Indie Top 20 Volume 2 Side 4 - Michelle Shocked, Passmore Sisters, Blue Aeroplanes, Brilliant Corners, Talulah Gosh

1. Michelle Shocked - If Love Was A Train (Cooking Vinyl)

For the first time so far on this blog, I've come unstuck - the original version of this track is nowhere to be found on YouTube or Spotify. If you want to listen to the 1988 studio version, however, it's on Vimeo.

Her debut album "The Texas Campfire Tapes" was a seemingly very unlikely underground hit in 1987, although it actually adhered to a commercial pattern hopefully familiar to most of us by now. Recorded on a Sony Walkman while Michelle Shocked performed an impromptu set around a campfire at the Kerrville Folk Festival, it's not as ragged sounding as you'd expect, but is nonetheless raw. There are background noises in the mix on numerous tracks (including occasional vehicle sounds) but it did nonetheless do a great deal to document the intimacy of the performance and Shocked's strong delivery.

For every phase in popular music history where the dominant commercial noise is almost ridiculously slickly produced and heavily airbrushed pop and rock music, it seems that a handful of "authentic" acoustic artists gain major exposure as a conscious counterstrike, usually from members of the public and critics keen to show their support for "real music".  Whether it was intended to or not, "The Texas Campfire Tapes" seemed to mostly gain appreciation for the novelty of its "realness", and the fact that Michelle Shocked was very radically political in her day-to-day life also gave her an added edge, making her a valuable interviewee.

She was certainly a huge cult star for years afterwards in the USA and the UK, but a series of record company disputes ensured that after 1992, she was out on her own, producing her own material to continued, if slightly more subdued, success. She eventually became a born-again Christian and was accused of making homophobic comments live onstage ("Once Prop 8 gets instated and preachers are held at gunpoint and forced to marry homosexuals, I'm pretty sure that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back"). This in turn led to a rambling defensive debate on Piers Morgan's show, of all places.  From a Sony Walkman recording for an indie label to talking about your faith and prayer meetings on the Piers Morgan show... never let it be said that life doesn't take some damn unpredictable paths.

As for "If Love Was A Train"... it's deftly performed, brittle and rustic, but truly nothing outstanding, and I'd actually rather hear the synthetic joys of Erasure's "Sometimes" again. Clearly "the devil" has all the best tunes, eh? Meanwhile, up in heaven...



2. The Passmore Sisters - Every Child In Heaven (Sharp)

The Passmore Sisters had already been indie mainstays for years by this point, having formed in 1983 and issuing six singles to interest from late night radio (and especially John Peel). "Every Child In Heaven" has a peculiar Americana feel to it, totally out of sorts with the group's Bradford origins. It's probably one of the slickest pieces of pop the group ever produced, however, and sounds like it could have been a bargaining chip towards bigger things... but to no avail.

The group disintegrated later in the year, with bass player Howard Taylor and guitarist Brian Roberts joining The Hollow Men, who signed to Arista and achieved a greater deal of cult success in the process.



3. Blue Aeroplanes - Tolerance (Fire)

Like most of the acts we first stumbled across on Volume One who re-emerge here, The Blue Aeroplanes land with a more confident, coherent vision. "Tolerance" maintains the imaginative flourishes of "Lover and Confidante", but manages to sound bolder and more crafted in the process. In particular, the chorus here is nagging and effective, and the band's identity sounds fully rounded and finalised.

The group would eventually jump ship from Fire to Ensign Records, where they gained a bigger budget and more attention, but Top of the Pops never beckoned, meaning we never got to see an interpretative dancer frolicking around on BBC1 at 7:30pm while a sunglasses-wearing Gerard Langley delivered spoken word observations to an alt-rock backdrop. We could only but dream of such an occasion, unfortunately.



4. The Brilliant Corners - Brian Rix (SS20)

Rather like The Chesterfields, there was a distinct sense that Bristol's Brilliant Corners really weren't taking this business that seriously. They possessed a fine line in catchy tunes and daft wordplay, and "Brian Rix" is as sharp and witty as a Half Man Half Biscuit record, whilst having the jangle-pop richness and sweetness of a Smiths track.

"We fumbled around in front of the budgie/ she started to laugh/ what was so funny?" enquires singer David Woodward, before the chorus informs us "It's just you remind me of Brian Rix/ When you pull down your trousers it sends me in fits". This is one of the finest lyrical couplets indiepop has ever produced, and certainly one of the most enduring. The vision of the couple in a suburban living room awkwardly fiddling with their clothes is immediately apparent. Teen angst? The Razorcuts mope around it, whereas The Brilliant Corners trip over it unawares and turn it into an Ealing comedy.

