118b. Joy Division - Atmosphere (Factory)

Returned to number one for two more weeks from 16th July 1988

Here's what was going on lower down the charts across those two weeks.


Week One


6. Chumbawamba - Smash Clause 28! (Agit Prop)

Peak position: 4

Clause 28 was such a contentious Government Bill in 1988 that besides the national press, just about every music magazine – including Smash Hits – covered it. It stated that Local Authorities should “not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

Boy George released the single “No Clause 28” in protest, which didn’t pick up much airplay and failed to reach the Top 40 (although somewhat strangely, Radio One did hold a phone-in debate about whether it should be playlisted, a move which smacked of BBC boardroom compromises). Chumbawamba also stuck their oar in with this effort, which was never really angling for airplay to begin with. It ricochets between punk thrash and more subdued, murmured elements where the most biting lyrics can be found: “You keep throwing stones though your house is made of glass/ you've helped to make Mccarthyism popular, at last” they state.

Clause 28 should feel like a quaint eighties relic from less enlightened times, but thanks to the continuing political popularity of Reform UK and a hard right wing media, it feels as if needn’t necessarily be. Bad Thatcher tribute acts, like anarcho-punk, will seemingly always be with us.

7. The Sea Urchins - Solace (Sarah)

Peak position: 5

It's somewhat peculiar how all the releases on Sarah Records get lumped in with the "twee" tag when in reality, the output of the label was quite diverse. "Solace" by The Sea Urchins is proof of that – rather than being flowery or flimsy, it’s really under-produced and slightly underheated garage psychedelia. The vocals wail and harmonise like The Gibb Brothers on "Have You Heard The Word", overloaded guitar solos buzz around the room like aggravated wasps, and the whole thing sounds like a sixties demo or outtake.

I can't be alone in thinking that the budget production and distorted elements get in the way of the song breaking through in places; I've always had the impression that if "Solace" had actually been given a more sympathetic studio treatment, it could be close to early Primal Scream. But it's also the needles-into-the-red garden shed sound to this single that sets it apart. Very few other bands aping this sound at the time were quite so rough and ready, or so aggressively dreamy.

12. Another Sunny Day - I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist (Sarah)

Peak position: 12

And indeed, whenever a music journalist seeks to skewer the output of Sarah Records with their case for the prosecution, "I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist" is sometimes first on the list. And why in hell not, I suppose? This, really, is a mere minute-and-a-half of sparsely recorded guitar plucking and musing on unrequited love, the musical template for weak, fragile young souls with tea-stained Sartre books hiding in their satchels that they're never actually going to read. AmIrite?

Not really. While I can't get geared up for this single in the manner that a lot of Sarah aficionados can, its economy of style and folksy melody are significant plus points. There's an awful lot going on within not much time, in a manner that the best sixties folk rockers managed but very few cult indie figures did.

Lyrically, of course, it's as simplistic as anything ever produced by a hair metal band, if not more so - it has delicate sensitivity in buckets, but Harvey Williams (the main driving force behind ASD) despairs "I could speak to you, you could speak to me/ Oh but it will never happen, what will be will be", which feels like peak adolescent romantic idealism. He's in love with a girl who doesn't know he exists, purely because her dialogue with him has been non-existent. All she's aware of is that occasional intense gaze across the playground, which is getting more and more intense and uncomfortable by the day... pack it in, Harvey. She probably fancies a boy in the year above anyway.

As is often the way with indiepop, though, swap the gender roles around in the song to the more traditional "I'm In Love With A Boy Who Doesn't Know I Exist", and the creepiness and hopelessness somehow fades away. Which is maybe at least half the point.

13. The Springfields - Sunflower (Sarah)​

Peak position: 13

Not Dusty Springfield’s original combo reunited on Sarah Records, of course, but a Chicago group of the same name who found themselves washed up on that Bristol label.

The single’s debt to The Byrds is so obvious that it’s barely worth mentioning, but I’ll take great sounding Byrds copyists over clumsy original thinkers any day of the week, and “Sunflower” is sumptuous, sure-footed, pretty, deceptively complicated and, of course, jangly. A lot of British indie groups would love to have written it, but wouldn’t have been capable.

25. Drug Free America - Day-Glo Pussycat (Blind Eye)

Peak position: 16

Cult group who occasionally defied categorisation, seeming to indulge themselves in heavy rock, synth-pop or industrial depending on their mood that day, or even that verse or chorus.

