100. Soup Dragons - Can't Take No More (Raw TV)

Five weeks at number one from 27th June 1987

When I started writing this blog, I did idly wonder what the hundredth number one might be, and promised myself that I wouldn’t draft a full list in advance and project ahead. That would spoil the beezer surprise for me, after all – supposing it’s a really appropriate, “era defining” classic? Or, even better than that, something the indie-kids would get agitated about; an Erasure single, perhaps, or one of the many Rhythm King releases that dominated the late eighties? What would that co(s)mic event tell us?

In reality, and at the risk of sounding like Hannah Fry, sequential numbers don’t care much about your preferred narratives. Just as nothing exciting happened when your car’s mileometer hit 5,000, and you just passed a boarded up carpet store rather than the Angel of the North or the house of the first person you ever loved, centenaries occur just because eventually they have to. The law of sequences demands it, and whether they coincide with something memorable depends entirely on the way the coin lands that day (go and look up the 100th Official UK Number One and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve been told the answer to that one before, many times, but I still have to keep reminding myself).

Back in 1987 though, The Soup Dragons taking the crown at this point would have felt somewhat appropriate, even though I can’t remember anyone noting it. While the start of their career saw them regarded as another one of those cheap and cheeky C86 acts, all fizz and charm, and the tail end saw them cast as bandwagon-hopping chancers, there was a brief sunlit period where they were critically lauded as the next big cult thing. Front page magazine shoots were gained, a highly reputable manager swept in to guide them, and a serious buzz emerged.

“Can’t Take No More” landed at the apex of all the fuss, and became their first single to enter the national Top 75. At this point, the group were still playing true to their roots, and the promotion around it was misleadingly low-key – The Chart Show played the accompanying video a few times, making a big deal of the fact that it was shot by the group for £80, tactfully ignoring the backing they had at this point.

The song itself is actually the third slam-dunk in a row for the band, following both “Hang Ten” and “Head Gone Astray” into some kind of scratchy indie heaven. The three singles are markedly different from each other yet still, amazingly, identifiable as Soups product. “Hang Ten” stays true to their C86 roots and serves up two minutes of exhilarating rattle and roll, while “Head Gone Astray” is somehow punky yet beautiful jangle pop, and then “Can’t Take No More” is a stranger beast still – shouty, stammering, always evolving then collapsing again, and downright furious about the inconsistencies and wrongdoings of a significant other. “Your attitude always ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/ like the weather!” rants Sean Dickson angrily, while staccato drumbeats and distorted guitars follow him behind.

It could choose to all be over in two minutes like “Hang Ten”, but instead it twists and evolves, featuring shimmering guitar breakdowns and taunting, childlike “na na na” vocalisations, before finishing on an ear-splitting electric organ break. It’s almost as if the group had two possible objectives, either a track akin to The Who’s “I Can See For Miles”, or a Slade styled rave-up, and decided to go for both at once, but keep the production and the presentation raw and cheap.

It’s easy to attempt something like this and come back with something perfectly listenable but ultimately insubstantial – thousands of low-key indie bands have done just that – but they channel so much adrenalin and frustration into one three minute single they manage to make the listener feel both peppy and disorientated at the same time. Elements of this, particularly the sharper and more discordant aspects, sound as if they would have slotted very neatly alongside some of the groups emerging out of the USA in a year or two’s time; Black Francis, for one, seems as if he might have appreciated it. Far from staying true to this indie era’s dominant idea that singles should be cheap, raw and simple, the Soups bounce and ricochet off the walls in ways which aren’t immediately predictable (the disorientating psychedelic dizziness of the latter half of each verse is interesting and proof they were already operating in a different territory to either The Wedding Presents or Bodines of this world).

64. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

Five weeks at number one from w/e 29th June 1985

There’s an elephant in the room we really need to address before talking about this single; namely the small problem of Beggars Banquet not really being an indie label, and its products having no real place in the indie charts. While Beggars were certainly an indie when they began in the late seventies, they rapidly inked a marketing and distribution deal with Warner Brothers who, whatever the size of Beggars own offices or staff-force, made them no more or less independent than Sire, Atlantic or Elektra.

The official MRIB indie charts recognised this state of affairs and barred them from entry. The NME, Melody Maker and Record Mirror indie charts all seemed to be in a state of confusion over it, though, letting Beggars in at some point in the mid-eighties before booting them out again a year or two later. So far as I can tell, this wasn’t a hot topic among the readers of those magazines, who probably didn’t care about these trifles; such discussions were fit only for industry types in the pages of Music Week. It must have been galling if you were in with a shot of getting an indie number one during The Cult's reign at the top, though – so commiserations to Doctor and the Medics who suffered that blow during this single’s initial stay there.

In other respects too, “She Sells Sanctuary” feels like something more than a modest little independent release. Every time we’ve met The Cult on our travels through these charts, there have been subtle shifts and progressions, sometimes interrupted by a fanbase-pleasing 45 before they increased their levels of stomp and bluesy strum a little further. “Sanctuary” is the sound of borders not just being fully breached, but the group sprinting across them screaming about their arrival. Held in place by one of the better rock riffs of the eighties - a mutant cross between Big Country’s bagpiping guitar and a classic Keith Richards refrain - Astbury sounds as if he’s screaming for sanctuary while running from one rock genre to the other.

While I doubt the group were being overly cynical in the construction of this one, it is fascinating just how many styles and tropes it wraps into one neat bundle. The incoherent post-punk vocalisations are intact – of all The Cult’s singles, it’s interesting that their biggest hit so far should be the most incomprehensible – but while there’s a Kirk Brandon-esque wail in the mix, there are also moments where Astbury’s voice finds the clench teethed scream of basic metal.

Elsewhere, Duffy’s hoedown hook is consistently interrupted at the tail end by the brief strums of a folky acoustic guitar, so regular, simple and predictable that almost feels like a sample. I’m a sucker for this bit, actually; I love the way it keeps interrupting the busy nature of the rest of the song with its polite, understated tick of approval, as if its visiting from another song entirely. Then there’s that instrumental break, mellow and toying with psychedelia, shoving the central riff underwater and filling it with the whine and buzz of sitar strings.

The end result is that “She Sells Sanctuary” sounded like everything that was going on in alternative rock in 1985 happening at once. At the time, I couldn’t help but be very conscious of its existence; it felt as if it spent most of the summer school holidays slowly crawling around the Top 40, never quite reaching the top ten but refusing to leave. At certain hours on Radio One, its riff needled away on the airwaves, sounding so familiar that it begged doubts as to whether somebody had written it many years before [post-script: It does admittedly sound somewhat like the intro to "Cats In The Cradle"]

Years later, when I became old enough to be let into alternative rock clubs, it still hadn’t gone away. It remained the barnstormer the DJ would utilise at the key moment everyone had consumed enough Snakebite and Black, only to watch the dancefloor seethe with the disordered movements of a hundred grebos, crusties and goths (and some of the metallers too). Some tracks spoke only to small segments of the audience and created vacuums in the corners of the dancefloor, but “She Sells Sanctuary” – like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Firestarter” after it – seemingly spoke to everyone.