Brian Rix, famed for his comedic farces, liked the single enough to appear briefly in the video for it (which confusingly uses a slightly stripped back version of the track - you can here the Indie Top 20 version here). Chart history wasn't made despite his helping hand, but the video appeared on "The Tube" and "The Chart Show" and further bolstered the band's reputation. This isn't the last time we'll be considering them on this blog.



5. Talulah Gosh - Talulah Gosh (53rd & 3rd)

Talulah Gosh in "selling out" shocker! The eponymous second single had a video, a reasonable production, a decent pop arrangement, and a needle-sharp chorus, and some of their fans felt their hearts sinking as a result. The feyness was still apparent, and the band had lost none of their identity at all - man alive, with words like "Talulah Gosh was a film star for a day/ Talulah Gosh was a top celebrity", they were clearly still in their own very pre-adolescent, bedroom dreamer lyrical mindset - but the whopping church organ climax to the tune almost seems sarcastic in the way it abandons their previous understatement so dramatically. (I do have to point out the obvious fact that this was just a big production compared to their last, though. I'm not claiming it was Tubular bloody Bells, and certainly there are elements of the band's timing here which are ramshackle, but not obtrusively or destructively so. It's charming rather than jarring).

Increased airplay, press and even television time followed, but it wasn't really to last. Whatever their actual intentions, Talulah Gosh were ultimately a short-lived prospect, but one who we will have the chance to discuss again one final time.

As for Indie Top 20 Volume Two, perhaps it's only appropriate that it should finish so dramatically. It rounds off a series of confident sounding recordings which seemed to promise a Proper Movement about to do Big Things and go beyond its relatively underground reach. Of course, a handful of exceptions aside, things didn't quite turn out that way. 

Indie Top 20 Volume 2 Side 3 - Beatmasters/ Cookie Crew, The Beloved, The Chesterfields, Voice of the Beehive, All About Eve

1. The Beatmasters Featuring The Cookie Crew - Rok Da House (Rhythm King)

If it feels far too early to be talking about "Rok Da House", you're not completely mistaken - it was originally issued in July 1987 but only became a proper chart hit in January 1988 after constant club exposure kept the track alive and growing in popularity. So effectively, the Indie Top 20 series was getting access to a bona fide proper chart hit a few months early. I have no idea whether its presence had a knock-on effect on the compilation's sales during the dying months of 1987 before the track became properly commercially available again, but it surely can't have hurt.

Anyway, "Rok Da House" was considered quite unusual at the time in that it took the London Hip-Hop duo Cookie Crew and got them to front a House single. At that time, neither House nor Hip-Hop purists were usually favourable about the streams being crossed, and it was occasionally referenced as either a bold and brilliant move or an incredibly stupid one.

Indeed, whether it was actually fortuitous or damning for The Cookie Crew is open to debate. They had won a national rap championship and appeared in session on John Peel's show prior to this, and had a certain underground kudos - once "Rok Da House" became a massive Top 5 hit, though, they were pushed by record labels in an increasingly poppy direction they felt uncomfortable with, and they eventually quit in frustration.

From a purely selfish point of view, "Rok Da House" was an enormously uplifting single at the time, and still sounds like huge fun even today. The Beatmasters fill the track with endless dramatic effects, from stomping beats to synthetic fanfares and processed vocals, as well as a killer piano hook. It sounds attention-grabbing and engineered for success, which is why it's so surprising it sat underground for so long. While House music was becoming big chart news in 1987, a lot of it did bubble away for months before rising into the consciousness of the mainstream.



2. The Beloved - Forever Dancing (Flim Flam)

Arguably, The Beloved were unbelievably ahead of the curve here. By accident or design, many of the elements of "Forever Dancing" sound like the beginnings of Indie Dance, and when this was later compiled on to the first "Best of Indie Top 20" compilation LP sandwiched between The Soup Dragons "Mother Universe" and a New Order club remix, it sounded at home despite having been recorded years before either of them. Everything about the sound of "Forever Dancing" screams major-label-indie-dance-signings-of-1989... which, quite naturally, The Beloved later became.