“Day-Glo Pussycat” is an example of how agitated and twitchy they could be. Somewhere buried in this mix is a perfectly commercial track, but its suffocated beneath the shouting and chaos.

27. The Golden Dawn - My Secret World (Sarah)

Peak position: 21


Week Two


17. Mirage - Push The Beat (Debut)

Peak position: 17


24. Goldtop - Introduction (Gee Street)

Peak position: 24

Seemingly the only single release by Paul O’Kane aka Gold Top, a British hip-hop artist. “Introduction” is a rough and ready track which suggested that he potentially had more petrol in the tank than either Gee Street or others were prepared to use.

As unlikely as it sounds, these days he’s a singer-songwriter who has since released other work on Soundcloud; I had to double-check my research as it sounds utterly nothing like “Introduction”, but sometimes first impressions can obviously be misleading.





26. Robert Lloyd and the New Four Seasons - Something Nice (In Tape)

Peak position: 6

Robert Lloyd, ex-head of Vindaloo Records and lead singer of Brummie indie group The Nightingales (victims of endless lazy and slightly inaccurate "They're Birmingham's answer to The Fall!!!" music press reviews) was reasonably well known by 1988. The Nightingales were behind numerous cult indie classics, but once they split in 1986 he clearly decided that his solo career would veer in a poppier direction. The false group name Robert Lloyd & The New Four Seasons was initially created for this very purpose, and very quietly and quickly dropped to become plain old "Robert Lloyd"; I presume this happened when someone got antsy that the actual Four Seasons would take legal action. Somewhere on a cutting room floor, perhaps this was even a subplot in the "Jersey Boys" film - "I cannot believe da noive of this Nightingales guy".

"Something Nice" proved Lloyd could clearly have a pop career if he wanted and had enough of a tail wind behind him. It's a stomping, bold, brassy and incredibly catchy track lyrically focused on some kind of mid-life crisis. "I get scared that something nice will fly by", Lloyd panics. "Every time I'm ill I think I'm dying" he clarifies later on, "every time I'm sad I feel like crying/ this is the state I've got myself in". For all that, this propels along in a strident, chirpy, almost festive fashion, sounding like a hit Edwyn Collins never had. The twelve inch version is better still, revealing a restless itinerary of midlife woes which have become uncomfortably relatable.

This received a strong amount of evening airplay on Radio One, and caused A&R staff at Virgin Records to eventually get in touch. He was signed to the label and released the "Me and My Mouth" LP and the rather ace single "Funeral Stomp" which utterly and undeservedly stiffed. Virgin dropped him, and there would then be nothing much from Lloyd until The Nightingales reformed in 2006.

For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forum

Number One In The National Charts

Glenn Medeiros: "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You" (London)

98. Gaye Bykers On Acid - Nosedive Karma EP (In Tape)

Three weeks at number one from 23rd May 1987

“If this was video, we could forward all the crap”.

When people talk about the indie charts in the eighties, they often think in terms of the press headlines, the dominant idea of alternative music; groups with guitars, to borrow a phrase from a long retired Decca A&R man.

While they were often wrapped in a bright mesh of electric guitar based sounds, the listings also weren’t immune from the effects of ever-cheaper technology or club culture, and the period this single spends at number one is striking for a few reasons; firstly, it’s when the KLF first appear in their initial Justified Ancients of Mu Mu guise (more on them down below) and also when a relevant future number one

(Spoiler

Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover of “Love Missile F1-11”)

enters the top ten. And right on top for three straight weeks was this sprawling heap of digital barbed wire, discordant guitars and distorted samples. It felt as if something was happening. Something ugly, but something nonetheless.

The reasons sampling started to work its way into low-budget music had as much to do with affordability as fashion, and the effects of the lowest priced technology were smeared all over the crevices of the indie scene in 1987. The memory limits of most cheap samplers involved short stabs of speech or music, delivered in a highly distorted manner, rather than extended, luxurious loops. The bands that chose to play with these new toys therefore often became equally manic and unfocused, creating a frenetic racket rather than any kind of groove.

You can hear this throughout “Nosedive Karma”. The band take a garage guitar riff, trigger messy, fast samples from ancient Hollywood films, then throw in muddy solos and agitated rants about – well – you be the judge. “Avarice and greed/ Nostalgia through your veins/ It ain't crack that I need/ To make things feel the same!” rants Mary Byker, presumably railing against the black-and-white Levis world that permeated 1987 (The KLF would similarly sneer at this on the debut album “1987 What The Fuck Is Going On”). These lyrical ideas shift and frequently drift into nonsense, though, colliding with an old school chorus of “ba ba ba bas” and another onslaught of samples and noise.

