41b. The Smiths - This Charming Man (Rough Trade)

 

Returned to number one for six more weeks on w/e 3rd December 1983

The Assembly's "Never Never" may have been a huge chart hit, but The Smiths finished 1983 as an ever-growing and unstoppable cult, and in the world of the indie charts, the ferocity of the cult is everything. The underground kids are the ones marching towards Rough Trade en masse to buy the most important new record, after all, not the biggest pop hit. 

That "This Charming Man" managed only week at the top in November felt implausibly stingy at the time, so it's no surprise to see them back on top and managing to hold that position until well into 1984. It's a result that disrupts the natural flow and timeline of this blog somewhat - it would have been much better to see out 1983 and begin 1984 with a brand new track - but sometimes an excess of liquid causes the jug to overflow, and all we can do is mop up the mess around the table as best we can.

Here is what happened in the rest of the indie charts while The Smiths were back at number one.

Week One

12. Birthday Party - "Mutiny! EP" (Mute)

Peak position: 3

The final release following Birthday Party's split in mid-1983, the "Mutiny!" EP shows Nick Cave clearly moving towards the Bad Seeds style. While nobody would dare to suggest that the title track "Jennifer's Veil" was anything approaching pop music, the chaotic fury of their earliest releases has now totally been replaced by something much more controlled but no less sinister. Cave is the clear leader here while the rest of the group twang and strum behind. 

20. The Higsons: "Push Out The Boat" (Waap)

Peak position: 14

Charlie Higson and his boys were deeply unlucky not to score a genuine hit in the early eighties - if Pigbag managed to cross over with their angular dancefloor friendly post-punk, there's absolutely no reason why The Higsons frequently more commercial singles couldn't have become a bigger deal as well.

"Push Out The Boat" probably emerged far too late in the day, just as the tide was going out for this kind of affair, but it's an absolute triumph, combining taut dancefloor grooves with a sense of urgency and purpose so many of their compatriots were too cool to get close to. If it weren't for the fact that Higson eventually became best known as a comedy writer and performer, chances are he would have enjoyed a stronger reappraisal at the turn of the 21st Century, but by that point he didn't seem obscure enough or "serious" enough for the Hoxton Hipsters. 

21. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - He's Read (Red Rhino)

Peak position: 21

27. !Action Pact! - Question of Choice (Fall Out)

Peak position: 19

Week Two

15. New Model Army - Great Expectations (Abstract)

Peak position: 15

New Model Army would rapidly go on to become a huge cult rock band, simultaneously blessed and cursed with a fanbase who were almost as fanatical as The Smiths' tribe, but often more confrontational. Stories abounded of interested punters casually turning up to their gigs and being beaten up for not looking the part. 

Unlike The Exploited, it's hard to imagine New Model Army encouraging this behaviour. While their political ideologies were often strict and puritanical, the group themselves were keen for the ideas to reach as large an audience as possible. Their second single "Great Expectations" is a sneering attack both on the way naive capitalist ideas worm their way into both the education system and parenting. "They said 'Son, it could all be yours, you just work hard and pay your dues/ Don't be content with what you've got, there's always more that you can want/ Everybody's on the make - that's what made this country great" - these are words which could just as easily have been written yesterday as in the Thatcherite sunlit uplands of 1983. 

Unlike a lot of the political rants that bind up the indie charts, NMA put across their ideas with both a degree of intelligence and relish. "Great Expectations" is a tight morality tale accompanied with a sneering thrash, and a chorus which Paul Weller (who they probably hated) wouldn't have been ashamed of. 

33. New Order - Blue Monday (Factory)

 

9 weeks at number one from w/e 26th March 1983

Is there a danger that I may be adding nothing here? If you head over to your favourite search engine now and try to find videos, blog posts and think pieces about “Blue Monday”, you’ll be spoiled for choice. Aside from a few smart Alecs on Internet forums playing devil’s advocate, you will find a set of almost unified voices gushing very genuinely about the song; its sound, the sleeve design, and the way it transformed Factory Records and therefore (arguably) Manchester.

What you tend to hear less about is how it was received when it was released in March 1983. Some journalists loved it unreservedly, as expected – New Order were, after all, press darlings even at this point – but there wasn’t the unified response you might expect. Right at the bottom of the Smash Hits singles review pages, almost as an afterthought, you can read David Hepworth’s uncharitable verdict:

“It had to happen. New Order have dumped moody, repetitive guitars in favour of moody, repetitive synths and a drum kit with a pronounced stutter. After the first twenty minutes or so, it starts to cause a tense, nervous headache”.

His Single Of The Fortnight was Bobby “O” with “She Has A Way”, which doubtless caused nods of approval from Neil Tennant on a nearby Carnaby Street office desk. Bobby “O” has certainly been influential on his career, but the verdict that “She Has A Way” is not only better than “Blue Monday”, but better by notable lengths and margins is surprising. It's playing on a field that's closer to New Order than you might expect, but is like a slap on the back from a mate on a crowded dancefloor in comparison to their record - bouncy, jovial and uncomplicated. 

Over at the NME, Julie Burchill was so frustrated by Factory’s reluctance to label the A and B sides properly that she reviewed the version on the flipside “The Beach” instead, fleetingly and half-heartedly, before moving on.

Record Mirror went one better and ignored “Blue Monday” in their review pages altogether.

