105b. The Sugarcubes - Birthday (One Little Indian)

Three further weeks at number one from 12th December 1987

The way "Birthday" sold in late 1987 was downright peculiar, even by cult indie standards. In a similar fashion to This Mortal Coil's "Song To The Siren" - with whom it possibly shared a few fans - it kept selling modestly week in week out, selling a thousand copies here and there. While other indie records were swift fanbase sellers in their debut week then ebbed away, "Birthday" kept on reaching new listeners who were intrigued by its sound. 

Such records always tend to bubble back up to the top of the NME Indie Charts during quiet weeks, and the Christmas 1987 period served Bjork and company well, allowing them to take the prize away from The Smiths during the entire festive season.

Here's what was going on lower down the charts.

Week One

6. Barmy Army​ - Sharp as a Needle (On-U Sound)​

Peak position: 3

More On-U Sound shenanigans, this time of the football kind - an entire track built around Liverpool FC football songs and chants, with "Abide To Me" sounding as if its being kicked right back to its hymnal roots in this context. 

While this one has been known to make drunken men cry on the dancefloor, as a non-football fan I just think it's an interesting and occasionally strangely touching idea - moments of terrace unity set to a steady, pulsing beat. Unsurprisingly, John Peel played it a lot. 

15. The Sea Urchins - Pristine Christine (Sarah)

Peak position: 7

The debut for The Sea Urchins, a band who picked up Primal Scream's fey sixties-inspired jangle and arguably upped the ante considerably. It's also the debut single for Sarah Records, a label who would suffer a number of inaccurate critical brickbats over the years but develop a fiercely devoted tribe of collectors. 

"Pristine Christine" is so straightforwardly agile and pretty that it's hard to imagine why it hadn't been written and released in 1966; whereas some of the records Sarah put out sounded messy and under-produced, this one strikes the balance just right between appropriate, luddite rawness and lovelorn melodies. A pearl.

16. The Rosehips - I Shouldn't Have to Say (Subway)

Peak position: 16

One minute and eighteen seconds of romantic tiffery on 45, which rushes past all of its ideas so quickly, and in such a thistly soup of lo-fi sound, that it feels as if you might have missed a key point or development - not unlike real-life romance in that sense, then.

17. The Groove Farm - Surfin' Into Your Heart (Subway)

Peak position: 17

Despite being lovers of sixties garage rock and releasing material which occasionally veered close to pastiche, the Groove Farm found themselves strangely loved by the indiepop kids too, perhaps due to their arrangement with the otherwise somewhat twee and snappy Subway Records. "Surfin' Into Your Heart" gives you a good idea of what they were about - quickly recorded, super-speedy pop tunes which may have sounded distorted and rough, but contained an optimism and euphoria few of their contemporaries could match. This 45 in particular sounds like a celebratory jig when so much of the indie chart was filled with either angst or contemplation. 

20. The Chesterfields - The Janice Long Session (Strange Fruit)

Peak position: 20

23. The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - Down Town (KLF Communications)

Peak position: 2

Drummond and Cauty had already got themselves into trouble with lawyers around the release of their debut album "1987 What The Fuck Is Going On", which provocatively sampled large chunks of music without seeking out copyright permission. As if to prove they had learned few lessons from their experience, "Downtown" sampled Petula Clark's classic, and the pair took the strange step of quoting from the Bible in interviews of the period, citing Proverbs 26:11: "As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is a fool that repeateth his folly".

The Christian element continued with their collaborators. Recorded with the London Gospel Community Choir, this is one of their more polished and well-realised early works, combining sour, cynical and heavily accented Glaswegian rapping with a joyous, happy-clappy chorus. "Glory!" sing the choir. "What glory?" answers Bill Drummond (aka King Boy D) "In a wine bar world? In a tenement block?" Conquering the charts with a Christmas tune was clearly not on his agenda at this point, as despite the overwhelming pop and fizz of the chorus here, the tune is torn in two directions. The Community Choir are pulling towards the holiness, the preciousness and the generosity of the season, whilst Drummond points out the harsher mid-winter realities, only for a sampled and stammering Petula to chip in at irregular intervals. "Neon signs are pretty" she sings, sounding pathetic and weak in this context, before another hard-edged, shouted, Special Brew-sozzled verse barges her out of the way.

