Number one for one week on 26th July 1986
“Folsom Prison Blues” was released from the album as a single, and an ordinary studio recording of “The Folk Singer”, co-written with Charles E Daniels, was chosen to sit on the flip. It might then have rested there largely unnoticed, but Burl Ives was quick to spot its mournful charms, recording it for his album “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in the same year, staying broadly faithful to the concept. It’s a wordy yet – on the surface – fairly simple tale of a forgotten singer who finds himself suddenly ignored by a public who once wanted to crowd and pester him with their admiration. The singer’s inability to adapt to his new empty environment is broached early on (“I pass a million houses but there is no place where I belong/ All I knew to give you was song after song after song”) with typical Cash-esque hints at his outsider status. Whoever the 'singer' is, you're left pretty convinced that there's nothing else he can usefully do with his life.
It’s not clear whether Cash was worried about his own future when he recorded it, but it’s not unfair to speculate that he might at least have been looking over his shoulder at those whose careers had been less successful, acknowledging that in the music business, longevity is often a fluke, not a given. Speculation online is rife about who he might have been thinking about, but the candidates are numerous; the tale of talented musicians, appreciated briefly when their talent peaked and happened to align with the public’s tastes, then rapidly forgotten, was not new even in 1968.
Above that, though, there are hints towards the growing invisibility of the older person in society, the slick young buck with his fresh ideas being reduced to a husk. As he wanders through streets he may have once been chauffeured through wearing his old fashioned clothes, he suddenly finds no eyes being drawn in his direction in either condemnation or admiration. His rebellion has become meaningless, and his only hope is that the children of the future reappraise his efforts – a problem that most creative people are left to desperately confront.
The original arrangement is simple and nigh-on perfect, greeting the singer’s fate with subtle arrangements and gorgeous downwards guitar twangs, which might be why Burl Ives wasn’t tempted to tamper with it much. Glen Campbell, on the other hand, took the flipside and exposed it to peculiar degrees of sunshine in 1970 – his version is a sweet yet daring finger-picked, bitter-sweet melody, “the singer” still singing his heart out rather than moping and dragging his heels.
Nick Cave’s version in 1986 was somewhat unexpected, but takes the cautious Ives approach of “don’t fuck with a classic” rather than the more radical Campbell move. So similar is it, in fact, that the only major difference is that Cave throws in the f word towards the end, something even Cash would never have considered in ‘68. It makes “the singer” seem threatening, a Grim Reaper character pointing his finger at the comfortable and the ignorant, rather than a completely defeated outsider. Cave makes you think the singer will be back, if not due to reappraisal, then perhaps on the headline news for some act of public indecency. It shifts the tone of the work slightly, but not enough to make it feel like an overhaul.
“The Singer” was released at a time when Cave appeared to be repositioning himself as a performer. His earlier work with The Birthday Party was demented, raucous and deliberately niche – punk rock at its loudest and most unrelenting. Two minutes spent listening to a Birthday Party track could feel strangely exhausting, and in his public’s mind Cave was a ferocious performer and unpredictable loose cannon. Once that group ceased to be, the Bad Seeds were formed and his moves became more measured (though often no less ghoulish).
His cover of “In The Ghetto” in 1984 – which we’ve already dealt with – proved that what he was doing was not vogue-ish pantomime, but something which had a place in music history. That was a rare example of a mass-appeal bleak protest song with hints of rebellion and righteousness at its edges. The despairing threat of “The Folk Singer” also carries its own outsider blues, and these singles and the subsequent covers LP “Kicking Against The Pricks” created early discussions about the “pantheon” of rock and pop and where our present-day heroes fitted in with it. You could almost argue that he set himself up as the Patron Saint of BBC 6Music there and then (before the station existed, of course).
What nobody appreciated at the time was how much of a reversed echo this would create. Years down the line, established but slightly dusty artists who may have feared they were turning into “The Singer” began to cover the work of contemporary artists or collaborate with them, flipping everything on its head. I doubt Cash held fears about his own irrelevance late in his career, but he certainly shifted focus in the 00s, covering U2, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow and perhaps surprisingly (or not?) Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” – and so the master sang the songs of his student.
Ultimately, I’m not sure that “The Singer” is a very significant single for Cave in terms of artistic achievement or sales; it may have topped the indie charts, but his future releases would achieve far bigger things. I like it and still listen to it occasionally, but it feels more like a cap being doffed to a major influence (and one who wasn’t necessarily that credible when it was released) than a serious creative undertaking. It is daring only in its unexpectedness. It also obviously cemented an association in the minds of others that never quite disappeared, one that allowed Nick Cave and Johnny Cash to be tied surprisingly closely together; an unthinkable idea at the height of punk rock, and strange enough even in 1986, a few short years after its wave had subsided.
