers who were local heroes, Renato managed to leap up the charts to become the Christmas Number One - the first time any independent distributor had ever managed to achieve this feat since the indie charts began (though it almost certainly wasn't the first independently distributed number one, as I'll explain later on). 

Champagne corks were popped at Pinnacle HQ that Christmas, and staff were asked to celebrate the achievements of the company's distribution arm, who had proven that they could take on the likes of EMI and Phonogram and win. At least a few of those staff wondered if this is what their dayjobs should be about, and if so, whether they might as well be earning better money at EMI or Phonogram instead. 

"Save Your Love" was an unquestionable achievement for the indie sector (in as much as pushing shit records to the top of the charts is ever something to be celebrated) but it was also a clear warning. Pinnacle was a business - and by this point a struggling one - not a charity. If it had opportunities to take local eccentrics and screen actors into the charts, there was no reason why it shouldn't, and it had certainly disproved the idea that it couldn't. Nothing would change very quickly at first, but later on in the eighties, the difference between their business model and Rough Trade's would begin to feel ever more acute. 

27. Crass - How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead? (Crass)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 13th November 1982

Initially I was tempted to bundle this number one and Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding” together in one entry. The double-whammy effect of two back-to-back number ones on the same political topic feels like the kind of thing which could only have happened in the indie chart – short of World War III, it’s hard to imagine the official national charts ever replicating the same phenomenon.

It also tells us something about how high feelings were running in British society at that point; whether people wanted the considered, empathetic jazz-pop of “Shipbuilding” or the downright savage “How Does It Feel…” or (more likely) neither, The Falklands War was a topic it was obviously difficult to look away from.

If “Shipbuilding” is an aerial view of a conflicted town populated with people struggling to see over the barrier of their own personal struggles towards a bigger societal tragedy, “How Does It Feel” is just visceral blame. Crass may have begun to fall out with the second wave punks who dominated the scene at this point, but lyrically speaking, they were the closest to the original punk spirit of 76 – while the likes of The Exploited fell back on simplistic chants and slogans and the odd cuss word, Crass damn near scream an entire diatribe on the Falklands conflict over the course of a mere three minutes, and even find time for some sloganeering in the dying few seconds.

“So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought/ Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught/ That you inflicted, you determined, you created, you ordered/ It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered” – this is a world apart from the taut, staccato, monosyllabic machine-gun attack of most eighties punk. It has so much to say that the song itself feels as if it can barely contain the anger; each line is elasticated close to a snapping point before the release comes, followed by the next swollen, unyielding attack. Then the next.

If there’s a moment here where Crass feel like every other punk band of the early eighties era, it’s probably around the chorus. That’s when the drums punch, the vocals get guttural, and the group take apparent glee in the chief slogan, perhaps hoping that it will stir the tabloid press to respond. What’s interesting is how quickly the song then collapses away from that chorus and descends into mania. Unlike “Shipbuilding”, it’s not clever as such – though the lyrics do stand alone perfectly well as a form of ranting poetry, which couldn’t be said of any other track in the indie charts at this point – and nor is it tuneful, but its design and precision are hard and sharp. It sets out to wound, and while it’s doubtful Margaret Thatcher considered their views, there isn’t a single line that leans back from the attack. Every single one is a tiny bullet, a distinct and aggrieved opinion.

The distance between this and the kind of fag-end punk dross that’s littered the indie charts over the last year is obvious. The senile tail end of any subgenre generally tends to consist of groups who have enthusiastically bounded into the room only to immediately forget what they went there for – you can hear this in the worst of glam rock in 1975, the collapse of disco, and even the lad-friendly meat-and-potatoes rock of 1996 Britpop. All were filled with chancers who only remembered the basic tricks of their trade, devolving rather than evolving.

26. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from 16th October 1982

There’s a moment in Sue Townsend’s bestselling novel “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole” where, upon learning that the Falklands War has broken out, Adrian’s father has a meltdown and tumbles out of bed, believing Britain to potentially be under attack. When the Moles are reassured that nothing of the sort is about to happen, and realise the Falklands are located off the coast of Argentina (hidden beneath a cake crumb in their atlas) normal family order resumes.

In the current age, where war seems to be a continual rumble in the background, it’s almost difficult to relate to this fictional overreaction. In 1982 though, the Falklands conflict was a shock. While the decades following World War II hadn’t been entirely peaceful, another country hadn’t actually invaded British territory in that time. As an innocent nine year old, I too sought reassurance from my parents that Argentinian soldiers weren’t likely to be parading down our street anytime soon. I had never heard of the Falklands and assumed they were either in the Channel Islands or off the coast of Scotland; this smelt to me like big trouble.

Once the national shock subsided, political blame began to be apportioned and sides began to be taken. Doubts were raised that the military or the British government had been taking the Argentinian threat seriously, leading to them being surprised by an attack which they had been repeatedly warned was imminent (this later led to conspiracy theories that Margaret Thatcher had actually allowed the war to occur for her own electoral benefit; I’m no fan of hers, but this seems unlikely). There were questions about whether an insignificant, sparsely populated island in South America was really worth risking human life over, and the inevitable counter-argument that the vast majority of Falklanders did not want to live under the rule of Argentina’s military dictatorship, and Britain had a duty to them.

It would be naive to assume there were clear left/right wing lines on these complex issues, though the general assumption was that left-wingers were supposed to be against the conflict while those on the right felt Britain had to protect its own citizens. To this day, I haven’t formed a clear opinion of my own on the situation, though by the time I was an adult and in a learned enough position to do so, the war seemed like a distant memory, so the pressure to have a proper opinion was off.

Meanwhile, out there in insignificant, gun-free indieland, it felt as if every group had a view. The anarcho-punks were against the war, obviously. Mark E Smith felt that the war had to happen, the first   contrary political position he had taken which apparently alienated him from some of his peers (it wouldn’t be for the last time). Some of the Oi groups were less subtle than that. And Elvis Costello and Clive Langer wrote this song.

Costello was vocally anti-Thatcher, and not necessarily subtly so. “Tramp The Dirt Down”, from his 1989 album “Spike”, is a fantasy about dancing on her grave when she finally passes away. While that song was visceral, “Shipbuilding” is subtle and unique among protest songs for not giving the listener an easy steer. Instead of laying down the law or satirically mocking the government, it takes the rare step of putting the singer in the shoes of an ordinary unemployed shipbuilder in a neglected industrial town – notably, the very towns Thatcher had virtually abandoned as non-Conservative voting lost causes in the eighties.

