51. March Violets - Walk Into The Sun

Three weeks at number one from w/e 11th August 1984

Back in my teens, I was a member of a twee indie trio who augmented their contemplative janglings about strange teenage girls and rainy days with a cheap Casio drum machine. We knew no drummers, saw no obvious way of getting acquainted with any, and in any case, we didn’t have and couldn’t afford a suitable rehearsal space to put a full drumkit in.

The band’s principle songwriter was strangely defensive of the crappy machine, though, constantly trying to make out it was a unique selling point rather than a hinderance, and had worked out ways of making it sound more interesting; piling on the reverb and ladening it with odd effects. I stood playing bass alongside the shuffling, precise, echoing thump and hiss of this digital steam engine and felt increasingly that this wasn’t what being in a rhythm section should be about. The other two members had each other to trade off and lean on – I had a machine I hated which just winked at me with one red LED eye. I obviously whined about this far too much, as one day they just stopped telling me when rehearsals were taking place.

Further back still than that, in the early eighties in the Leeds area, all kinds of goth-adjacent groups were choosing not to put little cards in the windows of music shops asking for drummers (or if they did, nobody replied). Sisters Of Mercy, Rose Of Avalanche and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry all decided this was a distinctly unnecessary and hassle-filled pre-eighties extravagance, and March Violets followed suit. The cavernous thwack of the drum machine therefore became synonymous with a particular brand of northern Goth rock, the lamp black musings of those groups always being anchored in place forcibly by that precise, immovable and sometimes unshifting rhythm pattern.

I’ve made my personal experiences plain from the outset here not as an excuse to waffle on about my embarrassing teenage years in groups – I barely give a shit about them now, so I fail to see why you should - but as a clear conflict of interest. I always hated the bloody machines in a rock context and now when I hear one on a professional rock recording, I often can’t get past it. The problem with drum machines wedded to anything predominantly guitar based is you’re usually going to have to work very hard to make a limitation sound like a positive feature.

The March Violets started, according to member Tom Ashton, as a “reaction to all the synthy pap that was filling the Top 40. We wanted to dance but we were also still punk rockers at heart. And we couldn’t be bothered to audition drummers, so we did what we did!”

Besides the fact that I obviously inwardly sighed when I read the slagging of “synthy pap”, there’s nothing wrong with this ambition it’s just – well – how do you dance to this single? To be fair to the group, they are ambitious with the beatbox. It shifts and changes and approximates a live drummer fairly decently throughout, but you can still tell. There’s a measuredness to it, a pulse without frills or fills or spontaneity. The guitars chunter and clang alongside it, and the added feature of the shifting but fussy beat just makes “Walk Into The Sun” sound leaden, too heavy to cavort around the dancefloor to, but also too far away from Proper Rock to mosh or throw yourself around.

Let’s not completely lose focus, though. More than many of their compatriots, The Violets have a distinctive sound of their own here, pulling politely away from theatrical doominess and towards something that almost allows some daylight in. You can hear it in singer Rosie Garland’s careful and almost gleeful annunciations during the chorus, or in the almost celebratory burst of sax towards the end. “The sun machine is coming down/ and we’re going to have a party” they declare, ripping off Bowie but at least making their intentions pretty clear. “Walk Into The Sun” makes it sound as if the kids in black were having a whale of a time after all.

The NME on Strike! (But here's The Cult, The Smiths and The Damned anyway)

9 weeks until w/e 4th August 1984

Here’s where things get tricky and a messy, charred hole emerges in our narrative. In the summer of 1984, IPC went on strike putting all of their publications either completely out of print (in the NME’s case) or operating to a greatly reduced degree. Some of IPC’s comics made it out into the shops, for example, but with reduced colour and using repeated strips from the seventies. This meant that if you were a kid in 1984 you perhaps had to deal with the unexpected surprise of Sid’s Snake out of Whizzer and Chips alarming a punk rocker, or found yourself trying to make sense of a background gag about some 1978 chart hit you couldn't remember. Everything, very suddenly, went black and white and childhoods were catapulted backwards in time.

