27. Crass - How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead? (Crass)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 13th November 1982

Initially I was tempted to bundle this number one and Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding” together in one entry. The double-whammy effect of two back-to-back number ones on the same political topic feels like the kind of thing which could only have happened in the indie chart – short of World War III, it’s hard to imagine the official national charts ever replicating the same phenomenon.

It also tells us something about how high feelings were running in British society at that point; whether people wanted the considered, empathetic jazz-pop of “Shipbuilding” or the downright savage “How Does It Feel…” or (more likely) neither, The Falklands War was a topic it was obviously difficult to look away from.

If “Shipbuilding” is an aerial view of a conflicted town populated with people struggling to see over the barrier of their own personal struggles towards a bigger societal tragedy, “How Does It Feel” is just visceral blame. Crass may have begun to fall out with the second wave punks who dominated the scene at this point, but lyrically speaking, they were the closest to the original punk spirit of 76 – while the likes of The Exploited fell back on simplistic chants and slogans and the odd cuss word, Crass damn near scream an entire diatribe on the Falklands conflict over the course of a mere three minutes, and even find time for some sloganeering in the dying few seconds.

“So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought/ Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught/ That you inflicted, you determined, you created, you ordered/ It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered” – this is a world apart from the taut, staccato, monosyllabic machine-gun attack of most eighties punk. It has so much to say that the song itself feels as if it can barely contain the anger; each line is elasticated close to a snapping point before the release comes, followed by the next swollen, unyielding attack. Then the next.

If there’s a moment here where Crass feel like every other punk band of the early eighties era, it’s probably around the chorus. That’s when the drums punch, the vocals get guttural, and the group take apparent glee in the chief slogan, perhaps hoping that it will stir the tabloid press to respond. What’s interesting is how quickly the song then collapses away from that chorus and descends into mania. Unlike “Shipbuilding”, it’s not clever as such – though the lyrics do stand alone perfectly well as a form of ranting poetry, which couldn’t be said of any other track in the indie charts at this point – and nor is it tuneful, but its design and precision are hard and sharp. It sets out to wound, and while it’s doubtful Margaret Thatcher considered their views, there isn’t a single line that leans back from the attack. Every single one is a tiny bullet, a distinct and aggrieved opinion.

The distance between this and the kind of fag-end punk dross that’s littered the indie charts over the last year is obvious. The senile tail end of any subgenre generally tends to consist of groups who have enthusiastically bounded into the room only to immediately forget what they went there for – you can hear this in the worst of glam rock in 1975, the collapse of disco, and even the lad-friendly meat-and-potatoes rock of 1996 Britpop. All were filled with chancers who only remembered the basic tricks of their trade, devolving rather than evolving.

23. Anti-Nowhere League - Woman (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 10th July 1982

In January 1981, during the long period of mourning that followed John Lennon’s assassination, Geffen scored another number one single from his “Double Fantasy” album. Beginning with the murmured lines “For the other half of the sky”, “Woman” wasn’t just a pean to Yoko Ono – although he clearly had her in mind – but women in general; the sacrifices they make, the nonsense they potentially tolerate.

For all its good intentions, “Woman” periodically bordered on the sickly and mawkish. My mother put forward her verdict plainly and simply: “It’s a good single, but God he had a nerve to criticise Paul McCartney for being sentimental”. She allowed him a pass, though, and in common with millions of others bought the “Double Fantasy” album, absorbing it while still shaken about the man’s death, then admitting its flaws and filing it away as a souvenir from a strange emotional period; the “Candle In The Wind” of the eighties, if you will.

I have no idea if, a year-and-a-half later, Anti Nowhere League’s “Woman” was partially inspired by the identically titled Lennon single or not, but it’s certainly an interesting coincidence. If Lennon’s single is part appreciation, part apology, The League take the opposite tack and focus on the delusion of romantic love and the dark avenues it can take couples down – although when I say “couples”, I should perhaps refer only to the men in the relationship; if John Lennon’s “Woman” is about women, then Anti-Nowhere League’s “Woman” is actually about the frustrations of men, and in many ways that’s probably the cleverest thing about it (it really doesn't get more sophisticated than this, trust me).

The song begins as a ham-fisted rock ballad, filled to the brim with cliches. “You came to me in a dream, I'm sure/ You gave your love, you gave much more to me/ Woman, will you marry me?” Animal sings after a series of other deliberately soapy cliches, before the group begin to rattle and roll to the repeating, gnashed line “Til death us do part”. From that point forward, the song finds its punk feet, kicking and screaming disappointed abuse such as “Yeah, you're sitting on your arse in your dirty clothes/ You're looking a mess, you're picking your nose” and “Your tits are big but your brains are small/ Sometimes I wonder you got any brains at all”.

It’s the classic set-up for the old school working man’s club gag in song form, “Take my wife, for example… no, really, please take her” extended from a few seconds to three minutes. I wasn’t particularly familiar with “Woman” until I needed to listen to it for the purposes of this blog, and first time out, I understood very well that the fluffy, silky first minute was purely a set-up for an inevitable descent into scattershot abuse; anything else at this stage of the group’s career wouldn’t have made any sense. You can’t travel from “I Hate People” to “I Love My Wife” within the space of a few months, even if doing that would arguably have been a stranger and therefore more radical move.

Feminists would doubtless want to point out the failings in the song and its expectations of relationships, arguing that by idealising romantic partners and putting them on pedestals we set ourselves up for disappointment, and you can't punish someone for failing to live up to the image you projected on to them. By doing do, they would thereby risking falling short of Melody Maker critic Carol Clerk’s Law of The League: “Take them seriously and the joke’s on you”. The group would probably also be thrilled by the outrage.

As a result, arguably the only question worth asking is whether the gag’s execution works or not, and it has to be said, it lacks any real sleight of hand – it nudges, winks and nods so heavily at the listener during the first minute that only an idiot would be surprised by what follows, and it eventually feels more like a bunch of rugby players screeching through some unresolved frustrations in the sports club bar. A lot of the lyrics are also surprisingly conservative, even in jest; criticising the state of a woman’s personal laundry feels more like the subject of a Fabreze advert than a second-wave punk band’s third single. Getting angry about the tidiness of your partner's clothes also has more in common with Gary Numan than Jello Biafra (there's a potentially libellous rumour about Numan and a groupie I won't repeat here. Do your own research, as they say).