Three weeks at number one from 8th November 1986
Ask, they always said. Ask. What have you got to lose? If nothing else, it will allow you to put everything behind you. Once you know for sure, you can either claim the victory or just move on. Better than stewing and giving yourself a nervous breakdown, like Frank down the road.
“Shyness is nice,” also sang Morrissey, “but shyness can stop you/ from doing all the things you’d like to”. And make no mistake, I was a shy thirteen year old when this was released. I was spotty, had thick, unruly hair, wasn’t remotely tough, wore glasses, and had a certain undisciplined intelligence but felt bored and unsatisfied at school and struggled to focus. My (bad) school reports were overly personal in their tone, and could be summarised quite neatly as “struggles with other people, struggles with his work, we don’t know what to do with him. Even open ridicule doesn’t seem to be having any positive effect”.
Amidst all this mess, most of which was just me struggling with a bleak home-life (my parents marriage was stable, but we had two very ill grandparents living with us and a heavy air of stress and hopelessness lingered) and surging hormones, there was one bright spot. I’d been friends with a girl we’ll call C since the last year of junior school, who due to weird boundary rules had been one of the handful to follow me to secondary school. Even in the last year of juniors, she was cooler than most of the children, with a blue leather jacket and a fringe she dyed like Marmalade Atkins. She was also quite pampered, openly talking about the clothes budget her parents gave her (“Don’t you have one, Dave? You should talk to your parents about that, it’s not on”) and her trips to the USA where her Dad had familial connections.
So of course, in secondary school I developed a raging crush on her and asked her out. What an idiot. If this were a work of fiction, there’s two distinct routes the above plan could take – the fairytale one, where we forged an unlikely formative alliance and amazingly ended up becoming the weird boy and girl who necked and mated for an entire year, or the one where I got rejected and ultimately mocked by the school. There’s no other possible outcome. We were friends. Friends already know they get along; you don’t need a couple of dates at the local Wimpy to work that one out. Talk to your High Street bookmaker about the odds now (“No teenage love affair, friendship shattered”: 1/4).
The fact that The Smiths “Ask” landed at this particular point in my life felt taunting, even though I now understand that while the song is lyrically simplistic, it’s also open to wider interpretations. “If there’s something you’d like to try,” sings Morrissey, which seems to be almost suggestive (how strange for him) and could even be hinting at homosexuality. “Nature is a language/ can’t you read?” he also protests, like Dudley Moore desperately hinting to an oblivious Eleanor Bron in “Bedazzled”.
Behind all this is a surprisingly unSmithsian jaunty major-chord single; a wiggling, skipping, hats-off-to-the-passing-policeman ditty which almost winks at the listener as it passes. The wheezing, chuffing harmonica beneath the melody makes the whole thing sounds like an exile from one of the last mid-sixties films made by a popular British beat combo – the central number where everyone leaps out into the street dancing. Derek Jarman directed the music video and seemed to hear that himself, creating a scratchier and more modern take, but falling back on the spinning umbrellas standby at a key moment anyway.
The rest of the arrangement gets ambitious, the group seemingly realising that if this isn’t going to be a mere Mighty Mighty styled throwaway, they’re going to have to pile one idea on top of the other like a musical jenga tower to give it tension. Marr’s guitar explores a multitude of elaborate jangles and the rhythms almost clatter in the chorus (there’s just a micro-dose of Depeche Mode industrialism in the mix here, enough to pass unnoticed). The instrumental break, such as it is, is a slow ambient intake of deep breaths, two chords struck slowly, before the whole jig starts up again.
Similarly to “Panic”, though, it feels lyrically like a series of catchphrases in search of a T-shirt or bedroom poster to be printed on. “If it’s not love then it’s the bomb that will bring us together” feels like another mid-eighties Paul Morleyism, and only “Spending warm summer days indoors/ Writing frightening verse/ To a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg” captures the old Morrissey richness of both witty and wordy – rather than solely dynamic - wordplay. One of the big, noticeable changes in the group’s style from 1986 onwards isn’t just the fact that their sound gets tougher and more brittle (largely thanks to Gannon) but how Morrissey’s lyrics, in turn, forsake beguiling imagery for immediacy.
To his credit, no other songwriter in Britain in 1986 would have been likely to rush forward to write “Ask” in quite this way, not even his many indiepop imitators, but the bulletpoint nature of the lyrics, the way each line is a random thought not necessarily wholly connected to the one before, is an unsubtle shift. If in the past Morrissey forged narratives, words and phrases are now rocks he throws into the ebb and flow of the group’s melody, desperately trying to create the biggest ripples to compete with their noise. It works, but it lacks poetry and I’m not sure I find it as interesting as a result. The eighties were awash with slogans anyway, and Morrissey’s central appeal was always his difference – he didn’t need to throw more into the mix.
