50. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - In The Ghetto (Mute)

 

One week at number on w/e 4th August 1984

In its original incarnation, the Mac Davis penned “In The Ghetto” was an enormous comeback hit for Elvis Presley – a number one in seemingly every major market around the world, re-establishing Presley’s validity and edge just as his star was in danger of waning.

Above and beyond all of that, though, it’s a genuine curiosity in songwriting terms. Over the years, Davis was strangely humble and unforthcoming about its roots and origins, referring to his childhood spent being friends with a “black boy” who lived in a rougher part of Chicago. “I couldn't figure out why they had to live where they lived, and we got to live where we lived,” Davis explained in the newspaper The Tennesean. “We didn't have a lot of money, but we didn't have broken bottles every six inches.”

It’s from this boyhood scenario that the story of “In The Ghetto” is supposed to stem, but it’s surprising that so little has been made – either by the press or the man himself – about Davis’ period spent working as a probation officer. “In The Ghetto” is sociological theory given an outlet in song-form, the cycle of urban misery described with every spin of the original record; let the needle hit the end, then lift it and return it to the run-in grooves, and you physically repeat the circle of neglect and life of crime every child in the same area goes through, and as the vinyl becomes worn and the music becomes distorted and uglier, so seeps through the steady decay. It’s a heavy load for a 1969 pop single to bear, but it manages.

Presley’s original recording is a strangely spacey and grand recording – widescreen and dramatic with its reverberating backing vocals, calmly plucked guitar lines and arrangements almost sounding as if they’re lifted from a Western soundtrack. “Paint Your Wagon” was a huge musical Western folly at this time, and there are echos of “Wanderin’ Star” about the gently shuffling wideness and melancholy of its sound. All of this is more likely to give the impression of a criminal cast out of society and forced to make his own way across a lonely prairie than it is the compressed and unforgiving environment of “the ghetto”. It’s a fine record, but it feels as if there could be other interpretations of it.

Enter Nick Cave. While Cave may currently have turned himself into the grandfather of modern alternative rock and a wise agony uncle for the broadsheet press, in 1984 he was an unpredictable ex-member of the manic and ramshackle Birthday Party, a fragile unit who sounded as if they might splinter to pieces before half their singles even finished. Neither that group nor Cave himself presented themselves as keen students of classic rock, instead coming across as nihilistic punks prone to screaming fits about all matters dark and gothic.

The fact that Cave chose a Presley cover to launch his solo career was therefore baffling at the time. A rock and roll revival was making itself felt through the psychobilly scene circa 1983/4, but “In The Ghetto” wasn’t the track to pick if you wanted to gain credibility from that crowd – it stems from the “establishment” era of Elvis, the point in his career where he was safely ensconced in his Graceland mansion and was no longer even a shadow of a rebel.

You can only conclude that Cave covered the song because he loved it, and instead of replicating it precisely or trying to scuzz it up, he instead boxes it into a minimal, slightly threatening space. At no point does it go wild, but the arrangement feels tighter, the slide guitar ominous, the drumming militaristic. Cave’s vocals, too, are not so relaxed, delivering the lines urgently, emphasising syllables unpredictably (you can hear this particularly in lines like “THEN one night in DES-peration, the young man BREAKS AWAY”). If Presley’s take on “In The Ghetto” is a cinematic sweep, Cave’s is a Play For Today version, alive and unflashy but still telling the same story. It swaps elegance for urgency.

It doesn’t usurp the original in terms of quality, but nor does it totally upend it. This isn’t Sid Vicious singing “My Way”, which I suspect some buyers and critics believed is how it would turn out – and it legitimised the song for a new generation. The tragedy is that “In The Ghetto” has never really aged, and a probation officer’s ideas about poverty, criminality and the cycle of deprivation and violence in 1969 was equally applicable in 1984 and indeed remains so today.

I’m not, generally speaking, a huge fan of what others have called “songs that tell you off”. John Lennon was the godfather of the form, always dropping in a snide swipe at the listener in the middle of a lyric, and “In The Ghetto” is equally guilty of this. “Take a look at you and me!” demanded Davis. “Do we simply turn our heads and look the other way?”

Davis had a pre-music career trying to mop up the mess that came with crime and poverty and obviously didn’t look the other way, but the insinuation is the rest of us aren’t trying hard enough. Slightly unfair given our limited options, which include direct debits to worthy causes and voting the right way and campaigning when we can, but precious little else. The song is otherwise chilling in its timelessness, though, and would be passed around to other artists as the decades marched on. It eventually found its way on to the KLF’s ambient album “Chill Out”, drenched in reverb, traffic noise and birdsong. It should have been as fitting in that environment as a sealion in an office block, but it slotted into the white-noise drenched Americana perfectly, feeling as much a part of the spirit of the country as the noise of the large, fast passing cars, the railroad and the evangelists screaming on the radio. Indeed, it could almost have seemed romantic if you weren’t listening to the message.

New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts

As this is the first NME chart in nine weeks, there’s an absolute shit-ton of new entries, and no, I’m not going to be covering them all. At the time of writing this I’m propped up in bed recovering from a weird glandular infection/virus, but even if I weren’t, you’d be lucky if I covered more than a quarter of these. Still, let’s take a look at the biggest and most interesting hitters through a slightly meaner, more focused lens than usual:


2. Skeletal Family - So Sure (Red Rhino)

Peak position: 2

The Skeletals are back with a sound which might have been closer to what people expected from a post-Birthday Party Nick; all bottom heavy drum sounds, and ominous rattling bass. Ann Marie Hurst is there to sweeten the pill, though, and as soon as her vocals come in it suddenly takes on a folkish, lighter air, and the band shift behind her sympathetically. Very much a single of differing halves.




