121. S'Express - Superfly Guy (Rhythm King)

One week at number one on 13th August 1988

I’m pondering this track while walking the dog and grabbing a drink at the local cafe – something I often do when drafting new blog entries – when, serendipity abound, I realise that the young women on the counter are listening to a seventies disco compilation. Sadly, this isn’t the kind of compilation that reflects a wide spread of the dancefloor hits of the era, but a kind of sanitised, Heart FM “disco super smashes” effort. So while I’m hanging around, I get to hear Boney M’s “Rasputin” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, and marvel at the fact that these were Proper Songs with lyrical stories and momentum. For as much as they were disco, they were also Pop.

Gloria Gaynor gasping and singing “Oh!” before the final chorus of “I Will Survive” means the same thing to everyone. Out there away from the Classic Pop Smash which happened to have a groove, however, lay a bunch of songs which probably meant something different to each of the hundreds of thousands of people who bought them. The creators of Silver Convention’s “Get Up And Boogie”, for example, were deeply proud of the fact that there were only six words used in the entire song (“Get”, “Up”, “And”, “Boogie”, “That’s” and “Right”) all glued on to some chirpy strings and a funky rhythm. “Get Up And Boogie” is only an exhortation to dance, lyrically speaking, but its simplicity means that it takes on a thousand different shapes for all its listeners – it could be about that person they kissed on the dancefloor one night in 1976 then never saw again, that first holiday abroad, that cocktail party they had that barely anyone can remember accurately… it’s celebratory but the memories it carries are up to them. Sometimes imprisoning yourself with only six words gives your listeners a lot of freedom.

Mark Moore of S’Express was a man of few words too. “Superfly Guy” is less manic and less inclined to throw mud at the wall than “Theme From…”, and instead sticks to a clockwork kind of groove, all ticks and gibbers, while liberally dropping the odd sample here and there. The main hook of “Superfly Guy, let me take you higher” is dominant and frequently repeated, but between that are breakdowns, soulful cries, and little bursts of records from the previous decade, teasingly dropped for those in the know (Roy Ayers is the credible chap in the case, BT Express the “tack” – S’Express stuck to the principle of placing the cool next to the plastic for most of their career).

The other key difference is that while “Theme” felt pulsing and heavy at times, sucking your feet downwards on the dancefloor, “Superfly Guy” is pure levity – not only do the vocals soar, but the entire arrangement seems to give you permission to enjoy yourself, to float off towards the club lights and do the breast-stroke in mid-air. It’s only possible connection to heaviness is the way it toys with gangster imagery ever so slightly (particularly in the equally care-free video) but it doesn’t do so with any degree of seriousness. It’s (quite literally) stick-on moustache dicking around, wearing the fancy dress like a kid in a cowboy costume.

Whether you think it’s a better single than its predecessor depends on what you want. For me, it is, because it knows its got a killer groove to offer and realises that budging from it to play into the hands of eighties samplemania will break the thrill; it engages with its key strengths. While doing so, it piles on other embellishments such as string stings and howled soulful proclamations, all adding up to an amazing single about absolutely nothing in particular, a slice of pretty minimalism to which you can attach any mood or memory you want.

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.