One week at number one on 26th October 1986
“Mention The Lord Of The Rings just once more/ and I’ll more than likely kill you” - there aren’t many better opening lines to songs than that. Even Neil Tennant had to highlight just how well Nigel Blackwell had nailed a common frustration with eighties life; the Tolkien obsession overhanging from the seventies into the squat and bedsit walls of the eighties student and doley generation.
This single once came up for discussion when I was in the pub with friends, and we all realised that when we first heard the song, each of us related the opening line to somebody we knew (although admittedly three of us were all thinking of the same individual). Every damn one of us knew someone who, however unrelated the conversation, would find some unlikely way of relating the situation back to Tolkien’s works. These days the opening line would probably have to be about Terry Pratchett or Doctor Who, but in the eighties and the early part of the following decade, Middle Earth still held a surprisingly firm grip.
Perhaps partly for those reasons, “Dickie Davies Eyes” is Half Man Half Biscuit’s strangest and bleakest early work; whereas their other material prior to this point had been a knowing, jokey three chord thrash through daytime television and the suburban shopping parade, DDE begins with opening instrumental lines that can’t decide if the song wants to be maudlin or jaunty. That marching drum beat seems to be designed to push bottoms off sofas towards a waltz with a partner, but the organ seems to be playing an anonymous fugue for somebody’s funeral. It doesn’t feel like much of a joke, and it continues in the same vein despite Nigel Blackwell’s lyrical interventions.
Besides Tolkien, it references footballer Brian Moore, whose “head looks uncannily like London Planitarium” – a line which would eventually become the title of a football fanzine – the erotic Cadbury’s Flake adverts doing the rounds on television, and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. Unlike their other tracks, it feels unfixed, drifting, the sharp observational eye replaced by an indecisive pre-REM sleep brain, picking up the frustrated or underwhelming memories of the day. Blackwell sings not with a rant or a cry, but a mumble, to himself rather than anyone else.
For a long time, I regarded this as one of the least satisfactory HMHB songs as a result. Blackwell’s lyrics are usually razor sharp – as a lyricist, his output is usually far funnier than most comedy poets, whose wit is often blunted by an apologetic tweeness and bounciness (performance poets are often slightly embarrassed about their craft and are desperate to try and make friends with the audience as quickly as possible). “Dickie Davies Eyes” is, by comparison, adrift on a coffee table raft in the middle of what passes for a frustrating friend’s living room, desperately grabbing at the detritus in the hope that something might provide a helpful anchor.
At some point in the last ten years, though, I’ve decided I actually like that. For one thing, the instrumentation on this is interesting and sometimes gets stuck in my head by itself – a queasy folky jaunt which sounds as if it might ordinarily be accompanying a tale of the sole survivor of an ancient shipwreck. Half Man Half Biscuit have been compared to folk music a few times in more recent decades, and you can hear the beginnings of that on this single. Punk rock it isn’t, except for the aspects which despair of hippy culture.
The promotional video also feels as if it ties in neatly with the surrounding C86 movement (whether that was Blackwell’s intention or not). The poet, musician and artist Edward Barton once said that the streets of the eighties seemed to be filled with discarded children’s toys from Boomer children who had grown up, their infant years left abandoned at the kerbside. Barton saw poetry and meaning in this and collected and appropriated them in various ways, as did less obviously “artistic” people like Stephen Pastel who could be found playing with battered Action Man toys at people’s parties. The video features endless examples of such childish behaviour, presented blankly and almost through a fog of boredom. If The Pastels seemed thrilled to be back out in the back garden playing with Stretch Armstrong again, Blackwell and his cohorts seemed to be pointing towards this discarded kinder-trash as the only thing that was freely available to him on a bored Tuesday (though the ride in the mechanised child’s toy in the shopping centre must have cost at least ten pence).
“Dickie Davies Eyes” is subsequently the Half Man Half Biscuit single you can listen to if you want to be gently amused, but also made to feel slightly uneasy. It’s a world of Rumbelows organs, charity shop bound Humperdinck waltzes and smart-arse comments which nonetheless also contains a weird sense of a responsible adulthood being unrealised. I find it funnier and more engaging now I’ve actually created some distance between myself and that Gandalf poster infested bedsit world – and that possibly says something more about me than it ever did the single.
At the time, it also felt like a final farewell. Shortly afterwards, Half Man Half Biscuit announced their split, perhaps wary of the joke getting old, and nobody expected them to return. By 1991 they would be back with new work, and haven’t been away since. I saw them live at a local venue recently, asking the audience about their bins days experiences (Blackwell is apparently suspicious of people who pay to have their bins power-washed) and performing tracks like “National Shite Day” with what sounded like genuine venom.
The jokes felt more relevant and more cutting than ever, the group tied to the disappointments and mundanities of everyday British life not just in the eighties, but the present day; the replacement bus services, the gum on paving slabs, the feigned ignorance of drivers around the purpose of drop kerbs. In the event the UK ever becomes an idealised fair society akin to Norway, Blackwell’s observations will dip into novelty history; a curio of how we used to live, and the clouds we hung over our heads while mending and making do. In all honesty, though, it looks as if he’s got a fair few decades of relevance left yet.
New Entries Elsewhere In The Chart
6. Cocteau Twins - Love's Easy Tears (4AD)
Peak position: 2
A rare stop outside the number one spot for the Cocteaus, who found themselves confronted with the same issue as Depeche Mode – what was once a guaranteed honour has now become a competitive battle.
I’m sure they didn’t worry too much about such things, however; the daylight world outside the recording studio and its awards and appraisals seemed to carry little appeal for them. In an interview with Smash Hits around this time, they sniggered, refused to answer questions, called “Love’s Easy Tears” “a wee toe-tapper”, then accidentally set fire to the restaurant table and panicked about getting told off – more concerned about the waiter’s reaction than the inevitable mocking the magazine was going to give them when it went to print.
