The Birthday Party: "Release the Bats" / Jon & Vangelis: "State of Independence"

20 August 1981

"John Peel...has nominated this as his record-of-'81; I'll settle for it being...not normally the kind of thing I would listen to...the most compelling, uncompromised...immaculate sequencer grooves...the singer rants with frightening intensity...and sax overdubs."
— Charlie Gillett

A mischievous start to this one on my part. This is our first look at a co-SOTF and, as a warped tribute to this landmark, I've decided to mash up Charlie Gillett's pair of glowing reviews into the above "quotation". I have, therefore, taken his analysis completely out of context. Anyone who wishes to see what he actually wrote is invited to do so by clicking on the link up top.

I suppose this week's entry is about understanding a reviewer's perspective rather than agreeing with it. Neither of Gillett's picks do much for me personally but I can see picking them, particularly in light of most of their competition. "Release the Bats" is indeed intense, yes, frighteningly intense even, an early example of goth rock's chilling power — though sadly free of the sympathetic touch that Nick Cave would later develop. "State of Independence" is a last-gasp for prog rock, a super-duo laying down some wonderful ideas that don't quite work out in the finished product. One YouTube comment describes it as reggae from outer space, an opinion I can't disagree with even if the sentiment fails to lift me from my apathy. Nevertheless, the two records do stand out: Singles of the Fortnight that I don't especially like but kind of get.

More interesting than the bulk of this fortnight's singles is Gillett's approach to presenting his reviews, which, again, I can understand if not necessarily desire to emulate. He has the records classified into three categories: Best of the Bunch; People You've Heard Before (and Will Hear Again) and, finally, People You Haven't Heard (but Will One Day). I can certainly see the appeal of this while immediately detecting its flaws. Leaving aside the first one, the second presents us with those who've experienced some chart success and/or critical acclaim. Given that he assumes readers are already aware of these figures it's strange, then, for him to begin one entry by asking "Have you heard of Ry Cooder?" Granted, this is a query that is well worth asking, even today. In addition, The Look (who?) seem to be a conspicuous pick here. They were soon to fall out of chart favour and into ver dumper.

Then we come to the third category. It's nice of Gillett to assume this eager eight all had bright futures ahead of them and obviously he wasn't to know that they were all destined for obscurity. Two of this bunch — The Bore-Town Bop and The Lucky Saddles — appear with the only singles they ever released. It's neigh on impossible to watch out for groups who disappear so rapidly.

Still, I like having the singles classified this way. If anything, perhaps Gillett just didn't have enough categories to lean on. I've come up with a few of my own with some very brief reviews to accompany them.

People Who Think They're Still Relevant (but Have Actually Gone Down the Dumper)

Kim Carnes: "Draw of the Cards"

A retread of her one hit and not nearly as good. The vocal smokiness is beginning to pale.

People You've Heard Before (and Never Want to Hear Again)

The Moody Blues: "The Voice"

At least Jon and Vangelis are trying, The Bloody Muds are just rehashing the same old stuff that was never especially great to begin with.

People You Keep Hearing About (but Never Get Round to Listening To)

Ry Cooder: "Crazy 'Bout an Automobile" / "The Very Thing That Makes You Rich"

Do I know Ry Cooder, Chuck? I know of him. It's been on my list for the last twenty years but I promise to check out the Paris, Texas soundtrack anytime now.

People Who Will Have a Hit (Even If They Don't Deserve To)

Cliff Richard: "Wired for Sound"

In no way whatsoever does a song called "Wired for Sound" have any business being done by His Cliffness. Gillett claims that it "doesn't deserve the feeling that Cliff manages to bring to it". Either that or perhaps our Cliff puts too much feeling into material that needs someone who understands irony.

Or I should just stick to a category I know. Namely...

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Ludus: "Mother's Hour"

Towards the end of his life John Lennon began taking note of the influence of his wife Yoko Ono on up and coming new wave acts, citing in particular The B52's and their cult hit "Rock Lobster". (Fun fact: a Canadian number one!) He could just as easily have been talking about Ludus (you know, assuming he ever had the chance to hear them). Vocalist Linder sasses it up in the verses while getting her inner Ono on in the chorus. Reflecting this polarisation is her band who play some supple free jazz mixed with the sneering ferocity of punk. If a biographer/liner note writer ever needs to fill space with a quote they could do worse than this: "Ludus are the missing link between Yoko Ono and Morrissey". They may even take me way out of context for all I care.

