So here it is... Merry Christmas

 

This will be the last blog entry until the absolute tail end of December, so myself (and Wayne Hussey and Noddy Holder above) would like to wish you a Merry Christmas. Thanks for reading the blog and I hope our journey from 1983 through to the middle of 1986 has been a pleasurable one - we started by dining on Goth Rock and the final specks of meat on the Oi! carcass, and have finished on Goth Rock, not by design, but by sheer luck... and if you thought Wayne Hussey wasn't remotely Christmassy, you'd obviously forgotten about the Metal Gurus above. Serendipity is our friend this Yuletide. 

I'm hugely grateful for everyone who has stuck around reading this year - you've been a loyal audience with barely any sign of dropping away - but this is still a fairly niche, obscure blog and it could really use a lift. If you like it and want to share the joy on social media, or better still want to link back to it from your own site, I'd really appreciate it. I do this for pleasure rather than any attempt to build a profile, but nonetheless having an influx of new readers would definitely spur me on throughout 2026.

At this risk of sounding like I'm doing an Alan Partridge/ Noel Edmonds styled address, there have been a small number of people over the last year who haven't enjoyed this blog, but (to my relief) almost all of the criticisms were pre-empted by the FAQ when I launched. Of course, nobody reads FAQs, so it's worth reiterating the fact that this blog can never function as a fansite. If you're a particular fan of a band or artist being covered, there may be moments when it gets frustrating because it feels as if I'm stating the obvious or even moving towards cliches, but that's for the benefit of all the people out there (non-UK readers in particular) who may never have heard a note of their work and just need some basic scene-setting. Once we've got that out of the way, I try, to the best of my ability, to try and find something new to say. Of course, if your favourite group didn't ever hit the Indie Number One spot, then you're really stuck in the land of pith (this pains me sometimes as well; I'd like to have written more about Felt and The Fall in particular, but neither group ever reached the top spot in the NME rundown). 

Here's a thought, though - in 2026, why not start your own blog? It's a dying hobby, but in these challenging times the world needs more enthusiasm and passion, in whatever form it comes. Be the change you want to see and give us all a better year. I want more things to read! See you again soon.

80. The Mission - Serpent's Kiss (Chapter 22)

Three weeks at number one from 14th June 1986

During my final year of sixth form college, I developed a slight crush on a goth girl in the year below (Cliche alert - I realise this isn’t remotely uncommon. Almost every male friend my age has suffered a similar predicament, and almost every female goth has had to toss away unwanted Valentines). Shamefully, I can’t remember her name for certain – which indicates that she obviously didn’t work her way into my affections to an unhealthy degree – but I can still remember how studiedly and absolutely she embodied ‘the look’, even getting angry when she ‘caught some sun’ and freckled her nose at an outdoor gig, ruining her pale skin plan. I also loved the confident way she played up to her dorkiness rather than trying to hide it under self-conscious posturing. She seemed friendly, quietly funny and unbelievably cool in a way almost everyone else I knew wasn’t.

I thought I’d kept my admiration for her on the downlow, but obviously not, because one night outside the local nightclub one of my friends drunkenly blurted out “Oi Dave, it’s that goth girl you fancy!” while she was within earshot. Clearly my poker face needed work. After she split with her unbelievably lanky, long-faced and permanently weary looking boyfriend, who it seemed had been her other half since birth, she awkwardly initiated further conversations with me and gave the impression she might be interested.

Reader, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, it didn’t happen. I can’t remember the reasons, but her finding another suitor who was just more gothic than me was almost certainly the prime factor. I had something of a quiet aversion to the key things that made her world revolve, feigning interest whenever we spoke but probably never being able to successfully conceal my doubt. Some time before this, a friend or acquaintance gave me a C90 compilation tape of current goth sounds and I listened, trying to get to grips with it. By the thirtieth minute, I was bored shitless and realised I was never going to commit to a lifestyle that had so much dreary sludge as its soundtrack. 

