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track "Jennifer's Veil" was anything approaching pop music, the chaotic fury of their earliest releases has now totally been replaced by something much more controlled but no less sinister.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. 

18. Blitz - Never Surrender (No Future)

One week at number one on 20th March 1982

Thanks to this blog, Gary Bushell has been on my mind a lot lately. While attempting the daily chores such as emptying the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry or walking the dog, my thoughts have often wandered and allowed his bearded visage to emerge in mind’s eye, stoical and almost impossible to read.

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve been bothered in this way. Back when I was in journalism college, my head tutor persuaded me to buy a different newspaper every day of the week – “it’s the only way you’ll learn to adapt your tone for different audiences”. So began the only period of my life where I bought The Sun and faithfully noted its contents, all in the hope that it would get me better grades (I appreciate that some readers may note the obvious irony here, or may share my Dad's concerns about failing to boycott the paper).

Bushell struck me as a strange figure even then, at the very height of his fame; a comedy and light entertainment nerd trapped in the body of a police constable, always one wink and guarded friendly gesture away from an outraged warning bark. Besides rants about immigration, leftie morons and “pillocks” at Channel 4 and the Beeb, he also held very specific and haunting obsessions on unlikely subjects such as the lack of variety shows on television and ageism in the entertainment industry. As I pored over his thoughts on the latter two matters, I realised how out of place they seemed. Most Sun readers probably couldn’t have given two figs about them – they were Bushell’s personal bugbears being given the maximum audience possible at the peak of his career. Whether I agreed with him or not, I had to conclude that he cared, which is more than can be said for many columnists who tend to seek out the most contentious viewpoints to generate "engagement".

Back in 1982 while he worked at Sounds magazine, “Oi!” was another uniquely Bushell-shaped obsession, seemingly born of a desire to make things happen rather than advance his career. While many music journalists have tried to build a name of themselves by creating distinct music scenes, Bushell’s pushing of the “Oi!” banner felt narrower than most. The central idea seemed to be to bring punk rock into the ownership of disaffected working class youth in unfashionable parts of Britain, putting it in direct opposition with most music journalists at that time, who seemed to want to further the aims of post-punk and art-punk bands.

You could argue that “Oi!” played out Bushell’s alternate reality fantasy, the answer to the question “What would have happened if Sham 69 had been the ultimate victors of the punk movement?” while the rest of the writers at IPC Towers were asking the same deluded question about The Fall, Wire or The Slits. Bushell’s argument does have fairness and legitimacy behind it, however; if punk was supposed to have been a tolerant home for all the outsiders, why were the struggling, unemployed youth in dull  towns and cities like Derby, Redcar, Redditch* and Margate often being left out of the media story? 

In answer to this question, the “Oi!” compilation series was born, which took the chemical ingredients of punk, exposed them to a bunsen burner, and boiled them down to their key essence, their remaining powder – anger and amateur three chord rock and roll. Somewhere along the way, the movement also attracted a fascistic element which many of the groups didn’t quite work hard enough to shake off, meaning that as soon as the subgenre is mentioned nowadays, one of the first things journalists feel inclined to do is address the issues it attracted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has left enough of a bad taste for the genre to be ignored by almost all the articles or documentaries covering punk rock since.

Suspicions about “Oi!” were big enough by 1982 that the playwright Trevor Griffiths staged (and televised) the production “Oi For England”. The plot revolved around an initially shadowy figure known as The Man offering promising punk bands who fit his own (fascistic) political ideas career-changing slots at a festival. It’s important to note that The Man was obviously supposed to be a representation of the powers-that-be, desperate to cause unemployed and directionless post-industrial youth to fight minorities rather than the system. Bushell’s later career as a well-paid right-wing tabloid hack did make the play seem astonishingly prophetic, though, meaning that when I finally got hold of a printed copy of the script in the early nineties, I assumed it was actually directly about him.

I could be forgiven for this presumption given what a go-to figure he was during the early eighties. Blitz were from New Mills (close to Derby) and initially saw what they thought was an ally in Bushell, sending him demo tapes in 1981 in the hope of getting exposure. Bushell, an avowed socialist at this point, was deeply impressed with their work and offered them a chance to sleep in his family home on a London council estate while attempting to establish their career, also giving them slots on his “Oi!” compilation series.