The Human League: "Love Action (I Believe in Love)"

6 August 1981

"This is more like it. Soul music made in Sheffield."
— David Hepworth

A bit of a cheat this one since David Hepworth didn't exactly bestow a SOTF among this lot. We're still a ways away from it becoming an established part of the singles review page so it's not as if they were being mandated at the time. But he reserved the bulk of his praise for this particular record and that's good enough for me.

Hepworth is currently co-host of the splendid A Word in Your Ear podcasts (along with fellow erstwhile Hits scribe Mark Ellen, more on him at some point in the future). They typically sit down with music journalists, biographers or musicians flogging a memoir but on a couple of occasions they've engaged in some fond reminiscences with other hacks from Britain's top pop mag. Well, mostly fond. Hepworth has admitted that the singles review was a particular bugbear for him, recalling that:

"Half way through you start resenting the singles. You have to respond to these things and you don't feel like doing it. You just start making cheap jokes at their expense which the readers loved."

Hepworth had a fractious relationship with Smash Hits readers over the singles reviews, although just how much of that was played up to tease the audience is guess work. The 21 February 1980 issue saw a change in format with new releases all discussed in a page-long article. Hep prefaces with the following bit of baiting:

Heh, heh, heh. That's put a spanner in your work's hasn't it? New format, y'see. Specifically designed to foil those folks who scan the page for names of their favourites and then grab pen and paper to fire off the usual "Who does David Hepworth think he is?" letter. Gotcha!  

A month and a half later and he's back doing the singles, which have begun to waver from one issue to another between the old (and future) format of highlighting each release with its own entry and what we'll call the Hepworthy style. This time he begins with a slightly different tack to take on readers: 

First, I must deal with my correspondence. I am grateful to the Arsenal and Police fan who wrote from Enfield to point out that he/she didn't care for the way the Singles Column was currently laid out. Thank you for you helpful advice. Now why don't YOU go stick YOUR head up a dead bear's (Look, Dave, it's no use being diplomatic — you've got to be firm with 'em! — Ed.)

Leaving aside issues with the singles and a surly reviewer, this entry marks the ascendancy of The Human League to the frontline of UK pop. A decent avant-garde outfit who'd yet to tap into the public consciousness, they abruptly went pop in 1981 and found themselves slowly beginning to catch on. In one of their aforementioned Smash Hits-themed podcasts, Mark Ellen put forth a theory that the arrival the magazine altered the landscape and helped move once serious-minded, album-oriented acts — such as Adam & The Ants, Dexys Midnight Runners, Madness and, yes, The Human League — in the direction of the teen dominated singles market. Not so much a sell out as a realisation of just what was going on — although that is often exactly what selling out amounts to. It's a tired and pathetic charge to level upon most and in this case it has absolutely no merit whatsoever — to the extent that as I write this I suspect that I'm trolling myself in order to conjure up an argument when one doesn't exist.

In any event, the Sheffield soulsters' musical integrity remained following their transformation. But what the likes of "Being Boiled" and "Empire State Human" lack is pop dramatics which "Love Action" and its predecessor "The Sound of the Crowd" have in spades — and this is well before we even get to a certain cut from parent album Dare that would close out the year.

The Human League brought so many elements together to make "Love Action" such an outstanding single: the pained, ravaged baritone of Phil Oakey, an industrial yet elegant synth backing, the presence of backing singers/dancers Joanne and Susan adding a touch of working class glamour, even the sinister but still kind of amusing video from a year later. Sheffield Soul in all its glory.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Kim Wilde: "Water on Glass"

Hepworth's grumpiness should be considered in the context of the awfully dire pile of 45's he had to sift through this issue. No one save for ver League escaped lashings from his curt pen. And who can blame him? "Water on Glass" is rather good in a scramble-to-find-a-third-single-off-an-unexpectedly-successful-album kind of way but Our Kim's coasting when held up next to "Kids in America" while her — in Hep's words — detached vocal sounds a wee bit too apathetic for a song dealing with tinnitus, even though this is something she would soon perfect on her very fine run of upcoming singles. Her bandmates, however, deliver the goods with a rousing performance that just about saves a pretty mundane SOTF runner-up. She could and would do better.

The Undertones: "Julie Ocean"

23 July 1981

"Lush balladeering might not sound typical Undertones country, but the passionate intensity that distinguishes all their work is here in spades."
— Johnny Black

Smash Hits was in its infancy in the autumn of 1978 when along came an obscure single from Ulster punks The Undertones. It didn't exactly set the charts ablaze but it took on a life of its own, particularly as its reputation grew with the endorsement of a British national treasure. John Peel admitted that "Teenage Kicks" delighted him so much the first time he heard it that he cried and he went to his grave a quarter of a century later still rating it as the greatest single of all time. No song has ever had such an impressive recommendation — and one it couldn't possibly live up to.

