42. The Assembly - Never Never (Mute)

 

Number one for one week on w/e 26th November 1983

Where Vince Clarke's head was at in the early eighties is a subject that's enjoyed surprisingly little debate, but following Yazoo's dissolution he forged the concept The Assembly. The idea behind the somewhat practically named unit was that he and long-term studio engineer and producer Eric Radcliffe would hire a revolving cast of lead singers to front Clarke's songs.  

This is a fascinating plan which seems to have been borne more of Clarke’s wariness than any commercial or even creative considerations, and the only song to emerge from it is this one led by Feargal Sharkey. Sharkey was also idly kicking a tin can around in late 1983 - The Undertones were one of many punk groups to have found the commercial headwinds of the early eighties insurmountable, and their final album “The Sin Of Pride”, released in March that year, managed to climb only to number 43 in the album charts (15 spaces lower than plucky Oi hopefuls Blitz, to give some sense of how much even the punk market had moved on). The record saw the group trying to shift direction, incorporating soul, sixties garage and Motown ideas, but the end results failed to create a hit single.

By May 1983 Sharkey had announced the group’s split, and they struggled through to the end of a European Tour, waved goodbye to their remaining fans, and disappeared with surprisingly little fuss or fanfare given the levels of success they had achieved in their prime. A Best Of, “All Wrapped Up”, emerged in Autumn 1983 and performed worse than “The Sin Of Pride”, climbing only to number 67. The Undertones could seemingly win neither with a change of musical direction, nor with their Golden Greats. Nobody apart from their most loyal fans really gave a shit that “Teenage Kicks” was John Peel’s favourite single of all time, or wanted to hear “My Perfect Cousin” or “Jimmy Jimmy” again; that degree of reappraisal would take a long time to ferment.

Under the circumstances, Sharkey had everything to win and nothing to lose from sharing a studio with Vince Clarke. While the latter may have been in a similar position and was equally bandless and perhaps bereft of direction, he had recent success on his side. The charts also proved that Sharkey loaning his voice to a synthetic backdrop wasn’t going to cost him any punk credibility – that counted for nought by this point. As if to illustrate this point, while “All Wrapped Up” was struggling in the lower reaches of the album charts, “Never Never” was already in the national top ten.

His presence also doesn't really upend everything as much as you’d expect. Despite his quivering but tough “big boys don’t cry” vocal stylings, “Never Never” remains a quintessential early eighties era Clarke track. Had this been handed to Moyet as a farewell single instead, there’s no doubt it would have had the same impact; akin to “Only You”, it’s another delicate, spring-wound synth ballad, which despite the high-tech setting – there’s a Fairlight CMI in the mix here - sounds almost rustic. The arrangement knocks and creaks like a windmill in Old Amsterdam (perhaps inspiring the promo video, shot in a windmill in Essex), while the keyboards ring out depressive, autumnal chimes. There are moments where it even sounds like an instrumental excerpt from the soundtrack of a children’s stop-motion animation.

Clarke and Radcliffe are the despondent organ grinders while Sharkey bemoans his loveless fate – “Love’s just a door that’s locked and there’s no key” – and finally, it seems, finds an appropriate setting for his voice outside The Undertones. Their later singles may have been more soulful than usual, but were still attacked vigorously with their primary colour loaded paintbrush, leaving him in his usual role as the exuberant and forceful punk era frontman. “Never Never” allows softer pastel hues in, and proves he had a flexibility few might have suspected in The Undertones earliest years.

Following the success of this single, and against the reckoning of many music critics of the period, Sharkey eventually regained his footing and achieved enormous success by the mid-eighties, his version of Maria McKee’s “A Good Heart” going on to become one of the more enduring number ones of the decade. “Never Never” had presented his ruggedness in a pop context and succeeded, and arguably gave major labels the confidence to view his career afresh.

38. Depeche Mode - Everything Counts (Mute)

4 weeks at number one from w/e 13th August 1983

“With someone like Crass, all you can get drawn in by is the lyrics and that’s it… the music is so hard that a lot of people won’t go near it. But with ‘Everything Counts’ they’ll give it a chance and then they’ll hear the lyric” – Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode talking to X Moore, NME 17th September 1983.

