Volume 19 Side One - Tracks 1-5 - Inspiral Carpets, Carter USM, Blur, The Charlatans, Radiohead

Formats: CD/ Cassette
Year of Release: 1994

Volume 19 is a somewhat odd entry in the "Indie Top 20" canon, in that it's the first one where you get a sense that neither Tim Millington (the compiler) or Beechwood Music (the label) understood the direction alternative music was going in. It fails to introduce one new act who would even go on to achieve cult significance, never mind anything else. If you wanted to be charitable you could offer the space afforded to Radiohead as an example of the series being ahead of the curve, but the 1993 reissue of "Creep" really doesn't count. The group had already been signed to EMI for some time, had a hit in America, and released their debut album by this point.

That's not to say that this is a bad compilation, and certainly the front end of it is stuffed with all kinds of goodies. It's just that 1994 was the year of Britpop emerging as a force for either good or ill, depending on your point of view, and the first "Indie Top 20" LP of the year completely failed to grasp or understand the change in the prevailing winds. Even at the time, this seemed like an odd release, and a sign that perhaps the series wouldn't be with us for much longer.

1. Inspiral Carpets - Saturn 5 (Mute)

When the teacher asked the boys and girls in my class "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I never hesitated to answer. "Astronaut", I replied. Then again, so did the boy sat next to me, Neil. And the curly-haired pompous voiced little boy Michael, an absurdly tall only child who knew everything about space, much more than the rest of us, and even had more books than us on the subject, actually. (When I imagine Michael now, he's wearing tweed and smoking a pipe, and looks about 65. He's also constantly on social media putting other people straight). The rest of the boys all wanted to be astronauts too. None of us had an original career in our brains. But why should we have? What else would you have wanted to be?

"Well, who knows what the future might bring?" my teacher replied sceptically, but we all knew. The future was space. We'd all either be visiting there or living out there, commuting to the moon and Mars and back in home for tea. I drew the Saturn 5 spaceship obsessively in my art book, perfecting its outlines, dreaming that one day I would travel on such a thing.

"David, Saturn 5 doesn't look like that!" Michael objected just loudly enough that the teacher could hear. I always drew Saturn 5 to look much more futuristic than it really was. Looking at Google images now, I can see it's a fairly typical looking rocket, but I drew it wider and flatter looking, like some kind of elongated metal flatfish. Who put that idea in my head? Who knows? I was only six. Still though, when I imagine "Saturn 5" now, I imagine my doodled representation of it rather than the rocket as it actually looked.

At that point in time, there were songs about the future and space on the radio, and they all sounded metallic, chromatic and faintly foreboding. Synthesisers and drum machines were usually at the forefront. We had all our eyes on the horizon towards a jet pack future. Fast forward to 1994, and I'm trying to become an adult, and suddenly The Inspiral Carpets were writing songs about the very spaceship that had fascinated me as a small boy. The Inspiral Carpets. A band with squeaky sixties electric organs and decidedly retro leanings. Being excited about the future had become a thing of the past, a fond memory in itself. Futurism was now nostalgia. "Eee, do you remember the days when we all thought the near future would be a lot more technologically advanced than it's turned out to be?"

"There's a popular misconception, says we haven't seen anything yet" sings Tom Hingley on this single, and it's clear that while there's a simple pop bounciness to it, it's infused with the feeling that the future we all dreamed for ourselves never quite materialised. "Monochrome TV, all the things that you ever represented to me/ take me once more, take me to heaven again".

I don't want to overanalyse "Saturn 5" too much. It is, at its heart, a very simple indie pop single, and I bet most people are able to appreciate it as such. By talking about it in such a tone, I run the risk of making myself sound ridiculous. When the group's brilliant drummer Craig Gill died last year, an online campaign was set up to get it back in the charts again, which I can only imagine was because it was seen as being one of the group's most accessible and uplifting songs ("This Is How It Feels" would have felt horribly inappropriate). It re-entered the Top 50, spending one week at number 48 in sympathy.

Trouble is, when others hear "Saturn 5" I think they just hear a sixties obsessed group of Oldham lads singing an uplifting Monkees-esque pop song about outer space. Fair enough, as that's undoubtedly correct. But I don't hear that. I hear something a bit hollow, something that at its heart feels that wondrous human achievements are a thing of the past, and from now on the biggest thing the human race can hope for is keep what we've got as intact as possible. From this point forth, if we're going to sing about a future in outer space we'll have two choices open to us - turn the vocoders and doomy synth pre-sets on ironically, or pound on Jetsons electric organs while singing "Woo-hoo-hoo" backing vocals.

"Saturn 5", then. It's not as depressing as "This Is How It Feels", but for some reason it does make me feel a hell of a lot more despondent.

It reached number twenty on its debut release in 1994, ensuring the group had a lifespan far beyond the baggy years, though regrettably "Devil Hopping" would turn out to be their last album.



2. Carter USM - Glam Rock Cops (Chrysalis)

Carter's fortunes, meanwhile, continued to decline. "Glam Rock Cops" is probably one of the duo's most recognised and appreciated singles, but was in itself a callback to former glories. The leaden glam rock beat pinned to the foundations of this single sounded strangely similar to the one used on "Bloodsport For All", one of their big breakthrough moments.

Lyrically, the track veers all over the road from the personal to the political, talking about South London street muggings to the group's own strange role in the music business. "You took it all from me/ My cheque book, my wallet/ my pride and dignity" rants Jim Bob one minute, before later observing "They put me in the spotlight, tied me to the stage/ the only thing I got right was to lie about my age".  So if there's a key theme running through the single at all, dignity seems to be it. Undignified street robberies, a government mugging the public by taking more public services away from them, and a possible confession that Jim Bob and Fruitbat were starting to feel a bit irrelevant as thirty-something pop stars. It's tied together very loosely as an argument about how doomed authentic political commentary in rock music is (or at least, I think that's the the common strand they're trying to wrap everything up with). Nobody's listening because nobody cares, and nobody cares because nobody else is listening anyway. It feels a tiny bit clumsy, though, and once again I find myself wishing the group had left themselves out of the argument.

Still, "Glam Rock Cops" is probably the last single in their canon to really sound like a possible hit, having a demanding keyboard clarion call and a defiant stride to its chorus, and a solid trucker's beat behind it. And it was indeed their last top thirty hit, reaching number 24. Times were changing, and Carter would have no real part to play in the new media vision.



3. Blur - Sunday Sunday (Food/ EMI)

And here the new boys are, bang on cue. The trouble is, "Sunday Sunday" is frequently taken at face value as some kind of Jamie Oliver styled roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding knees-up. The printed subtitle the track was given perhaps should have been underlined in red biro: "Legislated nostalgia - to force a body of people to have memories they do not actually possess".

As a single in its own right, "Sunday Sunday" isn't one of Blur's finest. It's an oompah ridden frolic and skip through an imaginary English Sunday landscape, doffing its cap to the ladies as it passes. As a statement, on the other hand, it's a very stinging pisstake, and worryingly prophetic in the way it highlights the ridiculous lengths mainstream British society (or perhaps more accurately, the media) will go to to glamourise and falsify its traditions, past and role in the world. "You meet an old soldier and talk of the past" sings Albarn proudly "He fought for us in two world wars/ And says the England he knew is no more". Remind you of anything you've read recently?

Having Blur rub up against Carter USM on this compilation starkly highlights the differing approach to politics and social commentary the old indie guard and the new Britpop heroes had. The scruffy, glamour-free authentic bunch of old took the angle of "Everything is wrong, and we're going to tell you exactly why with some witty rhyming couplets". Blur and their ilk took a more subtle approach, and you could argue that it was so subtle it went straight over the heads of at least half their  audience (you shouldn't doubt the fact that plenty of people in Blur's home county of Essex did take "Sunday Sunday" very literally, because I had petty arguments with them about it).

Is that irresponsible? Were Blur having their cake and eating it, appealing to future UKIP supporters and knowing students in the same breath? While it certainly didn't hurt them commercially in the long run, you can only consider their approach irresponsible if you also level that charge at every art-school band from the early sixties onwards (including The Beatles), most of whom also had their moments of being less than opaque and choosing to weave interesting narratives rather than issue dictums. For my taste, "Sunday Sunday" is a lot more cunning, biting and subversive than "Glam Rock Cops", even if it's not a Blur track I return to very often.

(Incidentally, Andy Partridge of XTC was the initial producer for "Modern Life Is Rubbish", and I've often wondered whether the Colin Moulding penned "Washaway" was an inspiration for "Sunday Sunday". It takes a very similar lyrical tack).



