Volume 9 Side 2 - The Shamen, New Order, McCarthy, Finitribe, Nitzer Ebb

1. The Shamen - Pro Gen (One Little Indian)

"Play this loud in a very dark room and little green men will come and beat you on the side of your head with silver hammers shrieking 'Let us in, let us in, we have some good sounds for you'. Fast, furious and sometimes a mite frightening, "Pro Gen" makes all the right moves in the right places." Record Mirror

Also known as "Move Any Mountain", "Pro Gen" tickled the belly of the Top 75 in 1990 before becoming a huge Top Five hit on its re-release in 1991. Really, it's the song that moved the group away from the cultish fringes and into the big league, containing Mr C a-waggin' his finger as he rapped twenty-to-the-dozen, lots of pristine, fanfaring synths, and killer beats.

Opinion will inevitably be divided on which period of the group's work stands up the best, their early neo-psychedelia, their mid-period Hacienda-flavoured Indie Dance, or the well fed years. I would argue somewhat cautiously that all those periods had something to offer, but that "Pro Gen" seems ever so slightly unexciting in retrospect. The repetitious chorus of "I can move, move, move any mountain" wanes very quickly, and the rest rings out confidently but lacks depth, edge, wit or bite.

Still, at the time this certainly felt like a bold and significant single, and many predicted a hit for The Shamen. They were right - it just wouldn't break through in 1990, that's all.



2. New Order - Round and Round (Club Mix) (Factory)

(In an interesting move, Beechwood Music provided no sleeve notes at all for this track)

By the time "Indie Top 20 Volume 9" came out, "Round and Round" was already old hat - a 1989 release by New Order which charted lower than anticipated (Number 21) and was promoted by a somewhat rubbish video of lots of female models pulling seductive, amused or innocent faces, the kind of idea even George Michael would have considered for three seconds, then rejected. It's untimely appearance here is probably for two reasons; the fact that the Club Mix fits the baggy mood of the 1990 era, and also to pull in punters with a big indie name. Well, at least it wasn't with an old Peel Session track this time.

"Round and Round" is a curiously understated pop track on an otherwise magnificent album. Always sounding faintly underpowered and underwritten, it sits on "Technique" like a faintly catchy afterthought amidst a sea of mournful ballads and blissed out Ibiza infused indie. Either "Vanishing Point" or "Mr. Disco" would have been better second singles, and even if "Run" had been shunted up the release schedules to occupy an earlier space it might have made more sense.

Still, we can't sit here all day rewriting history, and this was launched into a faintly indifferent world in 1989. Even a "quite good" New Order single from this period is good enough, obviously, and "Round and Round" is mellow, twittery and funky, and manages to slowly charm its way into your heart and cause your feet to tap. But that's all I can find to say about it...



3. McCarthy - Get A Knife Between Your Teeth (Midnight Music)

"The title comes from a cover of an Anti-Bolschevik pamphlet of the 1920s. It showed a crazed and hairy savage with a knife between his teeth who was presumably preparing to stab a respectable citizen to death. He represented what reactionaries believed a revolutionary communist to look like".

When my grandchildren come round on a Sunday and ask me the question "Tell me pops - when was Peak Baggy? And how did we know it had happened?", I usually pop a Werther's Original buttered candy sweet in their mouths and tell them "Why, it was when McCarthy, an underground Marxist indie band from Barking who had been on the C86 compilation, added wah-wah pedals and dancefloor friendly beats to their final single".

Because it happened! It did! And the fact that I don't have any children, never mind grandchildren, doesn't make the rest of what I've told you any less true. Somewhat strangely, they got away with it without a single cry of "Bandwagon Jumpers", though that's largely aided by the fact that "Get A Knife Between Your Teeth" is a fine little single. For all the wah-wah action and pumping rhythms, it's still melodically and lyrically a typical McCarthy record, and there's not an obligatory rapper in sight. Tim Gane sounds as rattled but sweetly voiced as ever, and the chorus punctuates everything with a determined message.

There's no question it was one of 1990's more unusual releases, however, and while nothing was ever said, one wonders if it might be a factor in the group's split and Gane's subsequent Stereolab experiments (more on which much later on). "Knife" swaggers in a way that his music never really did before or since this point, and if he felt uncomfortable, nobody would have been surprised.

He certainly wasn't technically proficient enough to handle it at this point. Apparently another studio helper had to operate the wah-wah pedal for him while he played, as he had no clue how to do it. For shame.



4. Finitribe - Monster In The House (One Little Indian)

"If you've seen the Finitribe live, you start to understand what their records are all about. Being almost cabaret in a housey sort of way, they come on stage dressed in bowler hats, looking like something out of A Clockwork Orange." Rave Magazine

Indeed, there were people who seriously thought Finitribe were The Future in 1990. Taking the traditional format of a group and putting on image-consious live shows to promote their Dance sounds, they knew the power of making their presence felt before The Prodigy came along.

On the great timeline of Indie-Dance (and certainly Dance music in general) they are but a blip, but around the point of "Monster" a seismic rumbling of promise could be felt. The track is an eerie, menacing piece of work, taking a similar semi-ambient tack to The Shamen's "Omega Amigo" but adding gothic drama to the mix. It's like a bad mid-summer dream, or a slightly ropey high in the middle of a derelict warehouse. The vocals alternately whisper, mock and fearfully announce "A thing like this could warp his mind!" then loop around the circuit again as the keyboards gently play a sinister and simplistic melody.

I still really like this track, actually, and possibly appreciate it more now in 2016 than I did at the time. Its slow, ambient pace and cool mean it hasn't dated much at all, unlike many of the uptempo barnstormers of the day, and it utilises a very simple idea exquisitely well.

Finitribe are often famed for featuring Chris Connelly in their early line-up, who left the group in 1988 to join Ministry. Later Finitribe tracks did have an industrial edge to them too, but "Monster" is an uneasy kind of bliss in comparison.



5. Nitzer Ebb - Lightning Man (Mute) - Vinyl and Cassette Only

"...It's thoroughly menacing, schizophrenic and possibly the only genuinely confusing record of the week. Quite marvellous, all things considered". Caren Myers, Melody Maker.

Nitzer Ebb really were rather industrial, on the other hand, and recently reformed in 2007 to continue their unfinished business.

"Lighting Man" combines brassy razzle-dazzle fanfares with gritted teeth vocals, snarled threats and squelching synthesiser lines, and is a very irate and confusing piece of noise indeed. What it's so agitated about is anyone's guess, but this is what the harsher end of electronic music sounded like in 1990 - jabbing and taunting rather than blissed out and grooving.

Nitzer Ebb built a large following for themselves throughout the early nineties and almost had a reputation as being the "other" band hardcore Depeche Mode fans liked. They have a loyal cult following to this day.

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.