32. Aztec Camera - Oblivious (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from w/e 19th February 1983

Winter 1983 for me was a period of upheaval. The health of my grandfather had worsened, and a family decision was made to move out of suburban East London and deeper into Essex, to a house large enough to take everyone in. Moving to a new town meant I had to go to a new school, (struggle to) make new friends, and have a new guitar teacher, two traffic jam ridden miles from where we now lived. In my memories of those trips, it’s dark and raining and the orange streetlights created neon streaks through the grime on the windows of my Dad’s Datsun.

“Now remember,” he said on the way to the teacher’s house, “this is just a try-out. If you don’t get on with him or don’t like him, we can find you another”.

On the second or maybe third occasion, I saw he had a copy of XTC’s “English Settlement” propped up against his stereo and was quietly, shyly flabbergasted, but felt too nervous to mention it. None of my friends or family liked XTC. They were my own little obsession everyone was trying to coax me away from, for reasons of their own. My friends deemed them to be ugly old bastards. My parents felt they were “untalented New Wave rubbish, he can’t even sing”, whereas they were “punk rock” according to my brothers. My new guitar teacher had obviously found his way to them, though - and I decided that if he taught me badly (though he never did) or talked crap (which he sometimes did) he would always be forgiven as one of the enlightened ones, and I would stick with him.

A couple of weeks later he gently asked me what I was listening to at home and who my favourite bands were. I named XTC and he looked taken aback. “Well, they’re brilliant, but I wasn’t expecting that answer!” he replied. “Tell you what, if you want to listen to things which will help you think about your own work on the guitar, there’s someone else you might also be interested in...”

(I feared the worst at this point. Guitar teachers were always recommending Gordon Giltrap and Sky to me, usually with the justification “They’re in the pop charts and they’ll teach you a thing or two”. As if  a ten-year old was going to use their limited pocket money to buy a bloody Gordon Giltrap album.)

“Roddy Frame,” my teacher continued. “He’s got a band called Aztec Camera. He’s very young but he’s really good on the guitar. Great songwriter too”.

Aztec Camera were already familiar to me through occasional brief mentions in the music magazines, but I hadn’t heard any of their work. I made a mental note to turn up the radio when they next came on. I would have a long wait ahead, but “Oblivious” burst on to the airwaves on its re-release that autumn, and I taped it on to my cheap little silver radio-cassette player so I could listen to it again. 

I liked it a lot, but given my age, I had very limited financial means and even going out to buy a single from the local Woolworths required planning and forethought. For whatever reason, “Oblivious” didn’t make the cut, and nor did the album it came from, “High Land Hard Rain”. I could hear enough of what I wanted from it – tricksiness which was neither showy nor pretentious, a gorgeous hook in the chorus, haunting backing vocals, lots of ideas and movement – without loving it enough to commit any money from the piggy bank. 

Listening to “Oblivious” again, trying to approach it with fresh ears, I’m struck for the first time by the fact that my teacher’s suggestion was probably an attempt to be helpful, to try to find something similar that might be in roughly the same wheelhouse as “English Settlement”. The samba rhythm topped off with a busy acoustic guitar, zinging and zipping around, isn’t a million miles off an arrangement Partridge and Moulding might have tried for that album – unlike XTC, though, this song has sprung from the bones of a very young, optimistic man on the brink of better things, rather than a tired and weary songwriter with growing personal issues.

“Oblivious” is an unashamed bash at a pop hit on the songwriter’s own terms. It’s not simple, it’s not necessarily straightforward, and at its heart is arguably a bit too pleased with itself, but the restlessness, the hooks, the drive are so powerful and bright that they dazzle the listener enough to trojan horse the smart alec elements in. Even the acoustic guitar solo in the middle is almost too sunny, too happy with itself to sound accomplished, in the way that upbeat music often causes us to overlook any complexity. Frame finger picks one note for ages before flying off anywhere ambitious on the fretboard, almost taunting the listener not to expect any more effort.

26. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from 16th October 1982

There’s a moment in Sue Townsend’s bestselling novel “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole” where, upon learning that the Falklands War has broken out, Adrian’s father has a meltdown and tumbles out of bed, believing Britain to potentially be under attack. When the Moles are reassured that nothing of the sort is about to happen, and realise the Falklands are located off the coast of Argentina (hidden beneath a cake crumb in their atlas) normal family order resumes.

