115. S'Express - Theme From S'Express (Rhythm King)

One week at number one on 14th May 1988

Bill Drummond once argued that anybody could have a number one in 1988, and it felt as if he had a point. There have been few moments in music business history where non-musicians could grab the top spot without the benefit of a major label strategy or a team of stylists behind them, but 1988 was an exception. Perhaps the punk rock dream had finally been realised. 

Except that none of the freakiest of these freak number ones, often released on indie labels, sounded anything at all like punk rock. There was no fury, disillusionment or thrashed guitars on offer; instead, the past was burped up on top of House grooves, and represented on television by either a DJ miming their day at “the office”, or a bunch of faces plucked from the latest dancefloor. A casual onlooker might think that the only thing these artists had in common with punk was the volume (and strength) of hair product they used.

Which could be true, except I don’t think that Punk Rock and British House culture were as far detached as they seemed. The Clash begat Big Audio Dynamite, after all, who were one of the first groups out of the traps to use loops and crude samples. Combined with that, many of the DJs didn’t emerge out of the High Street nightclubs of Britain; they emerged from the leftfield, bringing a diverse record collection and a do-it-yourself mentality, and the attendees frequently had an awkward but entirely self-styled glamour.

At the risk of complicating things, however, Mark Moore of S'Express was possibly one of the less marginal DJs. He had already achieved acclaim at the mixed/gay night “Asylum” at Heaven in London, whose style took on board the electronic edges of post-punk and House music. That instantly gave him an edge and a sense of flamboyance many of his contemporaries lacked. If Tim Simenon made shapes with his hands next to street graffiti and M|A|R|R|S’s in-person appearances on British television were practically non-existent, S’Express presented Britain with a camp, frivolous image – one of bright make-up, lame, thick eyeliner and a dependance on the cheap, thrift-store availability of the past (whether that involved the records or the clothes). If a lot of emerging House music DJs wanted to be seen as credible artists, Moore primarily seemed to want to prove that he was having fun and could also provide fun; S’Express dressed up for Top Of The Pops, laughed and sniggered, winked at the cameras, and pouted and beckoned like pied pipers (actually, some photos of the German disco ensemble Silver Convention show considerable similarities).

The music itself mirrored their image and attitude. On “Theme From S’Express”, Moore was never going to sample James Brown or Public Enemy if an irresistible riff from Rose Royce was there waiting to be grabbed, so a sample from “Is It Love You’re After” – a huge hit and not a funk or soul deep cut – is used as the central hook. It’s placed neatly over an acid rhythm, combined with prominent doses of cult psychedelic funk track “Crystal World” by Crystal Glass (I am proud to own a copy of this myself) and a brew of other sources, credible and incredible (it’s flash-in-the-pan US pop star Stacey Q, rather than some obscure soul singer, gasping “overdrive”, for example). It’s the sound of boundaries being pushed to one side, of frivolousness and silliness having a place alongside the credible suspects.

None of this made it an expensive pop project; the mere fact that the hi-hat sound was created with a can of hairspray was entirely a method of convenience (though if you weren’t told, it’s not even as if you’d notice). Moore simply didn’t have the equipment to make a satisfactory approximation of the noise any other way. The group’s thrift store clothes were, likewise, often a result of simple budgetary choices.

The end result is actually, for all its irreverence and scattergun focus, the most pop of all the House music tracks we’ve heard so far. It’s the sound of an ecstasy tablet being washed down with a glass of Cava, of your inner child allowing yourself to raid your older sibling’s abandoned suitcase of seventies clothes, of the once-loved records you left up in the loft being mixed with the vinyl you bought last week.

Pop music is rarely inclusive – the whole point of a pop idol is to give the ordinary pleb something to worship or desire – but the most punk rock thing about S’Express isn’t just their cheapness (in the best sense of the word) but their lack of snobbery and their relatable chaos, their understanding that while current trends and fashions bring joy, that's also true of the things from our childhoods we might have cast off into the cultural beyond. As one sample tumbled into another on their record, so too did their Top Of The Pops appearances revel in the sense they were getting away with something; a group of friends thrown together by a strange set of circumstances gurning and grinning like cheshire cats.