4. The Charlatans - Can't Get Out Of Bed (Beggars Banquet)

The Charlatans had been absent from the "Indie Top 20" series for some time by this point, last being seen on Volume 12 with "Happen To Die". I suspect that Beechwood felt that the group were rapidly becoming irrelevant, and didn't feel the need to give them space during their "wilderness years" (these things are relative, though - The Charlatans still remained reasonably popular during their post-baggy/ pre-Britpop slump years).

Of all the groups to adapt to changing styles, The Charlatans possibly had the easiest ride, and emerged more popular than ever. There always was a swaggering mod groove to their most popular singles, and an identifiable attitude. "Can't Get Out Of Bed" emphasises this, having a beery, pounding Faces styled groove at its foundations. Gone were the old-school Charlatans rhumba rhythms, and in their place was music to thrust your hips to.

To my ears, this is less interesting than "Then" or "Over-Rising", killing off any atmosphere or curious psychedelia for a bit of a stomp down the Marquee. Still, it saved the band's bacon, and ensured they survived as a force where most other groups of their era fell.



5. Radiohead - Creep (Parlophone)

I'm almost tempted to pass on this one. "Creep" has become such an iconic single now, and Radiohead such a colossus of a band, that attempting to pass any kind of pithy comment on it or them is doomed to failure. For a start, it's a huge red herring in the group's catalogue, a piece of lovelorn angst penned by a very young Thom Yorke about a woman he went to university with. No wonder he's faintly embarrassed by it now. Everything I've written along those lines is kept well away from public view (on the down side, nothing I wrote back then set me up for a long creative career).

Also, while Radiohead's reputation as being one of the era's most innovative and forward-thinking groups is seldom questioned, "Creep" did beg and borrow as shamelessly as Elastica. Leaning on elements of The Hollies "The Air That I Breathe" so much that the group were later forced to credit (and reward) that track's authors Hammond and Hazlewood, it's not a work of enormous originality. Even the clattering guitar lines were later revealed to be a studio accident.

What "Creep" did do, however, was provide an anthem for awkward youths and misfits everywhere. While the point may be skated around now, there's no doubt that it sold in the US to huge volumes of grunge kids, leading many of us (me included) to suspect that the group were no more than a passing angsty storm. Most of Radiohead's singles from this period were contorted, irritated balls of disgust, recalling Howard Devoto at his most direct as well as the likes of Cobain at their most incendiary. Only the US mix of "Stop Whispering", with its scaling, epic arrangement, pointed towards something more intricate, developed and astonishing around the corner.

"Creep" does serve its purpose bloody well, however - listening back to it now, trying to think about the first time I heard it, I feel just as uncomfortable as I did then. Unlike most of Radiohead's other material, it's piercingly direct. Yorke was a decidedly awkward looking rock star in 1993, and you felt and believed every word of the track primarily because he was delivering it. It also acted as a necessary development for the group. Prior to "Creep", Yorke appeared in press photos looking defensive and out of place, like a sulky, scolded geek. By the time it was released, he was regarded in a different light, and his role as a thwarted outsider rock star emerged (let's stop short of using the word "tortured" shall we, or I'll really have to jump out of the window in shame).

Problematically, I later ended up meeting a friend of the woman the track was directed at, and got to hear about the basis for the song - since then, I've never been able to listen to it without it being reminded of a series of adolescent soap opera anecdotes. Still, erasing those thought processes from my brain as best I can, it's hard to hear "Creep" as being anything other than the ultimate loser's anthem. The early nineties weren't short of those, but this towered above them all with an enormous, weighty crown on its head.

Indie Top 20 Volume 18 Side One - Blur, Bjork, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins, Carter USM

Formats: CD/ Double Vinyl/ Cassette
Year of Release: 1993

This volume is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the last ever "Indie Top 20" LP to be released on vinyl or cassette; or at least, so far as I can ascertain (if anyone knows better, please drop me a line). By the end of 1993, vinyl's days were considered to be numbered, and while the format limped on for a couple more years, the scarcity of original vinyl copies of albums like Pulp's "Different Class" or Blur's "Great Escape" will tell you how well they sold. "Indie Top 20" albums were never chart hits to the same extent as those records, and it's doubtful that the vinyl editions of the LP were even breaking the 1,000 units mark anymore. Beechwood can't be blamed for dumping the format at this point (and as for cassettes, they were becoming almost as unloved, and you couldn't listen to a double-play Indie Top 20 tape in a standard Walkman without the music slowing down with the drag of the compilation's weight anyway).

Secondly, the sleevenotes for this volume announce a huge change to the way the LPs were compiled in a passing fashion, almost in the hope their regular buyers won't notice. "Welcome to volume 18 of this series," they begin confidently, "where you'll find the likes of Elastica, Salad and Delicious Monster rub shoulders with the Modes, Bjorks, Pumpkins and Blurs of this maverick indie world. Let's face it, who gives a toss which label or distributor they release their records, so long as the emphasis is on damn good music?" This is a very interesting, "oh come on, get over it lads!" way of announcing a huge shift away from the founding principle of the series.

I do get how this happened. The situation with the indie charts at this point was rather ridiculous, with all kinds of "boutique" labels cropping up which were owned outright by major labels, and were often based in some dark and messy corner of their corporate tower block. Dedicated was a subsidiary of RCA, and regularly popped up in the indie charts. Virgin owned Hut (though in their defence, had a very hands-off approach, and allowed Hut to put out some really interesting and daring music). And Island Red was waiting in the wings, a label started by Island Records which just changed the corporate logo's colour and had their acts distributed independently so as to leap into the indie chart, where other signings such as Pulp or U2 were prohibited (no points whatsoever to Island for effort with their presentation, then, though you could argue they were rather more honest).

There's another side to this argument too, though. Chet and Bee's father Clive Selwood had very recently whined to the NME about the fact that his "Peel Sessions" records on Strange Fruit had been disqualified from the indie charts, purely because he had moved the company over to a new distributor. His voice was heard amongst a chorus of other elders in the industry complaining about the absence of a meaningful "alternative" chart where all their hip and happening bands could hang out with the likes of Huggy Bear and Aphex Twin. An alternative chart which, obviously, the BPI would have more oversight and control over, potentially leaving small bedroom labels without any media breakthrough moments, and maybe allowing groups like The Big Dish or Texas chart entries (possibly an exaggeration, possibly not - who knows what they envisaged?)

Both Selwood and his naysayers had relevant gripes, but the only sensible conclusion you can draw from this brouhaha - certainly in less than 10,000 words - is that "indie" had slowly become a victim of its own success. The majors had found a way of gatecrashing the party, and nothing would ever quite be the same again. And as for the "Indie Top 20" series, what it had set out to be, an honest guide to critically acclaimed but seldom heard music in the indie charts, it no longer was. This really marks the point that I saw the writing on the wall. If the "Indie Top 20" series had become a selection of all the biggest and best alternative music out there, then what made it different to the various leftfield compilation LPs the majors were sticking out? That's a question we may find ourselves referring back to more and more as we enter the twilight years of the series.

1. Blur - Chemical World (Food/ EMI)

And straight off the bat, here's EMI's first appearance on an "Indie Top 20" LP. It certainly wasn't Food Record's first showing, though - that occurred back on Volume Two in the days when it was a wholly independent label.

It's also Blur's first appearance, for obvious reasons, and it's tough to briefly summarise their career so far. Initially they were considered suspect by many critics and "indie kids", a group without "proper" indie credentials and an A&R man's wet dream. Good looking and confident, their earliest singles actually still stand up as marvellous slices of alternative pop. "There's No Other Way" crashlanded into the UK Top Ten unapologetically, and the band's energetic and cocksure live performances and charismatic photo shoots ensured that they were never going to be mistaken for another Chapterhouse or Moose. Damon Albarn's slightly tragic Frank and Walters haircut may have been a distinct minus point in their early days, but beyond that, they could barely put a foot wrong in terms of either sound or image. As the NME went to the trouble of pointing out, Blur were the indie band your average suited city commuter thought it was OK to like.

Then, following the success of their debut LP "Leisure", they returned with the new single "Popscene", a snarling three-minute outing which sounded nothing like their previous more psychedelically inclined moments, and instead resembled an early Teardrop Explodes single on amphetamines. It sounded fantastic, but landed at a time when the British record buying public were generally not interested in homegrown alternative sounds, and has subsequently been largely forgotten about outside of their fanbase (even by the band, who seem keen to disown it).

A long gap followed while the group developed their second LP "Modern Life Is Rubbish", which was supposed to have been produced by Andy Partridge of XTC - what I wouldn't give to hear a complete version of that LP - but he was given the heave-ho and replaced by Stephen Street for the final release. The band returned suited and booted in Mod gear posing with some dogs in the British music press, and without us fully realising it at the time, the future had arrived.

