88. Soup Dragons - Hang Ten! (Raw TV)

One week at number one on 1st November 1986

The Soup Dragons were one of those peculiar groups who seemed to go through several distinct phases in their career, to the point of feeling like multiple different acts. The period most people reading this will remember is their early nineties indie-dance/baggy phase, which saw them getting a top five national chart hit in the UK with a swaggering cover of the threadbare Rolling Stones B-side “I’m Free”.

If we’re not vaporised in some kind of nuclear war or I don’t get sick of writing this blog in the meantime – two big ifs – I’m sure we’ll get to that single in a few years time, but suffice to say it was written off by many journalists as a cynical attempt to score a hit. It also feels as if it’s disappeared from view in the years since; it dragged 1990’s kids on to the dancefloor, but didn’t necessarily convince the children of the future. Something about that Happy Mondays-aping lurch and groove just hasn’t proved durable.

Following that success, the group managed a minor scuff with the American mainstream with “Divine Thing”, which actually resulted in a number 35 Billboard hit, after which the line-up collapsed and interest was lost both at home and Stateside. Their final album “Hydrophonic”, issued in 1994, was one I had entirely forgotten existed until doing research for this blog entry.

Phase one of their career, though, is the one we’re dealing with here, and the period that gets me most excited. It begins with a broke group from Bellshill, Scotland (home of the hits) hanging around their local scene and pressing demo tapes into the hands of likely compatriots. One such early supporter was Bobby Gillespie, who offered them a gig supporting Primal Scream. Following this, the NME picked up on an early flexidisc the group pulled together, then John Peel threw his hat into the ring and offered them a session, though the band had to borrow £150 from him to make it down to London to record it. All extremely thrifty and earthy beginnings.

If the latter-day Dragons were louche with lots of slow, lazy movement around their hips, the band that emerged in the mid-eighties were taut, spring-wound and hyper, spitting out their pop songs so fast that they were usually all over just after the two minute mark. The Soup Dragons I knew and loved didn’t pout or dreamily sing “yeeeeah” liberally throughout their singles; they gnashed, crashed and raced towards their conclusion, not in a chaotic, ramshackle C86 fashion, but with a tight, orderly and tense drive. The closest point of comparison in 1986 would probably be The Wedding Present, but while Gedge’s group moped and stretched their ideas, The Soup Dragons had a quick, explosive fizz. As a result, they began to command numerous music magazine front covers, seeming young, spotty, naive and a bit ungainly in all of them, but with delicious grins pinned to their faces.

“Hang Ten!” is one of their finest singles, immediately thudding into life with irresistible hooky vocal harmonies, before filling every second of the two minutes on offer with blissful melodies married to a thrashed guitar scramble. The lyrics seem to be about a relationship falling victim to the other party discovering Christianity – “I don’t care whose up there” sneers Sean Dickson – but are far too flippant and clumsy to be deemed a serious protest. What the song appears to be most in love with isn’t any kind of moral or political point, but what it can achieve in its short life; the stomping chant of the chorus, the dorky retro vocal harmonies, the simple but instantly memorable guitar riffs and the ascending climax. All of it remains superb.

Comparisons were inevitably made to groups like The Buzzcocks and The Undertones, but The Soup Dragons sounded as if they’d also heard The Ramones and a few of the more recent US punk groups – there’s something about “Hang Ten!” which doesn’t make it sound like a product of young men who were nostalgic for a punk era they never properly experienced.

In fact, the vague, flippant references to surfing, God, furious yet blissful harmonies and heavy-handed guitar playing actually resembles The Pixies prior to their point of entry. I sincerely doubt Black Francis was listening to The Soup Dragons – at this point they barely had any traction in the USA – but if you pulled apart his record collection and Sean Dickson’s in 1986, I wouldn’t be that surprised to see a lot of crossover. Both groups created furious but joyous rackets which seemed to live in their own particular fantasy lands, though the Soup Dragons favoured brighter melodies and fewer weird twists.

Clearly other prominent people in the music business thought there was more to the group than a few thousand cultish indie sales. By this point, the group were managed by Wham’s co-manager Jazz Summers who paid for their records to be issued on his own Raw TV label. This interesting fact seemed to bypass the music press at the time, although the band openly laughed and joked about it not long afterwards, insinuating that the only reason they put records out on Raw TV was to guarantee access to the indie charts, where they could experience a visibility which a number 150 peak in the official charts simply wouldn’t give them. Had Summers wanted to distribute their records via RCA, EMI or Warners, there’s little doubt he could have pulled the strings and done so, such was his influence.

Doing that, however, would have denied The Soup Dragons space on Channel 4’s “Chart Show”, or mentions in the published indie charts in the music and trade press. This is possibly the earliest example of a group manipulating the indie listings to benefit their profile, using threadbare packaging and low budget videos to project an appearance of plucky ordinariness, while being bankrolled by a powerful and wealthy individual looking for the next big thing. Summers was an extremely canny innovator; in time, this practice would become increasingly common, eventually begging questions about the authenticity of the indie chart, which by the early nineties became riddled with fake “cottage industry” labels set up by major labels to ensure their new acts experienced a brighter spotlight.

In 1986 we were none the wiser, and would have laughed if you even suggested that The Soup Dragons had big money behind them. “Just look at them!” we’d have said, pointing to the front cover of the latest Record Mirror, where the group were holding kitchen whisks and grinning, perhaps thinking all the time about the stunt they were pulling.

