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. 

Indie Top Video featuring New Order, Darling Buds, Birdland, McCarthy, They Might Be Giants, Oyster Band

Format: VHS
Year of Release: 1989

Hot on the tails of the CD88 compilation - indie music on a digital format, whoever would have thought it? - came "Indie Top Video", which brought together sights as well as sounds from Volumes 1-6 of the series.

Though this again was something of a lie. Not only did no videos whatsoever feature from volume one or two of the series, there were also five non-canon "bonus tracks" nestled amongst the fifteen vids, and one track which wouldn't emerge until Volume Seven of the CD/vinyl/cassette format.

Not that it really mattered, and not that I ran to Our Price demanding my money back. "Indie Top Video" was fantastic viewing for those of us who wanted to see videos of some our favourite tracks in full, especially those "The Chart Show" had rudely skated past during the Indie Chart rundowns. And "The Chart Show" clearly had an enormous influence on this tape as well, as prior to each song commencing a flashing "Play" logo emerged. Fortunately, they didn't trouble us with any "Stop" and "Rewind" nonsense, though.

Beechwood didn't handle this release themselves, and looked towards the mighty powerhouse of EMI to take on the manufacturing and distribution. Their Picture Music International arm handled it, meaning that when you started the tape you were introduced to the same charming and whimsical animated logo and music that greeted you whenever you pressed play on a "Now That's What I Call Music" VHS compilation. It was hard to know what to make of that, really.

While this Indie Top Video sold enough copies to climb into the national Music Video Top 20 - which seems like an astonishing achievement given the relative obscurity of a lot of the contents - subsequent tapes sold less and less well, and the series failed to get beyond six editions. We'll take a look at each in order when they occur on our timeline and discuss the tracks that don't appear elsewhere, providing a link back to the others that do.

1. New Order - Fine Time (Factory) - Bonus Track

Straight off the bat, here's our first bonus track, and it doesn't get much better than this. "Fine Time" caused a flurry of both panic and speculation at the point of its release. Being the first track off New Order's "Technique" LP, its frantic Acid House rhythms and full-on collision of dancefloor ideas made some think that the band were going to return with a fully fledged House LP. Of course, they didn't - and in fact, while "Technique" may be a wonderful album, it's actually much more subdued and moody in places than it's widely given credit for.

Still, "Fine Time" constantly ricochets around in such a manner that you do have to wonder what the band were on when they came up with it. The central keyboard riff is never far away, but across only a few minutes we're also treated to Peter Hook's bad Barry White impersonations, stammering vocals and guitar lines, loud, dominant whooshing effects, acid house squelches and a fantastically simple and pretty melodic guitar line at the end. It's supremely hyperactive, and you get the sense that once the group had built the basic foundations of the track and nailed the hook, they went wild taking every popular Ibiza idea they'd heard and throwing it in the blender alongside it. The result is something so impatiently itchy sounding that you want to be dragged along with it. You're never entirely sure where it's going or what the point is, but it throws everything it's got in your direction. It is unbelievably huge fun.

The video is no "True Faith", but is an absurd festive promo about the surreal and faintly disturbing adventures of one boy and his aggressive looking Jack Russell terrier. I didn't know what to make of it at the time, and I'm afraid I still don't now. Even when the track climbed to Number One on the Chart Show indie chart, they failed to play it, for reasons I've always found hard to understand (druggy imagery? Dated Christmas imagery? Just plain "being faintly disturbing"? Who knows?)



2. The Shamen - Jesus Loves Amerika (Moksha)

3. Pop Will Eat Itself - Def Con One (Chapter 22)

4. A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray (Rham)

5. The Darling Buds - It's All Up To You (Native)  - Bonus Track

I always felt that his was probably The Darling Buds' strongest moment. Released prior to them signing to a major label and becoming steadily smoothed over, "It's All Up To You" still has a hard, abrasive edge beneath Andrea's double-tracked choirgirl vocals. It also contains a killer rumbling bassline and lovely Ramones styled guitar solo from Harley Farr, and like some of the finest Indiepop feels like Phil Spector's girl group ideas meeting with the best punky sounds.

"It's All Up To You" did make some of the hype feel justified, and it was impossible not to wish the best for the band - but the Epic years delivered very little success, and by the early nineties I bore witness to them in a very Spinal Tap situation, sitting in a corner of Southend's HMV waiting for people to come up to get copies of Darling Buds records signed. I thought about buying one just for the sake of saying hello to the group and getting some of their inkwork on a copy of their record, but I was short of money that day and badly wanted to buy a copy of something else, so I didn't. To be fair, it's unlikely that my life would have been wildly changed by such an event. And anyway, I probably would have nervously stammered a lot in front of Andrea Lewis.



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

7. Birdland - Hollow Heart (Lazy) - Bonus Track

Within a few singles, Birdland went from being the saviours of British music to a standing joke, leading the Manic Street Preachers to nervously protest "We're not the next Birdland!" to any journalist who would listen. In fact, that was one of the last things Richey Manic said to Steve Lamacq before carving "4 Real" into his forearm. Imagine that - you feel so strongly that you might be going down the same career path as another group that you're driven to such a violent act (this, I realise, glosses over Richey's problems perhaps inexcusably for the sake of a semi-joky aside, but there is nonetheless a grain of truth to it).