If "For Tomorrow", the first single off "Modern Life", sounded like a classic sixties single which had somehow been beamed into 1993 by mistake, "Chemical World" was greeted with brickbats from some quarters for "sounding like a rip-off of Suede". These criticisms have largely been forgotten now, but you can hear the basis for them - the swagger, camp vocalisations and sharp, angular guitar riffs do bear a faint resemblance to "Animal Nitrate" or "Metal Mickey". But besides those, chiming Beatlesy riffs are evident, a slightly Move-esque chorus, and even very faint traces of early Adam Ant in some of the overly pronounced  punkish cock-er-nee vocal inflections. The fact that music critics homed in on the one current and vogueish aspect to the sound highlighted Blur's overall problem - people still weren't convinced about their comeback chances and were treating them as yesterday's men and major label chancers.

In fairness, "Chemical World" has never been my favourite Blur single. "For Tomorrow" is a thing of optimism and beauty and staggeringly confident songwriting, whereas "Chemical World" feels cheaper and a bit more stilted and less effortless somehow, almost as if there's another aspect of the chorus they mislaid somewhere along the way. Still, it was strong enough to make minor commercial headway, and the group fell off the "at risk" register.



2. Bjork - Venus As A Boy (One Little Indian)

Bjork's journey from quirky cult indie singer in The Sugarcubes to coffee table "dance diva" felt incredibly unlikely at the time, though it's perfectly possible to see the joins if you look hard enough. From the funky impact of "Hit" to her work with 808 State to The Sugarcubes remix project, there was clear evidence that the idea of working with guitar-based groups making a new wave and post-punk inspired sound was appealing to her less and less.

Debut single "Human Behaviour" was a rattling, organic sounding single which crept into the lower reaches of the Top 40, whereas "Venus As A Boy" sounds exotic and bewitching whilst also channeling ideas found in the romantic frilliness of old torch songs. When Mike Flowers Pops covered this a couple of years later, it sounded more convincing as an easy listening standard than a lot of their other efforts.

Sadly, while Bjork could already be found in magazines like "The Face" looking amazing in photoshoots, and was developing a striking visual identity and an emerging mainstream presence, this and "Human Behaviour" barely scratched the consciousness of your average Woolworths shopper. "Venus As A Boy" bettered the chart presence of its predecessor by managing one week in the Top 30 at number 29, before quickly falling out of view again. Her album "Debut" had already been released by the time this single emerged, and had confidently entered the album charts at number three before immediately exiting the Top Ten the following week - Bjork had all the hallmarks of a cult artist appealing to a small but dedicated fanbase buying her product in the early weeks of its release.

All that would change thanks to two developments - firstly, "Debut" was a slow-burner of an LP which recovered its footing and began to hang around the top thirty for weeks on end, slowly accumulating sales throughout the summer of 1993 by word-of-mouth appeal. The release of her frankly startling collaboration with David Arnold, "Play Dead", also nudged the casual record buying public towards the LP, despite the fact that at first "Play Dead" wasn't even included in the tracklisting. Following that, Bjork became a singer that audiences far beyond indie kids and Face readers became aware of, an unusual and mainstream icon, known enough to be lampooned on episodes of "Spitting Image" singing along to Fax machines. Naturally, Bjork was the first person to point out that as someone who had previously played along with machines in various experimental combos, the "Spitting Image" sketch could hardly be considered satire but a kind of factual presentation of her inclinations.



(I'm not being allowed to embed the official video here, for some reason - if you want to see it, follow this link). 

3. Depeche Mode - Condemnation (Paris Mix) (Mute)

When writing about Depeche Mode singles from this period, it's important to remind yourself that they were all written by Martin Gore, and Dave Gahan had absolutely no hand in their construction at all. I say this for the simple reason that most of "Songs of Faith and Devotion" sounds almost uncomfortably personal, as if written from the perspective of an individual having a mental collapse or life crisis. Riddled with tales of temptation, guilt and suffering, it frequently sounds as if you're listening into a group counselling session organised by a Deep South church. What makes the LP compelling often isn't the craft of the songwriting - which was the case with the fantastic triad of "Black Celebration", "Music For The Masses" and "Violator", albums every home should have copies of - but the rawness of it all.

"Condemnation" is possibly the most uncomfortable moment of them all, sticking to a mournful southern blues structure, gospel vocals and Gahan pleading with the listener to understand his point of view so much that his voice actually cracks under the strain. "If you see PURITY as immaturity/ I don't sympathise" he spits. "If for kindness you substitute blindness/ please open your eyes". Even now, it's a faintly uncomfortable listen, a single which - and I hate to point it out - would undoubtedly have been highlighted as a key Depeche Mode moment had Gahan actually died from his drugs overdose.

As it stands, it's an unlikely moment in their singles catalogue, not really a very obvious 45 (despite its top ten placing) and - thank God - something which has not been tainted with a great deal of significance since. It sounds tortured and full of the stings of open wounds and vinegar, and the group would never really seem this anguished again. This guilty, neurotic and brooding, yes. Anguished, no.

Interestingly, the official video for this is nowhere to be found on YouTube.



4. Smashing Pumpkins - Today (Hut)

From Depeche Mode's angst to the Smashing Pumpkins with their cheeriest, happiest faces on. Whatever next? "Today" is the Smashing Pumpkins single even the band's haters (like me) have to grudgingly admit is a fine song, beginning with the pinging summer sunshine ice-cream van guitar intro and then thrashing around in a joyous, messy swamp of distorted pop sounds. The video picks up on the dominant mood of the sounds and utilises them brilliantly in the accompanying promo.

So popular was "Today" with alternative audiences at the time that Levi's Jeans wanted to use it in one of their commercials. The band refused, and the brand reverted to plan B and got some ageing session men in to record something similar. The group named themselves Stiltskin for the purposes of their record "Inside", and shot to number one, a position Smashing Pumpkins would never occupy in the British singles charts. There are those who mark Stiltskin's success as being "the death of grunge", the moment when the industry decided it could co-opt the sounds and imagery of the movement for commercial gain and plaid shirts could begin to be found in Marks and Spencers. I couldn't possibly comment.



5. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Lean On Me I Won't Fall Over (Chrysalis)

As the "Indie Top 20" series had now adopted a more inclusive approach, any bands who used to be on indie labels but were now on majors were welcomed back into the fold, and that included our old chums Jim Bob and Fruitbat here.

Carter USM were one of the most bafflingly successful groups of the early nineties, and their debut major label release "1992: The Love Album" shot to number one and spawned the peppy top ten hit "The Only Living Boy In New Cross". The band went from being cult indie sensations to proper pop stars (if rather geriatric ones by the standards of the time) and were hounded by tabloid press journalists looking for scoops on their private lives, and fan mail from troubled youths looking for advice and guidance.

"Lean On Me" takes the latter problem and turns it into a song, and it's a subject matter which would find less identification with the general public than their previous musings. It focuses its attention on the desperately troubled missives the pair were receiving in their mailbag, reflecting on suicide, criminality, and substance abuse. Essentially, it's like Eminem's "Stan" way before that moment, but instead of having a clear narrative it's unfocussed, guilty and disturbed sounding, a loose-fitting stream-of-consciousness rant about the people who had chosen to regard the unlikely figures of Jim Bob and Fruitbat as being personal saviours. Suffice to say, it's not a topic the public or even Carter fans easily found a way into, and while the pair sound sufficiently agitated and disturbed, a creeping bit of self-pity also slips into this song. "Why are these people bothering US?" seems to be the subtext, and while that's a perfectly valid question - there were surely many more professional people out there for dealing with personal problems - it's hard not to hear it as a gripe as well.   The pair are observing this chaos from the relative luxury of fame, and whatever their intentions behind the track, it sounds awkward. What could have passed as social commentary in 1991 sounds uncomfortably like a privileged complaint in 1993.

The song itself pales in comparison to their previous singles as well, and is a big, roaring mosh of a tune anchored by a slightly hooky but not particularly interesting riff. This really marked the beginning of a slow and steady demise for the group commercially, although they would release far better singles than this one before calling it a day.

Again, no official video on YouTube.

Indie Top 20 Vol 11 - Side One - Carter USM, My Jealous God, Bridewell Taxis, New FADS, Flowered Up

Format: Double LP/ Cassette/ CD
Year of Release: 1991

Volume 11 is a seriously odd compilation, consisting largely of up-and-coming bands who never quite arrived at their intended destinations and lesser-remembered, mid-ranking tracks by known names.

"Indie Top 20" as a series did occasionally put out LPs where the hit-to-miss ratio leant more towards "miss" than usual, and it often seems to be for a mix of reasons. For starters, one of the jobs of the series was to introduce us to new talent in the hope that these acts would at the very least become cult heroes. Their tracks would sit on the LPs alongside press darlings and established indie acts. Overall, the series usually did an uncanny job of getting a tricky balance right, but when trends were changing or the tide was going out against alternative music, they sometimes responded in a very confused fashion.