“Love’s Easy Tears” does sound like the title of a fashionable eighties club twelve-inch, to be fair, but in reality its the usual hazy fog of ideas. Grasping on to the constituent parts or even individual lyrical lines is a taxing mission, and you just have to let go and accept it for what it is; namely, another Cocteau Twins single, perhaps not as interesting as the previous one.
15. $ci Fi $ex $tars - Rockit Miss USA (Who M I?)
Peak position: 10
I’d completely forgotten about this “bootleg” Sigue Sigue Sputnik single until I saw its entry in the autumn 86 indie charts. The Sigues started 1986 as its greatest hopes, subject to extortionate spending from EMI and a seeming belief even among some music journalists that the lads had invented the future of rock and roll. In reality, of course, they had just squeezed out bits of the past like meat paste from a tube – dollops of Moroder, Suicide, Casiotone, A Clockwork Orange and punk rock all coalesced around cotton wool textured pre-packaged white bread.
Their commitment to not just a stage image but a carefully curated graphic design and production style was actually admirable. Unlike Frankie Goes To Hollywood, you got the distinct sense that it was all theirs, with every tiny detail accounted for. Also unlike Frankie Goes To Hollywood, however, the limits of the little world they created began to feel cramped after the first single. “Love Missile F1-11” was an acquired taste, but the follow-ups just offered more of the same digital pulse and distorted samples, and by the time the album came out the world was looking in the direction of the next newest distraction.
Looking back at SSS now, its astonishing how off-beam most of their cybervisions were – the future didn’t involve selling advertising space between tracks on albums after all, but adverts between Spotify listens. Nor did wearing fishnet stockings around your face ever really take off as a fashion thing, or Suicide ever become regarded as the next Velvet Underground.
The reasons behind making “Rockit Miss USA” a pseudonymous release have been lost to the mists of time (yes, this is a polite way of saying that I’m not going to waste too much time digging around) although apparently SSS had performed under the $ci Fi $ex $tars banner a few times. Some journalists were confused as to whether it actually was the band, or somebody else taking the piss. Stuart Bailie was moved to remark in Record Mirror that the fact you can’t actually tell is “a bit sad”.
Beyond parody? Perhaps not - the group did at least have Spitting Image puppets made of them, although Fluck and Law admitted that they were just any old puppets with fishnet stockings and wigs put over them, because they had no faith the band would remain topical outside the show’s current series. Harsh, but those wise men knew.
25. My Bloody Valentine - The New Record By My Bloody Valentine EP (Kaleidoscope Sound)
Peak position: 25
And as so often happens with this blog, no sooner have you finished with one group who tried to influence the future than the unlikely victors pop up as the next new entry. Not that this sounded like the work of visionaries at the time. Kevin Shields seems to have no idea how to manipulate the studio here, and relies on producer Joe Foster (aka Slaughter Joe) to create something between a twee Primal Scream single and “Upside Down”.
Feedback screeches and guitars fuzz under melodies so twee they might disintegrate under the breath of a gerbil. It’s possible to hear the band we actually love here, but it’s surprising to realise just how much of that owed a debt to the Jesus & Mary Chain, but while Jim and William Reid were happy with noise for the sake of noise, Shields eventually heard different channels and vortexes it could be siphoned through. Not today, though.
26. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - If You Were A Priest (Glass Fish)
Peak position: 26
Like Martin Newell, Hitchcock felt like a potential pop star who landed at the wrong time. 1968 would have seen both men getting signed to Harvest or perhaps Deram and given license to issue high budget albums of wonky art-pop. The eighties took one look and shoved them both into their respective garden sheds.
“If You Were A Priest” isn’t exactly a lost hit single for any era, mind you; you get the impression that Hitchcock had (and has) no notion of what a hit might actually consist of, instead pleasing himself with a bunch of twisting paisley riffs which occasionally jerk leftwards when you least expect it.
27. The Primitives - Really Stupid EP (Lazy)
Peak position: 3
The first significant single for The Primitives, whose abrasiveness here is the perfect foil for singer Tracey Tracey’s insouciant and dismissive vocals. The two minutes on offer here sound like you’re being kicked out of a flat by a girlfriend who can’t even be bothered to expend too much energy on being angry about your failings. Her sneer of “really stupid” sounds more like a neighbour chiding the kid next door who has been scratched by the cat for poking it up the bum with a Kerplunk stick. It’s the kind of dismissive feminine delivery men in their early twenties fear just as much as children.
28. Hula - Black Wall Blue (Red Rhino)
Peak position: 28
29. Sudden Sway – The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)
Peak position: 29
30. Fields of the Nephilim - Power (Situation Two)
Peak position: 30
Debut entry for my favourite goth band, the group actual goths seemed to openly hate or call “silly”. You can growl like Andrew Eldritch and wear the sunglasses and suits of a casino spiv, it seems, but don’t dare dress up like yellow-eyed post-apocalyptic desert cowboys doused with flour (and I’d argue back - why not? Irradiated cowboys from arid landscapes seem like a more realistic future doom prospect than vampiric kids with a love of eyeliner, and the potential soundtrack is a bit more promising too).
The group were often compared unfairly to the Sisters Of Mercy by critics, and while I’d usually call bullshit on that, in the case of “Power” it’s clear that they haven’t quite forged their own identity yet. You couldn’t pick this single out of an identity line-up, and the Morricone twangs and dramatic sweeps are not yet in place. They’d get there eventually.
For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forums
Number One In The Official Charts
Nick Berry - "Every Loser Wins" (BBC)
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