Early KLF records were often clumsy and awkward, and whilst "1987 What The Fuck Is Going On" was a groundbreaking and copyright busting album, it seldom had grace on its side, being filled with often clumsily placed distorted samples. By the time "Downtown" emerged, they sounded as if they'd finally got the hang of their direction and could no longer be criticised as being a novelty act - this (along with most of the forthcoming album "Who Killed The Jams?") is pop music with a bitter underbelly, the sound of a band absorbing the sounds and culture around them and criticising and distorting it. By the end, even the choir are singing "Jesus, what can we do?"

This is probably the finest early KLF single, and whilst you can't quite hear the future they'd have as mega-selling Stadium House releasing millionaires, it's a step closer towards that. It's certainly a pivotal indie release, and it deserves to be heard a lot more often.

24. Frank Sidebottom - Timperley Sunset (In Tape)

Peak position: 16

Sidebottom's typically ludicrous cover of The Kinks "Waterloo Sunset" sees him describing his suburb of Manchester with an affection which almost sounds genuine rather than joking; if Davies always sounded a bit sinister as he delicately trilled "I don't need no friends", Frank is only too keen to paint a keen, childlike picture of his community. 

It also feels as if marginally more budget and effort has gone into this than his earliest EMI releases, not that it really resulted in many sales outside his core fanbase. 

25. Society - Love It (Big Life)

Peak position: 14

Way before Bobby Gillespie chanced a hit with an Andrew Weatherall remix, the indie chart was treated to the spectacle of goths Danse Society collaborating with Coldcut on this record. It's not a complete success, with far too many spiky guitar riffs and distorted vocals in the mix, but is nonetheless one of the earliest examples of a crossover record - probably far too soon for either their fanbase or the House kids to fully throw their support behind it, though it seems to have picked up some more recent acclaim from the retro kids.  

Weeks Two and Three (only one chart published)

3. The Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (Rough Trade)

Peak position: 2

The final offering from The Smiths, "Last Night" slipped out around Christmas with barely any promotion or music video, feeling strangely like an afterthought rather than a swansong. As such, it suffered and was one of their least successful singles in years, reaching number 30 in the national charts and failing to top the indie charts, the first occurrence of this since "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" reached number three in 1985. 

Of course, if you're going to pick a song to roll the end credits to The Smiths career to, this isn't actually a bad choice; its lonely, looping melody resembles "How Soon Is Now?" without repeating the idea, Morrissey and Marr instead treating us to a music box lullaby of unresolved business, a ballad of ongoing loneliness. As The Smiths sounded when they entered, so they seemed as they left; isolated, slightly strange and unquestionably backwards looking. Instrumentally speaking, this record sounds like the end theme to a heart-wrenching black and white movie, where perhaps a priest or a soldier who is sent to the front is doomed to never experience romance, to always march to this funeral rhythm for eternity. 

As for Morrissey, he left the indie sector for EMI and, contrary to popular view, did occasionally produce the odd groover on the way; no Acid House for him, though, as he usually ended up having more in common with Shakin' Stevens when he wanted to cut some rug, rather than S'Express. He continued to find comfort in looking backwards.

20. Electro Hippies - The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)

Peak position: 16

29. Alien Sex Fiend - Stuff The Turkey (Plague)

Peak position: 20

A gothic Xmas single? Why not, I suppose, and certainly why not from Alien Sex Fiend, who were always rare examples of party-movers rather than the party-poopers of the Goth sect. Impersonations of Bernard Matthews mix with screaming, off-the-peg festive observations and occasional stabbing discords. The group operated within their own particular mutant zone, selling their records to the same five thousand fans, never really taking this business very seriously and somewhat getting away with it. 

For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

T'Pau - "China In Your Hand" (Siren)

Pet Shop Boys - "Always On My Mind" (Parlophone)

36. Tom Robinson - War Baby (Panic)

Three weeks at number one from w/e 9th July 1983

At some point in the early eighties I caught a glimpse of Tom Robinson singing “Glad To Be Gay” on the television and sat dumbfounded. I was shocked not because he was gay, but because he wasn’t homosexual in a way I’d been lead to expect. I was a naive child, not even a teen, and my limited awareness came from the music press and national newspapers, who generally put either very camp and effeminate or exaggeratedly butch gay men front and centre of their coverage.