Robert Wyatt, who recorded the vocal in a couple of hours, is an inspired choice for the message. His voice has the correct levels of earthiness and vulnerability to carry the song, and he knows exactly where the difficulties and contradictions lie. “Shipbuilding” presents the war as an opportunity and a threat; a chance for a deprived town to be given serious work for awhile by helping to build the ships which may send their sons home, alive or dead. “Is it worth it?” Wyatt asks. “A new winter coat and shoes for the wife/ and a bicycle on the boy’s birthday”. The song opens with the mundane, the everyday, despite the enormity of the problem the record is addressing.

In common with the rest of the country, disagreements in the town spill over: “Somebody said that someone got filled in/ for saying that people get killed in/ the result of the shipbuilding” Wyatt sings breathlessly. This is probably the clumsiest lyric in the whole song, but his tight, rushed delivery ensures that it’s made to work; the one direct mention of the event every parent is dreading, skirted over quickly, almost in denial.

At various moments, you sense Wyatt protesting himself, justifying allowing himself to feel upbeat, the line “It’s all we’re skilled in!” saying everything in five short words. What else do we expect or want them to do? Sit out the chance to take their families out of poverty, albeit briefly?

Unlike most political records, “Shipbuilding” understands the micro-events that underpin society. As individuals living in capitalist societies, we are all to some degree complicit in wars, slavery, and cruelty we would not otherwise condone. We may have opinions, but our jobs and lives, and our ability to put food on tables, are inextricably bound up in situations we may only be dimly aware of. Even the melody understands this, the piano line following “It’s all we’re skilled in” allowing itself to sound almost triumphant, before falling back into a minor chord again.

24b/25b - Yazoo - Don't Go (Mute)/ Depeche Mode - Leave In Silence (Mute)

Yazoo returned to number one for one week on 2nd October 1982

Depeche Mode returned to the top for one week on 9th October 1982

In the absence of any other major competition in the independent chart at this point, Mute's two prime artists simply swapped their positions in the opening week of October, before swapping back again the week after. As tempting as it might be to froth enthusiastically about each single all over again, it probably makes more sense to take a look at what was entering the charts lower down. 

New Entries in Week One

22. Attak - Murder In The Subway (No Future)

There are two ways to capture the fear of malevolent crime on the underground - one is to create a story arc around it, as The Jam did on "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight". The other is to gruffly and savagely terrify the listener with a dense, bass heavy punk racket. 

"MURRRDER..... on the subway!" they roughly growl over an almost jolly rhythmic march, and to give Attak credit here, this is Second Wave Punk with a very slight dash of post-punk about it. The guitars may twist and snarl, but that rhythm section has obviously been listening to a few Factory Records releases in its time, probably behind the guitarist's back. No wonder everyone sounds so pissed off.  

25. Various - Back On The Streets (EP) (Secret)

Yet another Gary Bushell approved Oi release, this one offering penny-pinched punks five bands for the price of one - Venom, East End Badoes, The Strike, Skin Disease and Angela Rippon's Bum all take up space here, and if you've been following this blog for a few months now, you'll know what to expect. 

Of the above, the inventively named Angela Rippon's Bum actually bothered to shoot a video of sorts, and far from being the Splodgenessabounds indebted piece of larkery I expected, it's pretty straight-ahead Oi thrash delivered by a bunch of disaffected herberts. The group wouldn't release another record until 2000, when the presumably long awaited "Nice Arse Shame About The Face" was launched into the world. 

27. The Enemy - "Punk's Alive" (Fallout)

Another 45 protesting that punk still existed, only adding to the sense that the movement was not waving, but drowning. There's little to distinguish The Enemy from their many Oi and Second Wave Punk peers here, with only the weird breakdown halfway through the track showing any sign of inventiveness. If I'd first heard this single during the beginning of my expedition with this blog I might have been more charitable, but getting through some of these groups is really starting to feel like a slog now. However much journalists at the various IPC music magazines were being paid to cover this stuff, it wasn't nearly enough.

30. Wasted Youth - Reach Out (Bridgehouse)

East London post-punks Wasted Youth, on the other hand, took their societal frustrations in a different direction; most of their fellow travellers tended to back away from direct commentary, but "Reach Out" is a sympathetic nod to skint youths everywhere, begging "It's not that easy and it's getting harder/ Reach out and touch somebody today". 

It's minimal and frosty, but as the singer Ken Scott states knowingly as the song fades, looking over his shoulder, it's an "ordinary song about ordinary people", and it challenged people to stick by their communities rather than gnashing and wailing or filling the lyrics up with ambiguous poetry - a novel approach at that time.

Sadly, Wasted Youth would split up before the end of 1982.

Week Two

14. Special Duties - Bullshit Crass (Rondolet)

In which the conflict between Crass and other more heads-down-and-shout second wave punk bands spills over into the indie chart. "Fight Crass not punk!" the group urge their listeners. "Crass were first to say punk is dead/ now they're rightly labelled as being red/ Commune Hippies, that's what they are/ they've got no money, ha ha ha". 

25. Depeche Mode - Leave In Silence (Mute)

Two weeks at number one from 18th September 1982

“We’ve been running round in circles all year/ doing this and that and getting nowhere...”


Both 1982 and 1983 saw music critics thunderously dismiss two major synthpop bands for their latest albums, which were seen as confused and pretentious departures from the expected path. The first, in 1982, was Depeche Mode’s second album “A Broken Frame”, which was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by rainy adolescent sulks, an uneven listening experience from a band clearly on the wane.

Then in 1983, OMD released “Dazzle Ships”, which in turn was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by pseudo avant-garde nonsense. Another uneven listening experience from a band, etc. etc. etc.

“Dazzle Ships” has since been throroughly reassessed and reissued on multiple occasions, and is now regarded not as evidence of a band out of time and ideas, but a daring and coherent piece of work (something very few people said in its day). A masterpiece, in fact. The sleeve art, featuring flashes of colour and darkness akin to the camouflage World War I navy ships adopted, mirrored the work within and created the same sense of dislocation and uncertainty; one minute bright and visible, the next slipping into a deliberately jarring Cold War statement.