Thanks to this blog, I’ve been thinking back to that sliding doors moment a lot lately, and wondering if maybe my friend did me – and goth in general – a disservice. He focused on the long, soporific aspects which leaned towards the seriously morbid and epic. While ploughing through the indie charts for this blog, I’ve been forced to remember that musically speaking, goth was actually a much broader genre than that, to the point of near-meaninglessness. Besides the punk originators (The Damned, Siouxsie And The Banshees) and their Batcave heirs, there were also groups who performed camp electronic nonsense (Alien Sex Fiend), arena-eyeing rock God goths (The Cult, Gene Loves Jezebel, *coughs* The Stone Roses) and also a bunch of groups I now think of as paisley bloused goths, adding loose-fitting hippydom to their sound (The Cure, The Bolshoi, All About Eve). These little sub-genres don’t necessarily always make sense or fit, and the groups I’ve mentioned tended to jump between them periodically, but they’ve helped me to make sense of a movement which stylistically sprawls in a number of directions.

This was perhaps demonstrated by Wayne Hussey and Andrew Eldritch's falling out while both were members of the Sisters of Mercy (which we’ve already covered in quite dramatic detail). One of the issues seemed to be that Eldritch had written new songs for the Sisters Of Mercy which were far too minimal for the rest of his group’s tastes, whereas Hussey’s were seen as too unusual. It’s not really clear how much of that eccentricity found its way into his subsequent group The Mission, but on the strength of their debut single “Serpent’s Kiss”, it would seem not much.

It starts predictably enough, filling your ears with dank guitar lines, wilted flowers and lyrics like “Ash on the carpet and dust on the mirror/ Chasing shadows and the dreaming comes clearer”, proving that Hussey had the poetry of his audience down pat. Where it suddenly shifts gear and shows its true colours – which aren’t entirely black – is in that zippy, celebratory chorus. “Screaming howl and the children play/ Serpents kiss for the words you pray” may be words which sound as if they need a reverberated steady backbeat and a gravelly vocal, but The Mission launch into them as if these child-bothering snakes are actually a good thing. It’s closer to Jim Morrison celebrating the dark arts with a forceful chorus than Bauhaus, shimmying and shaking its tight-trousered butt around the imagery rather than screaming about it.

Hussey, like Robert Smith, also gave the impression that taking the piss and even misleading the public was one of his motivations in life as well as trying to write great songs. When asked if he had “a type” when seeking out ladies, he responded with glee that his slogan could be “Wayne Hussey – he’s not fussy”. You can’t imagine Andrew Eldritch giving his game away so easily. The cheap and cheerful promo clip for “Serpent’s Kiss” is a thing of strange colour and joy too, filled with lipstick kisses from Uncle Wayne, while the group twirl multi-coloured umbrellas, and leap, lark and generally tit around in the country. Visually it has more in common with a Dukes of Stratosphear video than the rainy, rockist visuals which accompanied The Sisters “This Corrosion”.

79. The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Rough Trade)

One week at number one from 7th June 1986

“I'm not going to drag people down anymore. Everybody within this curious profession has to do their own thing, however obnoxious that may be. And nothing I can say is going to change that. Besides, I've too many enemies. It's quite distressing. It's a bit of a strain because one is welcome almost nowhere. I don't want to go to parties or go skiing with Spandau Ballet or anything but still it's become quite tiresome, this constant barrier of hate.” - Morrissey, Smash Hits, January 1985

“We're still at that stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning, they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'. So what can you do?" - Morrissey – NME, June 1986.

The Smiths opened 1985 with their signature single “How Soon Is Now?”, but it was a peculiar and somewhat understated year for them otherwise (certainly in singles chart terms). “Shakespeare’s Sister”, that odd stepchild of a single, arguably over-performed sales-wise, but “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” failed to reach the Top 40 at all, and despite its exquisite warmth, the return-to-form effort “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” didn’t push them back into the Top 20 either.

It’s impossible for us to guess at how Morrissey truly felt about his continued role as an antagonist and tormentor of the old New Romantics, although I suspect he privately enjoyed it; in other words, I’m reading the two quotes at the start of this entry as being so tongue in cheek that they’re in danger of disfiguring the side of his face. The Smiths were the kings of the IPC music press, adored by most of the groups in their royal orbit, and Morrissey was frequently overly generous with praise where his direct peers were concerned (unless you truly believe Raymonde, Easterhouse and Terry & Gerry were cruelly overlooked superstars at the time). The people he reserved his tongue-lashings for were the Proper Pop Stars – the beautiful boys and girls in Smash Hits who were unlikely to be backstage at a Smiths show. Slagging off Modern Romance and Duran Duran must have been a fairly risk-free endeavour, rather than making Morrissey the Larry David of rock.

