99. Pop Will Eat Itself - Covers (EP) (Chapter 22)

Two weeks at number one from 13th June 1987

Pop Will Eat Itself are one of the few groups I can vividly remember entering and exiting my life. The first memory involves me joyfully taking my meagre paper round money to HMV, rushing to the “P” section in the racks and finding a copy of their album “Box Frenzy”. “This is the stuff!” I thought while looking at the cheaply designed sleeve (complete with unflattering photos of the group swigging from tins of lager).

I took it to the till, watched it being rung up, and took the hour’s bus journey home from Southend precinct to listen to it. The number 1 route towards the smaller South East Essex towns was always an indirect, circling, dawdling trip which nonetheless built up anticipation – sleeve notes would be devoured, labels inspected, and sometimes abuse would be yelled by other kids from my school sitting behind me, asking why I hadn’t bought a Public Enemy record instead (fair comment in retrospect, and one PWEI would probably get on board with). When I got home and my Dad asked to see what I bought (“I hope you’re broadening your tastes a bit”) his face fell.

The second memory is me almost exactly ten years later, looking at a box of records in my parent’s spare room, trying to rationalise my collection and lighten my life load before moving into yet another short-lived and chaotic houseshare (things would get worse before they got better). My hand fell on “Box Frenzy” and placed it into the “discard” pile with barely a second’s thought. “I’ll never play that again,” I thought to myself, and sure enough, I don’t think I’ve even so much as streamed it online since.

So what was it about the group which elicited excitement in a fourteen year old paperboy’s heart but only prompted thoughtless dismissal in the head of a broke, chaotic, twenty-four year old almost-man? Those are two very different reactions, occurring at distinct periods, and it strikes me that it’s not just about the naïveté of my youth. We’re not quite hearing it on this EP, but Pop Will Eat Itself jumped on to hip-hop and sampling culture just at the right moment, signposting their allegiances and habits with upfront glee (they even supported Public Enemy live, though it should be noted that they were bottled off). The group described themselves as “Robin Hoods”, taking from other people’s work to enhance their own. They enjoyed comparing their pilfering to serious law-breaking on their records - “Crime circles, waves, and passes by/ Uh, sorry no speech, we really must fly!” they declare on the album’s not entirely serious ‘statement of purpose’ finale “Hit The Hi-Tech Groove”.

There was one other group in the indie charts doing precisely the same thing at this point, namely The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, soon to become the KLF. The difference in media technique here is startling, however. The Poppies swigged beer, belched and sang football songs as they marched through life, coming across like unruly schoolboys stealing Trebor sweets from the newsagents. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, were evasive and continually one step ahead of the journalists they spoke to. They never directly claimed to be sonic outlaws, jokingly or otherwise; they let the press draw that conclusion by themselves. Master criminals never openly brag about their daring heists – they let others report on them and speculate instead.

What’s interesting in retrospect is how underdeveloped the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu were at this point. Two tracks aside, “1987 What The Fuck Is Going On” is an unholy mess, reams of sticky-back plastic disintegrating against the weight of crudely edited samples which sound as if they’ve been cut with a dinner table knife. It’s like one of Chris Hill’s novelty cut-up records in places, failing to resist the temptation to floodlight how appropriately placed some of the copyright theft is, each sample lined up as a nudge-nudge wink-wink gag.

“Box Frenzy”, on the other hand, mixes genuinely quite witty couplets with piss-taking samples from recent hit singles (nothing too cool or knowing here) rapping that perhaps veers too close to shouting for comfort, and some porn film loops and casual misogyny (and even though most of that sexism stems from a cover version, nobody forced the group to record it at gunpoint). For all that chaos, however, there’s a strangely neat order to most of it, a sense of an album that was actually vaguely produced at FON, not just pulled together in a wild fury.

The central problem was that Pop Will Eat Itself had no mystery. They were loud. They were crude. They had creativity and wit, but it was unvarnished. The band journalists most frequently compared them to was the pre-Paul’s Boutique Beastie Boys. High praise in 1987, less so by the following year.

Prior to that album, the group released lo fidelity indie records with a trashy, punky vibe, getting on the C86 compilation almost by virtue of their DIY cheapness rather than anything else. At the point the “Covers EP” came out, PWEI were almost but not quite out of the chrysalis, moments away from the madness of “Box Frenzy” but still, to all intents and purposes, a guitar-based act with occasional raps on the side.

