Pink Industry: Forty Five

18 February 1982

"A four track 12 inch EP from former Pink Military frontperson Jayne and new playmate Ambrose. (Ambrose?)"

— Red Starr

I've written about several EP's in this space and they'll be a few more before long but this time I thought I'd do a little piece about how they're put together, according to someone who has no idea about how to do so. Here are my do's and don't's for compiling the perfect extended play with additional notes on how Liverpool's Pink Industry measures up with their first too-long-for-a-single, too-short-for-an-album release Forty Five.

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DO try to spread out the highlights. You know when there's a killer A side and you flip the bastard over only to discover that the B side sucks something awful? Well, you risk doubling the folly if you place the choice cuts back-to-back in a clever attempt to hook listeners. But just wait till they put on the second side and realise that there's nothing of note spread over two tracks.

✓ Forty Five begins with "Is This the End", the record's bleakest track. Ian Cranna Red Starr's fave is "Don't Let Go" over on the flip side.

DON'T make it a glorified single. This is what I will call the Crackers International problem. Erasure's bid for the 1988 Christmas Number One was a value-for-money four cut EP which excited enough people to give them their biggest hit to date. Yet, opener "Stop!" hogged all the airplay and it's doubtful anyone played the other three tracks more than the once. A genuinely strong set of tracks would've covered up "Stop!" being so damn repetitive. Ideally, every selection on your EP ought to be good enough to become the single

✓ No danger of this happening here, even though ver Pinks did eventually issue "Don't Let Go" as a single in its own right. But it was five years later so we'll let that one slide.

DO pad out your EP with an instrumental that you have lying around if you're struggling with . Three track EP's are a certainly a thing (there are even EP's with two tracks for some reason) but they're best avoided. Four's your optimal number. Even if you've got little more than a dismal two minute jam session, use it. Placed strategically at the end of side A it might even raise the odd eyebrow or bring a degree of delight to your hardcore fanbase who will doubtless feel convinced that this is the "real" you.

✓ Side A's closer is "47" (stylized as "~47~" though I'm not convinced the tildas are there for anything more than cosmetic purposes) which is your classic post punk tune with no lyrics because no one in the band could be arsed. Right they are too. On your standard single instrumentals smack of laziness (see the otherwise fine "Oscillate Wildly" by The Smiths); on an EP they provide depth — even if they do know such thing.

DON'T resort to including a remix, re-recording or live version of an old hit to bring your EP up to the optimum number of cuts. In this instance you're better off with fewer tracks. (NB: this rule does not apply to EP's that are geared specifically towards recycling material, such as Teenage Fanclub's Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It)

✓ (It's almost as if this study has been designed simply to make Pink Industry seem like geniuses)

DO try your best to get the running order as spot on as possible. Deacon Blue's Ricky Ross described placing the key opening and closing tracks on each side an album as the "four corners"; with an EP, you're looking at nothing but that dynamic. If you were decorating your living room, you could get away with leaving one or two corners empty; but what if it's all corners we're talking about? Think about it.

X I dig Forty Five (it's second only to the mighty Spiral Scratch in terms of EP's covered so far on this blog) but the running order is as baffling as Rubber Soul (seriously, how does "What Goes On" merit a more prominent placement than "In My Life"?). Kicking it off with "Is This the End" must've seemed dead clever (dead clever) but it belongs at the end. I mean, for god's sake, look at the title of the freakin' song!

DON'T cheat by putting out a standard two song 7" single and an "EP" with a pair of extra cuts for the 12". This is a sure-fire way of ensuring that you'll have yourself a Crackers International of your own. Make up your mind, buddy!

✓ Again, no danger of this occurring, even though it easily could have with the beloved "Don't Let Go". It's possible that more than two dozen people would've gone out and bought it had the catchiest, most likable track appeared first. (On the other hand, as Brian Eno said, only twenty-five people bought the first Pink Industry EP but everyone who did formed bands and had their charismatic female singers shave their heads)

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To sum up, Pink Industry did very well with Forty-Five. It's an excellent EP. I don't know if it deserved a bigger audience but those of us who have been pulled into its orbit have very much appreciated the experience. To quote that chap Red Starr's closing remarks of his review, "more of this sort of thing please". Well, quite.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Talk Talk: "Mirror Man"

DO manage to somehow be both critically acclaimed and underrated. This is a square that isn't easily circled but (a) you don't have to worry about doing so yourself and (b) your fans will refused to acknowledge the contradiction.

✓ Nick Drake aside, no one has ever toed the line between strong reviews and the air of being ignored like Talk Talk. The fact that they hardly ever had hits seems reason enough to consider them underrated despite the fact that music critics have done nothing but praise them.