If your childhood is lived in an eighties suburban bubble without much other experience to draw from, that becomes what you think “gay” means (besides a bog-standard playground insult). Yet here was Tom Robinson, a confident but regular looking performer, singing about how proud he was to be gay without make-up or any of the other cliched stylings apparent on his person. How could he be proud if he presented himself as such? Why wasn’t he dragging up like Boy George as he must obviously want to do? So many contradictions here to which there appeared so few answers in deepest South East Essex. I chalked Mr Robinson up as yet another one of those Elvis Costello type performers who was too much of a studious riddler for me to make sense of, and went back to reading my copy of Whizzer and Chips.

Of course, in retrospect I find all this hilarious because – at the risk of heavily signposting the obvious childish errors and ironies – Tom Robinson was an absolute trailblazer for gay rights way before any of the new crop of performers had even left school. Originally discovered by Ray Davies, who briefly signed him to his Konk label in 1973, “Glad To Be Gay” was issued by the charity Campaign for Homosexual Equality (or CHE) in 1975 while Robinson was out of contract. He decided to declare his pride before punk had even emerged, never mind the more open and out aspects of New Romanticism, performing the song defiantly in front of rock audiences. To put this into context, homosexuality had only been decriminalised in the UK for eight years at that point, and seventies rock audiences (and indeed even allegedly right-on rock critics) were not always renowned for their tolerance.

"Glad To Be Gay" remains a superb anthem and portrait of an intolerant, "non-woke" period so many of my moping, sad-arsed fellow heterosexual middle-aged men and ladies would like to return to. Every line is precise and jagged, highlighting hypocrisies and societal inconsistencies so obvious they should never have existed - "Pictures of naked young women are fun/ In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun/ There's no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine/ But they still find excuses to call it obscene". Those were the days, eh chaps? Still, at least we were free to drink water from hosepipes and trepan our skulls or some shit. 

There were other trailblazers besides Robinson, but few actually politicised their sexuality. For his troubles, “Glad To Be Gay” was banned from BBC radio despite containing absolutely nothing that could be deemed controversial a mere 6 or 7 years later. Other tracks of his slipped gay references under the radar and picked up radio play, and for a few years in the late seventies he scored hit singles on EMI, not least the deathless “2. 4. 6. 8. Motorway” which remains an oldies radio staple and heavily compiled anthem.

Later releases struggled, however, with even a songwriting collaboration with Elton John “Never Going To Fall In Love… (Again)” failing to chart. He was dropped by EMI, formed the rock band Sector 27 who signed to a reactivated Fontana records, scored no hit singles with them and promptly found himself completely broke, without a record contract or group and bereft of direction. He moved to Hamburg for a while acting as a musician for hire and gigging around the circuit in Germany, before having an unpleasant, alienating evening in a gay sauna which would at least partially inspire this song.

Frustrated, he spewed various stream-of-consciousness lines into a notepad, including the opening lines here “Only the very young and the very beautiful can be so aloof/ Hanging out with the boys, all swagger and poise”. Having emptied his pen of his thoughts, they sat in his notebook for an undefined period before eventually being used to fill “War Baby”, each line a complaint, a charge, or a recently excavated nugget from his anxious belly, each one not necessarily connected to the one before - “Corresponding disasters every night on the TV/ Sickening reality keeps gripping me in its guts” sits alongside “I don't wanna batter you to your feet and knees and elbows/ When I'm kneeling by the candle at the foot of my own bed” as personal angst jars and rattles against the universal.

You can speculate all you want about what “War Baby” is actually about – Tom Robinson has never helped us in this respect, and the safest conclusion to draw is that the chaotic state of life in the early eighties and his own personal life coalesced to create a frustrated outburst on 45. While the song itself is almost as anthemic as “Motorway”, the lyrical scansion is almost as loose as a Crass record, some lines stumbling hither and tither, stretching to try and fit the melody; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that many of the lines weren’t radically adapted from his notes. Misgivings topple into panic then into grievance and fear before Robinson sings the chorus’s final hook of “I’m scared, so scared, whatever it is you keep putting me through”.