Volume 11, then, seems to have been released on the assumption that indie-dance would remain big news throughout the whole of 1991, when in reality people were starting to turn their backs and move on. This wasn't an unreasonable response on Beechwood Music's part, and they were far from alone in getting things wrong. The IPC music press also took punts on all manner of groups using shuffling beats and funky rhythms who failed to make any real headway, to the extent that readers wrote into their letters pages to openly mock them. Every movement has its crunch point when almost all the vaguely relevant acts get snapped up, and that's usually the moment it also all turns sour.

To understand how all parties managed to get it so particularly wrong, you have to remember that the timelines for baggy were unexpectedly short (by my reckoning at least) rivalling late sixties psychedelia for overground brevity. It rose into the mainstream in 1989 and had largely dipped back under again by the end of '91, causing many major labels to check the contracts of all the bands with wah-wah pedals and organs they'd only recently signed up. On a personal level, this was hugely frustrating for me. Not only was I managing to sneak inside alternative nightclubs just as the music was changing from an exciting mix of danceable sounds back into dreary rock orthodoxy, but I had local friends and friends-of-friends in indie-dance bands who were the toast of the regional press and had A&R interest one minute, then were suddenly abandoned by everyone the next (and you have to remember that bands Down South were much slower to jump on the Groovy Train). I can clearly remember being told enthusiastically "You'll love this new local band My Life Story! They sound a lot like James!" Jake Shillingford would obviously move house, look for new musicians in a new location, and have better luck later on in the decade. Only those willing to reinvent themselves would live to fight new battles another day.

I got to witness the harsh luck and unfairness that could befall perfectly good bands at a very young age. A number of strong demos by promising bands were washed out to sea on the incoming tide of shoegazing and grunge, and there's probably a perfectly respectable series of rarities compilations somebody could squeeze out of the scene if they were so minded. There was a sense - on my part at least - that the party had ended before its natural moment.

Regardless of this, Volume 11 was also a landmark LP for two other reasons - it was the last to feature the familiar vertical Indie Top 20 logo along the left-hand side of the sleeve. It was also the last to be compiled by Chet and Bee. Whether that was because Volume 11 had a lower strike rate than other LPs and they felt it was now time to hand the reigns over to someone else, or for other reasons, I know not.

That said, the differing range of styles on offer between Volume 11 and 12 isn't as sharp or as notable as you'd expect, and a number of acts managed to cling on a while longer - but the times they were a-changin, and a-changin fast.

Don't let what I've said above put you off reading about Volume 11, though. There's some very good, and some highly unusual stuff on offer here, even if some of it is so completely obscure that it does look as if I'm going to have to do some vinyl rips for you all again for the first time since Volume 3. Grrr.

1. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere (Rough Trade)

"Glorious, energetic, witty guys, who happen to write great tunes with terrific lyrics. Watch them explode in '91" - Jonathan King, The Sun.

The quote above says it all. While I don't remember Carter responding to their recommendation in the Soaraway Sun with quite the same level of indignation that Cabbage did a few weeks ago, it was indicative that by this point, they were no longer those two funny shouty men with a drum machine from the London pub circuit. They were a serious proposition.

Even with Jonathan King's recommendation, though, I suspect that a few of us (me included) couldn't quite believe that Carter would ever be more than a cult band. They neither looked or sounded the part, had a noticeable disrespect for the mainstream, wrote harsh lyrical observations on all number of awkward topics, and quite frankly weren't an easy sell. But rise up they did, signing to Chrysalis Records, releasing a number one LP, rugby tackling Philip Schofield live on national television, inspiring outraged tabloid newspaper headlines, many reeking of bullshit (headlines about their secret South London "swanky pads" turned out to be false, as if anybody hadn't guessed that in the first place) and... essentially, living a life with all the benefits and trappings of pop stardom. That this has become largely forgotten by the media in the years since means I almost feel as if I'm spinning younger or non-UK readers a ridiculous yarn. Indeed, my Canadian wife struggles to believe me when I try to emphasise how big Carter were for a brief period, which is probably why I seem so defensive now. It's become a habit.

"Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" was not their breakthrough single, however, and is actually probably one of the most uncommercial releases of their indie label period. Not only does the entire song seem to hang on a very doomy, dramatic and gothic five-note keyboard riff, it's also about alcoholism, attacking the misleading advertising of the alcohol industry in the process.

You don't need me to tell you that this isn't very rock and roll. While I could point to any number of examples of rock and popular music embracing and celebrating the allure of the alcoholic beverage - right down to Rolf Harris's "Nick Teen and Al K. Hall", for God's sake - very, very few songs have been released underlining the pitfalls and dangers, highlighting the vomit and the sleaze underlying the Martini cocktail lifestyle. "Try agrophobic, schizophrenic, paranoid attacks of panic!" snarls Jim Bob, "Or epileptic fits of laughter 25 million mornings after!"

While the track never quite set indie club dancefloors alight in the way "Bloodsport For All" or "Sheriff Fatman" managed, it apparently caused numerous recovering alcoholics to write to the pair thanking them for the song, with Jim Bob recently claiming that it was responsible for more mail than anything else they wrote. It remains a rare example of an anti-alcohol song in the rock canon, certainly outside of the straight edge scene anyway.

The sound of singing drunks at the start of this track also elicited an immediate response from my mother at the time. "What's that you're listening to?" she asked. "It sounds exactly like the drunks I used to hear in Stockwell when I was trying to get to sleep at night". So there you have it. My mum was referring to a council estate in Stockwell, and by doing so, was rubber-stamping this track as having an authentic working class South London soundtrack.

As for Carter's other work - sadly, we will be spending some time away from them after this, and when we next meet them, it will be when they're travelling in the opposite direction down towards the dumper.



2. My Jealous God - Pray (Rough Trade)

"Poignantly pretty, 'Pray' is a blissful bitter-sweet trance dance, an effortless groove and supremely natural" - Ian Gittins - Melody Maker.

My Jealous God's wah-wah guitar infested "Everything About You" emerged in 1990, and instantly shook up indie club dancefloors and caused a lot of major label A&R reps to begin tapping their wallets along to the groovy rhythms. Here was a band who were clearly bound for greatness. They were promptly groomed for stardom and released the follow-up "Pray" on Rough Trade to higher expectations while everyone watched excitedly.

Their chips were promptly pissed on by the combined effects of the financial problems Rough Trade were experiencing and the waning influence of indie-dance on the mainstream, and "Pray" did not get much attention outside the indie ghetto. The band would still jump ship to Fontana Records to release the rather Blurrish and actually really very good "Easy" as a major label debut, followed up with a reissue of "Pray" - but neither charted and they were dropped without an album ever seeing the light of day.

To be brutally frank, the fact that "Pray" is absolutely nothing special may also have been a factor in its muted reception. It's a slick and poppy piece of work with a somewhat middle-of-the-road production, sounding like a halfway house between Beats International and Blur, but having none of the hooks of the former or any of the charm, awkward edges or innovation of the latter. Why it needed to be released twice, apart from perhaps the fact that it sounded vogueish and accessible, is a mystery. It's not awful, but nor can I find anything to enthuse about here. One of those singles the word "Meh" was invented for.

Do check out "Easy" and "Everything About You", though - both show that My Jealous God were capable of better, and are enough to make me wonder about what that missing LP might have been like.



3. The Bridewell Taxis - Spirit (Stolen)

"...is Leeds' Bridewell Taxis third single from 1990, out on their own Stolen label, an album is scheduled for release soon!"

The Bridewell Taxis were another bunch of likely pop stars who were somewhat unfairly lumped in with the baggy scene. In fact, their influences were incredibly disparate and never short of interesting, seemingly taking in Northern Soul (unlike their funky rivals), indie-punk and even epic seventies rock as well as the baggy rhythms of the day. Their solitary trombonist was a typically lo-fi and indie approach to injecting a soulful sound into their jagged grooves, and the cheap keyboard sounds combined with that to produce a noise that wasn't big budget, but was at the very least identifiable and unique - something which couldn't have been said for many of their contemporaries.

"Spirit" is a particular favourite of mine, sounding too rigid and uptight to actually be funky, but nonetheless having a powerful, intense driving force cutting right through its core - it's mean, pinch-faced and demanding whilst also feeling somehow empowering and groovy. I used to play this constantly on my college radio show, broadcast live in the common room to about fifteen disinterested people.

The instrumental chorus to "Spirit" also wasn't intentional, but was apparently put in place as the lead singer Mick Roberts was so drunk after a two-day drinking binge that he couldn't remember what the actual words for the chorus were. Perhaps he should have listened to the advice in Carter's "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" a bit more closely.