The crisis continues. Crass may have vacated the number one spot, heaving the doors open and drunkenly chanting as they left, but the broader British malaise continued; the problem of what being left-wing meant in a society where Thatcherism and the harder edges of capitalism were portrayed as the only answer. You would have expected Crass to have something to say on the matter but Depeche Mode? Politics didn’t really seem to be their thing.

There had been hints of it on “A Broken Frame”, of course, but only in an obvious, non-committal way. Their sinister anti-Hitler Youth deep cut “Shouldn’t Have Done That” didn’t say anything new beyond “Fascism is a bad idea”; something even a Daily Telegraph reader could have got on board with (back in those days at least. Who knows now?) At the time, too, the sleeve offered little, the image of a peasant woman with a scythe being only the barest of hints.

In 1983, their third album “Construction Time Again” emerged with the cover art showing a man swinging a large hammer over his head while standing high on a mountainside, backed by an antiseptic mouthwash sky. It looked like something from a political propaganda poster, an idealised, romanticised view of the European working man. A few critics and fans were quick to spot something else – what if the scythe on the sleeve for “A Broken Frame” could also be interpreted as a sickle? What were they trying to tell us?

While Depeche Mode didn’t design their own sleeves, “Construction Time Again” wasn’t shy about the band’s left-leaning political ideas. It was an album I bought as a teenager and instantly fell in love with, because it expressed its ideas so starkly and simply, echoing my own emerging thoughts without clouding the messaging with doubts or ifs and buts. These days, some of it feels naive and the album has toppled in my estimations as a result – at its most preachy, there’s a thin line between the broad socialism they present on tracks like “Pipeline” (“Taking from the greedy, giving to the needy”) and “Shame” (“Do you ever get that feeling when the guilt begins to hurt/ seeing all the children wallowing in dirt”) and Michael Jackson at his most pious.

The key difference here, the artistically (rather than lyrically) revolutionary aspect, is that Depeche, influenced by the industrial music scene sprouting around them, introduced a digitally sampled crashing and clattering to the simple sentiments, not new in itself, but certainly a fresh idea in a pop context – its release date even beats ZTT’s debut record, The Art of Noise’s “Into Battle EP”, by some margin.

The record’s uneasy, irate mood was influenced by Martin Gore’s world opening up beyond the confines of South East Essex. Having travelled to Thailand and witnessed crippling poverty, then returning home again to comfort, he became struck by the concept of a world shrinking thanks to the availability of technology and air travel, but failing to ‘eradicate its problems’ despite the glaring obviousness of the disparity between wealth and poverty. The excuses of ignorance and television’s distancing effect could not longer be leant on if the problem was right there, literally in front of most of us, and also very literally begging and appealing to our better nature.

“Everything Counts” is so central to the album’s theme that it appears twice – once in full, at the end of Side One, then again as a brief, muted reprise at the end of Side Two, nudging us in the ribs gently. Its initial appearance is far from subtle. It begins with a grinding, panning, metallic effect, like the work of a panel beater echoing around a mountain valley, then adds large, cinematic, sombre notes and a wailing, unearthly Shawm noise created by a synthesiser. Within barely twenty seconds, the track has managed to enter into conflict with itself; modernity versus ancient art, progress against tradition.

28b. Yazoo - The Other Side Of Love (Mute)

 

An additional two weeks at number from w/e 18th December 1982

Here we go again, viewers. The Anti-Nowhere League's "For You" only found sufficient stamina to stay atop the indie charts for one week, leaving Yazoo to take back the throne over the Christmas period. 

Here's what was happening lower down the charts in those festive weeks which, lest we forget, also saw us gaining a national independently distributed number one.

Week One

29. Threats - Politicians And Ministers (Rondolet)

Peak position: 29

Rough-as-fuck Scottish punk which sounds as if it has more in common with American hardcore than a lot of their compatriots. "Politicians and Ministers" is relentless, punchy, and points towards a possible direction British punk could have opted for if everyone hadn't been too busy going on about how it wasn't dead. As things stood, however, this was to be their last recorded offering until 2001, at which point they returned to a level of fringe acclaim they didn't really receive in 1982. 