The first track on offer on this EP, a cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s recent hit “Love Missile F1-11”, is smart because it takes the digital twitter and stutter of the Moroder produced original and reminds us that basic, churning rock and roll was the blueprint beneath all that futurism after all. PWEI’s version is explosive and thrilling, turning the heat up on the best bits of an idea which was always trying too hard to second-guess where music was going next. “Who cares about your weird Clockwork Orange inspired pretensions, let’s rock” seems to be their thinking, and perhaps somebody could try that method with Campag Velocet next.

83. The Mission - Garden of Delight/ Like A Hurricane (Chapter 22)

One week at number one on 2nd August 1986

Two weeks after they vacated the indie number one spot with “Serpent’s Kiss”, The Mission returned again with this huge sounding double A-side. Rather than offering us further lumps of paisley rock, both “Garden” and “Hurricane” feel like wordy, skyscraping resignation letters to the independent sector from its latest breakout talent.

Listening to these again feels odd. While they were generally applauded by critics in a lukewarm fashion, The Mission were never given universal acclaim. There have also been very few revisions to that view since, meaning that almost all non-genre based lists outlining the best music of the eighties and nineties fail to mention their name. Subsequently, you find yourself stunned when revisiting their sudden rush of cult fame in 1986, which delivered two Top 75 singles on a relatively unestablished indie label (with this one even creeping into the top fifty). Viewing their promo video for “Serpent’s Kiss” recently, I was struck by just how playful it was, but also how much the band’s confidence over-rode the indie budget – The Stone Roses may have been arrogant sods, but their bleached-out cheapo promos didn’t contain even a grain of Wayne Hussey’s self-assuredness.

“Garden Of Delight” is the first single to really put that confidence across on vinyl. The Mission here don’t sound ‘indie’, they sound massive. Once again, Hussey tries to set himself up as the goth scene’s resident poet - “Revelation is laid, and reflects/ on the windswept liquid mirror/ of this breathless whirl, this happy death/ this elegance and charm” he declares, doubtless penning the words in elaborate, curvy purple ink – but rather than backing off uncertainly, the band around him rise to such towering declarations with the confidence of city stockbrokers. In particular, guitarist Simon Hinkler puts in another brilliant performance of complex jangles followed by uncertain, ascending tension (there’s a weird parallel universe somewhere where he never left Pulp, and they ended up making these noises instead).

For all that, though, it still sounds more like a music business calling card than an obvious single to my ears; the group offering something because it sounds big and important rather than a good candidate for a standalone 45. The inflated nature of it makes it sound like something that would appear towards the end of side one of an album rather than anything else – an end to the First Act and a sop to any wavering listeners assuring them that bigger, grander tunes were still to come.

The other A-side, a cover of “Like A Hurricane”, was given less airtime so far as I can recall, and is more along the lines you would expect, albeit having the kind of production you would anticipate from an established, successful American performer or group on their fifth or sixth album (and I did initially think Hussey was singing “You are like a hurricane/ there’s cum in your eye” rather than “calm”). Between its moments of arena pretension, though, there’s a gothic thunder in the basslines and drum patterns and Hinkler’s guitarwork moves from jangle to solid soloing and back again, acting as the focal point of interest when Hussey’s hollering gets a bit much.

For all that, I have to confess that I don’t really enjoy either side all that much. They did the job and The Mission were releasing records on a well-funded major label before the year was up, but there’s something about their grandness which I find cold and difficult, as if the group are high up on a platform, out of my eyeline and away from my lived reality, thundering on about the elements, decadence and death... but then again, I never was the type to be enticed by either aspiring Rock Gods or actual ones. 

The group clearly were, though. Following the release of this single, they became a major cult act and then, with their John Paul Jones produced number two album “Children” in 1988, moved extremely close to becoming the serious international mega-rock act “Garden Of Delight” seems to hint towards; no longer merely toying with Led Zeppelin imagery, they saw fit to get a member of that band to come in and guide them forwards.

Their appeal took a significant topple in the early nineties and by 1995 they were straight back to indieland again, Phonogram having lost patience with their big proposition. More of that when (and even if!) we get to that point, but it’s hard to resist quoting Andrew Mueller of Melody Maker’s review of their LP from that period, “Neverland” - “a stadium record that is never going to fill a theatre, a defiant gurgle on the way down the sinkhole”. Nine years is a bloody long time in rock music.

This ignores the fact that The Mission’s story prior to that point is actually a triumph, with large selling albums in Britain and significant, mid-chart cult sales abroad. The fact they’ve often been ignored in stories about eighties rock may be due to the fact that, even with the close calling “Tower Of Strength” on their side, they never produced a truly enormous anthem in the UK; indeed, they join the ignoble gang of bands who may have had scores of Top 40 hits, but never quite managed to edge into the top ten. 