Incidents such as these seemed to typify the band's slightly dazed and troublesome approach, with criminal incidents, confused highs, drunken brawls and near-death experiences featuring heavily in their careers (perhaps most ridiculously of all, Mick Roberts was once arrested for stealing carpets from the Hilton Hotel in Leeds). They were due to sign to Chrysalis Records shortly after "Spirit" picked up a lot of mainstream media attention, but the label were put off by a shambolic drugged up live performance they witnessed from the band, and swiftly opted to sign the safer, and now largely forgotten, Poppy Factory.

You can't call such incidents "bad luck". The Bridewells were clearly a band who could have had a shot at a lasting career if they hadn't been such a wayward bunch - but then again, without that edge to their personalities, would they have sounded as abrasive as they did?  Whatever the facts, and however many hypothetical avenues we want to explore, they were the closet this period came to producing a Dexys Midnight Runners, albeit without any of the manifestos or control freakery - just pure chaos.



4. New Fast Automatic Daffodils - Fishes Eyes (Play It Again Sam)

"When is a Manchester band not a Manchester band? When their name is New Fast Automatic Daffodils! Hard-boiled dub funksters with a surrealist edge (ooer) on true unpigeonhole-able form" - Good Times Magazine.

Following "Big", "Fishes Eyes" was really a continuation of the New Fads speciality - long, loose, funky and shuffling post-punk funk sounds with strangely barked slogans over the top. In this, lead singer Andy Spearpoint chants the phrase "The fishes eyes will watch your lies" repeatedly, which was apparently inspired by an unknown person posting a dead fish through his letterbox with a note simply stating that fact attached to it.

There was a sneaking sense that the New Fads were a bit like a semi-comatose Pigbag, rambling away and improvising this nonsense off their addled cuffs, but as with "Big", their singles were really highly enjoyable. "Fishes Eyes" manages to squeeze enough riffs, diversions and funky beats across its seven minutes to not make it seem like a chore, and there's a distinctly threatening, paranoid air to the track as well which adds a lot of spice to the mix. They were frequently baffling, but never boring.



5. Flowered Up - Phobia (Heavenly)

"Apples and pairs, but where's the stairs? What's yours!"

Flowered Up's progress was regarded by a few critics as being thwarted by this single. While "It's On" was uptempo and insistent, "Phobia" is a bit dark and chilly by comparison, and is also a strangely clever composition for a group some were trying to write off as punkish urchins. It contains numerous instances of meandering instrumental breaks, noodling guitar work and faintly awkward arrangements, proving that they weren't quite as rough around the edges as they would perhaps like to have been perceived. There's a fussiness and fiddliness to these grooves very few other tracks on this LP contain.

For all its curiosities and strengths, though, it does have to be said that "Phobia" isn't much of a single. It's a perfectly good track in its own right, but it lacks the immediacy and impact of "It's On", and as a result saw their chart fortunes decline as this only just managed to reach Number 75 in the national charts. What it did prove to listeners, however, is that this was a band who weren't just Mondays-apeing chancers. They were more playful and had a much firmer identity of their own than that.

"Phobia" would also be their last indie single before they ran into the arms of London Records, where they produced the legendary epic single-come-music-video-come-short-film "Weekender" - a "Quadrophenia" for the baggy generation, if you will, and yes, I am about the hundredth person to say that - the cult LP "A Life With Brian", the Clash-inspired Top 40 hit "Take It", and a much more innovative and lively mix of sounds than their earliest critics might have suspected they were capable of.

Sadly, brothers Liam and Joe Maher died from drugs overdoses in 2009 and 2012 respectively, meaning a revival or reformation of the group will never happen. They remain definitively tied to the early nineties era, and some would argue deserve a more serious reassessment than they have so far been afforded.

The Best of Indie Top 20

Format: Double LP/ Cassette/ CD
Year of Release: 1991

"The Best of Indie Top 20 is a celebration of the rise and rise of independent music over the last three years. Many of the singles chosen are the bands' first important cross-over hits. Music that is so often described as specialist or provocative, but soon proves to become the mainstream taste; establishing new styles and genres.

First released in '87, The Indie Top 20 series has also gone from strength to strength, released 3 times a year as the definitive guide to independent music on double LP, cassette, CD and video. 

Beechwood music is fiercely proud of its independence and by making these albums available and generating much needed funds for all the bands and record labels concerned, we hope that we are helping independent music to continue its growth through the nineties."

Unlike CD88 which was really an attempt to bring large chunks of "Indie Top 20" into the digital age, this was a dual celebration; both of the series itself, which was by now ten LPs deep and available in most record stores, and the independent scene in general. At the point of Volume One's release, three short years before, being "indie" often meant cheap black-and-white record sleeves, John Peel airplay, low production values, and cultdom. By now it really could mean anything - any of the above, or the colossal success of the Mondays and the Roses, or even the full-fat independence of the KLF, issuing platinum records (or records limited to runs of 5 copies) on their own label without external interference.

There's a tendency to believe that this all happened very suddenly as a result of the baggy phenomenon, but that's an over-simplification of things. The independent sector went through several key moments from the late seventies onwards, some of them likely to get greater nods of approval from people reading this blog than others. Firstly, the emergence of punk and the DIY ethic in the late seventies (or, if not the actual emergence of the DIY ethic, then certainly the broader acceptance of it) opened considerable doors for anyone wanting to start a label. Then the first stirrings of mainstream chart success in the early eighties boosted the coffers and made siding with Rough Trade or Pinnacle seem like a realistic option - and those successes included Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Keith Marshall, and, er, Renee and Renato (who are a hugely unacknowledged factor as the first ever independently distributed Christmas number one, unthinkable a mere few years before. You don't have to actually like "Save Your Love" to understand its impact in boosting Pinnacle's reputation as a distribution body who could actually get records into all shops, not just the Small Wonders and Probes of the UK).

C86/ Indiepop boosted the profile of the independent sector yet again, rapidly followed by the commercial success of House music (which the major labels were slow to see the potential of), Stock Aitken and Waterman's PWL label, then indie-dance. The independent sector took a huge number of gambles the likes of EMI, RCA and CBS were frequently unwilling to place their bets on, and while that often led to sales in the hundreds rather than top ten success, it also sometimes highlighted the failures of the institutionalised corporate thinking of others, especially as the eighties came to a close. Indie labels were closer to the ground and the owners were normally punters themselves, a close part of the scene they celebrated. This enabled them to see the potential in anything from a popular club white label, to a bunch of fey indie kids, to an Australian soap opera star.

As a celebration, "The Best of Indie Top 20" emerged at the right time, looking backwards over the terrain the sector had climbed and taking stock. Sadly, it also landed a mere few months before their distributor Rough Trade's demise, leaving Chet and Bee (and their father Clive Selwood) scrambling to get hold of all their stock from Rough Trade's warehouse before the bailiffs got their hands on it. Clearly all wasn't sunshine and roses in indie-land - not at Rough Trade, in any case, where a fortune had been lost on a computer system that didn't work properly and paying rent on expensive properties.

Moving away from business difficulties, the contents of this album are interesting and presumably a compromise in places. The absence of The Stone Roses is odd. They were the big success story of the last couple of years, and presumably weren't included due to rights issues. James are also AWOL, as are My Bloody Valentine. There was also little space for big names who were independent-by-distribution-but-not-by-"style", such as Erasure or KLF or The Cookie Crew. No mention of old-school indie-pop success stories like The Primitives and The Darling Buds, either - clearly Beechwood didn't want to waste too much time looking backwards over their shoulders at artists who hadn't also had a role in defining the present (hence The Beloved's "Forever Dancing" appearing here yet again, for the third time. It had already featured on "Volume Two" and "CD88").

Carefully compiled and sequenced, "The Best of Indie Top 20" sold more copies than any other "Indie Top 20" compilation before or since. It hung around the official Compilation Charts for weeks amassing sales, had television adverts voiced by someone who sounded suspiciously like Craig Charles declaring loudly "It's soooound!", and could be picked up in WH Smiths or Woolworths easily. This is the LP which acted as an introduction to the series for many, and no doubt boosted its profile considerably. A few average tracks aside, it's also pretty difficult to fault. It does an incredibly good job of summing up the heady days of 1989-90 in particular.

It also features one surprise bonus track in the form of Carter USM's "Bloodsport For All", which we'll discuss when we come to it. An odd choice, as "Sheriff Fatman" was by far their more iconic single at this point, but mine is not to reason why.

We've discussed all the other tracks already, so please click on the relevant links if you want to re-read what I said about them first time around.