DON'T bear a passing resemblance to any popular comedians: no one will ever take you seriously.

X Actually, it's to the late Mark Hollis' credit that he managed to be a serious artiste despite being Eric Idle's doppelganger. Still, he'd have never gotten away with it had he looked like John Cleese.

DO try latch yourself on to a genre with fans that don't get so damn uppity about being a purist.

✓ Whereas folk, jazz and punk fans will revolt if you stray ever so slightly, synth-pop demands only that you employ a Casio keyboard, even if it's drowned out by guitars and horns and orchestras. Hollis had the freedom to roam in part because his band wasn't overly successful but also because he was involved in a genre that was more about what you stood for than the style of music you happened to play.

DON'T fret too much if the public aren't as receptive as the critics.

✓ Hollis went his own way, the punters be damned! And, hey, those royalty checks from that lame but successful No Doubt cover must've come in handy.

DO try to get yourself a Single of the Fortnight of your own so I can write about you in more detail.

X Well, at least that No Doubt cover might crop up...

(Click here to see my original review)

Pink Industry: Forty Five

18 February 1982

"More of this sort of thing please."
— Red Starr

One of the unforeseen pleasures of doing this blog is that it has turned me on to some brilliant records that I would never have otherwise encountered. I expected to develop a heightened appreciation for the likes of Dexys Midnight Runners and The Human League but I failed to consider the lesser knowns who have fallen into my lap. From the jazz art snot of Ludus to the ghastly but beautiful deconstructionism of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, it's clear that the eighties produced a vast array of sonically deranged geniuses who never got their due — and we've only just begun.

One of musicology's most longstanding clichés is that while few bought The Velvet Underground's debut album, everyone who did so ended up forming bands. Now I don't doubt the truthfulness of this claim — even if I've never seen any survey results that confirm it — but I have to wonder if it's as remarkable an outcome as one might think. Didn't plenty of hippies and rednecks end up putting together country rock outfits when they first heard The Flying Burrito Brothers? How many literate but disaffected young people took up poetry and confrontational performance art upon listening to Patti Smith's Horses? Weren't there an entire generation of overcoat-sporting Scots that invested in fairlight synthesisers due to The Blue Nile? Smallish, cult-like acts inspire further, even smaller, even cultier groups and so on into obscurist infinity.

Locked into this chain of influence at one point or another resides Pink Industry. Their musical heroes — the ones I can hear at any rate — weren't especially well known nor were any of the groups that came along after them. It's fine that I can sit here in 2018 and see so much of indie lush industrialists Cocteau Twins in this music — and even that's just speculation considering that Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie were likely busy ironing out their own sound while the Pinks were foisting this upon us but certainly the two groups were on to much the same audio alchemy — but naturally no one was to know who would be listening and who would be forming bands as a result back in '82. 

Red Starr prefers side B opener "Don't Let Go" for its Velvets influence and vocalist Jayne Casey's wailing but I'm partial to "Is This the End" which commences the flip side. A haunting piece, it's a curious choice to kick off an E.P. and not just because of the title. It has the feel of a track that brings an album to a bleak conclusion, not unlike "Decades" on Joy Division's Closer or "The Overload" on Talking Heads' masterpiece Remain in Light. Cinematic, powerful and rich, its sheer gorgeousness is only slightly dampened by the knotty sense that few could have been listening beyond John Peel's devoted following — and what does it matter given that they all promptly went out and formed bands. For its part, "Don't Let Go" falls into similar territory. I don't hear Lou Reed and John Cale so much as those vaguely industrial groups fronted by wistful female singers doing what would eventually be called dream pop. (And, yes, Cocteau Twins are precisely who I'm thinking of)

So, just where am I going with all of this? Nowhere really. Forty Five is a remarkable work that probably was influenced by the giants of underground music and hopefully influenced plenty of figures going forward. Few ended up buying it but those who did would have quit smiling, messed up their hair and messed about with their mates over cheap instruments. What more could you want from the periphery?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

ABBA: "Head over Heels"

"Oh God," Starr writes, his eyes doubtless rolling as he churned out this bit of copy, "number one for weeks and weeks." Surely his mood improved when he discovered just how wrong his prediction was. "Head over Heels" was the end of the Swedes' grip over the British charts, taking just a nominal spot in the Top 30. As Starr says, it's just another decent ABBA song in a world of much better ABBA songs and the punters agreed. They might have done better, however, to flip the record over as "The Visitors" sees them firing on all cylinders for just about the last time. Good time party bands tend to keep their melancholy hidden but this epic song of aliens being baffled by the world's madness and repression might have peaked the interest of a public that no longer had much use for them.