What the track does is work with the glitchiness of the technology rather than against it, evolving gracelessly and throwing different riffs and ideas around as if they’re detritus. On “Nosedive Karma”, it somehow feels as if no riff, no solo, and no lyrical idea is any more important than whatever fleeting digital scrap decorates it; the band leap towards every distraction gleefully, piling everything on top of the mess. If it sounded like a bunch of herberts pissing about with tech back then, there’s something slightly relevant about it in 2026 too; it also feels like being sat indoors on a Spring Day with all the windows in the house closed, but every window on your laptop open and blaring. Maybe they were on to something.

Gaye Bykers on Acid were a strange group. While saddled with the Grebo tag and sharing it with groups such as Crazyhead and Pop Will Eat Itself, they lacked any straightforwardness at all, and (some would argue) seriousness. Occasionally supporting themselves at gigs under monikers such as Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds (dressed as women) and fake dissident East German thrash punk band Rektum, there was a whole fictional universe surrounding the group which probably only made complete sense once you were on the inside. They also didn’t lean on the bog-standard Velvet Underground and Byrds influences, instead having members who loved Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.

That love of the angular, satirical and experimental cuts through a lot of their work and attitude. They may have presented themselves as motorcycle boot wearing scruffs with fridges filled with lager, but the noise they created was sometimes challenging as well as thrilling. “Nosedive Karma” is, for me, their finest single; a down-in-one chug of every twitchy, agitated idea 1987 had to offer, with the unexpected sweetness of the sixties surf chorus in the middle.

Its success and their subsequent press made them seem attractive to Virgin Records, who gave them a surprisingly free reign for 1988’s “Drill Your Own Hole” album (initial copies of which came with the central hole covered over by an unperforated label). The group blew their promotional budget on a satirical sci-fi B-movie of the same name, which is available on YouTube and is actually better than you’d expect, like some kind of Max Headroom-ised take on Hard Day’s Night, piercing the cliches and habits of idle rock hacks, the music business, punters and even themselves. Throughout, they are warned that they are spoiling their own chances of success by “not taking things seriously”. Perhaps they effectively diagnosed their own problem.

77. New Order - Shellshock (Factory)

Four weeks at number one from 5th April 1986

After four successive indie number ones from bands who had never graced the top spot before, here we are, back with the big boys on terra firma, gazing with wonder at their luxurious Peter Savile sleeves. Right from the start of this blog, New Order have had a dominant presence, scoring the eighth number one with “Everything’s Gone Green” then afterwards failing to reach the top (with a non-import release) only once.

Both they and Depeche Mode have been the two constant presences throughout, and that throws us a distinct challenge; whereas Depeche grew up in public and reacted against their earliest material in some interesting – and very occasionally misguided – ways, New Order eventually became (and indeed remain) comparatively staid fellows on vinyl. Dressing up games and intense, friendly interviews with the media were not their thing; the group’s lack of tolerance for the latter was summed up neatly when Peter Hook roared with laughter at an innocent business question following the collapse of Factory, then said “You journalists. You think you know it all”.

What that leaves us with is the recorded evidence and its gentle, unforced evolution (yeah, I know - the fiends) and also the reaction from outside their fanbase, which tended to vary from bowled over (“Blue Monday”) to frankly indifferent – their previous single “Sub-Culture” failed to even get inside the National Top 60.

“Shellshock” marks something of an about-turn in their declining commercial performance. Possibly helped by its appearance in the “Pretty In Pink” soundtrack and the fact that it wasn’t available on any other album, the single returned them to the Sunday chart rundown with a number 28 peak. Perhaps mindful of the fact that they’d pushed the twitch and groove of modern club music into the background of their more recent singles, they collaborated with producer John Robie whose 1983 club hit “One More Shot” they had admired.

It subsequently becomes the basis for “Shellshock” without a single riff being wholly lifted; but its ghost is there in that jerky, propulsive beat, in the continued sense of peril and danger (though it eschews the broken glass noises, which perhaps felt as if they were tempting fate on the dancefloor). The cries of “One! More! Shot!” get replaced by the blare of “Shellshock!” and the track stammers into life, introducing the symphonic touches New Order were always compelled to use when they were at their most ambitious. Picked strings meet autumnal, world-weary melodies, thrashed guitars, a stuttering drum machine and one of their most powerful and purposeful choruses in a long time. While I prefer the “Substance” edit of the 12 inch for taking the correct decision to cut the most hesitant verse and leave it on the studio floor, ten minutes doesn’t necessarily feel too long for this track. It has enough drama and enough of a groove to hold its own.

