11. Anti-Pasti - 6 Guns

 

One week at number one on 28th November 1981

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

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

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




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

10. Pigbag - Sunny Day (Y Records)

 

Number one for two weeks from 14th November 1981

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Two weeks at number one from 31 Oct 1981

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Number one for three weeks from 10^th October 1981

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough (Mute)

 

Number one for two weeks from 26th September 1981

“I can, you will” – Patrick Humphries, Melody Maker

I can’t think of many other groups whose opening shots were such red herrings. With “Photographic”, “Dreaming Of Me” and “New Life”, Depeche Mode had presented themselves as a synth-pop act with sharp melodies, but with cryptic, creepy and occasionally dystopian elements tacked on.

“Photographic” (which appeared on the Some Bizarre sampler LP) was a hushed, pulsing meditation on either criminal espionage or stalking an unfortunate woman – you decide which – whereas “Dreaming Of Me” is a series of filmic, cinematic images which all add up to apparently mean nothing much in particular but sound, like “Photographic”, in love with the idea of the machinery behind the art, the projectionist's filter through which the activity is made possible. We’ve already discussed “New Life” and what the hell might be going on there, but then…

“Just Can’t Get Enough” eschews all this for a boy/girl (or boy/boy or girl/girl if you prefer) love story of almost inane simplicity. And once “Just Can’t Get Enough” happened, neither Depeche Mode or Vince Clarke were ever quite the same again. It was to be Clarke’s last single for them - shortly after it was released he stated that he no longer wanted to suffer the trappings of being in a band; but despite this, he would never return to his word salad of bright lights, dark rooms, rising casts or red shadows, and nor would the remaining band try to emulate it. He would write more straightforward songs about love and interpersonal relationships, occasionally making the odd political statement, whereas the group he left behind eventually found their natural home writing about the big universal subjects – religion, human relationships (romantic and inter-personal) human failings, sex and love (Yes, this is an over-simplification if we're talking about their earlier LPs, and we'll have plenty of opportunities to see how as this blog progresses).

It’s not as if “Just Can’t Get Enough” shot in from the sidelines and turned everyone’s creative practice around. Anyone who has heard their debut album “Speak And Spell” knows that there are even more straightforward songs on offer (“Nodisco” and “What's Your Name” anyone? Let's not link to them, it seems kindest) but in terms of the broader public perception of the band, it may have proved to be a bit of a curse as well as a blessing. While it only reached number eight in the national charts, it remains one of their best known and most played songs to this day, soundtracking adverts, popping up on oldies radio, covered by kids on TikTok and YouTube in a variety of unlikely ways, all of which fail to ever escape the simple joy of the song. If the band weren’t already thought of by some critics as being cute, gleeful teens with candyfloss melodies, they were now.

My wife recently mentioned that in her mind, “Just Can’t Get Enough” and The Beatles “She Loves You” share a similar space, and I get her point. Both are unapologetically effervescent songs about young love. “She Loves You” has a bit more of a narrative to it, and it’s clear that the biggest enthusiast for the individual’s relationship is the singer who is addressing his daft mate (an interesting way of delivering the song’s central message) but the principle remains the same. Both songs are not unduly weighed down by doubt, mixed emotions or past experiences like most love songs are. They’re not ballads either – they’re boppy, excited, rowdy, the thrilling noise of a 15 or 16 year old realising they’re actually wanted and desired by somebody.

The facile lyrical nature of some of Vince Clarke’s later work for Depeche Mode can be painful to listen to at times, but it also partly contributes to the strengths of “Just Can’t Get Enough”. Dave Gahan sounds uncharacteristically chipper throughout, as if he can’t believe his luck and is almost deliriously senseless – “We walk together, we’re walking down the street!” he sings, barely able to believe such a simple act could be possible. Mostly though, the lyrics just repeat the title, chanting it as well as hollering it, until it becomes almost a meta comment on the hooky, addictive nature of the song itself as well as the relationship.

6. Birthday Party - Release The Bats (4AD)

 

Number one for three weeks from 5th September 1981

While many interviews have revealed his uniquely dry sense of humour, Nick Cave isn’t particularly renowned for his way with a catchphrase or punchline. In the mid-nineties, you could shove Jarvis Cocker – a man who isn’t averse to a bit of spite and darkness himself - on a panel show and be assured of a few cheeky giggles, but it’s safe to say that nobody called Nick Cave’s manager about putting him on Pop Quiz.

So it's strange to listen to “Release The Bats” afresh for the first time in decades, years after it last pummelled my ears during Friday nights at the Rayleigh Pink Toothbrush (goths welcome), and notice both how camply brilliant it is and how indebted to simple sloganeering. For a track which is largely regarded as spearheading the gothic movement, it owes a far bigger debt to Joe Meek and Screaming Lord Sutch than Joy Division or Bauhaus, taking the ketchup and cleavage gore of a thousand cheap Hammer spin-offs as its source text.

“Bite! Bite!” demands Cave at the start, before asking loudly but almost incoherently “Tell me that it doesn’t hurt/ a hundred fluttering in your skirt?” an image which is immediately ludicrous rather than disgusting.

The track, like many Birthday Party singles, starts as it means to continue, like an unchallenged steamroller slowly crumpling up the edge of the street where the parked cars live. There’s no discernable chorus, just a continued barrage of stabbed guitar lines, catchphrases (which as the song progresses descend into excited gibberish such as “sex horror sex bat sex sex horror sex vampire”) and Cave ripping himself into a state of either ecstasy or fury. He seems conflicted about the bats, wanting to destroy them (or “explode” them) as much as he wants to celebrate them, like a wildlife preservation officer who happens to have some living in his attic.

The drumming is also worthy of mention here; in common with a lot of the indie chart entries I’ve been listening to for this period of 1981, the near complete aversion to a cymbal or a hi-hat is both notable and strangely typical. Martin Hannett famously got the ball rolling on this percussive style with Joy Division, but it also became adopted by acts whose debt to Joy Division was less immediately obvious – Felt, for example, were also adding bottom-heavy percussion to their otherwise airy indie-pop compositions at this point. In The Birthday Party’s case, it anchors the sound down with those jazzy basslines, making “Release The Bats” bit-part punk racket with a strange unwieldy swing on top.