“A Broken Frame” received an award and praise for its Brian Griffin directed cover art, a photograph of a peasant woman ploughing fields under a gloomy sky with a scythe, while the rear of the sleeve showed sunshine breaking through on the right hand side. Its contents, on the other hand, remain ignored. The band themselves seem to see the album as an embarrassing learning experience from a difficult period, their fans seldom talk about it online, and if it comes up for discussion in Classic Rock retrospectives, critics still find time to have a chuckle at its expense.

So allow me to step forward and make a deeply contentious claim – “A Broken Frame” is one of my favourite albums of all time. It really doesn’t deserve to be ignored. Where you hear inconsistency and incoherence, I hear a record with deliberate, stark contrasts, the sunshine breaking through the dark clouds for occasional respite before being forced undercover again. Where you hear a confused group, I hear a band who knew that pop and post-punk were not mutually exclusive; that in the end, whether The Buzzcocks, Donna Summer or The Shangri-las were singing about the tight knots romantic relationships tie us in, they were still trying to communicate the same idea (the journey from soda pops to snakebite and black is really only a mere few years - nothing in adult terms).

Perhaps more importantly, where you hear a band trying and failing to be different, I hear them succeeding. There are moments on “A Broken Frame” they wouldn’t touch upon again – the frostbitten Siberian reggae of “Satellite”, for example, is a real anomaly (but no worse for it) – but also moments which set the stage for their future direction. The squally, epic “Sun And The Rainfall” is a rarely bettered track from the early stage of their career, offering hope and reason amidst a gloomy minor key. “My Secret Garden” is hushed and delirious, constantly teasing and threatening to rise its head above the fog before diving back down again. The much-mocked “A Photograph Of You” emerges bright, simple but heartbroken on side two, only for the sound of wind to blow immediately over it to introduce the minimal, marching childhood fascist Psycho Drama of “Shouldn’t Have Done That”. If the group didn’t understand how the handle the changeable mood they were trying to evoke here, the producer Daniel Miller surely did (as an aside, I should also say that even at the time I thought "Shouldn't Have Done That" sounded uncannily close to a late sixties Beatles studio experiment in places). 

The first two singles from “A Broken Frame” doubtless wrongfooted the public and critics. “See You” and “Meaning Of Love” showed some artistic development, but were essentially playing safe, trying to operate within spitting distance of Vince Clarke’s original ideas on “Speak And Spell”; two straightforward feedbag fillers, steadying the horses and ensuring nobody was hoofed up the arse all the way home to Basildon.

“Leave In Silence”, on the other hand, is the last single from the album and the one that really seems to define its spirit best. It begins with an approximation of mournful monk chanting (at this point not the cliché it has since become), an apologetic, descending bong of a chime, and synthesisers which glint despondently. This is pop picked up, slit apart, and turned into an inverse image of itself. Elements which should be celebratory and joyous are used instead to signal dismay, impatience and defeat in a minor key. Chimes collapse. Speedy synth-wizard instrumental breaks meander and tumble and reach no conclusion. Spiritual chants are used to signal defeat, not mystery or joy. Melodic conclusions are hinted at then abandoned. Glasses smash. It’s like a track from “Speak & Spell” in negative, swapping bright lights for shady resignation.

It’s also bloody wonderful and fascinatingly inventive. Prior to its release I had already decided I liked Depeche Mode, but it was the first single I found genuinely exciting. The group claim they had the option of picking a more obvious track from the album to release as the final single, but deliberately went with “Leave In Silence” to show another side to their work. Not everyone was impressed – Paul Weller was moved to comment “I’ve heard more melody coming out of Kenny Wheeler’s arsehole”, probably missing the point (as critics also did) that the band were keen to use the single as a springboard to a different career in Vince Clarke’s absence, not produce a song the milkman could whistle. When “Leave In Silence” arrives on the “Singles 81-85” compilation, whose tracks are presented in chronological order, it feels like the key transition point despite being from the second album – the moment where they truly find their own voices and stop worrying about their ex-bandmate.

In common with many other tracks on “A Broken Frame”, it has clumsy lyrical flaws, the “spreading like a cancer” line tactlessly pre-empting Turbo B out of Snap (though at least they have the sense not to rhyme it with dancer). It was also given an ultra-New Romantic arty promo video directed by Julien Temple where the band stand beside a Generation Game conveyer belt of random items which they smash with hammers. This seemed like an interesting clip by 1982 standards, but the world of music videos has evolved significantly since and it now looks like it's trying far too hard to be clever. These are minor setbacks, though, and shouldn’t distract from the fact that this is a wonderfully unusual pop record.

The risk also paid off, to an extent. While “Leave In Silence” only reached number 18 in the charts, their lowest charting single since their debut “Dreaming Of Me”, it was successful enough to make the group realise that they could get away with testing their existing audience and potentially attract new listeners into the bargain. The Clarke-led Depeche Mode of old were now a dead concept, and the fact this change occurred so swiftly in the space of a mere year is shocking by modern standards.

As for “A Broken Frame”, there are occasional signs that at least some people are getting wise to its strengths. In 2015 the Greek synthpop duo Marsheaux released their own modernised version of the entire album, which in common with most tribute exercises contains surprising and fantastic interpretations as well as tricks which don’t quite cohere. It’s clear that the pair are handling it with love and admiration, though, seeing its bold shifts and changes in tone as strengths rather than weaknesses. It’s a small step, but hopefully further respect will follow from other quarters.

Away From The Number One Spot

New Entries In Week One


14. Fad Gadget – “Life On The Line” (Mute)

Frank Tovey entering the charts in the week Depeche Mode take the top spot is a neat piece of symmetry – the group acted as his support act for their early London shows, which brought them to the attention of Mute label boss Daniel Miller.


The band namedropped Fad Gadget often and tried to ensure he got some column inches, but despite his use of synths, Tovey was operating in a different sphere; taut, harsh and occasionally disturbing. “Ricky’s Hand”, essentially a parody of a seventies Public Information Film set to buzzing synths, is darker and more comedic than Mode ever got, as well as probably being one of the first examples a PIF being dismantled and reappropriated artistically.

“Life On The Line” is more compromising, shifting closer to pop, but still doesn’t push the mercury very far up the thermometer. While other groups were showing that synths could be used to communicate other ideas besides alienation and futurism, Fad Gadget were having absolutely bloody none of that, and while the song offers the listener some bait, Tovey’s delivery never moves an inch beyond cold and uncommitted, like the Drimble Wedge of futurism.