75. Shop Assistants - Safety Net (53rd and 3rd)

Three weeks at number one from 1st March 1986

At the time of writing this, I’m ploughing through Justin Lewis’s marvellous book “Into The Groove”, which performs the unenviable job of trying to tie together the hundreds of narratives around eighties music. How you remember the decade probably depends an awful lot on a wide variety of factors besides the big headline events – how old you were, where you lived, how much money you had, and ultimately what mattered to you most; the microscopic silk threads that weave in a dizzying number of directions. 

It’s not that the eighties is the decade where audience fragmentation becomes the norm, but you can just about see the 21st Century and its cornucopia of unmixed, niche experiences on the horizon. Underground and DIY movements, started by people with perhaps more ideas than financial sense, and invisible to most but their small target audiences, began to feel more viable. For club music, urban pirate stations cropped up which were avidly followed by those in the know, creating surprise hit singles for artists nobody in the mainstream media (apart from the likes of James Hamilton) were writing about. Numerous low-budget indie labels, fanzines and club nights also popped up, all collectively pushing a roughly shared agenda and creating a scene which could see a good single by a relatively new band selling 10,000 copies with only minimal bites of mainstream exposure.

Amidst the avalanche of short-lived indie labels around the period, 53rd and 3rd is one which seldom seems to get written about, despite having an enormous cultural clout for a couple of years, almost exclusively releasing records by the kind of groups we would refer to as “indiepop” these days (and far ahead of bigger cult labels like Sarah Records).

Launched in Scotland in 1985 with Stephen McRobbie (of The Pastels), David Keegan (of The Shop Assistants) and Sandy McLean (of early indie Fast Product) running affairs, their sleeves were amateurish and none-more-indie, usually consisting of smudged designs in two colours. The contents inside matched the artwork, being simple, frequently fey, cheaply recorded and sometimes scratchy pop tunes performed by usually very young or naive bands. Their roster, if you could call it that, is essentially everyone any self-respecting indie kid of the era has heard of; Talulah Gosh, BMX Bandits, The Vaselines, The Pooh Sticks and Beat Happening all at least passed through. Their catalogue numbers usually began with AGARR, which stood for “As Good As Ramones Records”, thereby solidly etching a firm ambition on all their output, right in the middle of the run-out grooves.

For Stephen McRobbie aka Stephen Pastel, the enterprise might have been motivated by his recent experiences on Creation Records (although we’d have to ask him). His group had recently been booted off the label alongside a number of others during an Alan McGee organised clear-out, partly motivated by criticisms from his artists about what the label now represented and how he was handling their affairs. If Creation had once seemed like a convenient safehouse for oddballs and mavericks, the artists residing there had perhaps not appreciated how ambitious McGee truly was, which became only too apparent during the Jesus & Mary Chain’s first run of success. He suddenly stopped being the over-excitable man who folded single sleeves with his friends and associates until the early morning, and instead became a sunglasses-at-night wannabe McLaren figure.

53rd and 3rd backed completely away from grand statements and kept themselves firmly on the amateur side of the street. Despite this, their first release “Safety Net” quickly climbed to the top of the indie charts, and unlike The Sisterhood or Easterhouse before it, remained there for more than one token week, far above the current Depeche Mode single “Stripped” and also outpacing new contenders such as The Wedding Present and The Mighty Lemon Drops. 

It was, despite their amateur aesthetic, a strong opening statement for the label. The Shop Assistants had been slowly building up an audience since 1984 with releases on various labels, and their previous single “Shopping Parade” had peaked at number 3 in the indie listings. The group – a mixed gender quintet – had also spent some of 1985 benefitting from national support slots with Jesus & Mary Chain, bringing them to much larger audiences than they would have experienced had they been stuck on pub bills with the Jasmine Minks or A Witness. On top of that, their work and live shows were cut through with a bonhomie which didn’t seem fake; without seemingly even trying, their interviews, video clips and even the records themselves made them sound like a joyful gang of people who could be your new best friends. In underground circles, where bands toured the country bumping into the same fanatical individuals in Norwich, Leeds and Bristol, that mattered. There was a sense of belonging. 

If you were so minded, you could see “Safety Net” as being a very cynical move as a result. “Lucky you’ve a safety net/ lucky you’ve somewhere to go,” the song begins. The indiepop community was by this point becoming tight and solid friendships were forming – like most small music based cults, it contained people who may only have had a few slabs of vinyl and a surplus of idealism in common, but that seemed like enough to forge lasting bonds. The opening lines, then, could be addressed to the “lucky people” in the audience. “Afraid of dying and afraid of life/ But wishing we could stand around the stars again,” lead singer Alex Taylor sings again later on, addressing the simultaneous neuroses and child-like wonder of a lot of their fans.

