29. Anti-Nowhere League - For You (WXYZ)

One week at number one w/e 11 December 1982

If you’d taken me to one side years ago and told me I would spend 2024 writing thousands of words about The Anti-Nowhere League, talking about their relevance to the early eighties and the dying embers of British punk, I wouldn’t have believed… well no, actually I would have believed you. I probably would have replied “Oh, OK. And this would be for some niche blog I started, I suppose?”

Entries about the group are among the least-read on here so far, but ironically, that’s the inevitable price of writing about the movements of sales charts rather than the enduring influence or critical acclaim artists have. The Indie Chart may be seen as a safe ghetto for innovation, but in reality it was as susceptible to fleeting novelty, hype or shock tactics as any specialist chart – and just as Motley Crue and Limp Bizkit were cartoonish fratboys who burnt rock and roll down to its basic chemical property of loud, brash oafishness in the Rock Charts, ANL did the same for punk rock in 1982. Their schtick wasn’t “for everyone” back then, and it certainly isn’t now.

Despite this, for anyone who didn’t want to be troubled by politics, anarchy or evidence of the lead singer’s impeccable collection of reggae and krautrock records, to those who just enjoyed records that were loud and offensive, and also to impressionable teenage boys who were sorry they were in Junior School when punk broke, they filled a void. The word “edgelords” comes up time and time again on social media when I mention them, except ANL were being offensive contrarians before that insult even existed.

It's slightly surprising to discover that their fourth indie number one of 1982, and indeed the final new indie number one of the year, is probably the only genuinely surprising step outside their usual zone so far, and fittingly it seems to be a basic justification for their stance. “For You” isn’t even particularly punk rock; it’s an anthemic pub rock chugger which might have been heard in a Camden boozer circa 1975, only lyrically speaking the song speaks to the multitudes of fans most of those bands never had:

“We laugh… but no-one's laughing/ We kiss… and no-one cares/ So we shout… but no-one's listening/ So we live… like no-one dares” sings Animal, before launching into a chorus about the remains of punk rock before him, his own army of droogs: “For you/ Well I'll be your soldier/ For you/ I'll bury friends”.

As we’ve established, trying to get under the skin of The League is a fool’s errand, like trying to understand why the old biker in your local Railway Tavern is such a rude bastard. Nonetheless, “For You” is as close as we’re ever going to get to a ‘tell’. Unlike Crass, the group were never going to go on a political crusade for society’s marginalised, but they speak volumes about the mindset of the second wave punk audience here; it afforded a safe space in economically troubled, conservatively minded times, a club to make friends when the rest of society had written you off as an oddball or a failure. In that sense, it served the same purpose punk always did, it’s just that this group, for a whole host of reasons already explored, are an outlier and really don’t fit the modern critical overview of what punk was and should be. History is written by the winners and ANL were only the victors in one largely forgotten year at the arse end of everything.

23. Anti-Nowhere League - Woman (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 10th July 1982

In January 1981, during the long period of mourning that followed John Lennon’s assassination, Geffen scored another number one single from his “Double Fantasy” album. Beginning with the murmured lines “For the other half of the sky”, “Woman” wasn’t just a pean to Yoko Ono – although he clearly had her in mind – but women in general; the sacrifices they make, the nonsense they potentially tolerate.

For all its good intentions, “Woman” periodically bordered on the sickly and mawkish. My mother put forward her verdict plainly and simply: “It’s a good single, but God he had a nerve to criticise Paul McCartney for being sentimental”. She allowed him a pass, though, and in common with millions of others bought the “Double Fantasy” album, absorbing it while still shaken about the man’s death, then admitting its flaws and filing it away as a souvenir from a strange emotional period; the “Candle In The Wind” of the eighties, if you will.

I have no idea if, a year-and-a-half later, Anti Nowhere League’s “Woman” was partially inspired by the identically titled Lennon single or not, but it’s certainly an interesting coincidence. If Lennon’s single is part appreciation, part apology, The League take the opposite tack and focus on the delusion of romantic love and the dark avenues it can take couples down – although when I say “couples”, I should perhaps refer only to the men in the relationship; if John Lennon’s “Woman” is about women, then Anti-Nowhere League’s “Woman” is actually about the frustrations of men, and in many ways that’s probably the cleverest thing about it (it really doesn't get more sophisticated than this, trust me).