It eventually peaked, perhaps appropriately, at number 13.

24. Yazoo - Don't Go (Mute)

Eight weeks at number one from 24th July 1982

When we bumped into Yazoo’s last single “Only You”, there was a sense the new duo were just settling into their working relationship. For whatever its strengths and commerciality, “Only You” was a track Vince Clarke had lying around before Yazoo came into being, and had initially considered hawking around to other groups. At the point of writing it, his working relationship with Alison Moyet hadn’t really been instigated, so what the public were left to buy was Moyet interpreting a track which at one point could just as easily have been handed to Depeche Mode.

“Don’t Go” is the first example of a Yazoo single where the fork in the road, the divergence between Mode and Clarke, is obvious. If Clarke’s earliest work with Depeche Mode fizzes and bops, “Don’t Go” bops and slams. The drum machine is approximating an R&B/gospel rhythm, the central synth riff – in all other respects close enough to something Clarke might have tried circa “Just Can’t Get Enough” – has more dancefloor friendly shades to it, not least the aspects where the familar high-end squeakiness is replaced by digital bubbling or low, bassy grumbles.

It’s actually less ambitious melodically than a lot of Depeche Mode’s earliest work. “New Life” was busy and surprisingly ambitious, always introducing new twists, while “Don’t Go” finds its groove by the twentieth second and sticks rigidily to it, only offering slight variations.

Unlike “New Life”, though, Clarke has a singer who can be ambitious on his behalf. While Dave Gahan is a strong vocalist, his performances from 1981 right through to the present day have tended to stick doggedly to a mournful mid-range. You could argue that it forced Depeche Mode to become more dramatic, more symphonic around him; his vocals have generally acted as the central anchor, requiring the splashes of colour to occur elsewhere in the songs. Moyet, on the other hand, veers from threatening low growls here right up to desperate shrieks. She supplies the dramatic flourishes while Clarke is free, for the first time, to let the central hooks hit a steady dancefloor friendly groove without worrying too much about frilly embellishments.

With it, the pair also managed to take early eighties synth pop to slightly different places from their peers. If you were being charitable, you could argue that it was fresh and new, and that it signalled that Clarke knew synths were about more than just aloofness and futurism, but in truth they weren’t the first to realise this. Giorgio Moroder picked up the new technology and discovered that it could represent sex, desire, vulnerability and danceability in the previous decade. All Clarke and Moyet were really doing was picking up the baton and understanding that they didn’t need permission to take electronics into these areas. Their approach here, a kind of gospel tinged New Romanticism, did however slowly nose away at the boundaries of what was possible, impressing critics without frightening either the school disco dancefloor or Clarke’s earliest fans.

“Don’t Go” is one of those rare examples of two stylistically very different individuals realising the qualities they have in tandem, and working them through with maximum effectiveness. It peaked at number 3 in the national charts.

23. Anti-Nowhere League - Woman (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 10th July 1982

In January 1981, during the long period of mourning that followed John Lennon’s assassination, Geffen scored another number one single from his “Double Fantasy” album. Beginning with the murmured lines “For the other half of the sky”, “Woman” wasn’t just a pean to Yoko Ono – although he clearly had her in mind – but women in general; the sacrifices they make, the nonsense they potentially tolerate.

For all its good intentions, “Woman” periodically bordered on the sickly and mawkish. My mother put forward her verdict plainly and simply: “It’s a good single, but God he had a nerve to criticise Paul McCartney for being sentimental”. She allowed him a pass, though, and in common with millions of others bought the “Double Fantasy” album, absorbing it while still shaken about the man’s death, then admitting its flaws and filing it away as a souvenir from a strange emotional period; the “Candle In The Wind” of the eighties, if you will.

I have no idea if, a year-and-a-half later, Anti Nowhere League’s “Woman” was partially inspired by the identically titled Lennon single or not, but it’s certainly an interesting coincidence. If Lennon’s single is part appreciation, part apology, The League take the opposite tack and focus on the delusion of romantic love and the dark avenues it can take couples down – although when I say “couples”, I should perhaps refer only to the men in the relationship; if John Lennon’s “Woman” is about women, then Anti-Nowhere League’s “Woman” is actually about the frustrations of men, and in many ways that’s probably the cleverest thing about it (it really doesn't get more sophisticated than this, trust me).

The song begins as a ham-fisted rock ballad, filled to the brim with cliches. “You came to me in a dream, I'm sure/ You gave your love, you gave much more to me/ Woman, will you marry me?” Animal sings after a series of other deliberately soapy cliches, before the group begin to rattle and roll to the repeating, gnashed line “Til death us do part”. From that point forward, the song finds its punk feet, kicking and screaming disappointed abuse such as “Yeah, you're sitting on your arse in your dirty clothes/ You're looking a mess, you're picking your nose” and “Your tits are big but your brains are small/ Sometimes I wonder you got any brains at all”.

It’s the classic set-up for the old school working man’s club gag in song form, “Take my wife, for example… no, really, please take her” extended from a few seconds to three minutes. I wasn’t particularly familiar with “Woman” until I needed to listen to it for the purposes of this blog, and first time out, I understood very well that the fluffy, silky first minute was purely a set-up for an inevitable descent into scattershot abuse; anything else at this stage of the group’s career wouldn’t have made any sense. You can’t travel from “I Hate People” to “I Love My Wife” within the space of a few months, even if doing that would arguably have been a stranger and therefore more radical move.

Feminists would doubtless want to point out the failings in the song and its expectations of relationships, arguing that by idealising romantic partners and putting them on pedestals we set ourselves up for disappointment, and you can't punish someone for failing to live up to the image you projected on to them. By doing do, they would thereby risking falling short of Melody Maker critic Carol Clerk’s Law of The League: “Take them seriously and the joke’s on you”. The group would probably also be thrilled by the outrage.

As a result, arguably the only question worth asking is whether the gag’s execution works or not, and it has to be said, it lacks any real sleight of hand – it nudges, winks and nods so heavily at the listener during the first minute that only an idiot would be surprised by what follows, and it eventually feels more like a bunch of rugby players screeching through some unresolved frustrations in the sports club bar. A lot of the lyrics are also surprisingly conservative, even in jest; criticising the state of a woman’s personal laundry feels more like the subject of a Fabreze advert than a second-wave punk band’s third single. Getting angry about the tidiness of your partner's clothes also has more in common with Gary Numan than Jello Biafra (there's a potentially libellous rumour about Numan and a groupie I won't repeat here. Do your own research, as they say). 

