33c. New Order - Blue Monday (Factory)

Returned to number one on 12th November 1983 for one week

Groundhog Day hits us again as "Blue Monday" jumps up from number three to reclaim the top spot from This Mortail Coil. Let's look at what's happening further down the... oh.

The fact is, this event also occurred on a very dull and uninteresting week where there are only three new entries, of which one is a future number one, and another is just an old record we've already covered with its B-side flipped to the plug position. Let's not make a big song and dance about this, let's just get this covered and move on to the main entry tomorrow, I think....

New Entries (such as they are)

24. Alien Sex Fiend - Lips Can't Go (Anagram)

Peak position: 9

There are very few groups on the goth circuit whose career has ridden the greatest crests of the movement and also the most loveless troughs, but Alien Sex Fiend have persisted against all the odds, throwing an album into the shops every decade since the eighties (with the exception of the 2020s, though I suspect it's only a matter of time).

This is remarkable as unlike some of their more well-known peers, they never really had a watershed moment. Their only album to get inside the mainstream charts was "Maximum Security" in 1985, which spent one week at number 100; beyond that, they've never graced the Guinness Book of Hit Singles or Albums with their presence. 

"Lips Can't Go" probably gives you an idea about why. The first time I played this a couple of weeks ago, I got so pissed off with its unshifting, minimal electro-racket that I gave up halfway through. Just now, however, I found myself almost enjoying its clattering, pulsing, horror-comic dirginess, and who knows, a third play might actually spark something. You can also hear the approach of groups like Nitzer Ebb and even Front 242 in its basic sound, proving that they were probably just as much on the side of the emerging industrial music as the sounds of the kids in that Batcave.

28. The Escalators - The Munsters Theme (Big Beat)

Peak position: 28

This was originally released as the flipside to their single "Monday", but Big Beat obviously noticed that it was starting to pick up more attention and subsequently ran off some new picture sleeves with "The Munsters" being promoted as the A-side instead... and here we are. In any ordinary week I'd stick the boot up this one and refuse to dignify it with more than a link to the relevant video - it's a re-release in all but name - but we're not exactly spoiled for choice right now.

Questions should probably be asked about why exactly a twang-tastic sixties instro take on The Munsters theme should have been getting attention nobody intended it to receive, and there are probably a couple of key things going on here; firstly, there's the minor factor that Channel 4 had started screening old episodes of The Munsters on British TV in the late afternoons, causing it to pick up new appreciation from schoolkids, students and the unemployed. Then, of course, there was the fact that goths were growing in number and desperate to pick up anything which had any associations with the ghoulish, freakish and bizarre. While The Escalators weren't courting that audience at all, it's safe to assume that a fair few of them bought this record. 

It's actually a very effective cover which sharpens up the original theme in the way those cynical approximations of popular television tunes did on Decca, Columbia and Pye in the early sixties. The group's guitars sound sharp as pins and have the clean, preppy tones of an instrumental rock era which is now largely ignored by most music listeners. Even in 1983 it was a little bit too niche in its revivalisms for its own good, which probably explains its inability to climb higher up the indie chart. 

For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Billy Joel: "Uptown Girl" (CBS)