94. The Primitives - Stop Killing Me (Lazy)

Three weeks at number one from 21st March 1987

BAMALAMALAMALAMA…. Rarely do singles begin with such an abrasive attack of guitars, right from the very first second, before putting their bristles down again. Most groups, even alternative ones, are aware of the need to consider the delicate sensibilities of radio listeners and save their noisiest moments for later on in the single. Coventry’s The Primitives couldn’t have given a damn in this instance, though, putting their loudest attack right at the start of the single, then never quite hitting that peak again.

That said, The Primitives were an odd bunch to start with, creating slightly misshapen alternative pop whose influences were obvious (and tantalisingly fashionable) but were stretched into an unforced coolness of their own. Early songs liberally utilised the feedback screeching beloved of the Jesus & Mary Chain, the simple pop attack of The Ramones, Motown choruses, and the scratchiness of the Shop Assistants and The Flatmates, topped off with their own unique weapon in lead singer Tracey Tracey. While other female vocalists in the indie chart communicated with anger, conviction, sweetness or heartbreak, sometimes all in the same song, Tracey usually rolled her eyes with impatience. You can hear the disdain in almost every Primitives song at this point (bar “Thru The Flowers”) – perfectly enunciated, softly sung. Previous single “Really Stupid” is a prime example, taking its very title from the tired, understated insult that peppers the song.

It’s close to punk rock, but punks tended to sneer forcefully rather than seem utterly, offhandedly above whoever they were addressing. Tracey’s vocal style is actually quite chilling as a result; she feels like every woman who wearily sighed at your weak jokes, or gave you steely glances across a club dancefloor to pre-warn you that your chances with her were nil. Whether her style has the same effect on women (making them feel as if she is unapproachable and cooler-than-thou) is something I’ve never asked, but from a male perspective there’s something inherently but relatably threatening about it. She gave the impression of being somebody who Took No Shit without needing to heavily articulate the fact.

“Stop Killing Me” combines her vocals with guitars which skid off in various directions at different moments, beginning with that immediate machine gun fire, then settling on a distorted Ramones riff, then chiming beautifully in the chorus, then get steadily more gnarly until feedback starts to bleed around the edges. It is a very sharp, short and simple pop song at heart – Tracey even “ba ba ba bas” in the chorus, like a back-up singer with a soda pop in one hand – but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in its many flavours of menace. Insouciance and noise meet melody and friction, and it manages in two minutes what some singles fail to achieve in five; something that’s thrilling and hooky but also a little bit alienating and challenging at the same time. “Just keep away from me/ ‘cos you’re killing me” sings Tracey, and you believe that not only might she mean it, but she may be directing it at you.

By this point, the music press were beginning to get seriously excited by the group, which seemed to represent everything about British alternative rock they loved rolled together into one package. Tracey’s charisma and the rest of the band’s obvious love of pop hooks made them seem like one of the few groups in the late eighties indie charts who stood a strong chance in the outside world, and the media cuttings piled up quickly.

In time, they would be referred to as being part of the “Blonde” movement, a particularly unimaginative and press contrived scene which rather reductively grouped vaguely alt-leaning bands together who had blonde female singers. As a result, The Primitives found themselves lumped in with Transvision Vamp, The Darling Buds and The Parachute Men, despite only really having anything in common with one of those acts.

Such idleness and borderline misogyny from the music press was fleeting and quickly forgotten, and the group ended up floating far above it when they finally signed to RCA and managed a major Top Five hit with “Crash”. Its parent album “Lovely” sits in my record collection, and sands down the rougher edges of their sound slightly, but places the abrasion alongside flowery pop-psych, bright sunshine melodies and occasional bursts of almost Cocteaus-styled haziness (“Ocean Blue” feels almost as if its pushing at the shoegaze door three years too early). A cynic might argue that the group were having their cake and eating it – trying to be all things to all the different kinds of inky music press reading people – but they never quite lose their sense of self throughout, and the final results make for a surprisingly even listen. Even “Stop Killing Me” finds a natural home right next to the tranquil buoyancy of “Out Of Reach”.

The album only just failed to follow “Crash” into the national top five, but sold incredibly well for an alternative record, bagging the group a gold disc and a lot of music press and major label goodwill. By the following year, though, their follow-up album “Pure” only just managed a place inside the Top 40, and a crisis meeting was allegedly held at RCA asking if Tracey’s new deep red hair colour was to blame. Seldom in rock history has hair been regarded as such a central factor in a group’s successes and failings.