For the older brothers and sisters of those kids, however, it just went black. There was nothing emerging from Kings Reach Tower, so if they wanted a weekly music fix, they had to read Sounds, Record Mirror or Number One magazine instead, none of which really captured the tastes or tone of their favoured Express.

More problematic than that, certainly where I'm concerned here and now in 2025, it also meant that absolutely no NME indie charts were published for that entire period either, so I’ve nothing to show you for summer 1984; however, one possible compromise emerges from this mess. 

The Independent Singles Chart compiled by MRIB continued as usual, so we can get a likely sense of what might have been number one from the data presented there. This should be taken with a pinch of salt. MRIB’s chart tended to treat pop hits by the likes of Black Lace and Renee and Renato with much more favour than the NME’s somewhat more streamlined, specialist approach. In the summer of 1984, for example, Black Lace’s “Agadoo” got to the top spot on the MRIB Indies, but due to its more modest placing in the NME’s listings, we won’t be discussing it at length on this blog (something of a shame as it would have presented an interesting challenge for me, even if I doubt anyone would have bothered to read my subsequent thoughts unless I turned them into some kind of “Ahhhh! But it is pop perfection, do you see?” styled clickbait).

As a result, here are the MRIB Number Ones for that period, presented more briefly than usual, and to be treated with kid gloves by everyone reading them; none will be added to the Spotify playlist of NME Number Ones or referred to in any of the blog’s lists. These are only possible lost number ones, some more likely than others, but not to be treated as "official" chart toppers in the NME listings. 

1. The Cult – Spirit Walker (Situation Two) – one week on w/e 2nd June

Given the way this one was galloping up the NME Indies when we left them, prodding away at a track whose sales were already descending sharply (“Pearly Dewdrops Drops”) I see no reason to doubt this one would have got to the top; but having said that, this single feeble week at the top of the MRIB charts doesn’t exactly point towards a dominant presence.

“Spiritwalker” saw the final emergence of The Cult following the dissolution of Southern Death Cult and the amendment of the subsequently named Death Cult. The group, like some kind of chemical conglomerates company who were desperately perfecting their name to make it sound less garbled to the public, obviously realised keeping things sharp and simple was best.

It’s tempting to say that “Spiritwalker” was evidence of this tightened and more commercial ambition, but in reality the progression feels very slight. The opening introduction of the track is the biggest difference, acting as a very trad rock, hollered clarion call to listeners – as a non-fan, I was genuinely surprised by how engrossed I was in the first few seconds when I played it back for the first time in years.

What happens after that is a strange mixture of more Death Cultishness combined with occasional flashes and sparks of classic rock fetishism. The rhythm section certainly still have one foot in the gothic grave – the bass guitarist rumbles and rattles out root notes like a Peter Hook inspired pro, and the drummer pounds and thuds on the skins rather than the metalwork like a medieval minstrel. Elsewhere in the group, however, a clear love of noticeable guitar hero licks is emerging from Billy Duffy, and Ian Astbury is now starting to sound fully in command.

48b. Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops Drops (4AD)

Two more weeks at number one from w/e 19th May 1984

It's been a while since we've seen a rebound number one on the blog, but here we are again, back in the arms of the Cocteaus for two further weeks. Here's what was happening lower down the charts:

Week One

9. The Cult - Spiritwalker (Situation Two)

Peak position: 3

We'll come back to this one over the weekend if it's all the same to you - it was never officially an NME Indie Chart number one, but as we're about to find out, things got very complicated over the summer.

18. Colourbox - Punch (4AD)

Peak position: 18

More twittery grooves from 4AD's most dancefloor friendly band, who on this single sound as if they're edging closer to pop music, rapidly flashing Top of the Pops studio lights and the same carefree buoyancy of Freeez or even Break Machine. Only the extended breakdowns, lack of a nagging chorus and gasping orgasm noises prevent it from making the leap to daytime radio. 