It would be harsh to call it calculated, though. Musically, it’s poppy and sweet but undercut by the thorny scrape of cheap guitars and a bare, Mary Chain-esque backbeat. It couldn’t be trying less hard. If it’s an anthem, I’d argue it gets there by chance rather than strategic manoeuvres, purely by sharing themes common to twenty-somethings in an increasingly harsh economic environment.

49. New Order - Thieves Like Us (Factory)

 

One week at number one on w/e 12th May 1984

“And it’s called love… and it’s so uncool/ it’s called love/ and somehow it’s become unmentionable”

It's not unfair or cruel to point out that Bernard Sumner has never been an amazing lyricist. He’s written a pearly line or two on occasion, but I’ve always suspected that it was more by luck than judgement – most New Order songs succeed in connecting with listeners despite, not because of, their lyrics.

“Thieves Like Us” is an interesting case in that fans have bothered themselves online for years zooming into the somewhat vague lines I’ve quoted above. Why, in Bernard’s eyes, has love become “unmentionable”? This is a huge statement to make for a man who has told us elsewhere in the song that “Love is the cure for every evil”. Inevitably, some have interpreted this to mean that Sumner is talking about bigotry around homosexuality specifically here, particularly if you tie it neatly to the line “It belongs to everyone but us”. I like the idea of this, but the opening lines bear no relation at all and it’s always left me feeling unsatisfied, as if it’s a concept that people would like to be true rather than central to the song.

If we’re meant to find a statement in this song at all – and that’s a big debate in itself – I have to wonder if it’s actually, subconsciously or otherwise, about music, popular culture and post-punk cynicism and where we found ourselves in 1984 as the AIDS virus began to make itself known. Love songs and balladry have long been the staple of pop and rock music of all genres and hues, but for the entire time I've been keeping this blog, there’s been a surprising lack of them. Here in the undergrowth, we’ve been digging up tracks which are furious about war and the government, irritated by corruption and occasionally tickled by lust. Pick through every number one and you might find a couple of straightforward songs about love, but they’re usually from moments where an indie label was lucky enough to have a pop group on its roster bringing in the money (Depeche Mode, Yazoo) rather than The Birthday Party, The Red Guitars or Tom Robinson penning a song for a lover.

Even in the mainstream, something odd was creeping about in the creative waters, in that even the ballads were becoming ill-at-ease with themselves. “Every Breath You Take” is an obvious example from 1983, although Sting knew exactly what he was doing, pushing the obsession angle as hard as he could. There appeared to be no such playfulness about the single which was number one in the national charts when “Thieves Like Us” entered. “Hello” by Lionel Richie is a sickly, wispy, yet deadly little record, like being smothered with a chloroform pad by John Denver. Lyrically, Lionel is left crying for his life on top of lines like “You’re all I’ve ever wanted!” and “Are you somewhere feeling lonely or is someone loving you?” (you really need to do some research before getting in this deep over a stranger, old chap). 

Elsewhere in the charts throughout its reign, there were love songs, but all seemed to deal with a fracturing of romance (“Against All Odds” and “I Want To Break Free” being two serious contenders at this point). Much has been said about the music of the early to mid eighties cowering under nuclear paranoia, but I have to wonder if the overwrought nature of a lot of our love songs at that point also points towards something rather unhealthy.

If you want to believe that “Thieves Like Us” acts as New Order’s defence of straightforward love songs and is effectively their “Silly Love Songs” – and I’m not forcing you to – it does make more sense. The track is New Order celebrating romance without being dishonest or reaching for the darkest corner of the bedroom to sit cross-legged and weep. It’s not very poetic, but Sumner does a good job of selling it, stretching his vocals surprisingly effectively when required, seemingly having decided that detachment isn’t the answer here; after all, what he’s singing about is “uncool”, so he’s free to let go.

Elsewhere, the group are a powerhouse. Arthur Baker may have co-written this, but they forsake the electronic jitters and splutters of “Confusion” for something where live instrumentation and synths sit side by side comfortably. Hooky’s basslines slide and crash, guitars distort, and the keyboards manage to sound somehow chilly yet also celestial; it's love expressed from all angles, the dramatic, the angelic, the blissful and the darkly confusing. I’m a firm believer that most pop and rock songs don’t need to be more than four minutes long, and that often groups are just hammering ideas for the sake of ensuring their hooks are fully absorbed by radio listeners; “Thieves” doesn’t waste a second of its time, though, filling every part with drama and intrigue, occasionally recoiling to shadowy and moodier areas. It ends with a bogus “record slowing down” effect which miraculously manages to sound effective rather than gimmicky.