In reality, I would argue that “Pure” wobbled due to an obviously changing musical tide. The group displayed typical dexterity and included contemporary influences on the album, but none of them could really be heard in the choice of singles – with lead effort “Sick Of It” having more obvious teeth but ultimately being yet another stroppy Primitives single - and the public perception was one of a band who had nothing fresh to say, and whose day had ultimately passed.

The next album “Galore” failed to chart at all, and they split shortly afterwards, only reuniting in 2012 to record and perform again. They remain fondly regarded in the West Midlands in particular, where the local music museum in Coventry has a prominent Primitives section. They achieved something exceptional in eighties alternative music; a major hit single which remains recognisable to this day, and an album which, while under-referenced in recent years, cut through with more success than any other band with their stylistic leanings in 1988.

The Primitives made buzzsaw indie-pop which was played at the school disco (everyone can remember the DJ pulling the fader down so a hundred brats could sing “Shut your mouth”) and on Radio One. The Wedding Present, House of Love, Jesus & Mary Chain and even The Wonder Stuff (at this point) didn’t do that. They knew how to manipulate their sound just ever so slightly towards the centre without losing their identity or edge, which was a rare trick to pull off in the late eighties. As such, they’ve truly earned their position in the West Midlands hall of fame.

New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts

Week One


12. Crazyhead - What Gives You The Idea That You're So Amazing Baby? (Food)


Peak position: 3

Over in the East Midlands, Leicester grebos Crazyhead had a harder, more trad-rock edge than most of their peers, giving them access to the Heavy Metal and Rock charts as well as the indie listings. Beery, leathery and messy, their singles all sounded faintly like a throwback towards seventies bar-room boogie, and “Idea” is among the best of them – brash, dumb but crucially fun, it swaggers more out of enjoyment than self-belief. After all, no song containing the threatening lines about running away to a distant railway shack (“If I’m gone too long I’m not coming back”) could ever be accused of being totally in love with itself. There are darker shades of sixties garage punk amidst the more obvious rockisms here.

They were the latest signings to David Balfe’s Food label, who would eventually partner with EMI, but Crazyhead weren’t one of success stories of that period. After one album “Desert Orchid”, Food belched them back out into the indie sector again to fend for themselves.

13. Skin - One Thousand Years (Product Inc.)


Peak position: 13


Michael Gira and Jarboe from Swans periodically took time out of their main band for this side project, where the steam and grease of the dayjob was removed and replaced by a strangely adult oriented sound. Prior to Swans, Jarboe’s roots were in Jazz and choral work, and her talent is allowed to stretch freely here, removed from its usual corner, uncluttered by harsh experimentation.

A lot of Swans fans seemed to adore it, which is a surprising outcome given the clear difference in sound and aspiration.

16. Laibach - One Vision (Geburt einer Nation) (Mute)


Peak position: 13


Slovenian satirists Laibach didn’t hear anthemic stadium rock music with the same pair of ears as everyone else. Where most audiences heard cries for togetherness, they heard something eerily close to both Fascism and Communism. Subsequently, their takes on classic rock singles through this period are sometimes hilarious and occasionally chilling, and this version of Queen’s “One Vision” screws up the original song’s best intentions and instead makes it seem like a rally cry for a sinister new world order. There will be more of this sort of thing to come from the group, whose efforts really started to cut through in Western Europe throughout this period.

21. Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes - The Rain Fell Down (Narodnik)


Peak position: 19


26. The Stars Of Heaven – Holyhead EP (Rough Trade)


Peak position: 18


29. Rumblefish - Tug-boat line (Pink)


Peak position: 29


Birmingham group who issued a brace of records throughout the eighties and even managed a brief stay on a major label, but have subsequently left surprisingly little cultural trace.

“Tug-boat Line” is a perfectly reasonable introduction to their world, combining sweet but low vocals with moody ambient washes and strangely militant trumpets and rhythms. They would later re-emerge on Island Records as Low Art Thrill in the late nineties, where they rejected their earlier understated sound and replaced it with loud guitars and snarls – not that this ultimately fared any better.

