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.

Volume Ten Side 3 - Inspiral Carpets, Charlatans, The Darkside, Spiritualized, Family Cat

1. Inspiral Carpets - She Comes In The Fall (Mute)

"This is moody and miraculous with a lovely walking on air melody, but then the organ farts in again and firmly stops them becoming stellar".

I first heard "She Comes The Fall" in its Peel Session guise, and loved it - in typical Inspirals fashion, it was a stirling piece of garage pop, but this time with added flourishes. Barging its way into your mind with almost aggressive verses while the chorus turned you over and rubbed your belly with its sweetness, it also added marching military drumbeats and carefully plucked guitar lines to its arsenal.

The "Life" LP version later on wasn't much different. A bit beefed up, maybe, but pleasing and one of the highlights of a now frequently ignored piece of work.

Then this, the single version, was... well, it was as if the band had travelled back in time, gone to the Sound Techniques studio with Joe Boyd, and played with all the toys in there one merry afternoon. That should make the 7" version an absolute triumph, but oddly it sounds gimmicky and distracting instead. It swirls, honks, echoes and whooshes all over the shop while everyone gets over-excited pressing the "special buttons" in the studio, and it ends up smacking of a poor sixties parody rather than a carefully executed radio edit. It places almost alarming attacks of psychedelia where they feel uncomfortable; those howling electronic sirens during the instrumental break, for example, almost utterly ruin a top drawer Clint Boon performance.

None of this silliness can completely murder the song, of course, which remains strong enough to withstand the assault, but I'll still always reach for the LP version over this.



2. The Charlatans - The Only One I Know (Dead Dead Good)

"The Only One I Know, a track blessed with wah-wah guitar and a hammond organ swirling around a pure hypnotic groove" - Sounds.

"The Only One I Know" was a shock. Firstly, to anyone who hadn't been following The Charlatans closely at this point, which I must guiltily confess I hadn't, something as brightly poppy as this didn't seem possible. "Indian Rope" was slightly psychedelic and meandering, not catchy, bouncy and bouyant.

Secondly, even after I heard it, my first appreciative thought was "That might even get into the Top 40 if it's lucky". The fact that the single then soared into the top ten and could even be caught being used as backing music on keep fit programmes was above and beyond my expectations. It briefly made The Charlatans seem like a serious threat to the Mondays and the Roses - if they could keep this sort of jolly rhumba racket going, who knew what else would be in store?

"The Only One I Know" is so much a part of alternative rock's heritage now that it's actually difficult to take any number of steps back and look at it afresh. The first time I heard it, I adored the bittersweet chorus and those swooping, high basslines, but over the course of thirty or forty listens found myself ground down by one of the main hooks, the repetitive squawking keyboard line, which follows you around throughout like a flock of nagging geese. Like a lot of hook-heavy pop, its instant appeal does eventually become a mild irritant.

For all that, though, I've never once found myself needing to turn the radio off or leave the dancefloor for the bar when it comes on. Two singles in, The Charlatans had managed to pull the enviable (and certainly very profitable) trick of writing an ageless alternative pop tune. This is their "Reward", their "Echo Beach", or their "Birdhouse In Your Soul". It didn't necessarily typify their output, which as we'll see was actually rich and broad, but it did become a very powerful beacon to people who may never have otherwise got to hear the rest of their work - and they'd easily avoid becoming one-hit wonders.



3. The Darkside - Waiting For The Angels (Situation Two)

"an irresistable, etherial psychedelic pop song from the darkside, a trio from the centre of England".

Yet another group who splintered out of the dissolution of Spacemen 3, The Darkside were essentially the other members minus Peter Kember (who would create Spectrum) and Jason Pierce (Spiritualized). Perhaps somewhat inevitably, they were the least successful offshoot of them all, but that's not to say that they didn't create some music of note.

"Waiting For The Angels", for example, is dark, brooding, faintly psychedelic and - while not much of a single, if the truth be told - does slowly and lazily unveil a certain majesty across its playing time. There are mild similarities between this and The Charlatans' next single "Then", mainly around the mood and the bassline, which are surely just a vague coincidence.

The band managed two studio albums before giving up the ghost in 1993.



4. Spiritualized - Anyway That You Want Me (Dedicated) - Vinyl and Cassette Only (for some mad reason)

(no sleevenotes were provided for this track).

Talking of which... it's staggering the way ex-members of Spacemen 3 managed to colonise volumes of "Indie Top 20", and in this case, they're living right next door to each other.

In 1990, opening your new band's career with a cover version of a Troggs single was considered an incredibly suspect thing to do, whether the end result was any good or not. Nothing really says "Actually, we're a bit stuck for ideas" as much as a sixties cover. Jason Pierce seemed to have Brexited out of Spacemen 3 and now didn't have a clue what to do. And yet...

The original "Anyway That You Want Me", if you want to take the time out to listen to it, is a very spindly, pale, uncertain little fawn of a pop song, closer to The Velvet Underground at their most stumbling and unsure than a scaling psychedelic song. And Spiritualized took it and made it mighty, creating an ambitious cover akin to Nilsson's reinterpretation of Badfinger's slightly scrappy "Without You". Crashing, heavy-handed Troggs chords still form the foundations of the song, but surrounding them are a wealth of orchestral flourishes and wailing guitars - it's not a cover so much as a total reconstruction, and it's hard to imagine why anybody would prefer the original. If it can be criticised at all, it's for the overlong ending which tries to be agreeably hypnotic but just becomes blandly repetitious. The single wouldn't have lost much by having 30-45 seconds trimmed off it, and indeed at the time I often found myself skipping to the next track on this LP early.

Obviously, when it comes to Troggs ballads that needed a bit more work, Wet Wet Wet hit what some would call the "paydirt" with "Love Is All Around".



5. The Family Cat - A Place With A Name (Bad Girl)

"The Family Cat present, for your delectation and delight, their second single of 1990. So crank up the gramophone, roll back the carpet and get down to 'Place With A Name'".

"Listening to Leonard Cohen, though heaven knows why", begins this track, a viewpoint that sums up a common human dilemma. We depress ourselves with heavy folk singer-songwriter fare from the sixties when what we probably actually need is some Northern Soul.

"A Place With A Name" is a short, sharp, likeable piece of indie rock which failed to really present The Family Cat as much of a force for the future, but was a distinct improvement on the disappointment of "Remember What It Is That You Love". It lacks the scuffed up aggression of "Tom Verlaine" but replaces it with a lot of sweetness - the brightness was turned up on The Family Cat's world at this point, and that's a side of them that would make itself known on future singles too.

Volume 10 Side 2 - Flowered Up, Field Mice, Saint Etienne, Mock Turtles, Sp!n

1. Flowered Up - It's On (Heavenly) 

"Beds not boxes - don't forget kids, conservation is survival".

Storming seemingly out of nowhere, though actually emerging from Camden Town (and rather than being a band who were based there, they had proper backgrounds in Camden - blimey) Flowered Up were a press sensation in 1990. Even if every review had to mention the fact that they were "London's answer to The Happy Mondays", there was still nothing but admiration for their raw indie-dance sparkle. While baggy had been filled to the brim with comfortable middle-class bandwagon jumpers tacking funky rhythms on to their fey indie tunes, Flowered Up were the proper southern deal - rough round the edges, rebellious, a tad eccentric, and with some mightily good tunes too.

"It's On", their opening salvo, seemed a bit cursed, though. It's first taste of national mainstream television exposure was on the "ITV Chart Show", where a sound fault rendered Liam Maher's vocals largely inaudible. Then, in error, Heavenly Records sent the rather unvarnished demo version of the track to Beechwood for inclusion here. There was nothing wrong with it as such, but it wasn't as good as the finished single, and it certainly wasn't what we wanted or expected to hear. (I believe, but have no proof, that later pressings of Indie Top 20 Vol 10 might have corrected this error. Certainly, "The Best of Indie Top 20" used the right version).

In its true form, "It's On" was a hypnotic and powerful piece of dirty indie-funk, using panpipe sounds, harsh punk vocals and wailing guitars to unlikely combined effect. It's odd, complex enough and powerful enough that it still stands up now. In the video, their obligatory Bez-type character Barry Mooncult - a man who was a glazier before the band formed, and became a glazier again when they split up - grooves away with a giant flower around his bonce, in a manner that would become their visual trademark.

Feted as the next big thing, their debut LP possibly landed a bit too late to generate the impression it might have done had it been ready to go in 1990, but cult stardom was theirs for the taking. We'll meet them one more time, so our story doesn't quite finish here.



2. The Field Mice - Triangle (edit) (Sarah)

"Full length version appears on the 'Skywriting' mini-LP (Sarah 601)"

I seem to have vague recollections of bone-idle journalists declaring this to be a case of baggy bandwagon jumping from Sarah heroes The Field Mice, which of course was bollocks. For one thing, anyone who thought The Field Mice solely specialised in fey jangle-pop hadn't been paying proper attention. For another, "Triangle" has a woebegone electronic pulse to it which more closely resembles early New Order at their moodiest than, say, Flowered Up before them.

Filled with high-pitched Hooky basslines, electronic twitters and sweeping synth sounds, as well as faintly buried vocals, "Triangle" is a raw, mid-paced reflection on singledom which was never going to get many feet on the dancefloor. Piling and layering on different riffs and ideas across its hypnotic brand of budget electronica, this track is constantly evolving and never boring in the way a lot of this early nineties work often could be. Ideally, it also would have gained The Field Mice a bit more attention, but in the end it barely registered outside the usual audience who tended to hear their work. They seemed destined to become a quintessential cult indie act.



