29. Anti-Nowhere League - For You (WXYZ)

One week at number one w/e 11 December 1982

If you’d taken me to one side years ago and told me I would spend 2024 writing thousands of words about The Anti-Nowhere League, talking about their relevance to the early eighties and the dying embers of British punk, I wouldn’t have believed… well no, actually I would have believed you. I probably would have replied “Oh, OK. And this would be for some niche blog I started, I suppose?”

Entries about the group are among the least-read on here so far, but ironically, that’s the inevitable price of writing about the movements of sales charts rather than the enduring influence or critical acclaim artists have. The Indie Chart may be seen as a safe ghetto for innovation, but in reality it was as susceptible to fleeting novelty, hype or shock tactics as any specialist chart – and just as Motley Crue and Limp Bizkit were cartoonish fratboys who burnt rock and roll down to its basic chemical property of loud, brash oafishness in the Rock Charts, ANL did the same for punk rock in 1982. Their schtick wasn’t “for everyone” back then, and it certainly isn’t now.

Despite this, for anyone who didn’t want to be troubled by politics, anarchy or evidence of the lead singer’s impeccable collection of reggae and krautrock records, to those who just enjoyed records that were loud and offensive, and also to impressionable teenage boys who were sorry they were in Junior School when punk broke, they filled a void. The word “edgelords” comes up time and time again on social media when I mention them, except ANL were being offensive contrarians before that insult even existed.

It's slightly surprising to discover that their fourth indie number one of 1982, and indeed the final new indie number one of the year, is probably the only genuinely surprising step outside their usual zone so far, and fittingly it seems to be a basic justification for their stance. “For You” isn’t even particularly punk rock; it’s an anthemic pub rock chugger which might have been heard in a Camden boozer circa 1975, only lyrically speaking the song speaks to the multitudes of fans most of those bands never had:

“We laugh… but no-one's laughing/ We kiss… and no-one cares/ So we shout… but no-one's listening/ So we live… like no-one dares” sings Animal, before launching into a chorus about the remains of punk rock before him, his own army of droogs: “For you/ Well I'll be your soldier/ For you/ I'll bury friends”.

As we’ve established, trying to get under the skin of The League is a fool’s errand, like trying to understand why the old biker in your local Railway Tavern is such a rude bastard. Nonetheless, “For You” is as close as we’re ever going to get to a ‘tell’. Unlike Crass, the group were never going to go on a political crusade for society’s marginalised, but they speak volumes about the mindset of the second wave punk audience here; it afforded a safe space in economically troubled, conservatively minded times, a club to make friends when the rest of society had written you off as an oddball or a failure. In that sense, it served the same purpose punk always did, it’s just that this group, for a whole host of reasons already explored, are an outlier and really don’t fit the modern critical overview of what punk was and should be. History is written by the winners and ANL were only the victors in one largely forgotten year at the arse end of everything.

19. Anti-Nowhere League - I Hate People (WXYZ)

Three weeks at number one from 27th March 1982

“This just ain't the sort of music to lend itself to sensitive in-depth philosophical probings.” Gary Bushell, Sounds.
“It's so extreme, it's impossible to take offence. Take the League seriously and the joke's on you, mate.” Carol Clerk, Melody Maker.

You sense that music critics had a hard time being asked to pore over Anti Nowhere League’s work and were almost defensive about it. After all, their job is to write reviews which contain at least a few hundred words of imaginative and helpful observations for the modern music consumer. In the case of The League, though, you only needed to hear their first single and its B-side to get a fair impression of what the rest of their work was likely to be about – thunderous chords and an elephant footed rhythm section combined with cuss words and ridiculously extreme lyrical positions.

So it goes with “I Hate People”. A basic descending chord pattern introduces the song and sticks to it like a barnacle, used as the central hook for the bellowed chorus: “I hate people/ I hate the human race/ I hate people/ I hate your ugly face/ I hate people/ I hate your fucking mess/ I hate people/ They hate me”. It goes on to become what could be the soundtrack to a teenage workplace underling’s bad day, set to another misunderstanding in the post room or pathetic practical joke on the production line: “My mother thinks I am a jerk/ Because I hate my bleeding work/ Be like daddy he's sincere/ And don't be true because you're queer”.

Not for the first time since starting this blog, I’m reminded immediately of the Not The Nine O’Clock News song “Gob On You”, which satirised the arse end of British punk rock. “Gob on you/ cause you're far too old/ Gob on you cause your hands are cold/ Gob on you, you're a stupid old straight/ Gob gob gob gob hate hate hate hate” spat Mel Smith and Rowan Atkinson. Nobody could fault the team for attention to detail, but in retrospect you’ve got to wonder if they were missing the point – namely, that as music journalists had already freely noted, groups like The League hadn’t really entered the game for serious results to begin with. As punk’s initial light faded, it sometimes felt as if it had split into two factions; the hardcore anarchists who had serious grievances and misgivings and found punk to be a viable outlet for them, and those who just thrived on cartoonish chaos. By trying to parody British punk in the early eighties, comedians inevitably ended up landing slap bang inside the territory of those who weren’t taking themselves terribly seriously to begin with.

“I Hate People” would therefore be a bloody tough record to write about were it not for a strange and slightly worrying "creative decision" the band took in 2006. The release of Anti Nowhere League’s odds and sods compilation album “Pig Iron” saw the inclusion of a previously unreleased track entitled “The Day The World Turned Gay” which their previous label Captain Oi got cold feet about: