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.

There’s always been an argument that mods were/are, unlike many other youth movements, slippery shape-shifters who could creep their way into acceptable society just as easily as they popped pills at the local nightclub. By comparison, a punk with a mohawk in 1981 could at best expect to get a night shift job taking stock at the local supermarket, but would be more likely to find themselves unemployed. Buying into an extreme punk image wholesale, and not just being a weekend punk, was a conscious decision to be part of a group of hopeless outsiders who didn’t present themselves in the way society wanted or expected.

Mods, however, naturally slick looking in their fantastically cut suits, could begin their working life as a filing clerk or tea boy/girl and steadily get promoted without anyone suspecting their weekend habits. Some of the bosses I had very early in my career were first generation sixties mods. No punk, on the other hand, has ever been the boss of me (to the best of my knowledge). Whether all these thoughts were bouncing around in Wattie’s mind at the time he blurted out his call for violence isn’t clear, but it still doesn’t make for a worthy battle, seeming more like tribal agitation for the sake of it than a considered response to an actual social problem. Mods in 1981, however much they were capable of crawling into the lower middle classes, were not entirely responsible for society’s biggest ills at that point. 

The problem with these fundamentalist ideas is that they limited creative options too. It’s no surprise that the groups with the most puritanical views about punk often released material which seemed the most bare and minimal. The Exploited’s sound was therefore rowdy and riddled with chants, their lyrics plain and simple. All the tricksy word-play, irony and sarcasm which was a part of the earliest punk records is reduced to a series of agitated complaints and excited proclamations - “I'm filled up with aggression/ Want to smash your television”, they begin, before eventually finishing “Snarling and gobbing and falling around/ I really enjoy the freedom I've found/ My mate’s besides me lying on the ground/ His ears are bursting with the volume of sound”. Somewhere in between those two points lies an argument against derelict, neglected cities, authoritarianism and boredom. 

Most people will have one of two opinions on records like this one - the tightness of the limited ideas within them means I genuinely don’t think many other options are available. You either think it’s a fantastic event on 45, a superb sonic interruption to utilise at critical moments of stress and agitation, the stinkbomb answer to “Ghost Town”'s eerie chill... or just a bloody racket. There are plenty of people out there who would happily categorise themselves in the first group. Numerous grunge, hardcore punk and thrash bands have been influenced by The Exploited (Kurt Cobain was a fan) and the band still tour the world to enthusiastic audiences of mixed ages. Following “Dead Cities” they did slowly dip back underground again, but unlike many cult acts found the underground willing to offer them a reasonable living; their notoriety and influence has sustained them across many decades.

For me personally, though, they offered a brief little thrill once in 1981 that I’ve never been able to squeeze out of them while listening to their records out of choice – one disruptive flash of excitement, one mainstream appearance out of context I couldn’t forget, then they were gone. Except not, as I’m sure they would be at pains to point out; every time I heard any thrash or hardcore later on, there’s a possibility their ideas were lurking in there somewhere. 

A postscript. In the late nineties there was a bar I occasionally went to which was also a regular hang-out for crusties and anarcho-punks. I didn’t really fit in, but my presence was just about tolerated with only the occasional side-eye and question of “Are you a copper?”; this was usually asked as a passive-aggressive response to my straight appearance rather than out of genuine concern. 

One day, though, a friend of mine got drunk and thought it would be hilarious to chant “We are the mods!” at his bar table. One of the punks put him straight about his behaviour and warned him that if he wanted to avoid some serious damage, which he would be only too happy to help deliver, he should pipe down. Did the influence of The Exploited linger on in society to a certain extent too, with their scrawled sleevenotes being absorbed into the wider subculture nearly two decades down the line? Who knows, but it seems so.

Trivia 

• Exploited guitarist Big John Duncan left the group in 1983 and joined Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, a group who (as you probably already know) featured future Garbage singer Shirley Manson. He also became a guitar technician for Nirvana. 
• Besides Top of the Pops, the band also talked to Noel Edmonds about their haircuts on prime time television, with Noel doing his usual wheezy, airy laugh at their casual innuendo. Did they say something funny, Noel? 

Away From The Number One Spot

Starturn's “Starturn on 45 (Pints)” begins to climb the charts, entering modestly at number 30 initially, then clawing upwards. It was a northern working man’s club parody of the early eighties medley craze which eventually reached number 45 in the national charts. Both topics have been parodied so much since that it’s appeal may seem baffling from a 2024 perspective, but they did eventually have a proper number 12 hit in 1988 with the House music inspired “Pump Up The Bitter” (more on that one at some point in the distant future, perhaps).




One of the less anthologised Liverpool post-punk bands, The Last Chant, also crept around the lower reaches of the charts with “Run Of The Dove”, which featured future Waterboy Mike Scott and Colin "Black" Vearncombe.




The Birthday Party’s “Mr Clarinet” also peaked at number 10, failing to cross over to as many people as the cartoon gothness of “Release The Bats”.




Putting in a hugely convincing head-charge initially are anarcho-punks Infa Riot with “Kids Of The 80s” who jump from 20 to number 7 in The Expoited’s first week at number one, then fall away again. It’s lighter musically but lyrically filled with the same simply expressed ideas about street fighting and cop bothering. Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end…

The full chart can be found on the UKMix Forums.

Number One In The Official Charts

Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin - "It's My Party" (Broken/ Stiff)