30. The Beloved - Happy Now EP (Flim Flam)


Peak position: 24


Week Two


20. Hula - Poison (Red Rhino)


Peak position: 17


27. Psychic TV - Magick Defends Itself (Temple)


Peak position: 27

While Psychic TV took a few aims at the mainstream in the late eighties, they didn’t neglect to recalibrate on to their (un)usual course on occasion. Following the holy stomp of “Godhead”, they released this, a mish-mash of earlier Some Bizarre recordings which remind us of their roots as something stranger – something more sophisticated but almost sinisterly rural, like the pair of unidentified eyes staring at you deep behind that holly bush in the woods. Was it a deer, a ghost, or more worrying still, perhaps Genesis P Orridge himself?





29. The Chills - I Love My Leather Jacket (Flying Nun)


Peak position: 24

The Chills came from Dunedin in New Zealand, and while grown-up critics in the broadsheet press were getting frothy about Crowded House, their IPC underlings frequently opted to point in a more southerly direction for proper alternative pop (highlighting the achievements of both the group and the label they were signed to for top drawer Kiwi sounds).

“Leather Jacket” really wouldn’t sound out of place on Creation Records, being filled to the brim with the same credible sixties influences and dour but cool vocals. It stomps, swings and drones to its end, feeling like a quick Saturday walk into town with that friend you always wished you knew better, but who hid their ideas and thoughts behind wry smiles and references to the battered book they were currently reading, secreted in their (leather) jacket pocket.

Week Three


11. My Bloody Valentine​ - Sunny Sundae Smile EP (Lazy)


Peak position: 4


Kevin Shields and co return with an EP filled with song titles which seem as if they belong on a Rod, Jane and Freddy album – “Paint A Rainbow” and “Sunny Sundae Smile” are not, after all, in keeping with the group we later grew to love.

Nor is the music, really. This is inoffensive and under-produced indiepop with a slight “obscure sixties provincial psychedelic pop” influence, which isn’t to undersell its potency or effectiveness; there would be many far worse records of this ilk in the racks throughout 1987. The trouble is there would be many better ones too – this is the sound of a group who are dipping their feet into a crowded stream and bringing very little new to the party, with perhaps the exception of a murky and fuzzy mix which  vaguely hints at their future direction. Their early material is sometimes defended by fans, but I'd still be interested to know how often they actually listen to it. 

14. The Chesterf!elds - Ask Johnny Dee (Subway)


Peak position: 5

I can never decide if the opening lyrics to this song are pure genius or the most John Shuttleworthesque words ever committed to a modern release (beating even Cliff Richard’s “You’re My Pigeon” in the Shuttleworth pop stakes). "If you'd like to know what pop stars have for tea/ ask Johnny Dee!" trill the group, singing about the not-particularly-famous music journalist (these days Radio Times journalist) of the same name. Certainly from Johnny Dee's point of view, the lyrics are probably marvellous, so that's one critic they had on side straight away. One would imagine a conflict of interests prevented him from reviewing the single.

"Ask Johnny Dee" is a gleeful piece of indiepop, and while you could easily imagine it occupying a key space in an early sixties British teen flick (doubtless with The Chesterfields playing in a kitchen or living room after declaring "Hey! I've got an idea for a song!" while Johnny Dee smiles and nods approvingly with a cup of tea in the background) it's so irrepressible that it's impossible not to love. And inevitably, with lines like "Do you want to know who's number one in our hearts, Johnny Dee?/ Yes Mr Pop at the top of our charts!" it's pretty damn certain that they weren't trying to get us to take them seriously.

Johnny Dee is also noteworthy to me personally for being the first music critic to write about my other music blog "Left and to the Back" in "The Guardian". It was a brief and fleeting mention which led to an enormous surge in its readership - so it's slightly odd to be writing about him in this context, but perhaps only fair that I too doff my cap to the man.

As for the girl who plays the tambourine, please do get in touch if you're her. We've been waiting decades for an answer to her identity.





19. Voice Of The Beehive - Just A City (Food)


Peak position: 16


Another David Balfe signing to Food Records, which only existed as an indie label for a brief stage in its history, and with its slogan of "Let Us Prey!" almost certainly never had ambitions to operate as an artist's co-operative.

Voice of The Beehive were formed by Californian ex-pats Tracey Bryn and Melissa Brook Belland, and also featured ex-Madness stars Mark Bedford and Daniel Woodgate in their line-up, so nor were they entirely naive faces coming to an independent label without a clue. Not that any of this really matters in the grand scheme of things, and "Just A City" sounds like a convincing addition to the Paisley Underground fray, though I doubt it was ever referred to as such.