You can hear what the original fuss was about here, though (and I've also met more than one person who has insisted that Birdland were staggeringly good live). "Hollow Heart" is hyperactively brilliant, with everything taken at a breakneck speed. The cymbals hiss and crash constantly (I've seldom heard this much white noise coming from a drummer) the guitar lines are riddled with dumb, simple hooks, the vocals seep attitude - it's just fantastic in a primitive, slack-jawed way. This is garage punk at its very best, the only question it begged at the time was whether the band had the creativity or imagination to deliver more greatness across an LP or even whole career. The eventual answer was "no".

Still, just as we didn't ask The Kingsmen for another "Louie Louie", there's no reason at all (beyond record company expectations) that we should have demanded Birdland create another hundred or so "Hollow Hearts". This is the distinct sound of a group shooting out their finest moment from the barrel first, and rather than condemning them for that, we should still acknowledge that it was a pretty spectacular moment.



8. Cardiacs - Is This The Life (Alphabet Business Concern)

9. Danielle Dax - White Knuckle Ride (Awesome)

(A bit confusing, this - "White Knuckle Ride" wouldn't appear on the Indie Top 20 series until Volume 7. So as not to mess around with the structure of these entries too much, we'll be discussing it  when we come to talk about that LP).

10. Fields of the Nephilim - Preacher Man (Situation Two)

11. Loop - Collision (Chapter 22)

12. Christian Death - Church Of No Return (Jungle)

13. McCarthy - Keep An Open Mind Or Else! (Midnight Music) - Bonus Track

Prior to entering a Krautrock inspired Moogy wonderland with Stereolab, Tim Gane fronted left-wing indiepop firebrands (TM) McCarthy. Their approach to political polemic was unorthodox and challenging, presenting all their lyrics in prose format with Tim squeezing them to fit around the simple pop melodies. Often too, they would adopt the style of someone else's tedious right-wing diatribes and set them to a chirpy melody to expose their arrogance, contradictory nature and stupidity - "The Home Secretary Briefs The Forces of Law and Order" is a good example of this. ("We don't believe in violence! Those who use guns to kill in cold blood, they deserve all they get, they deserve all they ask for. So when you catch them pump them all full of lead, tear them limb from limb. It will be okay! For the law will be on your side!")

"Keep An Open Mind Or Else!" follows a similar tack, sung from the perspective of a person who believes themselves to be reasonable and right-thinking, but who simply cannot or will not engage with political arguments coherently and pushes away any facts they're presented with. To be frank, it hasn't dated one jot and actually probably feels even more applicable now in these social media times. It begins as an order to calm, rational debate being sung in a reasonable tone ("You should always try and see another person's point of view. You should never think that you know everything!") before descending into impatient, aggressive verbal carnage ("I don't believe in facts! No, I just believe in me. Argue, I don't care! Would you like your face smashed in?") And that, my friends, is just another Sunday night on Twitter, and even an eerie precursor to the Stewart Lee line "You can prove anything with FACTS". Times may change, but the patterns of conversation never really do.

"Keep an Open Mind" is backed with a truly sumptuous melody as well, like a trashy, harsher take on The Byrds, delicate backing vocals and fantastic hooks permeating the track. It probably is McCarthy's best moment, and is an unexpectedly pretty and melodic musing on pointless political discourse. Further proof (if it were needed) that political songs don't all have to sound like Crass or The Clash.



14. They Might Be Giants - They'll Need A Crane (One Little Indian) - Bonus Track

I've never much cared for They Might Be Giants. A few tracks aside, their material has always sounded far too much like the work of people who enjoy their own jokes too much. I made the mistake of buying the LP "Flood" back in my youth, and became desperately angered and annoyed with it within three listens. This was back in the days where buying an album probably meant one less night out for me that week, and it wasn't just that I hated much of the LP, it was also that I couldn't remove it from my brain afterwards either. Everything felt like a Sesame Street educational jingle sung by a New Wave Bert and Ernie. In fact, please don't make me dissect that LP again when there's no need. The songs! They're coming back to me!

"They'll Need A Crane" is proof that the band did have a sensitive and considered side, though, as the track takes a very considered look at a collapsing relationship. This verse alone is both witty and familiar: "Don't call me at work, no no/ the boss still hates me/ and I'm just tired/ and I don't love you anymore/ and there's a restaurant we should check out where/ the other nightmare people like to go/ I meant nice people, baby wait/ I didn't mean to say nightmare..."

Other than that, "Crane" is a simple and catchy shuffle through one relationship's wasteland. It's a shame they couldn't be this thoughtful and personal more often.



15. Oyster Band - New York Girls (Cooking Vinyl)

The Oyster Band went through a period of being both music press favourites and Radio Two "Folk On Two" stalwarts for a confusing point in the late eighties, and that's even more bizarre when you consider the fact that they were initially just Fiddler's Dram (of "Daytrip to Bangor" fame) recording and performing under another name. The original purpose of the alternate name was for the Oysters to act as a dance band for specific live shows and events, before eventually the Fiddler's Dram moniker was jettisoned entirely.

Given the success of The Pogues around this time, there was no reason why another folk group couldn't have broken through, and indeed The Oyster Band were probably one the finest examples of the genre at that point. "New York Girls" has just enough of a rough edge to set them apart from the competition, and it's impossible to sit still while this rattles along. The fiddle player alone deserves a gold medal for speed.