New Order: One more week at number one on 5th September 1987
The Smiths: One more week at number one on 12th September 1987
Here the record buyers go again, ruining the natural cut and flow of my blog with their historical purchasing decisions.
As we've seen before, rebound number ones are very common in the NME Indie Chart - sometimes because a record doesn't immediately realise its full potential and has a second or even third wave of mainstream support ("Blue Monday"), sometimes because a limited edition single only offers a short-term threat to the top spot and allows its predecessor to take back the prize, and occasionally just because two extremely competitive singles are out at the same time. And that's essentially what happened here - "True Faith" and "Girlfriend In A Coma" were two huge alternative singles in September 1987, and while in most indie charts "True Faith" held the top spot confidently, that wasn't the case in the NME.
There's nothing more to say beyond that, so let's look at the new entries lower down those charts.
Week One
5. The Soup Dragons - Soft As Your Face (Raw TV)
Peak position: 4
The Soups return with a soft chunk of sixties inspired pop; there had been signs of this proclivity before, most notably in the Byrdsian chimes of the wonderful "Head Gone Astray", but never had they been so directly expressed. These aren't touches or hints of an influence so much as a full-blown homage.
Despite this, the single was popular with fans and only just missed matching the Official Chart peak of its predecessor "Can't Take No More" (it peaked at number 66 versus that effort's number 65 placing). Its fey, summery paisley tones are pretty, merry, and unlike a lot of other groups from this period, not remotely snide or condescending towards late sixties pop - until I started writing this blog, I'd totally forgotten how many eighties indie acts suffered from the Austin Powers Tendency. Despite this, it feels like a weaker effort when placed up against the sheer power of their previous four singles, and as time went on, the group began to lean into this side of things increasingly often, sacrificing abrasion and firepower for slower, brighter harmonies.
Meanwhile, we should obviously be grateful to Sean Dickson for the YouTube upload, but it's a shame his copy of the video has suffered a bit of damage over the years.
Week Two
8. Big Black - He's A Whore / The Model (Blast First)
Peak position: 2
Steve Albini's gang return with two sonic blasts, neither of which are quite as uncompromising as I remember. "He's A Whore" sounded difficult for 1987 but wouldn't have been remotely out of place in 1993, thanks to his continued cultural spell-casting through the American alternative scene. In truth, it's beginning to sound strangely tepid these days, with those solid, steady beats making it seem almost (but not quite) as ordinary as a rough Beatles Cavern bootleg.
A lot of people bought this for the cover Kraftwerk's "The Model" on the other side, which replaces basic electronica with guitars which sound like insects stuck on flypaper. On the general spectrum of punk cover versions, it's closer to Devo than The Dickies in its stylings, but once again doesn't sound as impressive or as mighty as I remember. Or maybe I've reached the point in my life where genre-bending covers no longer seem that interesting.
9. Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Mute)
Peak position: 3
This was taken from "Music For The Masses", the LP which turned the suburban Essex boys into a stadium band, and created so much of the trouble and confusion that lay ahead for them. "Never Let Me Down" is a beast worthy of any arena, though, an absolute juggernaut of a single which oscillates between slapping industrial rhythms and an almost symphonic sounding chorus. At this point, Anton Corbijn had also got fully on board to produce all their videos, grainy Super 8 affairs laced with dream-like imagery which worked with the music almost perfectly. Everything was gelling.
"Music For The Masses" came in a sleeve featuring a glossy photograph of a huge red megaphone, presumably broadcasting the album to an abandoned piece of twilight countryside, a string of lights from a road in the distance being the only sign of life. Internal sleeve shots showed the megaphone up mountains or by lakes and canals - in my mind, the bash and clatter of "Never Let Me Down Again" was coming out of all of them. What else would be? The track sounds like a proclamation, an announcement worthy of instant attention. It's a truly great single, the sound of all the best and most interesting elements of the eighties rolled into one ball.
At the time, it didn't really command the attention it warranted in the UK, slipping out as a cult single in common with all their other recent shots. Over time, though, it became the high point of their live set to fans, their hands waving in the air like fields of barley. It might seldom be heard on Radio Two, but it's as important to the clan as "Enjoy The Silence".
26. Poison - Cry Tough (Music For Nations)
Peak position: 26
Meanwhile, here was the "true" sound of the stadiums and concert halls of America, operating in tandem with Depeche's ongoing threat. Poison's glam metal feels strangely cushioned and polished by our modern day standards and expectations of rock, closer to One Direction on one of their glam tips than any of the current pretenders. Nonetheless, something about that gloss and sheen obviously appealed just slightly to the Manic Street Preachers, whose first album "Generation Terrorists" occasionally has a little bit of that cushioned blow to its production.
It's also surprisingly enjoyable, its daftness and flamboyance seeming as breezy and daffy as a Dick Emery sketch these days.
28. The Three Johns - Never And Always (Abstract)
Peak position: 7
In which the Johns link up with Adrian Sherwood to explosive effect, causing them to sound more challenging and current than any of the other new entries in the chart this week - those rattlesnake drum machine rolls and jackhammer beats suddenly give the group a modern but also deeply threatening foil to react against. It's nasty but strangely compelling, not Indie Dance in any conventional sense of the phrase, but persuasive nonetheless. Probably their most astonishing single.
“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.