As soon as Food Records got what they really wanted, which was a major label marketing budget and distribution, Voice of the Beehive became much bigger, scoring five Top 40 hits between 1988-91. I always got the sense that the general public and music critics alike didn't know quite where to place them - too pop to be truly alternative, too retro sounding and guitar-based to be eighties pop, they seemed to occupy an ill-defined and moderately popular space in the record racks alongside the likes of River City People and Del Amitri; fellow faintly retro guitar based acts who were neither particularly fashionable for the era nor remotely underground, but maintained solid enough fanbases to keep their heads above water for years.

23. Happy Mondays - Tart Tart (Factory)


Peak position: 23


I bought “Tart Tart” from my local HMV after the Mondays became 1989’s most unlikely success story, and was deeply unprepared for the sinister, skeletal groove it contains – the lyrics concern a female drug dealer known to the group, the title being her nickname. This single was intended to be a tribute following her sudden passing, but even if you didn’t know about its origins, something about its troubled, wobbly feel already hints towards it; the group trundle along with one wheel constantly pulling them towards the left, and their attempts to recalibrate are constantly thwarted, shifting back to the gutter, while Ryder sings “I worry too much about the tests on the blood”.

It remains deeply uneasy listening, and it’s hard to imagine how huge this group would be within a mere couple of years. This makes The Fall sound like shiny, spotlight-ready pop stars by comparison.

24. The Pastels - Crawl Babies (Glass)


Peak position: 7


A friend of mine once briefly planned to start a series of cartoon strips called "The Adventures Of Stephen Pastel", during which some misfortune would always befall the boyish lead singer in the final frame. This could involve giving himself a migraine due to consuming too many sweets to getting one of his toys stuck up a neighbour's tree. "Och! Oh noooo! Not again!" he would exclaim, while staring wearily at the reader. Inevitably, these never got written purely because in those pre-Internet days, it would have been hard to find a place for them. And anyway, none of it was actually that funny.

One of these strip ideas, I seem to remember, featured Stephen Pastel rejecting a chocolate from a friend.

"Would you like a chocolate, Stephen?"

"No, I should not. They give me terrible migraines. A terrible, terrible banging in my head, and all for the sake of a coffee creme".

That's the reductive view you could take of him, and indeed The Pastels themselves; slightly sickly and precious children, forever stuck in pre-adolescence. That's definitely a line many music journalists favoured. But, in truth, there was (and is) much more to The Pastels than that, and they're possibly one of the most unfairly maligned bands of the period. Whereas a great many of their travelling companions were self-consciously childish to no positive end, The Pastels often took the Syd Barrett approach of using childhood memories and activities as a means of escape; or, as Stephen himself once said "Everything is fucked. Let's get back to the garden".

"Crawl Babies" is the noise of a band utterly nailing that doomed but child-like feel. "I wanna build her up, up as tall as a church" he sings hesitantly in the chorus, which is an odd line in itself. As tall as a church? Why not the Empire State Building, or the Post Office Tower? But no. Too urban, too dangerous. Churches tower over their immediate surroundings without being threatening. They're safe, holy places. Skyscrapers are the products of humans aspiring to something The Pastels cannot comprehend. So it's best to build someone up to high expectations within reasonable, non-threatening boundaries. Except...

The next line is "Just to watch her falling down" at which point he has a frantic dialogue with himself, "I just can't see her again/ I've got to see her again", he moans contradictorily. He's building a love affair and obsession out of nothing, out of ideas of what somebody could be, then terrifying himself with the stature of them, and backing off into isolation.

Frankly, "Crawl Babies" could be straight off a Syd Barrett solo LP - I was just getting into Barrett at the point I first heard this, and it triggered immediate associations for me - and some of the other lines are even peculiarly Barretty in a bleak post-Floyd way; "I go blind and my bones start to rust", for example. Doubtless the band would claim that Daniel Johnston was the actual reference point they were going for, but nonetheless, "Crawl Babies" has a very eerie sense of something not quite right within its hesitant, innocent delivery, whilst still carrying a marvellous and rather intricate melody - those guitar lines running towards the end of the track are beautiful, for example.

On the surface, you could call this twee indiepop, but no way is it just that. And The Pastels were certainly guilty of being twee at other points in their career, but "Crawl Babies" is a marvellous, full-bodied and beguiling single, and one of my favourites from the period.

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Number Ones In The Official Charts

Boy George - "Everything I Own" (Virgin)

Mel & Kim - "Respectable" (Supreme)

Ferry Aid - "Let It Be" (The Sun)