98. Gaye Bykers On Acid - Nosedive Karma EP (In Tape)

Three weeks at number one from 23rd May 1987

“If this was video, we could forward all the crap”.

When people talk about the indie charts in the eighties, they often think in terms of the press headlines, the dominant idea of alternative music; groups with guitars, to borrow a phrase from a long retired Decca A&R man.

While they were often wrapped in a bright mesh of electric guitar based sounds, the listings also weren’t immune from the effects of ever-cheaper technology or club culture, and the period this single spends at number one is striking for a few reasons; firstly, it’s when the KLF first appear in their initial Justified Ancients of Mu Mu guise (more on them down below) and also when a relevant future number one

(Spoiler

Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover of “Love Missile F1-11”)

enters the top ten. And right on top for three straight weeks was this sprawling heap of digital barbed wire, discordant guitars and distorted samples. It felt as if something was happening. Something ugly, but something nonetheless.

The reasons sampling started to work its way into low-budget music had as much to do with affordability as fashion, and the effects of the lowest priced technology were smeared all over the crevices of the indie scene in 1987. The memory limits of most cheap samplers involved short stabs of speech or music, delivered in a highly distorted manner, rather than extended, luxurious loops. The bands that chose to play with these new toys therefore often became equally manic and unfocused, creating a frenetic racket rather than any kind of groove.

You can hear this throughout “Nosedive Karma”. The band take a garage guitar riff, trigger messy, fast samples from ancient Hollywood films, then throw in muddy solos and agitated rants about – well – you be the judge. “Avarice and greed/ Nostalgia through your veins/ It ain't crack that I need/ To make things feel the same!” rants Mary Byker, presumably railing against the black-and-white Levis world that permeated 1987 (The KLF would similarly sneer at this on the debut album “1987 What The Fuck Is Going On”). These lyrical ideas shift and frequently drift into nonsense, though, colliding with an old school chorus of “ba ba ba bas” and another onslaught of samples and noise.

What the track does is work with the glitchiness of the technology rather than against it, evolving gracelessly and throwing different riffs and ideas around as if they’re detritus. On “Nosedive Karma”, it somehow feels as if no riff, no solo, and no lyrical idea is any more important than whatever fleeting digital scrap decorates it; the band leap towards every distraction gleefully, piling everything on top of the mess. If it sounded like a bunch of herberts pissing about with tech back then, there’s something slightly relevant about it in 2026 too; it also feels like being sat indoors on a Spring Day with all the windows in the house closed, but every window on your laptop open and blaring. Maybe they were on to something.

Gaye Bykers on Acid were a strange group. While saddled with the Grebo tag and sharing it with groups such as Crazyhead and Pop Will Eat Itself, they lacked any straightforwardness at all, and (some would argue) seriousness. Occasionally supporting themselves at gigs under monikers such as Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds (dressed as women) and fake dissident East German thrash punk band Rektum, there was a whole fictional universe surrounding the group which probably only made complete sense once you were on the inside. They also didn’t lean on the bog-standard Velvet Underground and Byrds influences, instead having members who loved Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.

That love of the angular, satirical and experimental cuts through a lot of their work and attitude. They may have presented themselves as motorcycle boot wearing scruffs with fridges filled with lager, but the noise they created was sometimes challenging as well as thrilling. “Nosedive Karma” is, for me, their finest single; a down-in-one chug of every twitchy, agitated idea 1987 had to offer, with the unexpected sweetness of the sixties surf chorus in the middle.

Its success and their subsequent press made them seem attractive to Virgin Records, who gave them a surprisingly free reign for 1988’s “Drill Your Own Hole” album (initial copies of which came with the central hole covered over by an unperforated label). The group blew their promotional budget on a satirical sci-fi B-movie of the same name, which is available on YouTube and is actually better than you’d expect, like some kind of Max Headroom-ised take on Hard Day’s Night, piercing the cliches and habits of idle rock hacks, the music business, punters and even themselves. Throughout, they are warned that they are spoiling their own chances of success by “not taking things seriously”. Perhaps they effectively diagnosed their own problem.