33d. New Order - Blue Monday (88) (Factory)

Three more weeks at number one from 21st May 1988

Well, this is an interesting case for chart pedants (and possibly nobody else). It might be tempting to treat “Blue Monday ‘88” as a new release, but it shared its catalogue number (FAC73) with the original single, so was treated by all chart compilers as a simple re-entry. Whether you went out and bought the original twelve-inch of this, or the new 7 inch version, or the CD Video single, or any other permeation of it, it was logged towards the same total. Some national charts even showed “Blue Monday” leaping up from the lower reaches of the Top 200 into the Sunday teatime rundown as a result.

This means it’s the fourth run at the top for the 33rd NME Indie Number One, but the circumstances this time are more interesting than before, and worth at least a bit of exploration. The original version was available as a twelve inch single only, a position the band and Factory Records refused to budge on. It made a jolly old mess of the chart display in my local Woolworths, so in the week “Blue Monday” was in the top ten somebody had scrawled “AVAILABLE ON TWELVE INCH ONLY!” in permanent marker on a piece of cardboard, right next to all the other carefully designed single sleeves. Peter Savile couldn't have wanted that – Tony Wilson might have considered it ‘found art’ and designated a special catalogue number for it, though.

Besides the memory of the horrible brown gap in the otherwise perfect row of Woolworths display teeth, there were other reasons a seven inch version might have been desirable at the time; radio stations wanted an edit of the song, for example, and pub landlords requested something that could fit into their jukeboxes (“Our customers have been asking for it”). I doubt either the band or Factory Records gave a cuss for these reasons, but over in the USA, Quincy Jones – whose Qwest label the band were signed to – had other ideas the group were unusually easy-going about.

Quincy, a man who was once rumoured to have kicked Michael Jackson around the studio floor ranting “Stop squeaking motherfucker!” in protest at his vocal tics, appeared to believe that “Blue Monday” could be remixed and edited afresh. New York mixer John Potoker, who had previously worked with Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, Scritti Politti and Candi Staton, was hired and ‘supervised’ by Quincy Jones, and ‘Project “No seven minute singles, motherfuckers”’* began.

The band’s reluctance to put up a fight about their classic single does seem absurd in retrospect. Had anyone tried to remix The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” in 1972 to make it briefer and sprightlier, placards would have been seen outside EMI’s base in Hayes, and no doubt Lennon and McCartney would have led the way. It’s hard not to get the impression that New Order still didn’t understand what they’d achieved, though – at the time, they appeared baffled by the record’s success, and by 1988 they seemed to be suggesting it had become dated. “It’s become our Birdie Song,” they scoffed.

Critical opinions of the subsequent “Blue Monday ‘88” single seem to have become harsher in the present century than I remember them being at the time. For most listeners, there is only one “Blue Monday” – the original twelve inch single which came out in 1983, and any other remix or rewrite of it is either sacrilege or at best ‘interesting’. None have really endured.

Thanks to its appearance on one of New Order’s “Best Ofs”, though, this one has probably lasted the course better than most. What’s most striking about it on first play is the sheer urgency of it all. Quincy and John brandish scissors and where they hear repetition, they cut it down to single phrases. They also dial the speed up a couple of notches, throw in incongruous samples of “radar”(?) and “Get down!” - New Order had never, ever asked anyone to “get down” before, even ironically, nor referred to Marconi tracking devices – and create a natural-sounding four minute single almost effortlessly. The most impressive aspect is the final minute or so, which twitches with digital propulsion, adding in some wonderfully simple chopping guitar lines, creating the kind of ecstatic, rushed climax the single never had before (although whether it needed one might be a question purists would ask).

While it shouldn’t be the focus of our attention, the video was remarkable too; not exactly another “True Faith”, but a chaotic, hyperactive, semi-animated rush through the adventures of the well-trained dog Fay Ray, who is asked to balance herself on disordered piles of rickety backroom chairs while the group also stand about one-legged on planks of wood. What did this have to do with the price of tea in China? Ask the video director, but even if you can’t extract sense from it, it is visually striking and at least communicates the new, twittering rush of the remix very well.