I quite like "Teenage Kicks" but like many punk classics — The Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant", The Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love", The Clash's "White Riot" — I find that it typically sounds better when I sing it to myself than when actually I put it on. The iconic riff is catchier and more vigourously played, with vocals that are screamed rather than using Feargal Sharkey's more restrained approach. (It also sounds much more thrilling on an open-mic night played by misfit amateurs who have no clue what they're doing; maybe I do understand the punk ideal)

By 1981 The Undertones had long since moved on from the likes of "Teenage Kicks" but their apparent passionate intensity remained. The band seemed to grow into Sharkey's voice as they progressed and his quivering wail is the basis for their convictions. The original version of "Julie Ocean", taken from their album Positive Touch, is shorter and kept simple, a spotlight for their lead singer's affecting vocals. Rerecorded — and/or remixed — for its single release, it's twice as long with more space for Sharkey's bandmates to get their own passionate intensity rocks on. Lush balladeering in Johnny Black's eyes thus becomes overly lush, over-produced and far too thought out. You'd think they would have known better having once been punks.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Dexys Midnight Runners: "Show Me"

Soul revivalism with a slurred vocalist shouldn't really work but Dexys usually managed to pull it off. Coming from their brief period of sporting track suits, boxer boots and pony tails — sandwiched between the more familiar hoodlum dockworkers and dirtbags in dungarees phases — there's an appropriate athleticism on display here. Black praises this in spite of having some doubts about them, even going so far as to dub them "pretentious" — something he curiously fails to detect in The Undertones. Either way, "Show Me" is absolutely glorious, the sound of northern soul fanatics who won't come down, won't give in, won't let up. Plenty of passionate intensity going on here but all in service of yet another Dexys classic.

The Passions: "Skin Deep"

9 July 1981

"A near-instrumental with wiry guitar and hustling beat taking first place over choirs and bursting balloons...Barbara Gogan ...contribute[s] some spirited but largely indecipherable wailing"

— Red Starr

Our first proper dip into the Smash Hits Singles of the Fortnight and we've already happened upon a flop. The Passions were coming off their first — and, as it would turn out, only — Top 40 hit with "I'm in Love with a German Film Star", a reasonably good tune which descends into novelty too much for me to take it seriously. But they took a bold step with its follow up. Dispensing with that whole song thing, they manage to carve out a groove with layers of robotics, funk guitar, synthesized choirs and, yes, Gogan's wailing (I can't hear the bursting balloons myself but there's lots going on in there) building upon each other. It doesn't seem especially remarkable at first but as it all frantically comes together the effect is startling and begs for repeat listens. 

It would be easy and understandable to look on askance at such a good record being denied even a nominal chart entry but I just don't see it. If anything it strikes me as the sort of little-known album cut that fans trot out to self-righteously belittle casual listeners. And they'd be right to do so. It may not have made an impact at the time but hopefully their fanbase appreciated it for the killer live showstopper that it almost certainly had to have been. And they had a SOTF as a feather in their caps — assuming anyone bothered to tell them. (Quite what effect, if any, that this modest achievement had on peeking the interest of readers is something I hope to go into at some point in the future)

To be fair, though, the competition isn't exactly stellar. Beyond this and the little number I've praised below, the only other single that has made of an impression is the lightweight but charming and catchy "When You Were Mine" by Bette "Mrs. Suggs" Bright (which Red Starr didn't think much of). Elsewhere we have some familiar acts doing pretty substandard work. U2's "Fire" is not even particularly notable for this single-word-album-title/Christian-lite rock period prior to their ascendancy, Kate Bush reminds us that she could be just as capable of irritating listeners as captivating them and did you know that Spandau Ballet is an anagram for Paul's Bland Tea? Just saying.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Icehouse: "We Can Get Together"

We're a half-dozen years ahead of the pink-florescent-leotard-soft-rock-slickness of "Electric Blue" — not to mention one positively epic permed mullet in the accompanying video — but this is equally drenched in the eighties, albeit in far less grievous fashion. Some new wavy guitar, a synth and some big drums provide the backbone to a simple yet spirited piece with a promo featuring some state-of-the-art early eighties graphics. Dated but in a good way — and that goes as much for song as video. So worthy of praise that it could have easily been a co-SOTF alongside The Passions. Perhaps "Red Starr" felt that they had brighter days still to come and didn't need to be propped up. "File under Highly Promising," his nibs concludes but I'm quite sure they never bettered this little gem. Their hairstyles, on the other hand, still needed some work.