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

"A Neil Young song lovingly reconstructed by two ardent fans from suburban London. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs claim to gain inspiration from 'Elvis Presley, our loving parents, and drugs". They are currently working on an album provisionally titled 'Foxbase Alpha" which is due in the New Year".

At this particular point in time, Saint Etienne were envisaged as being a group with no fixed lead singer - hence Moira Lambert acts as the vocalist for this track rather than Sarah Cracknell. Therefore, you could argue that this was a single issued before the proper "group" had completely formulated it's "line-up" (if such old-fashioned rock terminology could ever be easily applied to Saint Etienne).

Whatever the details, this is staggering - one of the few examples I can think of where a cover version  is so powerful that it becomes impossible to return to the original. Looped keyboard lines, a throbbing, prowling bassline and atmospheric washes meet Lambert's yearning vocals, and it sounds unbelievable that somebody didn't think of this years before. As a cover, this would have been equally effective as a disco track in the mid-70s or early eighties. In 1990, as indie-dance took a brief hold over everyone, it felt impossibly powerful, Young's angst being just as applicable to moody indie-kids with baggy clothes as it was to earnest hippies in 1970.

Somewhat surprisingly, it only got to number 95 in the National Top 100 on this release, and a slightly underwhelming number 39 on re-release. It did give Saint Etienne a flying start, however, and ensured they were watched closely by the press from this point forwards.

Note the appearance of the Tufnell Park "Go Home Bible Mike" graffiti in the video as well, which would later loan itself to the title of a Fatima Mansions album track.



4. Mock Turtles - Lay Me Down (Imaginary)

"The Mock Turtles are the best pop group in Britain" - John Harris - Sounds 4/8/90

If Manchester's Mock Turtles are remembered for much these days, it's writing "that song" "Can You Dig It" which was a number 18 hit in 1991 and featured heavily on Vodafone adverts in 2002. Oh, and for the fact that lead singer Martin Coogan is Steve Coogan's brother, and that the character of "Saxondale" is apparently partly based on him.

And if "Lay Me Down" is remembered for anything at all, or at least remembered by the dirtiest of pub quiz hosts who enjoy trick questions, it's for being the single that "Can You Dig It" originally nestled on the B-side of. Originally conceived as nothing more than a quickie number to occupy the empty space, and penned in a matter of moments, Coogan failed to see its potential, and certainly Beechwood Music missed a trick here by not giving it a track listing instead of "Lay Me Down" (they weren't always averse to including B-sides, as we'll see).

All this is deeply unfair on the A side, though, which may be more subtle than its more famous flipside, but is nonetheless a marvellous track. Another prowling bassline meets gorgeous atmospheric guitarwork and Coogan's hushed, delicate vocals to produce a piece of slick neo-psychedelia. It was clearly never going to sell tons of copies, but it's a beautiful wash of sound which many a 2016 neo-psych band would be delighted to write - it's also audible proof that the "atmospheric" work of the forthcoming shoegazing movement was present during the baggy period as well, and may even have done a lot to usher it in.

The Mock Turtles were yet another Manchester band who signed to a major label in 1991 who then seemingly didn't know quite what to do with them. Given the sizeable hit status of "Can You Dig It", you would expect that the label were given rock-solid foundations to build on, but the bouyant follow-up single "And Then She Smiles" fell outside the national top 40, and the LP "Two Sides" sank without trace. That, really, was that.



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

"A psychedelic cocktail of the sublime, beautiful, angry and sad, Sp!n, as the name suggests, create a deliriously exhilirating sound in hypnotic motion. They have been described as shameless pirates and freeloaders, 'purveyors of bliss-orientated pop' (Dave Simpson - Melody Maker) and of 'playing wildly electric, mesmerising pp that brooks no boundaries' (Stuart Maconie - NME)"

Though if you want aborted promise, this lot take the prize. Hyped as likely glory-boys, their careers spiralled out of control after this single was released when lead singer Lee Clark handed in his letter of resignation, unhappy with the record company's handling of their work. A mere day after that, the group were involved in a road crash which sent bass player John Mason into an eleven day coma. All the press superlatives were washed away in the wake of the chaos and they rapidly became forgotten men.

"Scratches In The Sand" actually sounds very ahead of its time now, and while some feeble attempts were made in 1990 to categorise them as "baggy", it's a much harder, more brittle and downright less funky proposition than that. T Rex styled elements burst through (the "Do you want me like a lover?" lines sound utterly glam) and the whole thing simmers with attitude. With this, you could possibly argue that Britpop landed four years too early.

That's not as daft as it sounds, either. Members Steve Mason and Matt James would later pick themselves up and dust themselves down and recruit Martin Rossiter as their next lead vocalist, and begin a new band called Gene together. More on that lot much, much later - but while Rossiter brought thoughtful and considered lyricism and emotive vocal stylings (and not to mention some success) to the mix, I can't help but wonder what Sp!n might have become under the right circumstances. There's an abrupt rudeness to "Scratches In The Sand" that points towards something very different and potentially thrilling not far down the road.