Number One for five more weeks from 1st October 1983
Anybody who read the preceding entry to this one could hardly be surprised to find "Blue Monday" back at number one. The indie chart is more volatile to tracks yo-yoing around the listings than most, but even the National Charts couldn't shake themselves free of Blue Monday's broad and enduring appeal. As holiday makers returned from the club nights they'd enjoyed during the long, sticky summer of 1983, demand was reinvigorated and it ricocheted into the National Top Ten for the first time.
For what else went on while it enjoyed a second stay at the top, please see below.
Week One
7. The Fall - Kicker Conspiracy (Rough Trade)
Peak position: 3
Way before New Order's football record, here was The Fall's, with less ecstacy and more hot dogs, lager and weary references to football hooliganism. "Kicker Conspiracy" occasionally sees Mark E Smith at his least cryptic and most everyday - even a Cockney Rejects fan could understand what "Remember! You are abroad/ Remember! The police are rough!" is referring to - but then he veers back into the land of The Fall and manages to make the sport sound mystical and arcane. To this day, I haven't made my mind up what "Plastic, slime, partitions, cocktail, zig-zag, tudor bar" actually means (I suspect it's a reference to the gentrification of the big game, but leave your own ideas in the comments).
Still, this is as populist and immediate as early Fall gets, and it's a corker, its strident, military march feeling somewhat appropriate for a Saturday session.
17. Depeche Mode - Love In Itself (Mute)
Peak position: 4
The least political track on "Construction Time Again" becomes the second and final single to be taken from it, and while it worked perfectly fine as the album's opener, something seems awry on 45, almost as if it's a hook or two short of becoming the pop anthem it truly wants to be.
Still, the razzing, brassy synthetic intro is powerful enough to stop the track from being merely middling, and Gahan sounds almost livid while he ruminates on love and its actual meaning in a society filled with anything but. In 1982, Martin Gore asked us what the meaning of love was and sounded child-like. Here, he sounds like it might have dawned on him and he's now embittered. A year is a long time if you're in your early twenties.
The final synth solo at the end of this track sounds as if Alan Wilder is making things up as he goes along, and that mad spree gives the single a much needed final boost, but it wasn't enough - this was their first single to fail to reach the national top twenty since their debut "Dreaming Of Me" (it had to make do with a number 21 placing).
Elsewhere in their catalogue, skinhead punk group Combat 84 ranted and raved "Fuck Off CND!" and "It's better to be dead than red!" On this one, they go into an irate diatribe about how all rapists should be hung. "We want capital punishment!" they demand.
Their politics were much debated at the time, but hardly really need to be guessed at here. Remember - the indie charts are a very broad church.
Week Two
19. A Certain Ratio - I Need Someone Tonite (Factory)
Peak position: 9
ACR almost veer towards something here I can imagine my funk-loving brothers playing in their cars. Their earlier records were never afraid to mess up a perfectly good groove by tossing mismatched angular ideas into the mix, but "I Need Someone" is pure slickness. As I'm playing it now, some foxes are screeching outside - whether their horniness was pre-existing or brought on by the sliding cool on offer here is open to question (probably the former, though).
21. Black Lace - Superman (Flair)
Peak position: 11
Remember when I said the indie charts were a very broad church? That didn't just apply to right-wing skinheads - Butlins entertainers could get a piece of the action too.
Black Lace grappled awkwardly with their identity a few times, and you can see this in an early Butlins disc where besides performing holiday camp crowd pleasers they also gave us their version of "Bohemian Rhapsody". Ultimately though, they sold considerably more records when they just stuck to the party songs.
"Superman" was their first national hit and feels utterly inexplicable now, though to be fair it wasn't exactly deemed regular behaviour at the time - Smash Hits ran a whole column on the fact that the mere existence of "Superman" meant absolutely anybody could be a pop star. The Black Lace lads simply announce a series of mimes they want us to perform while a cheap, jaunty quiz show styled keyboard riff plays behind them, and they occasionally holler "SUPERMAN!" Why did anyone apart from mobile DJs and fitness instructors need to own a copy of this? Who actually sat and listened to it contemplatively at home? Would you honestly want to meet such a person?
At the very least, this seems to have been the inspiration for Tim and Eric's bizarre skit "Doo Dah Doo Doo" where the Dad fetishist and cibophobe Pierre issues instructions which are no less incomprehensible over a basic repetitive riff.