1. Happy Mondays - 24 Hour Party People (Factory) (Volume 3)

2. The Farm - Stepping Stone (Produce) (Volume 9)

3. The Charlatans - Indian Rope (Dead Dead Good) (Volume 9)

4. Inspiral Carpets - Joe (Cow) (Volume 7)

5. Soup Dragons - Mother Universe (Big Life) (Volume 9)

6. The Beloved - Forever Dancing (Flim Flam) (Volume 2)

7. New Order - Round & Round (Club Mix) (Factory) (Volume 9)

8. The Shamen - Pro>Gen (One Little Indian) (Volume 9)

9. Paris Angels - All On You (Perfume) (Sheer Joy) - (Volume 10)

10. Flowered Up - It's On (Heavenly) - (Volume 10)

11. Front 242 - Headhunter (Play It Again Sam) - vinyl and cassette only - (Volume 6)

12. Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus (Mute) - (Volume 8)

13. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Bloodsport For All (Rough Trade) - bonus track

"Bloodsport For All" saw Carter return to their popular theme of a man's life in the army and the hype not quite living up to the reality. "How very hackneyed" you might think, but in reality a number of horror stories were beginning to be slowly drip-fed to the press at this time, focussed on bullying, and even (by the time we reached the late nineties) mysterious deaths at places like Deepcut barracks. Clearly it wasn't just Government-defined enemies some soldiers were fighting, but also psychopathic enemies within their own ranks.

The single's lyrics can't resist the usual Carter onslaught of tabloid headline puns, but are nonetheless actually quite savage, highlighting the bullying racism which was rife in the armed forces  ("While we're on the subject I've been called a spade/ single-filed in public/ with my privates on parade/ I hope my feet go flat/ before I hang myself").

Combined with that unflinching criticism of army life, "Bloodsport For All" has a sledgehammer glam rock rhythm, a pulsing synth bassline and a fierce energy to it despite its mechanised rhythm section. The final minute builds itself into the kind of frothing fury last heard on their cover version of "Rent", and on the original seven-inch version you could just about hear the screeching conclusion of guitars being thrown to the floor in the final audible section of the fade-out, like a private tantrum you could only hear if you pressed a glass to the wall of their studio.

I'm a sucker for the unsubtle trucker rhythms of glam at the best of times, and this always was one of my favourite Carter USM tracks.  By taking the foot-stomping of the mid-seventies and adding it to a military march criticism of the modern army, they created a very macho, muscular sounding record which nonetheless undermined the message sent out to the country by the military's PR campaigns. It's far from perfect - most Carter records of this period have a clunky, sticklebrick production I find harder going in the present day than I ever did at the time - but it climbed to Number 48 in the national charts, and showed the group were poised for a mainstream breakthrough. And all this despite "Bloodsport For All" being subjected to a Radio One ban due to the Gulf War "sensitivities" of very early 1991.



14. Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (4AD) - (Volume 7)

15. Dinosaur Jr - Freak Scene (Blast First) - (Volume 7)

16. Spacemen 3 - Revolution (Fire) - (Volume 6)

17. Wedding Present - Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? (Reception) - (Volume 6)

18. Birdland - Sleep With Me (Lazy) - vinyl and cassette only (Volume 9)

19. Loop - Arclite (Situation Two) - vinyl and cassette only - (Volume 8)

20. The Sugarcubes - Regina (One Little Indian) - (Volume 8)

21. The Sundays - Joy (Rough Trade) - (Volume 9)

22. The Heart Throbs - Dreamtime (One Little Indian) - (Volume 9)

Indie Top Video Take Five - Carter USM, Eat, Thee Hypnotics, Shack, KLF

Year of Release: 1990

The next instalment in the Indie Top Video series was downright odd, if you want me to be honest, readers. An unexpected plethora of bonus tracks (four, or five if you count the different version of "What Time Is Love") even though there were plenty of tracks from Indie Top 20 Volume 10 they could have got perfectly respectable videos from.

The most notable omission here is The Farm's "Groovy Train", which was the biggest hit on Volume Ten, closely followed by the bizarre absence of the Inspiral Carpets. The Darkside are also missing, as are The Family Cat... either some rights issues were going on with this particular VHS edition, or all concerned decided to rationalise the track listing a bit.

Quality visuals clearly weren't everyone's prime concern, as some joker obviously thought the slow-motion video for The Pixies "Velouria", arguably one of the worst music promos known to humankind, was worthy of inclusion.

Anyway, let's turn down the lights, pull out some sickly sweet cornershop popcorn and one of those giant tins of Faxe beer we all used to guzzle (or I did, anyway) and ponder the contents.

1. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Rubbish (Big Cat) - bonus video

Jim Bob once quipped (in the liner notes to their Greatest Hits LP "Straw Donkeys") that the only reason they were keen to issue "Rubbish" as a single was to force their fans to enter record stores and ask for their new single, which was rubbish... because it was.

A likely story, I think. "Rubbish" is as catchy as hell, complete with its Game-n-Watch synthetic intro, its sample overload (including John Peel) and its almost skiffle-styled chorus. On this occasion, it's not especially clear what the boys are waffling on about, though. "I'm underage and uninsured/ on the High Road to Domestos/ Chloraflouracarbon Lord/ Asbestos Lead Asbestos" Jim Bob snarls, quoting the ingredients list of detergent bottles and World Domination Enterprises song titles in one breath for no clear reason at all.

It's a piece of bin-kicking, hook-ridden punk rock, though, and while it never caught indieland's imagination as much as "Sheriff Fatman", they clearly weren't going to disappear on us. An "ITV Chart Show" slot opened up for them with this single, and while nobody thought pop stardom beckoned for the band, they surely and steadily reached more people.



2. Eat - Psycho Couch (Non-Fiction) - bonus video

Ange Dolittle, lead singer of Eat, is one of indie's stalwarts. From Eat to Weknowwhereyoulive (consisting largely of ex-Wonder Stuffers) to Big Yoga Muffin, he trod the boards with a number of outfits and led them with an icy assurance. Both the press and fellow musicians seemed to talk about him as if success was assured, but in the end Eat remained a cult concern, and one dogged by inter-band tensions and bad luck.

"Psycho Couch" received single of the week in the NME and got voted a "Miss" on the revamped, Jools Holland hosted "Juke Box Jury" - mixed fortunes, but you can't fault the level of exposure. It's an odd, decidedly psychedelic single, and one which didn't seem to belong in 1990 or indeed any other time. A rock and roll bassline meets an almost gothic atmosphere and rattling drums to sound faintly threatening, slightly eerie, rather unusual and crucially unlikely to break through.

The video was partly animated and while not as luxurious or detailed as Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer", nonetheless showed that a lot of effort was being put into breaking the band. It's not available on YouTube, but you can see it on MTV's site, along with what must surely have been a very reluctant cover of "Summer In The City" (which also did nothing for them).

Eat recently reformed in 2014 and have resumed their careers, even issuing a new single "She Cries Flowers" in 2016.

3. Pixies - Velouria (4AD)

4. The Telescopes - Precious Little (Creation)

5. Spiritualized - Anyway That You Want Me (Dedicated)

6. Thee Hypnotics - Half Man Half Boy (Situation Two) - bonus video

A slow, snaking, bluesy groove dominates "Half Man Half Boy", making Thee Hypnotics sound a tiny bit more commercial than on previous "Indie Top 20" outings - though really, all these things are relative.

Press for Thee Hypnotics was ecstatic at this point, and not just the traditional sniffy scribes at Melody Maker and NME, but also Kerrang as well. The indie kids at IPC towers saw the group as being the modern heirs to The Stooges distorted riff and roll, whereas Kerrang journos just saw them as a furiously dirty and thrilling live rock band. At this point, Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes could also be heard singing their praises.

Unfortunately, far from being a crossover band uniting both the floppy-fringed and the greasy-haired, they really remained a cult concern.



7. The Charlatans - The Only One I Know (Situation Two)

8. Mock Turtles - Lay Me Down (Imaginary)

9. Shack - I Know You Well (Ghetto) - bonus video

Liverpool's Shack are often talked about as being the group that slipped through the net - the band who should have been absolutely massive in the early nineties but barely had a sniff of success. Certainly, they were firm favourites among critics, who gushed forth endless superlatives about their classic tunesmithery.

They were certainly dogged by bad luck, like an enormous amount of bands featured on "Indie Top 20". The master tapes for their finest work of this period, the LP "Waterpistol", were destroyed in a recording studio fire. Their producer left behind a DAT recording of it in a hire car, which took weeks to track down and recover, only for their label Ghetto - which had been largely coasting on the minor success of The Lightning Seeds for some time - to go bust.

"I Know You Well" was a standalone single which didn't end up on that LP, but is a mellow, shimmering piece of sixties inspired pop with a marginal amount of wonkiness on its side as well. That rushing, distorted merry-go-round sound which occurs at the beginning of the track and halfway through feels like the gentle slide into the darkest recesses of your couch after one joint too many, while the main melody spins around your head. And indeed, a spliffy fog did often hang around Shack's music - nothing at all wrong with that, and they were far from being the only offenders, but the contemplative introspection of their work would actually be better suited to the tail-end of the decade. Perhaps it's not too surprising that they had their biggest critical and commercial success in 1999 with "HMS Fable", then, way outside the timelines of this blog.