4. Red Guitars – Steeltown (Self Drive)

Peak position: 4

“I see the Steeltown closing down” state the Guitars, “Everybody’s got a new car/ with the redundancy money they pay”. The track was based on a real-life situation the group observed in Consett, where the town’s decline led to some unpredicted results – namely men flashing the cash for one last big pleasure purchase before generally settling down to a life of inactivity and disappointment.

Steeltown is funkier and dubbier than their previous work, leaning on atmospheric reverbs and clatters like an early UB40 single. It all adds to the sense of desolation and unease, and whereas Red Guitars had previously opted for hookier singles, “Steeltown” succeeds admirably as an audio postcard from a broken town.




6. The Cramps - Smell Of Female (Boxed set) (New Rose import)

Peak position: 6

8. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Monkey’s On Juice (Red Rhino)

Peak position: 8


9. Discharge – The More I See (Clay)

Peak position: 9

More famously covered by Metallica, “The More I See” could therefore be seen as the missing bridge between hardcore punk and Thrash Metal – that is, were it not for the downright lo-fi snapping elements in this. You can hear Thrash in the stuttering guitar lines and the whining solo, but so much of the rest of it is pure hardcore; sludgy and grinding with occasional piercing vocal shouts.




10. 23 Skidoo - Language (Illuminated)

Peak position: 6

Dizzying and disorientating post-punk funk which fidgets, thrashes, squelches and grinds, clatters to the floor and starts all over again to almost repeat itself, only to completely swerve off track again. Complex uneasy listening which manages to stop just before you suspect you might have taken enough.




11. Play Dead – Isabel (Clay)

Peak position: 11


12. The Smiths – Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (Rough Trade)

Peak position: 9

See the previous entry for more thoughts on this one.


13. Toy Dolls - We're Mad (Volume)

Peak position: 7

Like Norman Wisdom fronting The Sweet who are in turn covering a Herman’s Hermits song, you can’t accuse Toy Dolls of taking the obvious creative routes to making a single; the trouble is, “We’re Mad” is slightly too pleased with itself, the anti-war analogy combining with the Dolls natural whackiness slightly too awkwardly. It ends up coming across not as punk rock exactly, just age-old dippy English contrariness. If this single were a person, it would wear ties with Fred Flintstone all over them to important office meetings. 

It also can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to be a Black Lace single or a Splodgenessabounds one, and while that might open up all kinds of debates about fine lines, I’ve better things to do this afternoon, like mowing the lawn.




18. Black Lace - Agadoo (Flair)

Peak position: 6

Speak of the devil, and he shall come, perhaps not in a puff of sulphur but a squeak of Butlins whimsy. As mentioned before, “Agadoo” reached number one in the MRIB Indie Charts, but I’ve dodged a bullet by picking the NME charts to base this blog on. 

A few passing thoughts on what is widely regarded to be one of the most irritating singles of all time, though – it’s maybe not as ghastly as you remember. While in summer 1984 it was a persistent menace, these days its roots in bygone holiday party music make it sound almost affectionate and innocent, all sunshine, the tang of sharp orangey Fanta drinks, and the distant noise of steel drums and trumpet fanfares on the beach. I don’t think I ever had a childhood holiday quite like that, but “Agadoo” somehow manages to convince me that I did.

It’s also one of the least sexy holiday records ever, not even hinting towards the idea that anybody might actually copulate. Instead, Black Lace rattle off a list of abstract and non-erotic dance moves and sing about the beach and sky a lot. It’s no wonder that when I walked past a kid’s party near a beach recently, this was still blasting from a portable speaker at a loud volume; it seems to be communicating its thoughts mainly to the under-12s. There’s no danger of you remembering your first holiday romance or even kiss to this record – you’re more likely to remember that time you first tried a cider flavoured ice lolly and your friend Gary got stung by a jellyfish. Not a good record by any stretch, but probably harmless.




19. Brilliant Corners – Big Hip (SS20)

Peak position: 19

20. W.A.S.P. - Animal (F*ck Like A Beast) (Music For Nations)

Peak position: 20

Early minor success for the fledgling metal label Music For Nations. Los Angeles leather edgelords W.A.S.P. would eventually manage some modest success in the grown-up charts where they nonetheless failed to really grow up much themselves. 




21. Sex Gang Children - Deiche (Illuminated)

Peak position: 17


22. The Sid Presley Experience - Hup Two Three Four (ID)

Peak position: 6

23. !Action Pact!​ - Yet Another Dole Queue Song (Fallout)

Peak position: 11


24. Cult Maniax - Full Of Spunk EP (Xcentric Noise)

Peak position: 24


26. Abrasive Wheels - The Prisoner (Clay)

Peak position: 26


29. Trevor Walters - Stuck On You (I & S Productions)

Peak position: 10

Huge breakout Lover’s Rock hit from 1984, although until I came across this chart I have to confess I’d utterly forgotten it existed. It tacks a lilting and airy rhythm to one of Lionel Richie’s better known numbers and not only succeeds in making it sound lighter and better, but actually improves on Lionel’s chart position in the UK (number 9 versus his number 12). It’s not something you can imagine sitting in the record racks of serious reggae aficionados, but you can envisage King Charles owning a copy (for our gracious King does indeed enjoy his Lover’s Rock).

Trevor Walters was a fleeting reggae presence in the early eighties, and had two hits to his name (this and “Love Me Tonight” from 1981) but has an Internet presence weaker than some groups who only had one John Peel play before disappearing. It’s a shit business.




30. Brilliant - Soul Murder (Food)

Peak position: 30

For the full charts please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: "Two Tribes" (ZTT)