 

30. Laurel & Hardy - You're Nicked (Fashion)

Peak position: 30

The volume of reggae singles referring to police arrests or troubling encounters with The Fuzz in the early eighties tells a story six hundred newspaper headlines never could. The racist element of the police force, particularly in certain branches and areas, was acknowledged enough to make its way into mainstream comedy sketches, and most of the reggae artists belonged to communities where undignified and poorly evidenced arrests were part and parcel of daily life.

"You're Nicked" caused such a stir in 1982 that major labels became interested in the pair, and the follow-up single "Clunk Click" emerged on CBS as a result. That effort was a rather more establishment pleasing pean to the dangers of drink driving and failing to fasten seat belts, which still wasn't quite popular enough to turn them into major stars. Their dippy stage presentation and cheeky charisma remains fondly remembered by many, though. 

Week Two

18. Dead Kennedys - Halloween (Cherry Red)

Peak position: 3

Surprisingly conventional rant from the Kennedys here about the foolishness of Halloween - "Why oh why do we take Halloween so seriously as a piece of organised fun when we're wearing masks all year round?" they philosophise, while Roger Waters presumably nods enthusiastically and takes notes for a possible concept album.

Still, even if you're left with the impression that Jello Biafra probably went to parties with piles of anti-capitalism leaflets under his arm and was a bit of a buzzkill, "Halloween" has such a mean, snarling intent behind it that you're almost tempted to join in. 

Anyway, in 1982 in Britain barely anyone gave a fig about Halloween, so most of us probably had no idea why he was so het up about this topic. Those were the days. That's probably also why this track peaked in the indie charts at the less than seasonally appropriate period of Winter 1983.

23. Toy Dolls - Nelly The Elephant (Volume)

Peak position: 10

Oh mother. If you think this single is making a somewhat early appearance in 1982, you're only half-mistaken. "Nelly" was originally issued during this year and rapidly gathered steam as a cult novelty punk favourite, played on nighttime radio and beloved by those people who thought that children's novelty songs being thrashed around were a unique and funny concept.

Given that we'll eventually get another chance to consider this one in depth, let's hold fire for now and instead marvel at the sights and sounds of those Toy Dolls. 

24. Clint Eastwood & General Saint - Shame & Scandal In The Family (Greensleeves)

Peak position: 24

Family strife set to a bouyant reggae swing here, which in common with many of the breakout reggae tracks of the early eighties favours nods, winks, and a swing and lightness of touch over anger or deep dubbiness. 

Eastwood was a prominent performer during the early part of the decade, but his visibility weakened significantly in the following few years. 

25. Charlie Harper's Urban Dogs - New Barbarians EP (Fallout)

Peak position: 22

Why yes, it is that Charlie Harper (of UK Subs) on an extra-curricular mission. The Urban Dogs were apparently formed when the Subs began to regard certain minor club gigs as being beneath them, conflicting with Harper's desire to perform to small and sweaty audiences in legendary venues. They slowly evolved into a unit with a purpose of their own. 

Imagine early UK Subs only with a bit more of a whiff of sticky Heineken on a pub floor, and you're there. If anything, "New Barbarians" harks back to the prime punk era unapologetically. 

30. The Vibrators - Baby Baby (Anagram)

Peak position: 13

The Vibrators were always punk's slightly less credible also-rans, initially signing to Mickie Most's glitzy RAK label (more commonly the hangout for the likes of Hot Chocolate, Smokie and Mud). "Baby Baby" sees them wearing their old school rock and roll influences freely and unapologetically, like the pub rockers they were always close to being. 

Despite the fact that they were one of the first punk bands to be whisked off to a recording studio, their records seldom entered the national charts, and by the eighties they were firmly ensconced in the indie sector. "Baby Baby" sounds as if it could have been a possible minor hit in 1976, but 1982 shrugged its shoulders and didn't even allow them entry into the Indie Top Ten. 

The full charts can be found at the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Renee and Renato: "Save Your Love" (Hollywood)

This also peaked at number 5 in the indie chart during the same period. Its lower position in the indie charts can doubtless be explained away by the fact its fondest purchasers were more likely to be buying copies in Woolworths rather than Rough Trade and Volume, so we've had a very lucky escape here.