One week at number one on 9th April 1988
This is the first time Vince Clarke has been number one on the NME Indie Chart since 1983, when The Assembly reached the top spot with “Never Never”. It feels as if the cultural bulldozers have flattened the land and rebuilt on it twice over since then; in Indie terms, he was sharing chart space with anarcho-punks, Oi! urchins, Toyah and Tom Robinson when we last discussed his work in depth – in mainstream terms, that moment also coincided with Culture Club being the dominant popular force, and Slade having an unexpected comeback. Makes you think.
Of course, it’s not Clarke’s fault that the eccentricities of the NME Indie Chart placed some fairly significant Erasure records outside the number one spot (“Sometimes” only just missed out) but it isn’t an exaggeration to say that he also spent a lot of time in the long grass. After Yazoo split, he embarked on dead-end projects which (The Assembly aside) either didn’t sell or didn’t get off the ground, then launched Erasure who found themselves unexpectedly cold-shouldered by record-buyers. Even “Oh L’Amour” couldn’t get inside the national Top 75, leaving Dollar to walk off with it under their arms to turn it into a hit instead (and if Vince Clarke seemed faintly passé in 1986, then what the hell were Dollar? Truly, this feels incomparable – imagine The Springfields having a hit with a Ray Davies flop in 1964.)
By 1988, though, the pair were sprinting towards their imperial phase and just about any single they put out was assured a high chart placing. “Ship Of Fools” was the first to be taken from the explosively popular “Innocents” album, and in a strange way offers a handy symmetry, in that it sounds closer to The Assembly’s only single than perhaps anything Erasure had done so far. Both songs have a creaking, autumnal atmosphere – gentle melodies and lingering, airy notes underlining despair and tragedy. Where “Never Never” is about romantic regret, though, “Ship Of Fools” feels sociologically driven in a weirdly non-specific way.
The first time I heard it, I assumed Clarke was riffing off The Beatles “The Fool On The Hill”. The lines “The flowers and the trees are encapsulating me/ And I go spinning” are probably responsible for that, but the rest is strangely repetitive and vague, focusing constantly on the “baby of the class” who “didn’t know that one and one was two/ two and two were four”. There’s really very little to it beyond that, and you’re tricked into believing it’s lyrically richer because the arrangement does most of the work – a filmic, steadily building, occasionally almost organic sound which gets the synthetic strings out surprisingly early but still visits new places with them by the fade-out. It’s a far cry from his earliest work, coming across like a soothing lullaby to life’s misfits, a parent rocking a cradle to comfort their child’s disappointment.
As a teen, I related to it on a very obvious level. We had a late August baby in our year at school who was cursed with a mind which contained persistently naive ideas; the kind of child who, if he read a Judge Dredd comic strip that lunchtime, had managed to convince himself the story might be not only possible but actually real by three o’clock. He was also short and skinny, and while he was friendly and surprisingly good at keeping himself out of trouble, always looked faintly lost at the periphery of the playground. He joined in but was never really at the centre of anything that went on – a mid-field slogger, a bit-part character in games and social interaction.
He grew quieter as the years went on, clearly understanding that every time he opened his mouth, he exposed himself to ridicule from both kids and teachers alike. I immediately associated him with this song; he wasn’t a vindictive or bratty teen. Shouldn’t there be some kind of prize for that? It’s not as if I always managed to pass that test myself. He was a trier who had genuine personal qualities most of my friends didn’t have, but people were too busy laughing at his feeble misunderstandings to notice.
It’s him I saw in my mind’s eye whenever this song played (and it still is). And perhaps not just him, but all those other meek, good-natured kids who did their best, failed most of their exams, and were released without praise or acknowledgement to employers who probably had them pegged as eternal mail-frankers, coat checkers or goods packers, never asking the obvious question: “What does this person want out of life? What else can they do?” At least the school bullies and delinquents occasionally got special attention in 1988. Quiet, dumb nobility did not result in any extra coaching.
Erasure fans might argue that I’m being too literal, though. There’s a certain amount of debate about whether this song is about teenagers realising they’re homosexual, the naivete around those feelings and the assumption that gayness is either a sin, or practically unheard of, or something that happens to people you don’t associate with. The ship of fools in this instance is the school, and the post-Clause 28 classroom, not helping children work through their feelings and enter the adult world with either a lack of bigotry or a clear, guilt-free mind. The timing of its release adds some credibility to this view.