112. Wedding Present - Nobody's Twisting Your Arm (Reception)

 

Three weeks at number one from 19th March 1988

Sometimes – often, in fact – I find myself wondering what “pop music” is, and what the word really means. If you want to be blandly factual about it, it just means “popular”; so one week pop music could mean Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”, the next “I Should Be So Lucky” (XTC’s single “This Is Pop” seems to favour that notion). On the other hand, if you want to get scientific and separate the concept away from freak breakout Death Metal hits, there’s probably something to be said about the fluency of the melodic formation, about how strictly the song keeps to agreed time signatures or templates, rather than pulling them to pieces like the excesses of prog or jazz.

Our last entry on Bomb The Bass’s “Beat Dis” did find me asking a few questions, I must admit. While Tim Simenon is hardly Miles Davis, that single does sound like the audio equivalent of a hyperactive but purposeful man throwing paint at a canvas, using repetition to an extent, understanding symmetry, knowing what he wants to get at the end of it, but eschewing ideas like verses, choruses and middle eights for a free-form splurge over a hooky groove. Is THAT pop? Well, it earned a silver disc and was inescapable for the whole year, which is more than “O Superman” managed, and yes, I instinctively understood it as a teen – but it doesn’t adhere to “the rules”.

The indie charts are supposed to be the place where rules go out of the window and innovators can experiment in their labs before the better ones are poached by a major label. The problem here is, things are unpopular or marginal for all kinds of reasons, and that can be because they’re difficult to immediately understand, far too ahead of their time or, actually, rooted so far behind in the past that they may feel antiquated. Until 1988, when the tide began to turn, I would argue that the indie listings have often been surprisingly anachronistic in nature; the retirement home for fading sub-genres, owing obvious debts to punk, psychedelia, sixties pop, and even folk.

The Wedding Present are an interesting case in point. When they first emerged, the music press did not describe them as forward thinkers, but a glorious return to pre-eighties values – of “buzzsaw” guitars, pop-punk melodies, realistic, earthy home-spun truths of love affairs gone awry set to a melodic thrash. The only way the group were ever aligned with any projected future was by being feted as “the next Smiths”, with David Gedge cast as some kind of Agony Uncle for heartbroken youths everywhere.

This needn’t necessarily be a problem. From skiffle onwards, pop music history has been littered with traditionalists leaning on the stylings found in old songbooks. It can be a serious disadvantage when there’s an absence of commerciality, though - when they started, The Wedding Present created a fierce racket, but didn’t really seem like keen respecters of the big chorus, instead favouring the brooding, repetitive refrain.

By the time “Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm” was released, that situation was corrected. From start to finish, this single absolutely fizzes with memorable melodies as well as unforgettably barbed lyrics – the opening lines “And when I called your house/ I’m sure your sister thought that I was somebody else” feels like something from a daytime soap; almost comedic from one angle, but harshly relatable if you’ve ever experienced similar indignities. The lyrics intertwine with a tune which is fast and furious, but beneath the stroppiness lies a melody Pete Waterman wouldn’t have cocked a snook at.

That sense only gets stronger when the chorus lands, which continues the lyrical homeliness, but punches far beyond that with something which could have been from a mid-80s pop hit, if only the group had dispensed with those guitars and invested in a Roland synth and a drum machine. It’s not a million miles from a prime Motown era track in its pure rush of heartbreak and dismissal, Gedge donning a Diana Ross wig and marching off away from his tormentor like a man who knows his true worth (and it doesn’t depend on settling for being second best). Or perhaps it’s something else – maybe “Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm” is, in a sense, “I Will Survive” for indie karaoke blokes everywhere. Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has released an electropop cover of this record, but I’ve always wanted them to.

In case anyone felt it was in danger of being too blokey, however, Amelia Fletcher of Talulah Gosh features prominently on vocals throughout, adding an effective harmony and perspective to remind us that many a woman has also phoned up a boyfriend’s house only to be given unsubtle hints by their sibling.