In the current age, where war seems to be a continual rumble in the background, it’s almost difficult to relate to this fictional overreaction. In 1982 though, the Falklands conflict was a shock. While the decades following World War II hadn’t been entirely peaceful, another country hadn’t actually invaded British territory in that time. As an innocent nine year old, I too sought reassurance from my parents that Argentinian soldiers weren’t likely to be parading down our street anytime soon. I had never heard of the Falklands and assumed they were either in the Channel Islands or off the coast of Scotland; this smelt to me like big trouble.

Once the national shock subsided, political blame began to be apportioned and sides began to be taken. Doubts were raised that the military or the British government had been taking the Argentinian threat seriously, leading to them being surprised by an attack which they had been repeatedly warned was imminent (this later led to conspiracy theories that Margaret Thatcher had actually allowed the war to occur for her own electoral benefit; I’m no fan of hers, but this seems unlikely). There were questions about whether an insignificant, sparsely populated island in South America was really worth risking human life over, and the inevitable counter-argument that the vast majority of Falklanders did not want to live under the rule of Argentina’s military dictatorship, and Britain had a duty to them.

It would be naive to assume there were clear left/right wing lines on these complex issues, though the general assumption was that left-wingers were supposed to be against the conflict while those on the right felt Britain had to protect its own citizens. To this day, I haven’t formed a clear opinion of my own on the situation, though by the time I was an adult and in a learned enough position to do so, the war seemed like a distant memory, so the pressure to have a proper opinion was off.

Meanwhile, out there in insignificant, gun-free indieland, it felt as if every group had a view. The anarcho-punks were against the war, obviously. Mark E Smith felt that the war had to happen, the first   contrary political position he had taken which apparently alienated him from some of his peers (it wouldn’t be for the last time). Some of the Oi groups were less subtle than that. And Elvis Costello and Clive Langer wrote this song.

Costello was vocally anti-Thatcher, and not necessarily subtly so. “Tramp The Dirt Down”, from his 1989 album “Spike”, is a fantasy about dancing on her grave when she finally passes away. While that song was visceral, “Shipbuilding” is subtle and unique among protest songs for not giving the listener an easy steer. Instead of laying down the law or satirically mocking the government, it takes the rare step of putting the singer in the shoes of an ordinary unemployed shipbuilder in a neglected industrial town – notably, the very towns Thatcher had virtually abandoned as non-Conservative voting lost causes in the eighties.

Robert Wyatt, who recorded the vocal in a couple of hours, is an inspired choice for the message. His voice has the correct levels of earthiness and vulnerability to carry the song, and he knows exactly where the difficulties and contradictions lie. “Shipbuilding” presents the war as an opportunity and a threat; a chance for a deprived town to be given serious work for awhile by helping to build the ships which may send their sons home, alive or dead. “Is it worth it?” Wyatt asks. “A new winter coat and shoes for the wife/ and a bicycle on the boy’s birthday”. The song opens with the mundane, the everyday, despite the enormity of the problem the record is addressing.

In common with the rest of the country, disagreements in the town spill over: “Somebody said that someone got filled in/ for saying that people get killed in/ the result of the shipbuilding” Wyatt sings breathlessly. This is probably the clumsiest lyric in the whole song, but his tight, rushed delivery ensures that it’s made to work; the one direct mention of the event every parent is dreading, skirted over quickly, almost in denial.

At various moments, you sense Wyatt protesting himself, justifying allowing himself to feel upbeat, the line “It’s all we’re skilled in!” saying everything in five short words. What else do we expect or want them to do? Sit out the chance to take their families out of poverty, albeit briefly?

Unlike most political records, “Shipbuilding” understands the micro-events that underpin society. As individuals living in capitalist societies, we are all to some degree complicit in wars, slavery, and cruelty we would not otherwise condone. We may have opinions, but our jobs and lives, and our ability to put food on tables, are inextricably bound up in situations we may only be dimly aware of. Even the melody understands this, the piano line following “It’s all we’re skilled in” allowing itself to sound almost triumphant, before falling back into a minor chord again.