22. New Order - Temptation (Factory)

Six weeks at number one from 29th May 1982

Nearly twenty years ago now, I subscribed to Last.fm, an application which measures the music you stream or listen to on devices, and produces facts and stats about your habits. It aims to stun and surprise you by revealing who your favourite artists are and who else you might enjoy, but can display the bottish habit of shooting bogies such as “If you enjoy listening to Paul McCartney, you may also like the work of John Lennon”.

Once every so often, though, it pulls up an unexpected theme you hadn’t noticed before; that could be that you have an overwhelming proclivity to listen to Joni Mitchell during Springtime, or that your nineteenth most listened to song of all time is an easy listening cover by an artist you otherwise don’t care about, or – in my case - that New Order are among your top twenty most listened to artists (currently resting at the number 12 spot).

The stats don’t lie. Year in, year out I dip into New Order’s catalogue and devour some of their tracks almost obsessively, but I do all this without feeling as if I can call myself “a fan”. Looking at the rest of my personal chart, I can see a stream of artists who at some point of my life I have felt a strong and possibly ill-advised connection to, particularly in my teens and twenties. They’ve all produced music I’ve loved, but have probably also had a combination of other factors which captured my imagination - strong lyrical themes, wit, intelligence or irony, a gripping visual aesthetic which stirred my excitement for their music, or a sense of something I could relate to or a version of somebody I wanted to be.

I don’t recall ever feeling this way about New Order. New Order have always just been there, pumping out wonderful records which have been, at different moments and sometimes all at the same time, moody, stylish, irresistibly danceable, boundary pushing and exquisite pop. Despite all this, though (and I accept there’s a chance I’m projecting here) who among us has really felt as if they know Bernard Sumner or Peter Hook, or even The Other Two? As teenagers, did we really read one of their interviews and want to follow them around the country until we more clearly understood the workings of their minds? Did their lyrics – in one or two cases, among the most atrocious ever written – make us think “Finally somebody has put a new spin on some of the events in my life”?

New Order never gave much away, but they also never gave the impression there was much going on behind the mystique either. All the beauty took place around them; those tastefully designed Factory Records sleeves and arthouse music videos created an image of sorts, but not one that stuck to a solid theme or was consistently, identifiably their own – if you asked Bernard Sumner to talk in depth about the meaning behind any of the artistic elements that accompanied them, you might get seven or eight words at best. If you really wanted the lowdown on that stuff, you had to ring the entryphone at Factory Records and philosophise with Tony Wilson.

“Temptation”, then, is fascinating for two reasons; firstly, it acts as the first solid, logical bridge between their old analogue past and their new experiments with electronics. If “Everything’s Gone Green” sounded shaky and tentative, “Temptation” seems more sure footed, in tune with the machinery rather than occasionally falling out-of-step with it. The original 1982 version (and not the 1987 remix which the group seem determined to make us believe is the definitive version) is too spindly for the dancefloor, but still sounds forward-thinking, like an early experiment in indie-dance.

Combined with that, though, is something that feels sharper and more honest, more knowable and believable, less arid than most of New Order’s work; Sumner’s voice strains and struggles, but the simplicity of the lyrics about the collapse of a relationship are close enough to Motown (The Temptations, even). “Up, down, turn around/ Please don't let me hit the ground/ Tonight I think I'll walk alone/ I'll find my soul as I go home” could actually be lines from a Northern Soul record, while the repeated begging of “Oh, it’s the last time/ I’ve never met anyone quite like you before” brings everything to the necessary climax.

21. Yazoo - Only You (Mute)

One week at number one on 22nd May 1982

In the eyes of the music critics, Vince Clarke was always going to be the winner for leaving Depeche Mode. It probably wasn’t intended as a cynical political move, but it worked in his favour – as a brand (rather than a band) they were cute, young, teeny and unashamedly pop, and arguably disposable too. Their name even translated (arguably) as "Hurried Fashion", as if to accidentally hint at a certain lack of long term plan.

By departing with some vague excuses about not enjoying the trappings of being in a group, his stance could be read as personal, disapproving of their style or direction, or artistic depending on what you wanted to believe. It was certainly an admirably bold step; few band members have quit right after their first major hit single and gone on to further success.

While hindsight proves that his move wasn’t a dumb one, it would be wrong to assume he always felt secure about his decision. Shortly after leaving and before more concrete arrangements had been made, he wondered whether he could make a living as a songwriter, and he initially offered “Only You” to the band he had just left. There’s a beautiful alternate timeline opening up here which allows us to go wild imagining what Depeche Mode would have made of this song (I’m slightly surprised somebody hasn’t tried to do this with AI technology already). I’m straining and failing to hear it; there’s something about “Only You” which doesn’t sound like it should be sung by Dave Gahan, and the arrangement is also gentle and simplistic rather than featuring the broad atmospheric sweeps the band would quickly utilise. 

The group turned Clarke down, perhaps inevitably feeling that buying second-hand songs off the band member who had just walked away would not be an act of confidence and could potentially seal their fate. Had they accepted, it would also have deprived Clarke of his first major hit as a non-member of the band; sometimes it’s for the best that paths remain unexplored.

What he did instead was quickly hook up creatively with a local woman, the ex-Screamin’ Ab Dabs member Alison Moyet. Moyet was from a very different school of thought to Clarke and his ex-Depeche friends, having a background in punk and R&B groups and a powerful, expressive voice which couldn’t have been less akin to the sulky mid-range Gahan inhabited. There was a wildness and directness to her approach which opened up all manner of fresh possibilities for Clarke as a songwriter, not least the chance to act against the critical cliché that all synth groups were in some way “cold and emotionally detached”.

In this respect, “Only You” is a slightly strange opening effort in that it doesn’t make the most of her abilities. There’s a daintiness to it that doesn’t give her much to play with – from the intro onwards, the precise, pinging, staccato synth lines remind me of an electronic version of the sounds seeping from a wind-up musical box. It’s pretty and memorable but lyrically and melodically simplistic. The intro provides a solid foundation and the track never moves very far away, stuck in its own delicate and very unspecific mourning for a failed love affair (rather like “See You”, this is romance presented as a series of sketchy outline Mills and Boon details, filled with touched hands behind closed doors and women sulkily looking out of windows).