The song begins as a ham-fisted rock ballad, filled to the brim with cliches. “You came to me in a dream, I'm sure/ You gave your love, you gave much more to me/ Woman, will you marry me?” Animal sings after a series of other deliberately soapy cliches, before the group begin to rattle and roll to the repeating, gnashed line “Til death us do part”. From that point forward, the song finds its punk feet, kicking and screaming disappointed abuse such as “Yeah, you're sitting on your arse in your dirty clothes/ You're looking a mess, you're picking your nose” and “Your tits are big but your brains are small/ Sometimes I wonder you got any brains at all”.

It’s the classic set-up for the old school working man’s club gag in song form, “Take my wife, for example… no, really, please take her” extended from a few seconds to three minutes. I wasn’t particularly familiar with “Woman” until I needed to listen to it for the purposes of this blog, and first time out, I understood very well that the fluffy, silky first minute was purely a set-up for an inevitable descent into scattershot abuse; anything else at this stage of the group’s career wouldn’t have made any sense. You can’t travel from “I Hate People” to “I Love My Wife” within the space of a few months, even if doing that would arguably have been a stranger and therefore more radical move.

Feminists would doubtless want to point out the failings in the song and its expectations of relationships, arguing that by idealising romantic partners and putting them on pedestals we set ourselves up for disappointment, and you can't punish someone for failing to live up to the image you projected on to them. By doing do, they would thereby risking falling short of Melody Maker critic Carol Clerk’s Law of The League: “Take them seriously and the joke’s on you”. The group would probably also be thrilled by the outrage.

As a result, arguably the only question worth asking is whether the gag’s execution works or not, and it has to be said, it lacks any real sleight of hand – it nudges, winks and nods so heavily at the listener during the first minute that only an idiot would be surprised by what follows, and it eventually feels more like a bunch of rugby players screeching through some unresolved frustrations in the sports club bar. A lot of the lyrics are also surprisingly conservative, even in jest; criticising the state of a woman’s personal laundry feels more like the subject of a Fabreze advert than a second-wave punk band’s third single. Getting angry about the tidiness of your partner's clothes also has more in common with Gary Numan than Jello Biafra (there's a potentially libellous rumour about Numan and a groupie I won't repeat here. Do your own research, as they say). 

19. Anti-Nowhere League - I Hate People (WXYZ)

Three weeks at number one from 27th March 1982

“This just ain't the sort of music to lend itself to sensitive in-depth philosophical probings.” Gary Bushell, Sounds.
“It's so extreme, it's impossible to take offence. Take the League seriously and the joke's on you, mate.” Carol Clerk, Melody Maker.

You sense that music critics had a hard time being asked to pore over Anti Nowhere League’s work and were almost defensive about it. After all, their job is to write reviews which contain at least a few hundred words of imaginative and helpful observations for the modern music consumer. In the case of The League, though, you only needed to hear their first single and its B-side to get a fair impression of what the rest of their work was likely to be about – thunderous chords and an elephant footed rhythm section combined with cuss words and ridiculously extreme lyrical positions.

So it goes with “I Hate People”. A basic descending chord pattern introduces the song and sticks to it like a barnacle, used as the central hook for the bellowed chorus: “I hate people/ I hate the human race/ I hate people/ I hate your ugly face/ I hate people/ I hate your fucking mess/ I hate people/ They hate me”. It goes on to become what could be the soundtrack to a teenage workplace underling’s bad day, set to another misunderstanding in the post room or pathetic practical joke on the production line: “My mother thinks I am a jerk/ Because I hate my bleeding work/ Be like daddy he's sincere/ And don't be true because you're queer”.

Not for the first time since starting this blog, I’m reminded immediately of the Not The Nine O’Clock News song “Gob On You”, which satirised the arse end of British punk rock. “Gob on you/ cause you're far too old/ Gob on you cause your hands are cold/ Gob on you, you're a stupid old straight/ Gob gob gob gob hate hate hate hate” spat Mel Smith and Rowan Atkinson. Nobody could fault the team for attention to detail, but in retrospect you’ve got to wonder if they were missing the point – namely, that as music journalists had already freely noted, groups like The League hadn’t really entered the game for serious results to begin with. As punk’s initial light faded, it sometimes felt as if it had split into two factions; the hardcore anarchists who had serious grievances and misgivings and found punk to be a viable outlet for them, and those who just thrived on cartoonish chaos. By trying to parody British punk in the early eighties, comedians inevitably ended up landing slap bang inside the territory of those who weren’t taking themselves terribly seriously to begin with.

