20. Pigbag - Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag (Y Records)

Number one for five weeks from 17 April 1982

Any keen student of the indie chart in the eighties will know that there were records which seemed to hang around forever, yo-yoing around the bottom end of the listings as if they didn’t have homes to go to. Two factors seemed to particularly trigger this phenomenon – hit singles being purchased by stragglers or new fans long after the song’s peak, and long-term dancefloor hits. Sometimes, particularly in the case of a future 1983 leviathan (which I can’t even believe I’m bothering to be secretive about) the two factors combined to an astonishingly potent degree.

After its debut in 1981, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” crawled up and down the indie chart, disappearing after pressing runs dried up then reemerging, beginning the process afresh, then evaporating into thin air. Its popularity appeared [citation needed!] to be largely driven by club play and word of mouth in its earliest days. It wasn’t generally heard on daytime radio and as a small boy I don’t recall hearing it at all until 1982, although my older teenage brothers already seemed familiar with it by the time it first emerged in the grown up charts.

The track feels taken for granted nowadays, and in some circles – certainly those of particular football fans – it’s become a party favourite, a carnival cracker, something to dig out when a goal is scored, a promotion is guaranteed, or just deployed at the right time when everyone is in the correct mood. I’ve seen the effect “Papa” has on audiences, and it’s immediately recognised and understood, having a galvanising effect and crossing most cultural divides.

In one respect, this is explicable enough. The central aspect of the record is a stupendous fanfare backed with the kind of funky rhythm section that everyone finds irresistible. The horns and the clappy backbeat beckon you towards the floor even if you’re one of life’s most apologetic wallflowers. It's the part everyone can whistle when asked, the aspect that pulls everyone towards the centre of the floor. 

15b. Anti-Nowhere League - "Streets Of London" (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 6th February 1982

This is where things get awkward. As Theatre of Hate dipped down to number two – possibly, I suspect, due to pressing plant or distribution issues – the Anti-Nowhere League managed to climb back up to the top of the charts again for another fortnight.

Rather than spending another 1,000 words or so pontificating on the significance of both the group and the song itself, let’s just take a look at what was occurring further down the charts, shall we?

In the first week of the League boomeranging back up to the top, Mari Wilson enters at 22 with “Beat The Beat”. Wilson’s distinctive beehive hairdo and retro-leaning girl pop stood out quite significantly in 1982, and as the year progressed her positions in the official charts grew ever more impressive. “Beat The Beat” would have to make do with a final placing of number 59 in the national charts and number 12 in the NME indie listings, but interest was blooming and she wouldn’t be held back forever.




Just beneath her at number 23 lay Zeitgeist with an urgent sounding post-punk cover of The Temptations “Ball Of Confusion”. It just about works, although the group’s unvarnished shoutiness and unpolished reading sometimes holds the track back rather than taking it to new and exciting places. Issued on the “Jamming” fanzine’s record label – remember that enormous independent publishing phenomenon, everyone? - it failed to climb higher up the chart.




A genuine curiosity is at number 28 in the form of Cheaters’ cover of “Spirit in the Sky”, way before anyone else got their mitts on it and revived it to greater success (whether that’s Doctor and the Medics or those Kumars). It takes the original and adds a punkish vocal rasp and a glam friendly punch and thud – which to be fair, the original was never a million miles away from to begin with.




In week two, UB40’s “I Won’t Close My Eyes” debuts at number 8 before eventually peaking at number 3. Acting as the lead single from their “UB44” album, “Close My Eyes” saw the group struggling to connect with the public and only reaching number 32 in the national charts – a thrilling prospect for the Theatre of Hates of this world, but terrible news for a group who only a couple of years prior to this were guaranteed top ten hits. The relative failure of their work at this point prompted a rethink, and their revenge on the hit parade would be swift.

2. UB40 - Don't Slow Down (DEP International)

 

Number One for one week on 30th May 1981

Note – This single was a double A-side with Don’t Let It Pass You By – the NME Charts (either deliberately or mistakenly) list it solely as “Don’t Slow Down”, so that’s the side I’ll focus on here.

When you’re having conversations with someone else about music, it’s always interesting to witness the assumptions that pop up; for example, until fairly recently I assumed everyone knew that UB40 were once an extremely credible band. I took it for granted that their backstory was so enormous that it hadn’t been forgotten, even beneath the crushing weight of oldies radio exposure their biggest hits get. Very often, though, people are astonished by the idea that they were ever anything more than a very commercial Breeze FM friendly act. Their childhood memories begin at “Red Red Wine” and go back no further.

That’s a strange mistake to make. UB40, as most people reading this almost certainly realise, had deeply humble, lo-fi underground beginnings. Starting off as a Birmingham live act, they signed to the independent label Graduate in 1980 and proceeded to issue a string of successful top ten hits which felt like reggae viewed through a grease-smeared post-punk lens. Titles like “The Earth Dies Screaming”, referencing a possible nuclear apocalypse, felt more targeted towards IPC journalists and John Peel than the national top ten, but somehow pushed their way through anyway.

This period is also significant in that it produced allegedly the first ever single on an indie label to go top ten – “King”. I’ve seen this fact bandied around often, but nonetheless I doubt it’s entirely true, or at the very least it depends on what your definition of ‘indie’ is. President Records were distributed by Lugton in the sixties (a company far away from the business of major labels) and got The Equals to number one, and Joe Meek’s Triumph Records earlier in that decade also scored a top ten hit in the form of Michael Cox’s “Angela Jones”. What I think people mean is that UB40 were the first to score a major hit single while an independent chart of some form also existed, which is a clear difference.

No matter; to begin with, UB40 were certainly operating on minuscule budgets. Their debut LP “Signing Off” was recorded in a bedsit in Birmingham, and contained a reproduction of an unemployment form on the cover. It was deemed a brave, brilliant and authentic record at the time, and found support among dopeheads, students, reggae fans, soulies and casual listeners alike. I heard the LP frequently in the bedroom I shared with my brothers growing up, and when I was old enough to eventually buy a copy for myself, I did. “Signing Off” is nothing like UB40 at their commercial peak – it’s far too skeletal and dour for that – but despite that, its sound and dominant themes were entirely right for the period. Like The Specials’ “Ghost Town”, its sulk sums up the mood of the early eighties. While it may have been more compressed, boxed in and less widescreen than that record, the disc and its packaging are equally tied to an era which promised little for those in the old industrial heartlands.

Following the success of that album, the group left Graduate Records – who survived without them for awhile but never found another act who caught the public imagination to the same extent - and formed their own label DEP International, with a view to issuing their own material and that of other reggae artists they admired. The first handful of DEP records were distributed by Spartan and, in common with their previous work, entered the indie charts as a result.