1. Discharge - Why? (Clay Records)

 

Number One from 18th May 1981 for two weeks

Back in the early nineties a label called Connoisseur Collection issued a series of thoughtfully compiled records called “The Indie Scene”. Each documented a year in the life of British independent labels, and while it was occasionally guilty of inauthenticity (even the most liberal definition of “indie” shouldn’t include The Stranglers releases on United Artists) the booklets were enthusiastically written and informative, and some of the CDs contained material which had been unavailable in a digital format before.

Despite this, missing from these compilations was any kind of (even passing) reference to the early eighties punk scene. Whether this was due to rights issues or master tape problems is a question, but cynical old me suspects that it was probably because those bands didn’t fit the narrative, despite their overwhelming popularity in underground terms. I can imagine the conversations in the office – “Post punk? Definitely, that’s going in. Industrial? Of course. Synth pop? Well, we can hardly leave Mute out of the story. Hardcore Punk? Forget it. Nobody is going to buy these compilations to listen to one minute and thirty seconds of a man grunting and raging against the failings of a supposedly liberal Western society while a group thrash away behind him”.

Whether my assumptions are correct or not, I generally feel the rush of enthusiasm for these releases has been wiped out of indie history. It fits the story in one respect, in that all these groups were operating outside the mainstream, had a distinct sound, passion and purpose, and were sometimes played by John Peel, but they certainly don’t neatly fit the preferred mainstream BBC 6 Music narrative, the backwards looking one with its tidy cuts and edits to the messy edges of the story.

In addition, punks in general had a significantly reduced visibility by the early eighties. They were still apparent, but seemed to have become more of a small town phenomenon; similar to the way in which you don’t see motorcycle gangs in urban areas anymore but one miraculously emerges as soon as you take a day trip to Cheddar, punks now seemed to have become a phenomenon of the bored suburbs and strange between-city outposts rather than the troubled estates.

At the time, I noticed the graffiti “Punk’s Not Dead” popping up in odd places (we’ll come back to this slogan again in good time) which even as an eight year old I understood wasn’t a good sign. People don’t tend to walk around protesting something’s not dead if it’s obviously in rude health. When our neighbour told us that her Dad was still alive, it was only because this seemed like a miraculous fact given his health woes, not because he had taken up tap dancing.

Punk, though, had both infected other genres and itself splintered into many different factions and forms. The Oi scene, championed and promoted by future tabloid superhack Gary Bushell, seemed to imagine an alternate universe where Sham 69 were the artistic champions of the movement and not The Clash or The Pistols. Then other “punk pathetique” groups like Splodgenessabounds and Peter and the Test Tube Babies occupied the gleefully childish fringes of the movement, as if they had decided that refusing to act like a grown up and celebrating, rather than railing against, the daft trivialities of daily life was one of the most anarchic and free-spirited things a human being could still do (I might be inclined to agree with them).

Then there was hardcore punk, though how long it took before anybody actually referred to it as such in the UK is open to question. Bushell didn’t seem to talk as enthusiastically about those bands, though he certainly gave them space. They were harder, heavier, nastier and, for all their relative musical amateurism, more Metal than the first wave of British punk bands.

Stoke-on-Trent’s Discharge were pioneers of the British movement, and the “Why?” EP shows us how they did it. It’s akin to Wire’s earliest work in that each song is a short, mean stab which doesn’t take up more time than it has to – the EP consists of ten tracks but is over in less than twenty minutes. Completely unlike any of Wire’s work, however, this is persistently, relentlessly harsh, a distorted and furious cacophony which barely stops for breath. Cal Morris’ vocals practically invent the doomy guttural chant of modern metal, while the group surge, clatter and charge behind him.

I read one comment on YouTube as an insult initially, then realised it wasn’t supposed to be: “More nihilistic, guttural, and sloppy. The raw shit that makes your lawn die.” It’s on the money. “Raw shit that makes your lawn die” isn’t a quote you’d put on a hype sticker for any conventional band’s record, but you might as well shove it in bold type for this one and be assured of attracting the right audience. Having heard it once, I don’t know if I need to hear it again, and to appreciate it, I suspect I’d have to have listened at the right time in my life – a younger time when I thought nobody was as angry as me, or had the same ideas about politics, or when I might have wanted to just rail against the luxurious beauty of the eighties mainstream.

Ultimately, though, it seemed the people spraying “Punk’s Not Dead” on the walls of towns in England were right. It was too potent and liberating to be a passing fad, and Discharge remain deeply respected by those who know their hardcore, getting appreciation from bands as diverse (in rock terms, at least) as Napalm Death and Metallica. There are probably some kids in Ipswich making a noise like Discharge without even knowing who Discharge are, or where their tropes came from. Movements never truly die. Like viruses they just mutate and evolve and find new hosts.

This may seem like an unlikely number one to be dealing with first, but the indie charts were awash with punk at this time, and in that respect it sets the tone perfectly. Year in, year out, hardcore punk will make itself felt in some way, either literally or disguised and morphed into new forms, on this blog.

Additional trivia

Clay Records are probably more famed for their punk output than anything else, but weren’t solely a punk label, also taking on goth rock, New Wave of British Heavy Metal artists, and (eventually) blues rock in the form of sixties legends The Climax Blues Band.

They were formed by Mike Stone in Stoke-on-Trent and Discharged were their first signing, their initial single “Realities of War” being distributed out of his car boot in the honourable indie tradition. The label ceased its activities in 1989.

Away from the number one spot

The Fall are at number two for two weeks with the “Slates” EP, which might have been a considerably more interesting release for us to focus on first, but this is the way the dice fell. “Leave The Capitol” remains one of the most potent and relevant Fall tracks of all time, the lyrics standing alone perfectly adequately as a piece of spoken word poetry if you let them – Smith at his finest. You could also reasonably argue that The Fall’s sound represented a more interesting splintering from the origins of punk than Discharge, and I wouldn’t hesitate to agree with you.




Toyah lingers at the number four spot for two weeks with the hit single “I Want To Be Free”, helped along by a video showing her throwing cutlery everywhere amongst other striking imagery.

(My sister: “Did you see Toyah on Top of the Pops last night?”

Mum: “No, what did she do?”
“Threw cutlery around.”
“What FOR?”
“Because she wants to be free.”
“Tsk".)

Pigbag’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” ascends the charts threateningly as well, but would take nearly a year to show its full potential, and Depeche Mode debut at number 20 with their first single “Dreaming Of Me” – a truly odd opening salvo from the group in that its unapologetically cryptic futuristic lyrics and slightly detached, icy atmosphere are extraordinarily well done but utterly atypical of almost all of the rest of their work, and indeed that of their then songwriter Vince Clarke. It’s a much more complex song than it initially appears, featuring an oscillating instrumental break which almost owes a debt to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and numerous buzzing, squelching synths pulling you in with their bright melodies before pushing you away again with uneasy atmospherics.

It didn’t get to number one so we won’t get a chance to discuss it in full – as you can tell, I wish we could – but their immediate, short-term future lay in using synths to create Pop rather than towing the listeners through alienating environments.




In the lower reaches of the charts, the reissue of “I’ll Keep On Holding On” by The Action is evidence that the sixties mod, garage and psychedelic movements were still attracting record buyers. Proof once again that the indie charts weren’t just about the future – they were also for people whose tastes were otherwise being neglected by the present.

Number One In "The Real World"

Adam & The Ants - "Stand And Deliver" (CBS)

The full charts are available at the UK Mix website.