In reality, Jon Marsh probably wasn't a seer so much as a person who drank from the same electronic dance pool as New Order, and was almost certainly looking to create dancefloor friendly pop hits, not cult indie tunes. "Forever Dancing", for all its foresightedness (accidental or otherwise) really isn't The Beloved at their finest, either - some of their later singles were rich with atmosphere or had tons of pop smarts, whereas this is a moody groove which sulks and struts along without really making any firm impression. Their sound is identifiably in place, though, and it would put them in very good stead in a couple of years time... just not in 1987. And for an indication of their early struggles, it's worth noting that absolutely none of their indie singles made the top ten of the indie charts, with "Forever Dancing" peaking at number 15, and the two singles preceding it only getting as far as number 22.



3. The Chesterfields - Ask Johnny Dee (Subway)

I can never decide if the opening lyrics to this song are pure genius or the most John Shuttleworthesque words ever committed to a modern release. "If you'd like to know what pop stars have for tea/ ask Johnny Dee!" trill the group, singing about the not-particularly-famous (and still active) music journalist of the same name. Certainly from Johnny Dee's point of view, the lyrics are probably marvellous, so that's one critic they had on side straight away. One would imagine a conflict of interests prevented him from reviewing the single.

"Ask Johnny Dee" is a gleeful piece of indiepop, and while you could easily imagine it occupying a key space in an early sixties British teen flick (doubtless with The Chesterfields playing in a kitchen or living room after declaring "Hey! I've got an idea for a song!" while Johnny Dee smiles and nods approvingly with a cup of tea in the background) it's so irrepressible that it's impossible not to love. And inevitably, with lines like "Do you want to know who's number one in our hearts, Johnny Dee?/ Yes Mr Pop at the top of our charts!" it's pretty damn certain that they weren't trying to get us to take them seriously.

Johnny Dee is also noteworthy to me personally for being the first music critic to write about my other music blog "Left and to the Back" in "The Guardian". It was a brief and fleeting mention which led to an enormous surge in its readership - so it's slightly odd to be writing about him in this context, but perhaps only right that I too doff my cap to the man.

As for the girl who plays the tambourine, please do get in touch if you're her. We've been waiting decades for an answer to her identity.



4. Voice of the Beehive - Just A City (Food)

Another David Balfe signing to Food Records, which only existed as an indie label for the briefest point in its history, and with its slogan of "Let Us Prey!" almost certainly never had ambitions to operate as an artist's co-operative.

Voice of The Beehive were formed by Californian ex-pats Tracey Bryn and Melissa Brook Belland, and also featured ex-Madness stars Mark Bedford and Daniel Woodgate in their ranks, so neither were they entirely fresh young naive faces coming to an independent label with a few tunes and no clues whatsoever. Not that any of this really matters in the grand scheme of things, and "Just A City" sounds like a convincing addition to the Paisley Underground fray, though I doubt it was ever referred to as such.

As soon as Food Records got what they really wanted, which was a major label marketing budget and distribution, Voice of the Beehive became much bigger players, scoring five Top 40 hits between 1988-91. I always got the sense that the general public and music critics alike didn't know quite where to place them - too pop to be truly alternative, too retro sounding and guitar-based to be eighties pop, they seemed to occupy an ill-defined and moderately popular space in the record racks alongside the likes of River City People and Del Amitri; fellow faintly retro guitar based acts who were neither particularly fashionable for the era nor remotely underground, but mantained solid enough fanbases to keep their heads above water for years without scoring any major top ten hits.



5. All About Eve - Our Summer (Eden)

And Side Three of Volume Two bows out having offered us four future Top of the Pops stars out of five possible tracks. From the moment All About Eve began putting out vinyl, though, there was a sense that they were never going to be underground for terribly long, and the only surprise to me is that they weren't bigger. Appealing to goths, hippies, twee indie-kids and Q readers alike with their earliest, paisley-patterned and carefree material, they grabbed hearts left, right and centre. In fact, when my Mum first heard me playing this from the very slab of vinyl I'm now staring at, she declared "Who's this? They sound really good!" and I ended up taping the track for her. She offered no opinions at all on The Chesterfields or Voice of the Beehive beforehand, who simply didn't pass the old grey whistle test (even The Chesterfields! For shame).

Having a lead singer like Julianne Regan harmed matters none. Her impressive voice harked back to long-lost warm folk rock stylings, a sound highly absent from the mainstream in the eighties. They combined with the group's considered arrangements to a powerful effect, and she possessed a very floaty, casual charisma too (a letter-writer to Record Mirror once announced his fantasies about going on picnics with her - a somewhat unusual thing to declare to the world, but you could just about understand his angle). It may not be easy for a band of their ilk to repeat the trick today, but they were definite cover stars of the era.