So far, so unbelievably uncommercial, but “War Baby” has major features on its side. The first is the gentle, rocking melody and seductive sax – two things much beloved in the early eighties – but the aforementioned anthemic chorus acts as a glorious, luminous lighthouse beam, spinning around and hitting the listener amidst the choppy scramble of the lyrics. There, in the middle of it all, is the message we could all cling on to. 

32. Aztec Camera - Oblivious (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from w/e 19th February 1983

Winter 1983 for me was a period of upheaval. The health of my grandfather had worsened, and a family decision was made to move out of suburban East London and deeper into Essex, to a house large enough to take everyone in. Moving to a new town meant I had to go to a new school, (struggle to) make new friends, and have a new guitar teacher, two traffic jam ridden miles from where we now lived. In my memories of those trips, it’s dark and raining and the orange streetlights created neon streaks through the grime on the windows of my Dad’s Datsun.

“Now remember,” he said on the way to the teacher’s house, “this is just a try-out. If you don’t get on with him or don’t like him, we can find you another”.

On the second or maybe third occasion, I saw he had a copy of XTC’s “English Settlement” propped up against his stereo and was quietly, shyly flabbergasted, but felt too nervous to mention it. None of my friends or family liked XTC. They were my own little obsession everyone was trying to coax me away from, for reasons of their own. My friends deemed them to be ugly old bastards. My parents felt they were “untalented New Wave rubbish, he can’t even sing”, whereas they were “punk rock” according to my brothers. My new guitar teacher had obviously found his way to them, though - and I decided that if he taught me badly (though he never did) or talked crap (which he sometimes did) he would always be forgiven as one of the enlightened ones, and I would stick with him.

A couple of weeks later he gently asked me what I was listening to at home and who my favourite bands were. I named XTC and he looked taken aback. “Well, they’re brilliant, but I wasn’t expecting that answer!” he replied. “Tell you what, if you want to listen to things which will help you think about your own work on the guitar, there’s someone else you might also be interested in...”

(I feared the worst at this point. Guitar teachers were always recommending Gordon Giltrap and Sky to me, usually with the justification “They’re in the pop charts and they’ll teach you a thing or two”. As if  a ten-year old was going to use their limited pocket money to buy a bloody Gordon Giltrap album.)

“Roddy Frame,” my teacher continued. “He’s got a band called Aztec Camera. He’s very young but he’s really good on the guitar. Great songwriter too”.

Aztec Camera were already familiar to me through occasional brief mentions in the music magazines, but I hadn’t heard any of their work. I made a mental note to turn up the radio when they next came on. I would have a long wait ahead, but “Oblivious” burst on to the airwaves on its re-release that autumn, and I taped it on to my cheap little silver radio-cassette player so I could listen to it again. 

I liked it a lot, but given my age, I had very limited financial means and even going out to buy a single from the local Woolworths required planning and forethought. For whatever reason, “Oblivious” didn’t make the cut, and nor did the album it came from, “High Land Hard Rain”. I could hear enough of what I wanted from it – tricksiness which was neither showy nor pretentious, a gorgeous hook in the chorus, haunting backing vocals, lots of ideas and movement – without loving it enough to commit any money from the piggy bank. 

Listening to “Oblivious” again, trying to approach it with fresh ears, I’m struck for the first time by the fact that my teacher’s suggestion was probably an attempt to be helpful, to try to find something similar that might be in roughly the same wheelhouse as “English Settlement”. The samba rhythm topped off with a busy acoustic guitar, zinging and zipping around, isn’t a million miles off an arrangement Partridge and Moulding might have tried for that album – unlike XTC, though, this song has sprung from the bones of a very young, optimistic man on the brink of better things, rather than a tired and weary songwriter with growing personal issues.

“Oblivious” is an unashamed bash at a pop hit on the songwriter’s own terms. It’s not simple, it’s not necessarily straightforward, and at its heart is arguably a bit too pleased with itself, but the restlessness, the hooks, the drive are so powerful and bright that they dazzle the listener enough to trojan horse the smart alec elements in. Even the acoustic guitar solo in the middle is almost too sunny, too happy with itself to sound accomplished, in the way that upbeat music often causes us to overlook any complexity. Frame finger picks one note for ages before flying off anywhere ambitious on the fretboard, almost taunting the listener not to expect any more effort.