What it also has throughout is a noticeable itchiness and irritation. New Order singles were very often led by Sumner sulking about life’s personal disappointments like a moping child – a tendency some critics were keen to mock. “Shellshock” positively bristles, though, with Sumner discovering he can actually growl. Listen to the almost Jon Bon Jovi-esque snarl of “Another day goes by and ALL I do is cry”, or the finger-stabbing delivery of “All I get from YOU is Shellshock”. This isn’t an insolent, murmured objection behind the privacy of a closed bedroom door. It’s the sound of a tin can being hurled down the street, a young adult man’s stomp loud enough to get the neighbour’s curtains twitching.

66. The Woodentops - Well Well Well (Rough Trade)

Three weeks at number one from w/e 14th September 1985

In the Microdisney documentary “The Clock Comes Down The Stairs” – and indeed in some of the press interviews that surrounded its premiere – the group regularly mused on why they weren’t successful. The incendiary behaviour of their frontman Cathal Coughlan is frequently overlooked as an explanation in favour of other factors, such as the fact that The Smiths were dominating Rough Trade’s attention in the eighties.

I’m sure that this is largely true. Rough Trade were a small independent label often operating on creaky financial footing, and had to put the most money down on their leanest, speediest horse rather than gambling their lot on unknown quantities. The Smiths were certainly their prize filly, but what’s interesting is absolutely nobody in the documentary mentions The Woodentops, who were also rapidly catching up on the outside lane and were also stealing Rough Trade's attention.

The group, it seems, have largely been forgotten even by people who were actually in their vicinity at the time, but were distinct press favourites and earmarked as probable contenders even in the trade press. Rolo McGinty had previously unsuccessfully auditioned as the bass player for the Teardrop Explodes, and like that group, had a faint air of both the New Wave pop star and the magic mushroom guzzling hippy about him. His pixie-ish bopping made him a great English frontman in the Barrett/ Bolan tradition, while the group’s cocktail of influences made them a unique prospect.

McGinty’s rounded middle class English vowels met with frequently folky lead acoustic guitars, which mixed and matched with hyper post-punk tribal drums and squealing keyboards. The angular woodiness to their sound can’t have been unprecedented, but it felt simultaneously accessible and yet odd; the only real prior comparison I can think of is Unit 4+2 at the frantic and faintly psychedelic tail end of their career (give their final 45 “I Will” a spin to hear what I mean, but don’t ignore the better flipside). Even they never truly pushed the boat out this far, though.

McGinty made the approach sound very simple in a 1986 interview with “One Two Testing”, explaining “[There are] lots of different kinds of shapes but there's always this acoustic guitar and lots of backing vocals so it always has that kind of folkiness… The music of the drums, the bass, electric guitar and the keyboards is almost like a dream behind the acoustic guitar so the vocal and guitar are like Bob Dylan leaning against a tree, singing a song and the band is like a dream of the backing that's going on inside Bob Dylan's head when he's singing.

"He's not hearing this acoustic guitar, he's hearing this orchestra or something and he's singing with that. The acoustic guitar is just keeping his rhythm for him.”

They clearly weren’t approaching things from an orthodox direction, but the results could be astounding, and “Well Well Well” is marvellous. If you haven’t heard it in a long time, refreshing your memory is a valuable exercise – for one thing, it’s more intense than you remember, sounding polite and joyful but also faintly threatening. Rolo often sounds taunting while singing “Baby I know you like my way so wrap my soul and take it away” in the chorus, and the band pound, clatter and rattle like an old diesel train in danger of getting derailed behind him. It’s a steep downhill journey towards the buffers, or perhaps, in reality, towards a likely lady’s lap.

Usually when groups pick up acoustic guitars to enchant someone of the opposite sex, it’s done so with embarrassing displays of earnestness and passion rather than mischief, which is another way the group subvert expectations here. The fact that while doing so, they have a killer skiffling hook in the mix (Terry and Gerry would have undertaken unspeakable and possibly criminal dares to own this chorus) and know exactly when to stop is a sign that none of this is random, despite Rolo’s jazzy vagueness about their methods. It just feels eccentrically plotted, but unlike the off-kilter experiments of a lot of indie acts, it’s a scheme that Pops rather than jars.