11. Anti-Pasti - 6 Guns

 

One week at number one on 28th November 1981

There seemed to be a spirit of camaraderie among second wave British punk bands in the early eighties. While the most known of those groups are undoubtedly The Exploited and the Anti Nowhere League, there were a whole brace of other groups welcome inside that parameter fence as the groups all sat on the same bill at numerous punk all-dayers.

With one honourable exception aside, Anti-Pasti didn't get inside the official Top 75, but they were frequently close to dining at the captain's (sensible?) table on the Great Ship Bushell. Their debut LP “The Last Call” got to number 31 on the album charts, and many of their singles also flew high in the independent listings.

Some were ultra lo-fi and bruised sounding, scratching their way around common concerns at the time like audio brillo pads trying to scrape away the shine of capitalism (right kids?). “No Government”, for example, is a pretty straightforward anti-monarchy and anti-Thatcher single which also reminds its listeners that the Queen doesn’t fight in the army, so why should they? The whole thing sounds like one man yelling over the buzzing of a Remington electric shaver which has become embedded in a wasps nest.




“6 Guns” is surprisingly commercial and almost first wave by comparison, consisting of the kind of anthemic punk chorus neither Sham 69 or UK Subs would turn their noses up at. There are no surprises or red herrings stylistically here, with the group not being even vaguely tempted to acknowledge post-punk or the more rockist leanings some of their heroes were beginning to lean towards; it really is brittle, immediate and tight punk rock, and as such it’s difficult to find anything new to say about it.

5. Theatre Of Hate - Nero (Burning Rome)

 

Number one for one week on 29th August 1981

Every era produces cult rock stars who are slightly too well known to be deemed underground, but not successful enough to be immediately recognisable to casual listeners. This was something I understood at a very early age, precocious nerd that I was.

This ability is perhaps best illustrated by a pointless school playground row which broke out about my cluelessness around the topics of sport, film and tv programmes.

“He knows nothing about anything!” mocked one short-arsed kid, who seemed to be the ringleader in all this. “Doesn’t watch The A-Team. Doesn’t support a football team. Reads stupid kids’ comics and not war comics. And I’ll bet he hasn’t even seen [insert name of some obscure “video nasty” here]. He wouldn’t even know where to get [name of obscure “video nasty”], but I do! I’ve watched it TWICE!”

“Oh yeah?” I countered. “Well, you know nothing about music. You probably don’t even know who Kirk Brandon is!”

People began to titter, and the short-arse retaliated.

“Berk Brandon? Why the hell should I give a shit who Berk Brandon is?!” he sneered, and everyone laughed uproariously.

I don’t know what became of that kid, by the way, but so far as I know he didn’t become a sub-editor at the NME despite seemingly already having the requisite skills at the age of eleven (It also now strikes me that with a few modest alterations, the above exchange could be an argument between Stewart Lee and Richard Herring in series one of “Fist Of Fun”.)

But still… the fact I can still remember this playground exchange points to two things – firstly, I possibly still have some stuff I need to work through with a therapist. Secondly, it signals that Brandon was neither muckling nor mickling in the eighties, even at the height of his success (which is when I had the argument). He was the kind of rock star who crept into the corners of Smash Hits as well as gaining the full-spread treatment in the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. He was invariably portrayed as an edgy and out-there dude, but somehow lacked the recognisability and warped glamour of a Julian Cope, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey or Robert Smith character. By accident or design, those singers became mighty brands, supremely individualistic in their stylings and opinions and adopted as gurus by impressionable kids desperate for idols. Brandon, with his short crop of peroxide hair, looked as if he could have been a member of any number of post-punk bands. I’m not arguing that this matters to me, but – certainly in the eighties – this mattered if you wanted to be something more than a casual curiosity to most.

To make matters possibly more challenging, his early music career was also unsullied by involvement with major labels, despite growing interest in his work. His recording career initially began with the group The Pack on Rough Trade, before shifting onwards to Theatre Of Hate, who issued all their records on their producer’s own Burning Rome records – a label solely set up to deliver Brandon-related product. Despite taking this none-more-Buzzcocks styled DIY approach, Theatre of Hate certainly weren’t akin to the various standard issue punks and anarcho-punks littering the indie charts at this time. Rather, their sound was gloomier, with agitated vocals and slow rattling rhythms being anchored by clattering and swooping basslines. While the group have seldom been tagged with the ‘g’ (goth) word elements of their sound are certainly some steps ahead of that movement.