None of this stops “Hang Ten!” from being a cheap, potent and remarkable 45, of course, and it also proves a point – from the off, the band had something tight, simple yet incredible on their side which the music business couldn’t ignore. Unfortunately, it would be long slog from here to the brow of the hill, and while this single should have propelled them forwards with ease, they were left to gasp along with rucksacks for a few years before any significant mainstream prominence was awarded.

Never mind. This is what The Soup Dragons did when they were at their best. Go away and buy the recent compilation “Raw TV Products – Singles & Rarities” if you don’t believe me. A lot of their early singles weren’t available on CD or streaming until that put matters right - hopefully it will result in them being remembered as a marvellous C86 era band again, as well as everything else they tried to be in the years that followed.

New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts

18. The Very Things – This Is Motortown (DCL Electric)

Peak position: 12

In our previous encounters with The Very Things, there’s been a certain degree of theatrical Hammer Horror quirk in their mix, delivered with an angularity and flippancy which defied the obvious “goth” tag. They were usually closer to a Beefheart-inspired C86 act with Notre Dame bells on than the Nephilim, Mission or Sisters.

“This Is Motortown” is probably their most straightforward single yet, though, and drops the B movie monsterisms for some rather pedestrian growling and an oddly incongruous Motown beat. It’s still too odd to be described as mainstream rock, but I don’t walk away from it delightfully bemused, which was always the sensation their other work gave me. Maybe you’ll fare better.

19. The Wolfhounds - The Anti-Midas Touch (Pink)

Peak position: 15

And lo and behold, it’s a single I actually own, having found my copy reduced in Music and Video Exchange quite a few years later. Once again, it’s a strangely straightforward record for a band who could frequently produce work which steamed with tenseness, anger and anxiety. Instead, “Anti-Midas Touch” chops, jangles and snarls a bit, but never quite seems to put across any sense of conviction, feeling like an outline sketch rather than a fully fleshed out idea.

24. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Cut Down (Red Rhino)

Peak position: 10

The Lorries continued their mission to break out of the underground, and “Cut Down” is the sound of the group managing to mix some grinding industrial grooves into their usual rainy melodies. At this point the group sounded more confident than ever, and it was possibly only their utterly ridiculous name and reputation as eternal grooms at the gothic wedding which prevented a major label approaching them. “Cut Down” is perhaps also a little bit too repetitive and swampy for its own good, but is operating in a genre where such practice was generally deemed a virtue rather than a hinderance. 

25. Alien Sex Fiend - Smells Like Shit (Anagram)


Peak position: 11


26. Erasure - Sometimes (Mute)

Peak position: 2


A modestly low entry position for what would become one of Erasure’s defining singles, and certainly their first commercially successful release. Attitudes towards the group’s presence in the indie chart became increasingly sniffy as time went on, with stripey t-shirt wearing indie kids in corduroy trousers complaining that “They have no place in the indie chart!”

Obviously, if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that the indie chart was never genre based, and there are far bigger shocks up ahead than Erasure. There’s also the small matter that until “Sometimes”, they were also a group who were more likely to be heard on Janice Long’s show than daytime Radio One; a duo on an indie label who dearly wanted to be pop, but found that, for whatever reason, they weren’t getting further than the lower reaches of the official Top 100. When is a pop group not a pop group? Arguably when it’s not selling records and failing to be “popular”.

And whatever your thoughts on whether they're a good fit for these charts or not, "Sometimes" is an absolute corker of a song. It's only when listening to it with a fresh, critical pair of ears that you realise it's overloaded with thrilling flourishes, from that insistent, strumming guitar hook, to the dramatic instrumental break (perfectly dramatised on the video with a sudden downpour of heavy rain) and the frilly high-end synthesiser keyboard noodling before the beginning of the chorus. It demands you pay attention and love at least some of it, being stuffed with ideas, and that outpouring of creativity rightfully provided their first proper hit (though I'd argue it should actually have been a number one).

Erasure's stock seems to have fallen hugely in the last couple of decades, and more than any other group of that period, they seem to attract homophobic comments below their YouTube videos online, also being ridiculously tagged as a "gay group" rather than a band who actually have a diverse following. As Vince Clarke’s old bandmate Martin Gore recently commented, societally speaking we are clearly going backwards. 

28. McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty (Pink)


Peak position: 25


“Red Sleeping Beauty” may have been only a modest indie hit at the time, but it’s afterlife has been impressive – in the 00s it felt as if everyone with a music blog referenced it at some point or another, particularly amateur writers with hard left leanings. McCarthy fans The Manic Street Preachers also covered the track, bringing it to a much wider audience.

The group contained future Stereolab member Tim Gane, but whereas they placed their political messages amidst hypnotic krautrock rhythms, McCarthy opted for direct, upfront and extremely wordy messages set to a defiant jangle. By the time their second album “The Enraged Will Inherit The Earth” was released, their songs felt like a series of left-wing political prose being set to indie-pop sounds, their lyrics essentially being chopped up pieces of irate polemic; an approach which immediately set them apart, though may have owed a slight debt to Crass.

“Red Sleeping Beauty” is surprisingly delicate and simple by comparison, consisting of bare lyrical repetition. “While there's still a war to win/ My red dream is everything”, we’re told. The group came from Barking and in terms of message and even melody there are strong similarities with Billy Bragg at this early point. 

29. BMX Bandits – The Cat From Outer Space (53rd & 3rd)


Peak position: 29


For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Nick Berry - "Every Loser Wins" (BBC)