10. Sp!n - Scratches In The Sand (Foundation)

11. Paris Angels - Perfume (Sheer Joy)

12. Flowered Up - It's On (Heavenly)

13. Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Heavenly)

14. The Shamen - Make It Mine (One Little Indian)

15. KLF - What Time Is Love (Live At Trancentral) (KLF Communications) - bonus video

Or the KLF's big breakthrough moment. "Doctorin' The Tardis" had been broadly (and incorrectly) dismissed as a novelty single by many, and at the time you would have been forgiven for believing that they were destined to never be much more than situationist pranksters.

That would be foolish of you, though. While their debut LP "1987 What The Fuck Is Going On" is messy and more of a statement than a coherent piece of work, the follow up "Who Killed The Jams" showed that they understood how to create pop music as well (and perhaps the key pointer towards a more overground future was their largely forgotten 1987 Christmas single "Downtown", which I've written about on my other blog).

The Pure Trance original of "What Time Is Love" was a minimal piece of work which, while highly regarded at free parties, was never going to be a hit by itself. This Stadium House version (though nobody was was really calling it that at this point) was something else. Building on the foundations laid by Bomb The Bass, Coldcut and S-Express in mixing pop music with House music, it then scales new heights. The original central riff for "What Time Is Love" was a delicate affair, but for the "Live at Trancentral" version it sounds like it's being blasted through a hundred tannoys at once. It becomes a clarion call to dance, combining with Acid House squelches, a confident if slightly Daisy Age-ish rap from MC Bello, and pounding rhythms... even from a present-day viewpoint, it still sounds staggering.

There were DJs and fellow journeymen at the time who accused the KLF of "selling out" after hearing this, feeling that they'd spoiled the original Pure Trance vision they'd created and written a monstrous pop song with the main riff. Utter piffle, I'd say. I owned the "What Time Is Love Story" compilation before this version saw the light of day, and while the original is powerful, outside of the context of a club or a party it loses a lot of impact. The "Live At Trancentral" version takes the main riff, turns it into a chorus, and creates something incredibly muscular and hi-fi friendly in the spaces available. Even the audience roars are a magical element, making you feel as if the rave has suddenly arrived in your bedroom, while the ambient astronaut samples keep you floating long after the song has finished. In short - it's majestic. Very few songs manage to translate the magic of a hedonistic night out to the stereo at home, but this does it with unbelievable assurance.

Volume 10 Side 4 - Pixies, Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, Teenage Fanclub, Telescopes, Carter USM

1. Pixies - Velouria (4AD)

"...is taken from Pixies fourth LP 'Bossanova'".

"Velouria" is a strange one, by general standards at least. It comes crashing through your stereo speakers like an epic rock tune at first, scaling a mountain-face like David Lee Roth at his keenest, but constantly gets distracted on its way. It seems to be constantly building towards some grand anthemic chorus, only to deliver Frank Black's barked shout of "Velouria! My Velouria!" It beckons you forward with one hand, then pushes you away with the other.

It's still a strangely beautiful record, though, from those scaling, powerful verses right down to the Kim Deal vocalised outro. It's slightly unpredictable form also creates something a damn sight more interesting than your bog-standard piece of FM rock, twisting and turning around to ensure there's more to draw you back than the obvious initial hooks. Truly horrible and pointless video, though, which looks more like a "Chart Show" home-brew effort than an official product.

This was the group's first Top 40 hit in the UK, peaking at number 28.



2. Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes - Grand Hotel (Avalanche) - Vinyl and Cassette Only

"Shine on Patrick Magee, shine on! Ceadh mile failte."

Mmm. As a teenager, I found the references to the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing in this song exhilarating and hilarious, and considered it a true piece of punk rock. Now it feels uncomfortable - a key indication, if any were needed, that we get less flippant about these artistic gestures as we get older. Also, it perhaps shows how politically divided Britain was in 1990, with bilious and murderous hatred being targeted at those who weren't on the correct side of the left-right divide from a variety of sources, and never mind anyone else who might happen to be caught in the firing line. Ladies and Gentlemen, those were the days, and we're set to recreate those days...

Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes were actually old-school Scottish indie-poppers from the mid-eighties who seemed rumly out of place with the rest of Volume Ten's offerings. That said, "Grand Hotel" sits neatly enough next to "Velouria" with its abrasive sound and angelic female backing vocals. It's also a total headrush of a track, scruffy and scuzzed up but ferocious and full-on - an innocent slice of C86 this isn't, obviously.

It was also an unusual Indie Top 20 track in that it wasn't a big seller at the time, even in indie terms, and one EP later (the "Hold Me Now" extended play issued in November 1990) and the group would be no more. Its appearance on this compilation was the first time I was ever made aware of it. Even the Daily Mail's feathers clearly weren't ruffled by its existence, and it seemed to slip under a lot of people's radars. The eighties had been filled to the brim with furious, stabbing and occasionally controversial left-wing records or even anarcho-punk records - the steady flow would continue into the nineties until John Major's government was at its absolute weakest, but interest post-Thatcher began to deplete quite rapidly. The Family Cat's B-side "Bring Me The Head Of Michael Portillo" is the most recent example I can think of, but there may be others which you good readers can think of...



3. Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows (Paperhouse)

"Teenage Fanclub are going to be as big as The Ronettes hairdos, the Beaverbrook Foundation and Van Gogh's sunflowers".

And the Scottish fuzziness and scuzziness continues. "Everything Flows" is a ballad hiding under a fog of grungey guitars. It's melancholy, snail-paced and yet slightly noisy too. Lyrically it's confused and vague - "I think about it every day/ but only for a little while/ and then the FEELING" sings Norman Blake. Enough said, obviously.

"Everything Flows" feels like waking up in the middle of the night from a dream about an ex, alone, and with a sleep-fogged brain, knowing that your past decisions perhaps weren't the wisest, and not certain that you're any more sure-footed in the present day. It ends with distorted guitars swimming all around the mix, never once picking up the pace or offering a clear resolution. It's beautiful in a horribly disconcerting way. Perhaps unsuprisingly, it was wildly popular with John Peel listeners and did indeed do a lot to launch Teenage Fanclub outside of their existing cult following.



4. The Telescopes - Precious Little (Creation) - Vinyl and Cassette Only 

"Obsession always was one of the most terrifying of human emotions. It's when the noise stops that you silently start to scream." - Melody Maker

We're on side four of Volume Ten of "Indie Top 20", and is that... can that... can that really be a contribution from Creation Records? Well, switch my knickers! Apart from contributing the video to Tangerine's "Sunburst" to one of the Indie Top Videos, they had avoided the series like the plague until now for reasons known only to Alan McGee.

Of course, "Precious Little" is a piece of distorted, sinister and not entirely reassuring noise about love, or perhaps as the Melody Maker scribe pointed out, obsession. Had it been written for my benefit, I think I would have been a bit worried. You could quite easily give the lyrics and the melody to a twee girl with an ukulele in the present day (note to anyone reading - please don't do this) - it certainly starts appropriately enough with "Precious little look outside the sea crashes for you" - but The Telescopes, being The Telescopes, ramp up the volume and turn it into a threatening, obsessive attack, not a simple love song.

It's not their finest single, in truth, but it's certainly never short of being interesting. Stick it on in the company of friends, and witness the silence afterwards.



5. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Rent (Big Cat)

"I've been waiting half of the twentieth century for my housing benefit so that I can pay my rent, I am pissed off" - Fruitbat.
"I like the Pet Shop Boys and I'm more than happy to make them a little bit of cash to help them out, stuff the Poll Tax" - Jim Bob.

The second cover version on Volume Ten takes the same approach of taking the basic template of the original but completely transforming it. Or, if your views of this are unfavourable, it might feel actually as if Carter simply scrawled childishly and furiously all over the Pet Shop Boys original melody with a variety of Crayola crayons.

Obviously, The Pet Shop Boys version of "Rent" was largely deemed to be about male prostitution (subsequently denied by Neil Tennant in recent years) something I doubt either Jim Bob or Fruitbat would have been terribly successful at. Perhaps because of that, rather than due to a deliberate misunderstanding, they seem to have made it about paying the rent in general and turning into a screaming punk assault. It starts calmly enough with a gentle (if cheap) synthesiser pulse, then slowly begins to rumble like a volcano before exploding into a disconnected, screaming rant about the contents of DSS forms.