It was a huge number two hit, which makes its later fate seem inexplicable. It’s possible I’m listening to the wrong radio stations or hanging around the wrong shopping centres, but its status seems to have slipped over the years and I can’t remember the last time I heard it. Listening to it again for the first time in forever, I’m struck by how much of a passing novelty it may have seemed in 1982; Moyet may not be given many chances to stretch herself, but her voice is a lot more naturally expressive and technically proficient than many of her straining New Romantic rivals. She manages to bring warmth to some slightly flimsy lyrics and a sense of genuine emotional investment – Phil Oakey, Dave Gahan, and even Marc Almond at this point couldn’t have sold the song as well. In tandem with her, the gentle jewellery box synth backing adds a sentimental touch which can either seem irksome or moving depending on your emotional state when you press play.

20. Pigbag - Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag (Y Records)

Number one for five weeks from 17 April 1982

Any keen student of the indie chart in the eighties will know that there were records which seemed to hang around forever, yo-yoing around the bottom end of the listings as if they didn’t have homes to go to. Two factors seemed to particularly trigger this phenomenon – hit singles being purchased by stragglers or new fans long after the song’s peak, and long-term dancefloor hits. Sometimes, particularly in the case of a future 1983 leviathan (which I can’t even believe I’m bothering to be secretive about) the two factors combined to an astonishingly potent degree.

After its debut in 1981, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” crawled up and down the indie chart, disappearing after pressing runs dried up then reemerging, beginning the process afresh, then evaporating into thin air. Its popularity appeared [citation needed!] to be largely driven by club play and word of mouth in its earliest days. It wasn’t generally heard on daytime radio and as a small boy I don’t recall hearing it at all until 1982, although my older teenage brothers already seemed familiar with it by the time it first emerged in the grown up charts.

The track feels taken for granted nowadays, and in some circles – certainly those of particular football fans – it’s become a party favourite, a carnival cracker, something to dig out when a goal is scored, a promotion is guaranteed, or just deployed at the right time when everyone is in the correct mood. I’ve seen the effect “Papa” has on audiences, and it’s immediately recognised and understood, having a galvanising effect and crossing most cultural divides.

In one respect, this is explicable enough. The central aspect of the record is a stupendous fanfare backed with the kind of funky rhythm section that everyone finds irresistible. The horns and the clappy backbeat beckon you towards the floor even if you’re one of life’s most apologetic wallflowers. It's the part everyone can whistle when asked, the aspect that pulls everyone towards the centre of the floor. 

19. Anti-Nowhere League - I Hate People (WXYZ)

Three weeks at number one from 27th March 1982

“This just ain't the sort of music to lend itself to sensitive in-depth philosophical probings.” Gary Bushell, Sounds.
“It's so extreme, it's impossible to take offence. Take the League seriously and the joke's on you, mate.” Carol Clerk, Melody Maker.

You sense that music critics had a hard time being asked to pore over Anti Nowhere League’s work and were almost defensive about it. After all, their job is to write reviews which contain at least a few hundred words of imaginative and helpful observations for the modern music consumer. In the case of The League, though, you only needed to hear their first single and its B-side to get a fair impression of what the rest of their work was likely to be about – thunderous chords and an elephant footed rhythm section combined with cuss words and ridiculously extreme lyrical positions.

So it goes with “I Hate People”. A basic descending chord pattern introduces the song and sticks to it like a barnacle, used as the central hook for the bellowed chorus: “I hate people/ I hate the human race/ I hate people/ I hate your ugly face/ I hate people/ I hate your fucking mess/ I hate people/ They hate me”. It goes on to become what could be the soundtrack to a teenage workplace underling’s bad day, set to another misunderstanding in the post room or pathetic practical joke on the production line: “My mother thinks I am a jerk/ Because I hate my bleeding work/ Be like daddy he's sincere/ And don't be true because you're queer”.

Not for the first time since starting this blog, I’m reminded immediately of the Not The Nine O’Clock News song “Gob On You”, which satirised the arse end of British punk rock. “Gob on you/ cause you're far too old/ Gob on you cause your hands are cold/ Gob on you, you're a stupid old straight/ Gob gob gob gob hate hate hate hate” spat Mel Smith and Rowan Atkinson. Nobody could fault the team for attention to detail, but in retrospect you’ve got to wonder if they were missing the point – namely, that as music journalists had already freely noted, groups like The League hadn’t really entered the game for serious results to begin with. As punk’s initial light faded, it sometimes felt as if it had split into two factions; the hardcore anarchists who had serious grievances and misgivings and found punk to be a viable outlet for them, and those who just thrived on cartoonish chaos. By trying to parody British punk in the early eighties, comedians inevitably ended up landing slap bang inside the territory of those who weren’t taking themselves terribly seriously to begin with.

“I Hate People” would therefore be a bloody tough record to write about were it not for a strange and slightly worrying "creative decision" the band took in 2006. The release of Anti Nowhere League’s odds and sods compilation album “Pig Iron” saw the inclusion of a previously unreleased track entitled “The Day The World Turned Gay” which their previous label Captain Oi got cold feet about:

18. Blitz - Never Surrender (No Future)

One week at number one on 20th March 1982

Thanks to this blog, Gary Bushell has been on my mind a lot lately. While attempting the daily chores such as emptying the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry or walking the dog, my thoughts have often wandered and allowed his bearded visage to emerge in mind’s eye, stoical and almost impossible to read.

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve been bothered in this way. Back when I was in journalism college, my head tutor persuaded me to buy a different newspaper every day of the week – “it’s the only way you’ll learn to adapt your tone for different audiences”. So began the only period of my life where I bought The Sun and faithfully noted its contents, all in the hope that it would get me better grades (I appreciate that some readers may note the obvious irony here, or may share my Dad's concerns about failing to boycott the paper).

Bushell struck me as a strange figure even then, at the very height of his fame; a comedy and light entertainment nerd trapped in the body of a police constable, always one wink and guarded friendly gesture away from an outraged warning bark. Besides rants about immigration, leftie morons and “pillocks” at Channel 4 and the Beeb, he also held very specific and haunting obsessions on unlikely subjects such as the lack of variety shows on television and ageism in the entertainment industry. As I pored over his thoughts on the latter two matters, I realised how out of place they seemed. Most Sun readers probably couldn’t have given two figs about them – they were Bushell’s personal bugbears being given the maximum audience possible at the peak of his career. Whether I agreed with him or not, I had to conclude that he cared, which is more than can be said for many columnists who tend to seek out the most contentious viewpoints to generate "engagement".