What undoubtedly hurt Morrissey, however, was his status as a mere cult figure. It’s addressed on “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, and his continued complaints about the group’s fringe status in interviews are notable. There was never a hint of staged angst, nor frequently any clever wordplay, when he came to the subject of the group’s marginal status in interviews. Despite the success of the “Meat Is Murder” album, Morrissey was not one to ignore the importance or the cultural impact of the singles chart or daytime radio play. Why be Al Stewart when you could be Marc Bolan?

Or even – why be T Rex when you could be The Rolling Stones? The groundwork for “Bigmouth Strikes Again” was laid by Johnny Marr whose initial riff was inspired by “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” before the lyrics were handled by Morrissey. It’s the first single since “William, It Was Really Nothing” to have a significant spike to it, a brio and a hook which screams in your face. Morrissey plays the wounded victim, but this time it’s very clearly for comedic effect. In fact, the lines “Sweetness I was only joking when I said/ By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed” are almost too obvious, too try-hard – a protesting wail from an end-of-pier farce. The follow-up lines “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt/ As the flames rose to her Roman nose/ And her Walkman started to melt” are better, showing that however immediate “Bigmouth” wanted to be, he still had a keen sense of the absurd.

Behind him, Marr and the group play furiously. Marr’s guitar lines are an intricate, speedy rush as always, but it’s Mike Joyce who has one of the best moments on the record – the staccato rattling of his drums during the instrumental break sounding (unintentionally?) like the soundtrack to Billy Liar imagining himself machine-gunning another foe.

In fact, the whole damn thing is very Billy Liar-esque, Morrissey setting himself up as a comedic stooge rather than a wounded artiste – it suits him surprisingly well to be the self-parodying foil to the track as opposed to the unrecognised genius. The song itself, meanwhile, hammers and smashes in a way which almost recalls the height of glam rock.

78. We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Rules and Regulations (Vindaloo)

Number one for five weeks from 3rd May 1986

“Some people do think we’re stupid, but that’s quite understandable really, isn’t it? I can’t think why people would want to come and see us” – Vicky, Record Mirror, May 1986.

“I’ve got this theory that we’re actually providing employment, because if we can’t play our instruments very well, we have to employ other people, like orchestras, to come and do it. So in fact, it’s quite politically and ideologically sound not to be able to play very well.” – Mags, Record Mirror, February 1987

Those two quotes, taken nine months apart, probably say more about Fuzzbox (and their attitude to the world and the music business) than anything I could possibly throw at my keyboard for the next few hours. It’s no wonder some music journalists found them infuriating – it was the job of the eighties rock press to peddle the idea that music has importance in either a technical or “revolutionary” way; if a record isn’t competently or artfully performed, then it should be offending someone in its attempts to rebel (usually parents, the powers-that-be or “the straights”).

We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It (we’ll call them Fuzzbox after this point; they chose that abbreviated name for themselves eventually anyway) fitted the bill in theory. The “Rules And Regulations” EP was their debut release on Robert Lloyd’s Vindaloo Records, and lead track “XX Sex” was, beneath its chaotically fuzzy clatter, straightforwardly political. “XX sex sex gets ex-exploited” they chant, referencing page three girls and ranting “Cookery and hookery/ Exploit desolation and isolation”. If Huggy Bear had released that one in 1993, nobody would have questioned it – they sound similar enough, with only Vicky’s surprisingly clear and powerful post-punk vocals setting them apart (she's the only conventional musical talent evident on the track).

Title track “Rules and Regulations”, however, was the one with the home-made promo video which ended up picking up most of the airplay, and continued the usual punkish themes of a bleak pre-mapped journey through life, including workplace alienation, and the obviously feminist reference to a husband who “tied you down so you’re housebound”. It’s the ace on the EP, containing pounding drums without the use of metalwork, a central buzzing riff, and a chorus chant which isn’t a thousand miles away from Adam Ant, but taken as a whole, it clearly owes much more significant debts to The Slits and X Ray Spex.