Or maybe, like anything vague or abstract in art, what you think it means says more about your state of mind when you first heard it than anything else. Perhaps it’s the arrangement underneath, one of Clarke’s most ambitious to date, which does the most work – that gentle towing of strings, the steady breathing of the synths, the gentle shoreline wash translated into an antiseptic electronic jitter, the keening of Andy Bell’s voice. It’s the sound of a lullaby in a rigid world which says “Fuck nature, and balls to difference. We left those ideas behind long ago, and have rules and rhythms to impose”. The song fades out, but the cycle continues – the grown-ups always know best.
New Entries Elsewhere In The Chart
16. Ofra Haza - Im Nin'Alu (Ace)
Peak position: 9
Offering further proof that the indie chart was open to all, here’s the appearance of a Hebrew poem written by the 17th-century Rabbi Shalom Shabazi. While it had been set to music by many artists over the years, it was Israeli singer Ofra Haza who really spread its message far and wide, achieving an enormous pan-European hit with it in 1988.
While it reached the top of the charts in numerous countries, its performance was more modest in the UK; it initially crept out via Ace Records’ world music imprint Globe Style before WEA took over responsibility and gave it a heavy push, mindful of the colossal sales going on across the Channel. Sadly, it only reached number 15 in this country, perhaps due to the mocking noises of a million irritating parents and their children saying “What does she mean she’s in the loo?” every time it came on the radio, which can’t have been an outcome Shalom Shabazi would have foreseen.
Nonetheless, it was one of those amazing moments where world music met modern Dance music and pop and lots of people jumped aboard – and the rhythms and remixes amazingly do absolutely nothing to prevent it from being haunting. One minute you’re dancing, the next stood still in wonder at a voice calling to you from some ancient, distant, unreachable place.
22. Cardiacs - Is This The Life (SP/T)
Peak position: 5
The Cardiacs possess an admirably large (and often defensive) fanbase, who will often tell you that the band are something that creeps into your brain when you least expect it. You will hear a song or two, or maybe an LP, and initially be confused or repulsed, but then, suddenly... quite without warning, and perhaps in the middle of the night... everything will click into place.
First things first. I'm not trying to be deliberately contentious, but I don't really buy the idea that The Cardiacs are an especially difficult band. Within the context of rock music they're certainly more challenging than most, but they're hardly an improv jazz act playing at the Klinker who incorporate brass-scratching and paper-tearing solos. Their music is usually clearly structured, and often overloaded with so many hooks and ideas that one listen isn't enough to appreciate them all, but it rarely ever becomes an assault. They’re not abrasive like The Fall or unforgivably noisy like Bastard Kestrel; what they do sometimes has actual beauty.
Some of their best material is also pure genius. "Tarred And Feathered", for example, sounds like sixties music hall inspired psychedelia colliding with a Ronnie Hazelhurst quiz show theme before falling down some stairs (this isn't a criticism).
While the band have attracted some needlessly unkind critics over the years, their influence on other groups has also been notable. Blur are huge fans, and it's easy to hear the fact that a Cardiacs track without the more awkward elements could sound like something very close to the Colchester group.
Though oddly, "Is This The Life" is widely regarded as The Cardiacs at their most Pop, and sounds very little like Blur. Instead, it sounds like a post-punk band building a scaling, epic track from a discarded "Animals" era Pink Floyd riff. Not for no reason did some people sneeringly call them "progressive punks". Still, it is actually bloody brilliant, screeching and meandering guitar solo and all. The drums pound, Tim Smith's vocals sneer, and the whole track sounds so downright confident that you had to wonder if a corner was being turned and the band were set to become commercial. Certainly, the track attracted daytime airplay on Radio One, almost unheard of for an indie band at this point, never mind the flaming Cardiacs.
In the end, their own label Alphabet struggled to keep up with the pressing demand, and by the time the single could have been a minor Top 40 hit, the moment had passed. The follow-up, a cover of The Kinks "Susannah's Still Alive" (which naturally DID sound more like Blur, albeit only by a tiny fraction somehow) was also easily accessible in a skewed pop way, but didn't really attract the same kind of attention, and before long The Cardiacs were back on the margins again.
Tim Smith passed away in 2020 after a long period of illness, and has left behind a gaping void. Now more than ever, rock music needs "difficult" bands like The Cardiacs who piss critics off and baffle some of the public. There have been contenders, but none who have seemed quite so inventive since his passing.
26. Smith & Mighty - Anyone (Three Stripe)
Peak position: 15
Bristol duo Smith & Mighty pick up the chorus from “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and turn it into a deep, spacey groove. So throbbing and ominous are the basslines, in fact, that they sound like precursors to the forthcoming Sheffield techno/bleep scene. “Anyone” was not only forward-looking, but also twisted a Bacharach song inside out and made it sound like a dark 3am city centre moment.
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Number One In The National Charts
Pet Shop Boys: "Heart" (Parlophone)
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