“I Hate People” would therefore be a bloody tough record to write about were it not for a strange and slightly worrying "creative decision" the band took in 2006. The release of Anti Nowhere League’s odds and sods compilation album “Pig Iron” saw the inclusion of a previously unreleased track entitled “The Day The World Turned Gay” which their previous label Captain Oi got cold feet about:

15. Anti Nowhere League - Streets of London (WXYZ)

 

Three weeks at number one from 9^th January 1982

There’s a sketch in the series “Big Train” which portrays Ralph McTell struggling to engage with an audience who only want to hear his hit “Streets of London”. Whenever he begins to play anything else, everyone gasps in astonishment at his audacity, and begins heckling furiously until he is forced to concede and play the song again. And again.  

It does a brilliant job of sending up the plight of talented songwriters who are mainly known for their one huge success – for make no mistake, McTell was (and is) damn good. He’s the closest Britain ever came to producing a Gordon Lightfoot styled folk singer, and at his very best his work intertwines beautiful storytelling with intricate finger-picked guitar lines. The actual B-side of “Streets Of London”, “Summer Lightning”, could have acted as a point of entry to anyone wanting to journey further into his catalogue, and the album that was plucked from (“Easy”) contains other material like “Maginot Waltz” whose unexpected lyrical conclusion acts as a stab to the heart. 

His slightly undeserved "one hit wonder" status very nearly didn’t happen for him at all – he didn’t regard “Streets of London” as a contender for either of his first two albums when he first penned it in the sixties, deeming the subject matter too depressing. The producer Gus Dudgeon persuaded him otherwise and got him to record it in simple acoustic form for his second album “Spiral Staircase”, issued on the independent Transatlantic Records in 1969. 

From there on, “Streets of London” began to slowly grow in popularity, becoming a track that other folk performers sang in pubs and clubs. A ripple effect was created in the process, elongating its life far beyond the usual lifespan of a track from an (at best) cultish folk album. 

Thanks to its burgeoning reputation, McTell finally released it as a single in a swollen, more intricately produced form on the Warner Brothers subsidiary Reprise in 1974, and it climbed to number two in the national charts early the following year. That version is disliked by some purists for its wintery choral embellishments which could be argued to treacle up the song and over-embellish the point; the unvarnished 1969 recording is the one most folkies would point you towards.

I have to be honest, the production – whether raw and authentic or luxurious and icy - has never been the central issue for me. As much as I love McTell’s voice and the sumptuous melodies, and even some of the observational aspects of the verses, the chorus is a slightly unnecessary slap in the face. We’re expected to believe that because homelessness and human suffering exists, all other emotional reactions to personal tragedies, depression or emptiness are null and void. “How can you tell me you’re lonely?” pleads McTell. “Very easily actually, Ralph”, the listener could be forgiven for replying. “My Mum died last month and my partner is being an unsympathetic arse. And no, I don’t think your idea of a tramp pointing session in Central London is going to make me feel better, thanks all the same.” 

The central philosophy to “Streets of London” is rather too abrupt and facile, the musical equivalent of your irritating work colleague sneering “First world problems” when you tell them your car didn’t start that morning, or perhaps even Bono’s Band Aid cry of “Tonight thank God its them instead of you” stretched to an entire song. Unlike McTell’s best work, it’s an unsurprising and simplistic narrative, and that’s probably why it did so well commercially. The mass market generally only tends to have time for folk music when it tilts heavily towards sentimentality. Bert Jansch, who performed on the 1974 version of the track, stated that unlike McTell's other work it had “no mystery”, which feels like a fair assessment. 

The public adored the song's simple, sharp message, though, and the track simply wouldn't fade from view, eventually becoming bashed about by so many honking buskers and amateur performers that it felt inescapable. Victoria Wood took aim at its ubiquity in the eighties, featuring it in a sketch about care homes, where every single example of live residential entertainment involved terrible musicians singing the song in an inappropriately cheery fashion. 

By the time enough wannabe Dylans got their plectrums around it, McTell’s gentle baritone had been replaced in the public’s consciousness with a street poet rasp – so by 1982, your average British provincial High Street might have featured two things; a busker straining his way through “Streets of London” outside WH Smith, harmonica strapped around his neck, while 100 yards further down, a group of young mohicaned town punks sat throwing crisps at each other outside a branch of Presto. That halfway point, within earshot of both the wannabe beatnik and the teenage Sid Vicious wannabes, is where the Anti Nowhere League come in (finally).