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