Back in 1982 while he worked at Sounds magazine, “Oi!” was another uniquely Bushell-shaped obsession, seemingly born of a desire to make things happen rather than advance his career. While many music journalists have tried to build a name of themselves by creating distinct music scenes, Bushell’s pushing of the “Oi!” banner felt narrower than most. The central idea seemed to be to bring punk rock into the ownership of disaffected working class youth in unfashionable parts of Britain, putting it in direct opposition with most music journalists at that time, who seemed to want to further the aims of post-punk and art-punk bands.

You could argue that “Oi!” played out Bushell’s alternate reality fantasy, the answer to the question “What would have happened if Sham 69 had been the ultimate victors of the punk movement?” while the rest of the writers at IPC Towers were asking the same deluded question about The Fall, Wire or The Slits. Bushell’s argument does have fairness and legitimacy behind it, however; if punk was supposed to have been a tolerant home for all the outsiders, why were the struggling, unemployed youth in dull  towns and cities like Derby, Redcar, Redditch* and Margate often being left out of the media story? 

In answer to this question, the “Oi!” compilation series was born, which took the chemical ingredients of punk, exposed them to a bunsen burner, and boiled them down to their key essence, their remaining powder – anger and amateur three chord rock and roll. Somewhere along the way, the movement also attracted a fascistic element which many of the groups didn’t quite work hard enough to shake off, meaning that as soon as the subgenre is mentioned nowadays, one of the first things journalists feel inclined to do is address the issues it attracted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has left enough of a bad taste for the genre to be ignored by almost all the articles or documentaries covering punk rock since.

Suspicions about “Oi!” were big enough by 1982 that the playwright Trevor Griffiths staged (and televised) the production “Oi For England”. The plot revolved around an initially shadowy figure known as The Man offering promising punk bands who fit his own (fascistic) political ideas career-changing slots at a festival. It’s important to note that The Man was obviously supposed to be a representation of the powers-that-be, desperate to cause unemployed and directionless post-industrial youth to fight minorities rather than the system. Bushell’s later career as a well-paid right-wing tabloid hack did make the play seem astonishingly prophetic, though, meaning that when I finally got hold of a printed copy of the script in the early nineties, I assumed it was actually directly about him.

I could be forgiven for this presumption given what a go-to figure he was during the early eighties. Blitz were from New Mills (close to Derby) and initially saw what they thought was an ally in Bushell, sending him demo tapes in 1981 in the hope of getting exposure. Bushell, an avowed socialist at this point, was deeply impressed with their work and offered them a chance to sleep in his family home on a London council estate while attempting to establish their career, also giving them slots on his “Oi!” compilation series.

17. Depeche Mode - See You (Mute)

Four weeks at number one from 20th February 1982

Following Vince Clarke’s departure from Depeche Mode, a hard, callous cynicism set in among most quarters of the music press. Announcements that Martin Gore would pick up the songwriting duties were not received with the confidence Daniel Miller and the group had hoped for, and in some cases resulted in total derision.

Music journalists are often quick to judge the commercial prospects of any group in the heat of the moment, and frankly, nobody could have blamed them for their negative tack in this instance. The only evidence either they or the general public had that Martin Gore could write songs lay in a somewhat middling instrumental on “Speak And Spell”, childishly entitled “Big Muff”, plus the middling vocal track "Tora! Tora! Tora!". It showed he could pen a passable melody, but if these were the only Gore compositions heard in public, you can hardly blame them for speculating what on earth the rest of them must have sounded like. Did another synth instro entitled “Enormous Dildo” exist elsewhere which was of a lesser quality? Did he have an entire concept album of instrumentals with crude sexual titles hidden away somewhere, and were Depeche Mode to become some kind of Kraftwerk influenced version of the Anti Nowhere League? 

“See You” was therefore something of a pleasant surprise and a puzzle from the offset. It had apparently been penned while Gore was still at secondary school, a sweet but melancholic ballad written before he had even experienced a romantic relationship. He has since referred to this single somewhat critically, remarking that it was an example of him writing outside his personal experience, whereas his later songs about love were all at least partially biographical. He gives the impression of being slightly ashamed that this single therefore emotionally manipulates the listener into believing its lyrics are the truth.

Where you sit on this topic depends on your feelings on pop music, and whether effective songwriting has to be “The Truth” (a very purist hippy/ punk idea of what the form has to be) or can just as easily be the lie that tells the truth. Do we expect every artist to have direct personal experience of the things they reflect? It seems limiting, unrealistic and a bit unreasonable to do so.

The focus of this single is seemingly first love, which had been a Tinpan Alley songwriting staple and a subject numerous other artists turned to. “First Love Never Dies”, tackled by The Walker Brothers and The Cascades among others, is one of the most direct and obvious examples - “And if you're thinking of me/ And you find that you still love me/ There's no use to go on living lies”, the song demands towards the end, perhaps more in hope than expectation.

Then there are many other examples – “Macarthur Park” is probably the most overwrought and ambitious, but the angle shifts and alters in tracks like “Disco 2000” by Pulp (more of a document of a pie-eyed puppy crush than love, admittedly) and the almost flippant, joky “Emily Kane” by Art Brut. Romantic nostalgia easily captures the imagination of listeners precisely because your first serious relationship or (worse) unrequited desire can prove to be the most powerful, confusing and potentially havoc-wreaking event you’ll experience. The statistics around first affairs are unforgiving, and they usually strike when we’re too emotionally immature to deal with them. No wonder songwriters can’t let go of the idea – there’s either a good commercial racket in penning a tune about the subject, or else an enormous emotional purging for the author, and sometimes both.

In the case of “See You”, it’s possible to hear the “deception” if you listen to it after any of the above songs I've mentioned. Whereas they are rich in the kind of close observational detail typical of intense life experiences, picking up on background details like old men playing checkers in the park or woodchip on the walls, “See You” is suspiciously broad. “I remember the days when we walked through the woods/ we’d sit on a bench for awhile”, states Gore vaguely. “I treasured the way we used to laugh and play”. So far, this could just as easily be a song about a dearly departed pet dog, so routine and flimsy are the outlines.