Even New Order themselves have since seemed perplexed by the single’s dominance of dancefloors and the public imagination. Their original aim was to produce something they could leave a machine to play as an encore while they remained offstage, and Bernard Sumner once stated “It’s not really a song, it’s more of a machine that sounds good on club systems”. He then added, without further elaboration, “There was a lot of trickery going on that you don't realise. It's not just the bass, there's quite a lot of subsonic”, sounding slightly like Bill Drummond by way of Derren Brown as he did so. Maybe he was just genuinely dumbfounded by the single’s success and reached for the only explanation that made sense, that some kind of irregular sonic hypnotism was at play in making the track a success,

Whatever certain segments of the press or the group themselves thought, it was a given that the New Order single that followed “Temptation” was probably going to be a minor hit. The goodwill and the fanbase left hanging over from their Joy Division days would see to that, and “Blue Monday” confidently (but not breathtakingly) pushed its way into the national charts at number 37 on the week ending 19th March.

The expected run for singles by cult bands at this point was for the single to nudge another few places up the charts, perhaps resulting in a triumphant Top of the Pops appearance by the group, only for the single to fail to cross over to the general public and disappear. What “Blue Monday” did instead was far odder, hanging around the Top 100 for 38 straight weeks, often nudging up a few places or falling a few notches as if it had no bigger plans other than to hang around. By June it had fallen out of the Top 40, only to return again with a fresh wave of goodwill in September, eventually climbing to the top ten for the first time.

Early in its run on 31st March 1983, the group appeared on “Top Of The Pops” and put in a live appearance so nervous, chaotic and devoid of charisma that I found myself red-faced, desperately defending the record to my family - “But it usually sounds brilliant!” I yelled (to which my Dad’s admittedly sensible response was “Well, if you want to appear live on television you’d better make sure you can actually manage it first”).

The dominant myth is that the single dipped down the charts the following week as a result of disgusted would-be purchasers voting with their feet. This is actually not true – it climbed the chart defiantly. Had New Order decided to show up and put on a glove puppet show live on air, it wouldn't have killed the record’s momentum, if “momentum” is an adequate word to describe its mid-table stamina. Neither music critics, radio DJs refusing to play all seven-and-a-half minutes of it, its unavailability on seven inch single or Factory Records themselves could kill “Blue Monday” off – it knew it needed to reach everyone, and if it managed it slowly and stealthily rather than in a typical eighties rush, then so be it.

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.

13. The Damned - Friday the 13th (EP) (NEMS)

 

One week at number one on 12th December 1981

The thirteenth number one of 1981, and indeed of the NME Indie Charts in general, is The Damned’s “Friday the 13th EP” – a neat coincidence, or perhaps a case of demonic interference?

It’s certainly a rare victory for punk’s old guard whether Satan’s stinking finger nudged them to the top or not. The indie charts of 81 were generally dominated by Gary Bushell approved second wave acts, with the old school 70s bands with new homes on small labels clinging on in the foothills; if punk wasn’t exactly dead, it certainly seemed as if some of its original proponents were living in less assured circumstances.

Of all those groups, The Damned couldn’t be more “first wave” if they tried – they were the first UK band to issue a punk rock single in the form of “New Rose” and the first to push an album out. Unlike many of the more serious-minded acts who quickly usurped them, The Damned were cartoonish rogues, a hammer horror Ramones offering scuffed-up hyper garage rock. None of their songs offered clear manifestos or pushed ideologies, even for effect, unless of course “Can a man be a mystery man/ can a doll be a baby doll” is code for something I don’t fully understand. I suppose you could even argue that “Problem Child” off the second LP “Music For Pleasure” is a punk throwback to Cilla Black’s “Liverpool Lullaby”, but let’s forget I even thought of that idea.

The second album was a huge problem child in its own right, though. The Damned’s love of sixties psychedelia led them to approach Syd Barrett to produce the record, which inevitably came to nought. Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason took on the job instead as a consolation prize, and produced a negatively reviewed and poorly selling record in “Music For Pleasure”. So underwhelmed were critics and fans alike by the disc that it contributed to the group’s split afterwards.

Perhaps understanding that they had handled a typical case of second album syndrome too hastily, the group reformed without the original guitarist Brian James for the “Machine Gun Etiquette” album in 1979, which charted (unlike its predecessor) then pushed out “The Black Album” in 1980 which saw them broadening their palette and gradually moving away from their original punk sound. While goth wasn’t yet popularly understood as a musical genre in 1980, Dave Vanian’s vocals became deeper and eerier while the clanging of bells could occasionally be heard beneath the group’s toughened up (and incredibly well performed) R&B sounds – on some moments like the superb opening track “Wait For the Blackout”, it’s possible to visualise the group as The Pretty Things or The Downliners Sect with Lord Sutch on guest vocals after having had some valuable singing lessons.

Of all the punk groups, The Damned were generally the most open about their previous influences and also closer to the musos punk meant to replace. Captain Sensible once expressed outrage that The Pistols stole the Damned’s thunder, commenting that he bought a copy of “Anarchy In The UK”, desperate to hear what “our rivals” had produced, and feeling aghast when he heard “Old Man Steptoe singing”. They may have been fast, raucous, chaotic and even extremely daft, but they were probably always closer to their pub rock cousins than most of the emerging set; good musicians with sixties influences creating an exhilarating noise. They were therefore assured a longevity that a lot of the earliest 100 Club and Roxy hopefuls were never going to achieve.

Despite being somewhat unexpectedly produced by New Musik's Tony Mansfield, the “Friday the 13th EP” is really a sharp dose of more of the same, with lead track “Disco Man” pulling up water from the same well; those vocal harmonies, sharp guitar riffs and thumping backbeats don’t lie. “Limit Club” even combines gothic atmospheres with sixties psychedelia, proving that punk didn’t necessarily eliminate the hippies – it absorbed ideas from them too (the crossover between the hippy underground press and the fanzines also proved that the breaks weren’t as clean as everybody suggested).