10. Sisters Of Mercy - Temple of Love (Merciful Release)
Peak position: 2
Aka the one everyone knows besides "This Corrosion". "Temple Of Love" may sound a little more spindly and underproduced here compared to its later iteration, but its a huge leap forward for Sisters of Mercy in terms of obvious commerciality. Where previous singles have communicated their sparse ideas solely to believers of the Eldritch cult, this is the first which is unashamedly epic and almost glam rock in its explosiveness.
1983 has seen a number of deeply enduring singles emerge in the indie chart, and this is firmly in that club, to the extent that little more can be said about it in a couple of brief paragraphs.
11. 1919 - Cry Wolf (Abstract)
Peak position: 11
Tribal rhythms rattle and rage as the lead singer has the kind of anguished, strangulated cry more commonly found on Cure records. A ton of drama with no reprieve, you almost want to take a deep breath when this one finishes.
14. Discharge - Warning : Her Majesty's Government Can Seriously Damage Your Health (Clay)
Peak position: 7
Discharge are back on the scene and have some opinions. The opening track "Warning" is very clear - "They stand on the outside looking in/ they stand on the outside feeding you shit" they state, referring to cynical government propaganda.
Anyone expecting the group to follow other second wave punk groups into the world of cover versions, novelty hits or new post-punk directions would be wasting their time. This remains uncompromising, the group not wanting to shift an inch from their position as hardcore noiseniks.
20. English Dogs - Mad Punx and English Dogs (Clay)
Peak position: 20
It's weird how we go through weeks without there being any punk action in the indie chart, then there's a sudden charge of it into the charts in one fell swoop, almost as if the labels were all co-ordinating their attack to make it seem as if punk remained a potent force.
The "Mad Punx and English Dogs" EP is everything you'd expect it to be and nothing more or less. Even the "Psycho Killer" track isn't a surprise Talking Heads cover but a composition of their own, and a fast thrash kickaround at that.
One of the Cabs more haunting efforts, from its looped sci-fi sample of "There's 70 billion people on earth, where are they hiding?" to the eerie, exotic and warped instrumentation, it makes you feel as if you've been let in on a dark conspiracy. It's also a decidedly odd choice of single, but conventionality had never been the motivation for anything else they attempted.
25. The Wake - Something Outside (Factory)
Peak position: 15
The Wake were always somewhat indebted to New Order on their earliest recordings, and "Something Outside" is guilty of sounding rather too much like a portastudio bedroom impersonation of that group's movements. They would get much better, but this is far too flimsy to be worth wasting too much time on.
27. Tik and Tok - Cool Running (Survival)
Peak position: 27
Tik and Tok were a pair of robotic dancers who never seemed to be off the telly in the early eighties, constantly showing us what dancefloors would look like in the future when the droids got involved. Sadly, in the 21st Century it's doubtful anyone would be impressed by a robot dancing as jerkily as Tik and Tok, instead they would instead probably scream at Elon Musk asking if that's the best he could do.
They were also a synthpop duo in their own right, constantly battling for chart attention which never really came despite their media ubiquity. "Cool Running" demonstrates why - there's nothing wrong with it as such, but it feels stylistically a few years out of time, and a few years counted for a hell of a lot in synth pop terms. Stacked up against "Blue Monday" and "Everything Counts", its binary jitters and Tomorrow's World techno-fetishism simply don't cut the mustard. Had it been released in 1979, however, there's no doubt the world would have been agog.
Further proof that the Crass label was the home of punks who wanted to push boundaries rather than work to a conservative template. D&V stood for Drums and Vocals, and that literally was all the group offered - punk anthems delivered completely with a drum kit and vocals. Stitch that, Jack White.
It's surprising how well it actually gels despite its ludicrous limitations. It's not essential listening, but it's certainly a huge cut above a lot of the three chord minimalists who have worked their way into the indie charts in 1983, and proof that punk could have gone into many different directions in 1983 if the overall will had been there.
21. The Exploited - Rival Leaders EP (Bluuurg)
Peak position: 11
Speak of the devil... The Exploited are back! And still sound exactly as they did when we last bumped into them. It's entirely up to you whether that makes them old friends returning to your arms, or illicits the kind of groan reserved for the office bore coming back from the same Spanish holiday he has every year.
22. SPK - Metal Dance (Desire)
Peak position: 4
The early stirrings of industrial dance music make themselves felt here, though the roots of "Metal Dance" feel as if they belong in Mute's earliest releases too - there are shades of "Warm Leatherette" here both lyrically and melodically. Just when you think the pulsing melodrama is getting too much, that blissful chorus drifts in seemingly from another place entirely.
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