Ultimately though, the public disagreed with me. “Ask” was one of The Smiths biggest and most enduring hits (number 14 in the official UK Charts, subsequently earning a silver disc) and it remains one of their key singles. The group’s lack of bright, charming songs was also possibly something that did need to be addressed; you can imagine it provoking that Smiths fan you fancied to offer their hand and pull you on to the dancefloor. Even the most monochromatic and introspective groups need to litter their catalogue with occasional chinks of hope, bits of merriment for their tribe to dance along to. We can’t all stay clinging to the walls forever.
As for me and C, there’s a strange follow-up to this story. She left our school to move to the South West in the second year, and was never heard from by anyone again. Many years later I was looking at entries on the (long redundant) Friends Reunited site, and saw a very old school year photo containing me, her, and our twenty other form mates. She left a comment beneath. “Who ARE these people?” she asked the uploader. “I recognise you, Dave, and a couple of others, but that’s it”. So whether due to guilt, memories of our friendship or something else, she at least remembered me; a result I wouldn’t have predicted.
I could have replied and tried to instigate a conversation, but I left it there. I just wasn’t that awkward kid anymore – I was confident, married, had a job I quite liked, and no reason to start prying into dim and sketchy memories of my childhood failings. Under the circumstances, it felt like the best closure I could hope for; there are many reasons why sometimes it’s better not to question things. At least that way, you can imagine the positive, uncomplicated reasons for somebody’s behaviour, rather than the messier or more unflattering ones. Ask? Let it be, I say.
New Entries In The Chart
Week One
11. The Leather Nun - Pink House (Wire)
Peak position: 11
It wasn’t just The Smiths who were being breezy, seemingly. “Pink House” opens with some of the brightest notes of The Leather Nun’s career, although that sense of optimism doesn’t continue. “I wake up sweating with a feeling that I’m going to die,” sings Jonas Almquist. “Rambo Reagan is forcing me to eat American Pie”.
So it’s another single about America’s dominance of global culture. There were moments in the eighties, particularly if you grew up in a small town, where this felt inescapable; where the only choice of entertainment you had in the local cinema were three US films whose contents couldn’t have felt more divorced from the realities of your daily life. Then, of course, there was the sense that an ex-Hollywood actor with fading mental faculties had his fingers on the nuclear button (though God knows I’d probably happily have him back right now, given the current alternative).
Clearly these anxieties were felt in Gothenberg too, and while they’re clumsily expressed here, they cut through to enough people to become one of the Leather Nun’s more popular UK releases.
24. Pop Will Eat Itself – Poppiecock EP (Chapter 22)
Peak position: 3
More old-school Poppies from before they discovered drum machines, hip-hop and samples. Instead, it’s further abrasive indiepop, although it does at least feature their early track “Oh Grebo I Think I Love You” which became something of an anthem for all big-booted, greasy, long haired kids all over the Midlands. It’s less than two minutes of sweaty action, like a half-realised idea for an early Beatles single played by kids without a clue through amps that have been left to rot in a garden shed. Not necessarily a bad thing, as any lover of Nuggets rock will tell you.
25. Ciccone Youth - Into the Groove(y) (SST)
Peak position: 2
In which Sonic Youth beat PWEI to the party, not quite inventing Grebo as we know it, but certainly leaving a bit of a breadcrumb trail for the Midlands kids to follow.
Like a lot of Sonic Youth's attempts at side projects and experimentation, this starts off feeling so gleefully anarchic that you immediately want to rewind and listen to the whole thing again... but the fun palls quickly. "Into The Groov(y)" is a mutant Hip-Hop and punk celebration of all things Madonna, cutting huge holes in the original pop arrangement of "Into The Groove" until all that's left is a hollow, grinding structure predominantly driven by guest Mike Watt's repetitive bass runs. Occasionally Madonna's original vocal (which I'm assuming they didn't get copyright clearance for) rises up into the mix to threaten to restore order, then evaporates away again, overpowered, giving up the ghost.
But there's no way on earth this was intended as any kind of serious artistic statement, and really, it's just supreme daftness, another in a long line of attempts to punkify and radicalise highly successful, slick pop music (If I wanted to be really controversial here, I might ask what the difference is conceptually between this and The Dickies, drum machines and rapping aside). Often the problem with exercises like this one is they make you realise how solid and well constructed the original vision was, and by the time you get to the end, your main urge is to just put the original single on the turntable.
29. G.B.H. – Oh No It's G.B.H. Again! EP (Rough Trade)
Peak position: 29
30. Crass - 10 Notes On A Summer's Day (Crass)
Peak position: 17
A real peculiarity. Crass split in 1984 and most of their fans expected “You’re Already Dead” – covered in-depth elsewhere on this blog – to be the final single, but they found time to complete “10 Notes” throughout the winter of 1985, and then ultimately the energy to put it out at the tail end of 1986, complete with a goodbye message written on the reverse of the sleeve.
Anyone expecting an explosive farewell would have been disappointed. It’s really an art-punk 45 where various disparate ideas twist around each other, closer to Wire at their loosest and most indulgent than any of the loudest bits of anarcho-punk they pushed out at their peak. At times, it sounds like an album’s worth of discarded material compressed into one quick, uneasy package.