When journalists saw the promotional photographs of Fuzzbox with brightly coloured, electrified hair and thickly made up faces, they must have already written their articles before interviewing the group or getting any quotes. It seemed a simple case; more punk rock, more anarchy, angry young women desperate to be heard in a society which hadn’t given them a voice…

And yet Fuzzbox usually didn’t want to be drawn. They were too busy having fun. They openly sniggered on stage and gurned in their videos. Their politics were left-leaning, perhaps not atypically for an eighties band from a major industrial city like Birmingham, but they clearly hadn’t pored over Sociology textbooks seeking to justify their views to journalists; Easterhouse they weren’t. They had a tendency to regard themselves as ridiculous as the world they inhabited, and were far enough away from the initial impact of punk rock to be able to use bright hair dye and super strength hairspray and seem cartoonish, rather than menaces to society.

And yet – there was something strangely exciting and confrontational about all this anyway. Four women who were self-confessed musical amateurs, making a noise like that and having FUN, not attempting to justify their mere existence to the rock press? The very thought seemed powerful enough to propel this EP up the official national charts so that it peaked just one space clear of the National Top 40 – and only two spaces away from Freddie Mercury’s latest single - despite being released on a tiny indie label set up by the lead singer of The Nightingales (it’s notable that when Robert Lloyd decided to finance this initial release, some friends assumed he was having a mental crisis).

77. New Order - Shellshock (Factory)

Four weeks at number one from 5th April 1986

After four successive indie number ones from bands who had never graced the top spot before, here we are, back with the big boys on terra firma, gazing with wonder at their luxurious Peter Savile sleeves. Right from the start of this blog, New Order have had a dominant presence, scoring the eighth number one with “Everything’s Gone Green” then afterwards failing to reach the top (with a non-import release) only once.

Both they and Depeche Mode have been the two constant presences throughout, and that throws us a distinct challenge; whereas Depeche grew up in public and reacted against their earliest material in some interesting – and very occasionally misguided – ways, New Order eventually became (and indeed remain) comparatively staid fellows on vinyl. Dressing up games and intense, friendly interviews with the media were not their thing; the group’s lack of tolerance for the latter was summed up neatly when Peter Hook roared with laughter at an innocent business question following the collapse of Factory, then said “You journalists. You think you know it all”.

What that leaves us with is the recorded evidence and its gentle, unforced evolution (yeah, I know - the fiends) and also the reaction from outside their fanbase, which tended to vary from bowled over (“Blue Monday”) to frankly indifferent – their previous single “Sub-Culture” failed to even get inside the National Top 60.

“Shellshock” marks something of an about-turn in their declining commercial performance. Possibly helped by its appearance in the “Pretty In Pink” soundtrack and the fact that it wasn’t available on any other album, the single returned them to the Sunday chart rundown with a number 28 peak. Perhaps mindful of the fact that they’d pushed the twitch and groove of modern club music into the background of their more recent singles, they collaborated with producer John Robie whose 1983 club hit “One More Shot” they had admired.

It subsequently becomes the basis for “Shellshock” without a single riff being wholly lifted; but its ghost is there in that jerky, propulsive beat, in the continued sense of peril and danger (though it eschews the broken glass noises, which perhaps felt as if they were tempting fate on the dancefloor). The cries of “One! More! Shot!” get replaced by the blare of “Shellshock!” and the track stammers into life, introducing the symphonic touches New Order were always compelled to use when they were at their most ambitious. Picked strings meet autumnal, world-weary melodies, thrashed guitars, a stuttering drum machine and one of their most powerful and purposeful choruses in a long time. While I prefer the “Substance” edit of the 12 inch for taking the correct decision to cut the most hesitant verse and leave it on the studio floor, ten minutes doesn’t necessarily feel too long for this track. It has enough drama and enough of a groove to hold its own.

What it also has throughout is a noticeable itchiness and irritation. New Order singles were very often led by Sumner sulking about life’s personal disappointments like a moping child – a tendency some critics were keen to mock. “Shellshock” positively bristles, though, with Sumner discovering he can actually growl. Listen to the almost Jon Bon Jovi-esque snarl of “Another day goes by and ALL I do is cry”, or the finger-stabbing delivery of “All I get from YOU is Shellshock”. This isn’t an insolent, murmured objection behind the privacy of a closed bedroom door. It’s the sound of a tin can being hurled down the street, a young adult man’s stomp loud enough to get the neighbour’s curtains twitching.