While we've been exploring 1982 over the last few months, there have been moments where it feels as if much of the chart activity has just been a stylistic extension of 1981; the same array of lo-fi punk records, strange, rubbery post-punk sounds, and leftfield electronica. In particular, if it weren't for the Falklands-heavy subject matter, a lot of the punk records issued at the arse end of 82 would probably be difficult to date.
Progression was probably more evident in commercial terms. 1982 saw the deeply unusual phenomenon of indie labels managing to grab not just the year's Christmas number one with Renee and Renato (a record without a picture sleeve, damnit! How much more indie did you want that Italian waiter and his session sidekick to be?) but other positions in the top three as well. Yazoo managed two top three hits with "Only You" and "Don't Go", and Pigbag got to number three with "Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag". Two or three years earlier, the idea that Pinnacle, Spartan or Rough Trade could have pushed these records towards even moderate success would have been greeted with some scepticism. These distributors were seen as serving a certain niche purpose and little more - places to rest your first roughly recorded single or two while waiting to see if the big boys came running to your yard with generous financial offers. The idea that artists could actually succeed without inking a major contract with a big business at all was unthinkable.
It wasn't that the indies hadn't succeeded before, but (for example) the modest number 8 chart placing of Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" in 1981 - by now an inescapable pop oldie and one of the group's biggest sellers - is evidence that their limited means sometimes stymied records which might otherwise have been colossal. The number of odd UK pressing variants of "Just Can't Get Enough" indicates how desperate Mute were to keep up demand, offering different pressing plants at home and abroad cash to keep more copies coming.
Looking forward, 1983 is a stranger year in terms of genres in the indie chart, when the gradual decline of punk begins to allow all kinds of other ideas to barge their way through, some of them a lot more straightforward than we've heard before. You can get a taste of some of that on the right hand side of the page. Down below, however, is your one last chance to kiss goodbye to 1982 and all it offered, for better and worse.
See you again very soon and Merry Christmas.
On a more general note - as it's Christmas, please do consider linking to this blog if you like what I'm doing. Google are currently refusing to consider it for their search index register for reasons known only to themselves, and the only way I'm going to have any hope of them changing their minds is if it starts to get a bit more support externally.
That said, Google have been carrying an error on their Maps service with a local road for two years now, barrelling drivers down a street with a clear No Entry sign and also claiming it's where my house is... so let's not get our hopes up too high.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
“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.