In the indie charts of yore, even indulgent or utterly unlistenable Crass singles were snapped up with enthusiasm by their fans, guaranteeing high indie chart peaks even if they were just pissing about on cheap Casiotone keyboards, but seemingly by 1986 a lot of people had moved on.
Week Two
17. Razorcuts - Sorry to Embarrass You (Subway)
Peak position: 12
Razorcuts were arguably one of the prime indiepop bands of the era, and “Sorry To Embarrass You” is probably their anthem. If you wanted to consider this as the nervous and awkward cousin to The Smiths “Ask”, you could – it’s the sound of the kid who followed Morrissey’s advice and found it wanting. The lyrics occasionally border on the poetic, but it’s the central chorus that probably spoke to a thousand shy teens: “Sorry to embarrass you/ I thought you might feel the same”.
While records like this one became the subject of much scoffing and mocking amongst the confident Alpha A males at IPC Towers who felt entitled to a shag just because they'd once been in the same room as James Brown (either he of "Loaded" magazine fame or the legendary funkster), they did do something to capture teenage angst and hopelessness in a way that rock hadn't bothered to try since the early sixties. And more to the point, the tone had subtly shifted as the times changed.
My wife is keen to point out that a lot of rough and ready 60s Garage music (the indie of its day, if you will) is essentially "Sex Pest Rock", using Paul Revere and The Raiders "Let Me" as an example of how the recurring lyrical motif in the song is about one man's sense of sexual entitlement. What did the likes of The Razorcuts do? Gently announce their interest in a lady, then apologise profusely when it backfired. It's actually quite sweet and endearing in a way, and the lines "I'd rather talk some more/ than look into your eyes/ just waiting for the bell to ring/ so we can live our separate lives" could really easily have been sung by a sixties girl group about a boy - the flipping of the gender roles and the narrative here was almost certainly not a deliberate piece of artistic trickery, but the fact the observation can be made is at least really interesting.
Sadly, by the time this single drifted into my orbit years later I was much older, much harder and more cynical, and thought it was all a bit too weedy. Some music journalists seemed to hate it too, considering it to be threadbare amateur jangle for children with underdeveloped emotions. But damnit, don’t those kids need their rock and roll too? They got it in the early sixties, after all.
Razorcuts went on to be an enduring cult band on Creation Records and an undeniable influence on the direction of “indie” as a genre as opposed to a chart compilation method.
23. A Certain Ratio – Mickey Way (Factory)
Peak position: 23
A Certain Ratio were once one of Factory’s most prominent bands, but by this point they seemed exposed by changing trends around them. There's some enormously hooky disco riffs washing up throughout the near-six minutes of this track, and beefy basslines which are an absolute joy to play along to, but contextually, the track feels like debris left along the indie shoreline from a previous moment in time.
You could argue that it’s an early precursor to indie-dance, but that period was never quite so unapologetically in love with Studio 54 as this one seems to be, choosing instead to subtly bury the most glitterball elements in favour of House influences.
24. Salvation – Seek EP (Ediesta)
Peak position: 24
30. Yeah Jazz - She Said (Confetti)
Peak position: 30
And if Razorcuts definied indiepop in the eighties, Yeah Jazz continued their mission to accidentally define it for the late 90s and early 00s. Kitchen sink lyricisms meet arrangements which are deeply ambitious for a low budget production, giving us a boxy, town theatre amdram single which once again ruminates on the futility of suffocating small town marriages. “There’ll be a fine, fine time when the money runs out in a small town” they tell us. “She said, if he gets knocked down once more, she won't have the strength to pick him up."
Yeah Jazz really were head and shoulders above many of their peers at this point.
Week Three
Peak position: 24
30. Yeah Jazz - She Said (Confetti)
Peak position: 30
And if Razorcuts definied indiepop in the eighties, Yeah Jazz continued their mission to accidentally define it for the late 90s and early 00s. Kitchen sink lyricisms meet arrangements which are deeply ambitious for a low budget production, giving us a boxy, town theatre amdram single which once again ruminates on the futility of suffocating small town marriages. “There’ll be a fine, fine time when the money runs out in a small town” they tell us. “She said, if he gets knocked down once more, she won't have the strength to pick him up."
Yeah Jazz really were head and shoulders above many of their peers at this point.
Week Three
24. Slaughter Joe - She's So Out Of Touch (Creation)
Peak position: 24
Miscredited to My Bloody Valentine in the NME’s chart for reasons known only to that paper’s careless proofreaders, “She’s So Out Of Touch” is actually the solo work of producer Joe Foster. While his previous work had overflowed with feedback, this one nods so knowingly towards The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” you’re left to wonder what the point was. Still, as Everett True rightly pointed out, if one half of the C86 groups were nakedly inspired by Captain Beefheart, the other half were hopelessly indebted to the Velvets, and this is one of the key examples of the latter.
Following this, Joe Foster would release no more solo records, spending most of his future time either producing the work of others or heading up the marvellous reissue label Rev-Ola.
27. Gang Of Four – The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)
Peak position: 7
For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums
Number One In The Official Charts
Berlin - "Take My Breath Away" (CBS)
No comments:
Post a Comment