79. The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Rough Trade)

One week at number one from 7th June 1986

“I'm not going to drag people down anymore. Everybody within this curious profession has to do their own thing, however obnoxious that may be. And nothing I can say is going to change that. Besides, I've too many enemies. It's quite distressing. It's a bit of a strain because one is welcome almost nowhere. I don't want to go to parties or go skiing with Spandau Ballet or anything but still it's become quite tiresome, this constant barrier of hate.” - Morrissey, Smash Hits, January 1985

“We're still at that stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning, they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'. So what can you do?" - Morrissey – NME, June 1986.

The Smiths opened 1985 with their signature single “How Soon Is Now?”, but it was a peculiar and somewhat understated year for them otherwise (certainly in singles chart terms). “Shakespeare’s Sister”, that odd stepchild of a single, arguably over-performed sales-wise, but “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” failed to reach the Top 40 at all, and despite its exquisite warmth, the return-to-form effort “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” didn’t push them back into the Top 20 either.

It’s impossible for us to guess at how Morrissey truly felt about his continued role as an antagonist and tormentor of the old New Romantics, although I suspect he privately enjoyed it; in other words, I’m reading the two quotes at the start of this entry as being so tongue in cheek that they’re in danger of disfiguring the side of his face. The Smiths were the kings of the IPC music press, adored by most of the groups in their royal orbit, and Morrissey was frequently overly generous with praise where his direct peers were concerned (unless you truly believe Raymonde, Easterhouse and Terry & Gerry were cruelly overlooked superstars at the time). The people he reserved his tongue-lashings for were the Proper Pop Stars – the beautiful boys and girls in Smash Hits who were unlikely to be backstage at a Smiths show. Slagging off Modern Romance and Duran Duran must have been a fairly risk-free endeavour, rather than making Morrissey the Larry David of rock.

What undoubtedly hurt Morrissey, however, was his status as a mere cult figure. It’s addressed on “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, and his continued complaints about the group’s fringe status in interviews are notable. There was never a hint of staged angst, nor frequently any clever wordplay, when he came to the subject of the group’s marginal status in interviews. Despite the success of the “Meat Is Murder” album, Morrissey was not one to ignore the importance or the cultural impact of the singles chart or daytime radio play. Why be Al Stewart when you could be Marc Bolan?

Or even – why be T Rex when you could be The Rolling Stones? The groundwork for “Bigmouth Strikes Again” was laid by Johnny Marr whose initial riff was inspired by “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” before the lyrics were handled by Morrissey. It’s the first single since “William, It Was Really Nothing” to have a significant spike to it, a brio and a hook which screams in your face. Morrissey plays the wounded victim, but this time it’s very clearly for comedic effect. In fact, the lines “Sweetness I was only joking when I said/ By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed” are almost too obvious, too try-hard – a protesting wail from an end-of-pier farce. The follow-up lines “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt/ As the flames rose to her Roman nose/ And her Walkman started to melt” are better, showing that however immediate “Bigmouth” wanted to be, he still had a keen sense of the absurd.

Behind him, Marr and the group play furiously. Marr’s guitar lines are an intricate, speedy rush as always, but it’s Mike Joyce who has one of the best moments on the record – the staccato rattling of his drums during the instrumental break sounding (unintentionally?) like the soundtrack to Billy Liar imagining himself machine-gunning another foe.

In fact, the whole damn thing is very Billy Liar-esque, Morrissey setting himself up as a comedic stooge rather than a wounded artiste – it suits him surprisingly well to be the self-parodying foil to the track as opposed to the unrecognised genius. The song itself, meanwhile, hammers and smashes in a way which almost recalls the height of glam rock.

78. We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Rules and Regulations (Vindaloo)

Number one for five weeks from 3rd May 1986

“Some people do think we’re stupid, but that’s quite understandable really, isn’t it? I can’t think why people would want to come and see us” – Vicky, Record Mirror, May 1986.

“I’ve got this theory that we’re actually providing employment, because if we can’t play our instruments very well, we have to employ other people, like orchestras, to come and do it. So in fact, it’s quite politically and ideologically sound not to be able to play very well.” – Mags, Record Mirror, February 1987

Those two quotes, taken nine months apart, probably say more about Fuzzbox (and their attitude to the world and the music business) than anything I could possibly throw at my keyboard for the next few hours. It’s no wonder some music journalists found them infuriating – it was the job of the eighties rock press to peddle the idea that music has importance in either a technical or “revolutionary” way; if a record isn’t competently or artfully performed, then it should be offending someone in its attempts to rebel (usually parents, the powers-that-be or “the straights”).