Week Two

9. New Order - Murder (Factory Benelux)

Peak position: 9

Released over in Belgium as an exclusive on Factory's Benelux label, then charting on import over in the UK, "Murder" isn't really an act of generosity to loyal Belgian fans so much as a cast-off. It was originally recorded in Winter 1982 while the group completed their sessions for the "Power Corruption and Lies" album, and sounds (at best) like a B-side in waiting. By the time the "Substance" compilation emerged, that's how it was categorised too, relegated to the second bonus CD alongside all the other instrumental versions, dubs and flotsam. 

Sonically this has little relation to where New Order found themselves in 1984, containing tribal drum patterns, menacing bass lines, and spindly Twilight Zone-esque guitar work, interspersed with occasional samples from "2001 A Space Odyssey". For anyone pining for the atmosphere (no pun intended) of their earliest work, it might have acted as an interesting reminder of those darker days, but the average Belgian consumer must have been baffled to pieces by this one.

10. Husker Du - Eight Miles High (SST)

Peak position: 10

"Eight Miles High" created havoc with The Byrds "commerical fortunes" back in 1966, often being cited as being the point where their pop audience jumped ship to listen to material which didn't involve complex, meandering Eastern-styled guitar breaks and eerie, trippy observations on an England the band seemingly didn't understand, nor felt fully understood by (it's always been interesting to me that the group made visiting this country sound like an excursion to some mysterious and impoverished backwater tribal village - perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps it was the fact that Britain was still trying to pick itself up from the ruins of World War Two, but we can't have been as miserable and unfathomable as that, surely?)

It's a complex number to cover, which is possibly why the emerging Husker Du just dismantle it instead, howling, screaming and creating something which actually sounds uncannily like some smalltown 1966 garage act doing their thing with it. If the original is ill at ease with itself but nonetheless coherent, Husker Du's take is trippy in the most uncomfortable sense of the word, like someone who has taken acid at a crowded party in a strange town and now couldn't be further from enjoying themselves. It's a perfectly valid way of interpreting the song and captured the imagination of many listeners in 1984, beginning the process of Husker Du becoming a fringe cause for many music critics. 

13. Instigators - The Blood Is On Your Hands EP (Bluurg)

Peak position: 13

19. Exit-Stance - Esthetics (Revolver)

Peak position: 19

While Revolver was credited as the label in the NME's Chart (and indeed by the group on the sleeve) they were only the distributors of this distinctly DIY bit of goth rock - a very sketchy, presumably band-drawn sleeve houses a single with a black plasticrap label.

Sonically, Exit-Stance are underproduced here, and this is very lo-fi and top-heavy for something which clearly had ambitious to be a lot more expansive. "Do you worry about your spots?" the group ask, "Or do you - in a literal sense - put your face on each morning?" cleverly managing to make a point relevant to the anarcho-punks and the Goths simultaneously. No wonder it sold better than most other DIY singles during the same era. 

20. Break Machine - Break Dance Party (Record Shack)

Peak position: 20

In which the manufactured street crew are given an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to following up their huge hit. It jitters and whistles away in much the same manner, sounding like Roger Whittaker spinning on his back on a bit of cardboard, but also manages to sound like the work of a production crew caught with their pants down. "Oh shit, who thought that would be a smash?" you can hear them ask. "We don't seem to have any other powerful choruses to hand at the moment". 

The momentum created by their debut ensured that this climbed quickly to number 9 in the national charts before just as quickly descending again, but afterwards this particular Machine started to look a bit broken, unable to further build on their success. 

21. Quando Quango - Atom Rock (Factory)

Peak position: 21

28. Skeletal Family - Recollect (Red Rhino)

Peak position: 28

For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Duran Duran: "The Reflex" (EMI)