These initial missteps don’t end up mattering, though. A narrative of sorts begins to emerge which is only too believable. “I swear I won’t touch you,” he tells his imaginary ex towards the end, and “We’ll stay friendly like sister and brother/ though I think I still love you”. It’s not exactly poetry, but there is a tension tugging away at the song here which feels only too real. He’s making promises about his emotions he can’t keep, contradicting himself, and even throwing in trite philosophy into the song with the line “I think that you’ll find/ people are basically the same”; it’s certainly true that people need to be loved, but how they are loved, and by whom, are deeply complicated areas, and despite Gore’s teenage naivete here, as a listener you’re left with the impression that the singer (Dave Gahan) knows this. It’s not delivered forcefully or victoriously, it almost sounds as if he knows he’s in a weak bargaining position. If all we need is love, and we’re all essentially the same, then why meet up with someone from our past with baggage, after all? Why not choose a less complicated route?

The arrangements do a lot of the song’s work and are in places downright beautiful. The melancholic melody lines which emerge beneath “If the water’s still flowing we can go for a swim” are almost trying to sound victorious, bordering on a fanfare, but ultimately collapse into defeat. The endless tug-of-war at the heart of this song, portraying a man who doesn’t even really know what he actually wants, is unbelievably effective, and force the listener to imagine someone hanging around by the telephone wondering whether to invite themselves back into their ex’s life again, all the time knowing it’s futile and potentially damaging. Five years is a long time, and the times change – and the longer the communication gap, the longer the odds of closing it are, and the less likely it is the contact will be well received.

15b. Anti-Nowhere League - "Streets Of London" (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 6th February 1982

This is where things get awkward. As Theatre of Hate dipped down to number two – possibly, I suspect, due to pressing plant or distribution issues – the Anti-Nowhere League managed to climb back up to the top of the charts again for another fortnight.

Rather than spending another 1,000 words or so pontificating on the significance of both the group and the song itself, let’s just take a look at what was occurring further down the charts, shall we?

In the first week of the League boomeranging back up to the top, Mari Wilson enters at 22 with “Beat The Beat”. Wilson’s distinctive beehive hairdo and retro-leaning girl pop stood out quite significantly in 1982, and as the year progressed her positions in the official charts grew ever more impressive. “Beat The Beat” would have to make do with a final placing of number 59 in the national charts and number 12 in the NME indie listings, but interest was blooming and she wouldn’t be held back forever.




Just beneath her at number 23 lay Zeitgeist with an urgent sounding post-punk cover of The Temptations “Ball Of Confusion”. It just about works, although the group’s unvarnished shoutiness and unpolished reading sometimes holds the track back rather than taking it to new and exciting places. Issued on the “Jamming” fanzine’s record label – remember that enormous independent publishing phenomenon, everyone? - it failed to climb higher up the chart.




A genuine curiosity is at number 28 in the form of Cheaters’ cover of “Spirit in the Sky”, way before anyone else got their mitts on it and revived it to greater success (whether that’s Doctor and the Medics or those Kumars). It takes the original and adds a punkish vocal rasp and a glam friendly punch and thud – which to be fair, the original was never a million miles away from to begin with.




In week two, UB40’s “I Won’t Close My Eyes” debuts at number 8 before eventually peaking at number 3. Acting as the lead single from their “UB44” album, “Close My Eyes” saw the group struggling to connect with the public and only reaching number 32 in the national charts – a thrilling prospect for the Theatre of Hates of this world, but terrible news for a group who only a couple of years prior to this were guaranteed top ten hits. The relative failure of their work at this point prompted a rethink, and their revenge on the hit parade would be swift.

16. Theatre Of Hate - Do You Believe In The West World? (Burning Rome)

 

Number one for one week on 30 January 1982

The idea that the cold war exercised a clammy grip on the imagination of eighties pop is a dominant cliche. There’s plenty of evidence to back it up, obviously. Duran Duran clumsily used the frequently mocked “you’re about as easy as a nuclear war” line, and Ultravox penned one of the eeriest pop ballads ever, “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes”, and directed a child-melting video to go with it. Bigger and louder than either of those were Frankie Goes To Hollywood who spent nine weeks at number one with a record partially consisting of the actor Patrick Allen issuing post-nuclear bomb public information on top of agitated, urgent rhythms.

All those tracks emerged in 1983 or 1984, either around or not long after the point Ronald Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire” and the cold war entered its deepest freeze. Prior to that, while the threat was apparent, its shadow was perhaps more apparent in the atmosphere of some of the odder, more unsettled records to attract public excitement and attention; in that respect, it feels appropriate that “O Superman” was a huge seller in 1981 in a way I doubt it would have been five years earlier or later. Was it actually directly about nuclear war, though? Possibly not.

Records which actually directly referenced nuclear war, even in the indie chart, were relatively thin on the ground prior to that point, with tracks like UB40’s “The Earth Dies Screaming” being the exceptions that proved the rule. In general, most of the punk underground were more interested in issuing rattlingly irritated singles about the futility of war in general. The Exploited were particularly exercised by such matters, with lead singer Wattie’s previous career as a soldier serving in Northern Ireland feeding into his obsession with the futility of armed conflict.

“Do You Believe in the West World” was a bit of an exception, and emerged packaged in a provocative sleeve, signposting the actual meaning of the lyrics for anyone who wasn’t listening closely enough. Kirk Brandon uses a Western film backdrop as the canvas to scrawl his message on, offering us not very subtle hints such as “That was before the circus with the bear arrived/ oh the bear it roared as the gun was fired/ then the cowboy turned the gun on himself as he sang/ ‘no-one’s alive’”.

“Westworld” is actually a cunning and surprisingly rewarding single which seems to crush a wide range of influences into one song, from the obvious (actual Western films) to the more current. The track opens with a post-punk thunder of bottom-heavy tribal drumming, before allowing an almost funky rhythm guitar to slip in, as if to remind us that in the event of armageddon, Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins would be evaporated as well as Brandon’s more anguished music. 

As the track progresses and inevitably lets in some Morricone inspired twang, it also eventually permits a raging sax solo as well, making this sound like a condensed representation of rock and roll in the nuclear age. Whereas Theatre of Hate’s previous indie number one “Nero” was a static atmosphere piece with feet of clay, “Westworld” unfolds gracefully, managing more in its five minutes than most post-punk groups of the period bothered with.