We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It (we’ll call them Fuzzbox after this point; they chose that abbreviated name for themselves eventually anyway) fitted the bill in theory. The “Rules And Regulations” EP was their debut release on Robert Lloyd’s Vindaloo Records, and lead track “XX Sex” was, beneath its chaotically fuzzy clatter, straightforwardly political. “XX sex sex gets ex-exploited” they chant, referencing page three girls and ranting “Cookery and hookery/ Exploit desolation and isolation”. If Huggy Bear had released that one in 1993, nobody would have questioned it – they sound similar enough, with only Vicky’s surprisingly clear and powerful post-punk vocals setting them apart (she's the only conventional musical talent evident on the track).

Title track “Rules and Regulations”, however, was the one with the home-made promo video which ended up picking up most of the airplay, and continued the usual punkish themes of a bleak pre-mapped journey through life, including workplace alienation, and the obviously feminist reference to a husband who “tied you down so you’re housebound”. It’s the ace on the EP, containing pounding drums without the use of metalwork, a central buzzing riff, and a chorus chant which isn’t a thousand miles away from Adam Ant, but taken as a whole, it clearly owes much more significant debts to The Slits and X Ray Spex.

When journalists saw the promotional photographs of Fuzzbox with brightly coloured, electrified hair and thickly made up faces, they must have already written their articles before interviewing the group or getting any quotes. It seemed a simple case; more punk rock, more anarchy, angry young women desperate to be heard in a society which hadn’t given them a voice…

And yet Fuzzbox usually didn’t want to be drawn. They were too busy having fun. They openly sniggered on stage and gurned in their videos. Their politics were left-leaning, perhaps not atypically for an eighties band from a major industrial city like Birmingham, but they clearly hadn’t pored over Sociology textbooks seeking to justify their views to journalists; Easterhouse they weren’t. They had a tendency to regard themselves as ridiculous as the world they inhabited, and were far enough away from the initial impact of punk rock to be able to use bright hair dye and super strength hairspray and seem cartoonish, rather than menaces to society.

And yet – there was something strangely exciting and confrontational about all this anyway. Four women who were self-confessed musical amateurs, making a noise like that and having FUN, not attempting to justify their mere existence to the rock press? The very thought seemed powerful enough to propel this EP up the official national charts so that it peaked just one space clear of the National Top 40 – and only two spaces away from Freddie Mercury’s latest single - despite being released on a tiny indie label set up by the lead singer of The Nightingales (it’s notable that when Robert Lloyd decided to finance this initial release, some friends assumed he was having a mental crisis).

70. The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog (Big Beat)

Three weeks at number one from 16th November 1985

Of all the groups to visit the NME Indie Number One spot, The Cramps have been the slowest to peak so far (unless we count Robert Wyatt). Formed in 1976, their wait for a stint at the summit position – and indeed a debut within the UK National Top 75 – feels sluggish to say the least. If it were any other veteran punk group, you would assume it was something of a Toy Dolls situation; a freak novelty breakout hit pestering the peak slot.

The Cramps were a strange group, though; their obsession with trashy, furious old school rock and roll and B movies made them seem a heavy influence on the psychobilly scene, which by 1985 was only just shifting downwards from its 83/84 peak. Then their proclivity towards PVC stagewear and even on-stage nudity, plus the use of heavy make up and the aforementioned horror flicks, gave them an appeal to the more vampish goths. Punks also appreciated the high-paced attacks they threw into all their songs, and then there were weirdos like Mark E Smith who appreciated them purely for being fellow outsiders.

Alan McGee was also a fan, and when they inevitably signed to Creation in the mid-nineties, bouyed up by the label’s influx of Oasis cash, I was astonished by all the number of my friends who suddenly came out of the woodwork saying they’d always been fans. Once again, the sexier and camper goths, anarchists and leather jacketed rock and roll boys who rolled their own tobacco nipped down to the local record shop to buy “Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs”. “Ha ha!” a friend of mine barked delightedly on learning of the title. “You couldn’t get a more Cramps song title than that”.