An unpopular view started to form approximately around this time that Carter were like a rather punkish take on very late Pink Floyd - and when I say "late Pink Floyd", I very much mean the Roger Waters dictatorship years. Initially that might sound ridiculous, until you surf away and listen to "Not Now John" and hear similar spittle, samples, swearing, despair and melancholy rolled into one ball, just with much more careful production values (and classier backing vocals and more saxophones). Even the epic war ballads on "The Final Cut" with their tinkling pianos bore vague similarities to the likes of Carter's take on "The Impossible Dream". Whatever your general view, "Rent" here sounds truly hilarious at first, then weirdly gripping thereafter. It's a marvellous tantrum of a cover.

It was the flipside to their single "Rubbish" rather than an A-side, obviously, so its inclusion here is a bit strange. Clearly either the band or Beechwood Music deemed it more worthy, but I'm glad I got to hear it when I did.

Side 3 - Carter USM, Fatima Mansions, Wolfhounds, Birdland, Heart Throbs

1. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Sheriff Fatman (Big Cat)

"Carter's driver Terry, says 'Jim Bob and Fruitbat, I hate them, with their whacky names, pig awful guitars and that poxy tape machine, boring the pants off everyone with their stupid little songs about South London of which this one is probably the worst'". 

At this point in their careers, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine - or Carter USM as they would often eventually be known for the sake of brevity, by themselves and everyone else - were not big news. Jim Bob and Fruitbat's previous band, the mediocre and under-achieving Jamie Wednesday, had recently collapsed, leaving them with the choice of either forming a new band or plodding around the gig circuit as a duo using drum machines and tapes for backing.

This would be an unusual decision now, and was made even more unusual back then due to the sheer volume of unfashionable covers duos littering backstreet boozers. With names like Double Take, Two's Company and Two In A Bed, they used to entertain weary working class punters with drum machine and synthesiser festooned covers of rock classics such as "We Are The Champions", using their duo status to circumnavigate the tricky venue licensing issues surrounding full groups. Most were a frustratingly naff interruption to a nice night out in the pub, and weren't credible outfits. The year was no longer 1981, and drum machines and backing tapes being used by bands with loud guitars wasn't deemed a radical or interesting move, just a messy compromise. A similar stance being adopted by a band with original material seemed like an odd move.

Carter USM were also slightly aged gentlemen by 1990 indie standards and made a brash, decidedly unMadchester noise. Suffice to say that nobody expected much from them after their second single "Sheriff Fatman" picked up some attention, and it's cultish indie chart action really did seem like a one-off hurrah which would never be repeated again, never mind built upon.

What many of us reckoned without was how sharp and witty Carter could be. While their puns, observations and playful rhymes about life in London feel familiar now - so familiar that when I lived in South London a year ago, I could barely go outside for five minutes without getting a Carter earworm - it's worth listening again with a fresh pair of ears. "Sheriff Fatman", for instance, takes on slum landlords with a biting wit, like Soft Cell's "Bedsitter" transplanted into the brains of some demented Grebos. With its military stomp, synthetic brass fanfares, and dirty donking electro-bass lines, it also manages to sound unique - though whether it's a unique sound that works for every listener is obviously up for debate.

"Sheriff Fatman" is still one of the songs that defines the Carter legacy, and would become a proper hit once it was re-released on a major label in 1991. For now, though, they were regarded somewhat cautiously as being a novelty. I mean, how could this possibly last? But it did. And one really would have hoped that the subject matter of "Fatman" would seem quaint by now, but sadly it seems more relevant than ever.



2. Fatima Mansions - Blues For Ceaucescu (Kitchenware)

"...A bruising riff, declamatory remarks, wah-wah overload, the lot - definitely a contender for single of the year" Dele Fadele, NME

This definitely sounded like the moment Fatima Mansions finally found their true purpose. While they were never a very generic band at any point in their career - many critics have pointed out that they often sounded like three different acts in the space of one song - the material most people remember is the sonic thuggery of the LPs "Valhalla Avenue" and "Lost In The Former West".

"Blues for Ceaucescu" is arguably the first and finest example of the band's demented fury. Fixing on one repetitive, hypnotic and heavy blues riff, it kicks, stomps and thrashes around, using the then-recent execution of Ceaucescu to lyrically sprawl around tales of corruption in both the East and West. Seemingly taking its cues from the Bertolt Brecht quote "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again", the track even gently and cautiously hints towards child sex abuse cover-ups among the high and mighty at Kincora Boys' Home in Northern Ireland. "God, I love living in a DEMOCRACY!" splutters Coughlan disbelievingly. (See, some people were talking about this stuff way before the present decade...)

It's coming up for Christmas now as I'm typing this. Every Christmas in Romania, many people sit down to watch old footage of Ceaucescu being executed, and cheer. Every time I hear this track, I tend to find myself thinking about that. When I've discussed this with other people over the years, they've found it hard to digest. In Great Britain at least, it seems to be considered rather rude to not wait a day or two until someone's passing before you speak the truth about them, no matter what misery they might have inflicted on people during their lifetimes or how many people they may have sent to their deaths. Watching videos of them dying at Christmas is utterly beyond most people's comfortable comprehension.

We're lucky enough to have grown up in a country where most of us haven't been oppressed to the same degree as the Romanians, but "Blues for Ceaucescu" is a fantastic and tremendously cathartic noise in that it reminds us that there are people out there who would be quite willing to go that far if the opportunity arose - that power-hungry psychopathy is always there, waiting for a crack to open where it can infuence or manipulate society unchecked. And the track sounds magnificent, too. Relentless, pounding, minimal and yet very effective. One of my favourite singles of 1990 - no question.

3. Wolfhounds - Rite Of Passage (Midnight Music)

"'Rite of Passage' is about the sights you have to lower to hold down a job, and having dreams beyond the weekend and that job. A bigger sound, bigger ambitions. We are now campaigning against the Rates of Passage."

This is perfectly partnered with "Blues for Ceaucescu" in the track listing. Beginning with a sample of Joey Ramone burbling on about no subject known to man (but if you didn't know, you probably wouldn't know) it continues to introduce discordant guitar riffing, furious vocals, and a strangely minimal chorus. Trashing about the place, it lacks the anthemic feel The Wolfhounds had treated us to on previous outings, instead feeling more experimental and jarring.

Not that any of this makes it a bad track at all. On first listen it seemed (to my teenage ears) to be a bit too much to take, but subsequent revisits delivered a lot. It's so sprawling and unconventional that there's an interesting moment around every corner, and it hinted towards much better things to come from the band.

Forthcoming releases such as the LP "Attitude" showed that they were indeed moving on from their scratchy indie beginnings and developing a darker, more savage sound. Eventually though, the band would cease and Dave Callaghan would take that bleakness to the dub-indie outfit Moonshake who released some equally excellent recordings. We'll get our chance to discuss them eventually. 

4. Birdland - Sleep With Me (Lazy)

"Birdland's reckless rock rampaged into the charts with this scintillating slice of singalong sex" Rave Magazine.

This was indeed Birdland's big Top 40 debut, entering the Sunday chart rundown at number 32. In reality, though, there was barely a person around who genuinely still thought the group were the next big thing. Birdland never could top the unbelievable punk thrash of their debut "Hollow Heart", and "Sleep With Me" is actually a pretty baffling slide into mid-paced rock and roll. The swagger of Jagger and Richards runs right through its heart, but there's something a bit lead-footed about it all. The Stones swung, but Birdland steadily bang and stomp here.

There are far better Birdland singles out there than this one, which makes it unfortunate that it turned out to be their solitary minor hit. Despite that, it has enough attitude and a strong enough hook to be better than some of the indie-dance singles of the same era which received a more favourable critical reception. 

5. The Heart Throbs - Dreamtime (One Little Indian)

"... a band who epitomise all that is groovy and good in the female-fronted serious guitar scene. Over the last two years they have produced some of the most articulate and impassioned singles to emerge from the indie charts" ID

I'm offering that sleevenote above without comment. Sisters Rose Carlotti and Rachel DeFreitas were siblings of the unfortunate and deceased Pete DeFreitas of Echo & The Bunnymen, and were a powerful and seering contribution to the music scene at the time. Often overlooked when people go back over the history of nineties indie, they were nonetheless a surprisingly big deal to begin with, and had a sharp feminist angle to their work. Their second album "Jubilee Twist", for example, was named after a martial combat technique for attacking male genitalia.

The single "I Wonder Why" - never featured on Indie Top 20 - is probably one of the better examples of their hard edged guitar pop from this period. "Dreamtime" is much more atmospheric and world-weary, and perhaps gives an inaccurate impression of the more popular work they tended to produce.

It's a good single, mind you, and one which picked up on enormous volumes of college radio airplay Stateside. Awash with airy synthesisers, moody guitarwork and delicate but impassioned vocals, I played this often in my bedroom at the height of summer, watching the sun go down outside in the late evening. It felt nigh-on perfect, and it still feels somewhat majestic now.