Cave has never regretted the association, commenting emotionally after duetting with Cash in 2002: “Occasionally things happen in life that hold a special kind of resonance. This day, spent with my hero and his extraordinary wife, is one that will live with me always."
New Entries Elsewhere In The Chart
10. The Wedding Present - This Boy Can Wait (Reception)
Peak position: 3
A high new entry for the Weddoes on their own Reception label, proving that they were rapidly becoming a very big deal indeed. Somewhat oddly, the NME chose to solely credit “This Boy Can Wait” as the A-side here, though it was technically supposed to be a double A-side with the more highly regarded “You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends”.
“This Boy Can Wait” is, like most of the Wedding Present’s early material, perfectly good stuff, but for me the cherry is “Friends”, which dispenses with some of the adolescent frustration of the earlier singles and shows a delicate, mature underside to Gedge’s relationship failures, sounding less as if he wants to throw objects around his room, instead pleading with his ex for a friendship of sorts to be maintained. It combines that with sweetly tuneful yet high paced guitar battering, setting the kind of melodic conflict the group and their fans would find themselves happily trapped with for some time to come.
24. The Ex - 1936, The Spanish Revolution EP (Ron Johnson)
Peak position: 8
The Ex were Dutch anarcho-punks who, even in 1986, felt slightly out of place in the wobbly world of Ron Johnson Records, a label whose specialism tended to be groups whose God was Captain Beefheart rather than Penny Rimbaud.
One listen to this makes me wonder if a point was being made here, though. We’re rarely tempted to tie the seemingly disparate C86 and anarcho-punk scenes together, but the more abrasive edges do have something in common, not least the idea that whether you were angry or just plain off your bonce on low-quality tabs, you could treat your chosen instrument as a device to thrash unpredictable discordant noise with. You wouldn’t expect to see The Ex and Stump on the same live bill, but if you did, I get the impression fans of both parties would have walked away getting something out of the experience.
Unlike Stump, however, The Ex remain a going concern to this day.
25. Peter & The Test Tube Babies - Key to the City (Hairy Pie)
Peak position: 15
And here’s the original Half Man Half Biscuit if you’re inclined to make that argument (though I won’t agree with you). That said, “Keys To The City” isn’t particularly funny, focusing solely on the idea of Peter Test Tube being given that honour and imagining impishly and childishly what it might be like. “Do what I want cause I’m exempt from the law!” he declares, perhaps displaying a limited understanding of the governance of municipal honours in the UK (“Are you sure about this?” - a satirist’s voice).
He finishes the song telling us “Gonna make ‘em regret giving it to me!” to which your response could only be unsurprised. The rest of the tune is a chugging power-punk thrash, vaguely akin to The Lurkers. Hard to imagine why anyone wanted more of this sort of thing in 1986, a whole decade after punk broke and had moved in challenging new directions, but unless back-handers were going on down at the Rough Trade Record Shop, the charts don’t lie.
29. The Enormous Room - I Don't Need You (Medium Cool)
Peak position: 29
Surprise appearance by a flexi-disc which, even in the indie charts, was a rare sight. Jonathan King had tried to market flexi-discs as a low cost alternative format way back in the seventies only to be met with disinterest from both the public and the music business, and they ended up mostly being given away free with magazines or used in marketing instead (I still genuinely want a copy of the Essex double glazing firm's catchy "Mr. Wishmore" ditty).
Very occasionally, however, an indie band (probably unintentionally) heeded King’s advice and pressed something up on flexi when the alternative options seemed too costly. Often these were then given away with fanzines (as Creation Records debut was) or sold quickly at gigs. The short-lived Enormous Room, however, got this one into the shops and created a brief flurry of attention for its contents. It’s pure and simple indie-pop with a slightly agitated bent to its jangling, creating a tight irritation to a track which might have loosely flopped around feyly in the wrong hands.
The Enormous Room came from Watford and only released one other single, the “100 Different Words” EP on Sharp Records, although ex-Teardrop Explodes member and plotting music business mogul David Balfe liked them enough to showcase them on his “Imminent 5” compilation on Food Records in 1987. Not, as they quickly found out, that this was any guarantee of instant success – Pulp had been featured on the series the year before and had to wait nearly another decade for their moment, and they also shared space on Volume 5 with no-hit wonders such as The Househunters, Kilgore Trout, Scatman PX and The Wigs (though to be fair to Balfe, The Primitives, The Shamen and BMX Bandits also featured).
In the end, they became another example of a charting indie group who bowed out to get proper jobs without even offering us an album. Hey, did you forget them so soon, and did you forget their song?
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Number One In The Official Charts
Madonna - "Papa Don't Preach" (Sire)
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