I’m in danger of making them sound like a gargantuan cult, though, one of those bands who accidentally pulled in so many freaks and art school kids that they were a constant Top 40 threat. That’s far from the truth. The Cramps played the club circuit and lived in the cracks and airless caverns of society, supported by a loyal fanbase but never making sense to quite enough people to come close to being called a phenomenon.

In 1985, “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog” proved to be the closest they’d come so far to a breakthrough, and given that, it’s surprising how much of a step backwards it sounds. It has the same wide-eyed swaggering rock vocals of The Damned in their punk prime, a similar hollow, under-produced yet heavy duty whack to last year’s psychobilly movement, and very faint echoes of The Fall at their rawest and scratchiest (in other words, the group The Fall had ceased to be). The key thing to remember when pulling these various similarities together, though, is The Cramps were on the opposite side of the ocean in New York while all these things were occurring in Britain. The psychobilly scene owed them a debt, and similarities to any other punk bands were usually either coincidental, or entirely due to transatlantic admiration of their work.

45. Crass - You're Already Dead (Crass)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 31st March 1984

“You’re Already Dead” isn’t Crass’s final single – that would be “Ten Notes On A Summer’s Day”, released in 1986 – but it was the last one to be released while the group were a going concern. They entered 1984 in a state of disarray, burdened by heavy legal costs from the obscene publications court case around their album “Penis Envy”. They were also under the microscope of the tabloid press and the government thanks to their anti-Thatcher single “Mother of a Thousand Dead”, and their creation of a doctored recording faking a conversation between The Iron Lady and Reagan.

It’s impossible to speak on their behalf, but Crass were possibly beginning to feel the downsides of being a scratchy anarcho-collective living off their wits and little other external support. They may have operated successively away from the music business, taking matters into their own hands and surviving, but the more their reputation grew, the more interest they attracted from the mainstream media as well as the music press.

Music journalists in the eighties were, for all their critical savagery and their belief that they could make or break careers, pussycats compared to the tabloid press. They adored rebellion, and most were also niche publications, talking to an audience who understood their language, had sympathies with the idea of rock music being an agency for change, and generally didn’t get too upset about punk groups with hard-hitting viewpoints provided they weren’t fascistic.

Newspapers, on the other hand, were widely read, still thought of punk rock as being a possible threat to society, and loved the idea of singling out smart-arsed angry young men and women for a public flogging. That’s essentially where the Sex Pistols ended up in the late seventies, and in the case of Crass, typewriters in Fleet Street were beginning to become damaged by hacks bashing out feverish stories about these disgusting lawless vagabonds. In a flash of total absurdity, News Of The World were even moved to comment that the title of Crass’s album “Penis Envy” was “too obscene to print”. You hardly need me to highlight the stupidity, hypocrisy and irony in those four words.

It’s tempting to think that experienced warhorses such as Crass were able to roar with laughter, let these situations pass and even enjoy being provocateurs spreading their ideas to the broadest possible audience. I suspect, though, that they quickly found out that readers of tabloid newspapers are strangely unforgiving types, willing to apply pressure to the families of people featured in their stories as well as the individuals themselves. Penny Rimbaud commented in the liner notes for their compilation LP “Best Before 1984”:

“We found ourselves in a strange and frightening arena. We had wanted to make our views public, had wanted to share them with like minded people, but now those views were being analysed by those dark shadows who inhabited the corridors of power… We had gained a form of political power, found a voice, were being treated with a slightly awed respect, but was that really what we wanted? Was that what we had set out to achieve all those years ago?”

On top of that, the group were beginning to disagree with each other about some of their core political principles, including whether or not pacifism was a viable position. Pressure came from within and without, and the central supporting beam could not hold the weight.

“You’re Already Dead” almost seems like an audio souvenir of these contradictions and struggles. If The Jam had “Beat Surrender” as a farewell single where Weller set out his reasons for throwing in the towel – a very straightforward and principled address to The Kids – the very sound of YAD feels like a group falling into pieces in front of you in real time. It starts immediately with a cacophony of out-of-time musicians and screaming and swearing, before slowly finding its order and beginning properly as something akin to a sleepy, creepy anarcho-punk reading of the “Are You Being Served?” theme, as we’re told “Ask no questions, hear no lies/ And you'll be living in the comfort of a fool's paradise.”