"Our Summer" is an early indie release which has their sound firmly in place already, and received a largely positive critical pass despite some clearly unfashionable mid-seventies influences shining through. Later when they signed to Phonogram, they would find mixed critical receptions emerging despite continuing to record much the same style of material. For a while in 1987, though, they could do little wrong.

I'm also bound by Article 38 of the retro music writer's "All About Eve clause" to point out the legendary "Top of the Pops" clip of "Martha Harbour" where... oh, I really can't be bothered to go on typing. Sorry. The kettle's just boiled.

Indie Top 20 Volume 2 Side 2 - Close Lobsters, Flatmates, Pastels, Soup Dragons, Mighty Mighty

1. Close Lobsters - Never Seen Before (Fire)

If there was ever a band who were inappropriately cursed with the C86 tag - in Britain, at least - it was Close Lobsters. Rather like their labelmates The Blue Aeroplanes, their approach was considerably more quirky and arthouse than it was twee or shambling, and perhaps unsurprisingly they picked up a greater volume of critical appreciation (and airplay) in the USA than this country. It's very easy to imagine them being spun on college radio between REM, 10,000 Maniacs and Wall of Voodoo. I'm not trying to claim they sound the same, you understand, but it's possible to sense a shared aesthetic.

Sadly, the band never really sold huge amounts of records either here or in the USA, with their cult LP "Foxheads Stalk This Land" only reaching number 12 on the indie albums chart, and it was all over by 1989 (again!) They have recently reformed and have started gigging and occasionally releasing new material, and remain a strong cult act with many devoted fans preaching the gospel about their under-rated work.

"Never Seen Before" is a faintly peculiar brew and definitely an acquired taste. Jangly guitars collide with drawled vocals and beefy basslines, and they ultimately sound like nobody apart from themselves. The backwards tape playing at the end of the track is a lovely touch as well.



2. The Flatmates - Happy All The Time (Subway)

Back straight after Volume One, The Flatmates sound much sharper and more confident here. "I Could Be In Heaven" sounded slightly cheap and rushed, whereas "Happy All The Time" has all the hallmarks of something which might have been a hit had it been issued eight years previously. It's a thrilling little confection of 60s girl group sounds colliding with the dumb aggression of The Ramones, and the squeals and yelps throughout the single sound every bit as spontaneous and unplanned as Ray Davies' yelling on "You Really Got Me". It's the sound of a band totally thrilled to be getting their ideas down on tape, and that's a contagious feeling.

None of this would have the same effect if "Happy All The Time" weren't, as they say, a Tune. And it is. Like the best Indiepop, it has raw enthusiasm and a superbly hooky melody. These are the moments which make you want to form a band yourself. You feel like you could do it too, but tracks this deceptively simple and hook-ridden are actually harder to create than they seem.



3. The Pastels - Crawl Babies (Glass)

I've made a couple of slightly piss-taking comments about Stephen Pastel so far on this blog, but that's primarily because in the eighties he was a ridiculously unique (and quietly influential) character, and it's easy to parody lead singers who operate in a territory of their own making.

A friend of mine once briefly planned to start a series of cartoon strips called "The Adventures Of Stephen Pastel", during which some misfortune would always befall the boyish lead singer in the final frame. This could involve giving himself a migraine due to consuming too many sweets to getting one of his toys stuck up a neighbour's tree. "Och! Oh noooo! Not again!" he would exclaim, while staring wearily out at the reader. Inevitably, these never really got written purely because in those pre-Internet days, it would have been hard to find a place for them. And anyway, none of it was actually that funny.

One of these strip ideas, I seem to remember, featured Stephen Pastel rejecting a chocolate from a friend.

"Would you like a chocolate, Stephen?"
"No, I should not. They give me terrible migraines. A terrible, terrible banging in my head, and all for the sake of a coffee creme".

That's the reductive view you could take of him, and indeed The Pastels themselves; slightly sickly and precious children, forever stuck in pre-adolescence. That's definitely a line many music journalists took at the time. But, in truth, there was (and is) much more to The Pastels than that, and they're possibly one of the most unfairly maligned bands of the period. Whereas a great many of their travelling companions were self-consciously childish to no positive end, The Pastels often took the Syd Barrett approach of using childhood memories and activities as a desperate means of escape; or, as Stephen himself once said "Everything is fucked. Let's get back to the garden".

"Crawl Babies" is the noise of a band utterly nailing that doomed but child-like feel. "I wanna build her up, up as tall as a church" he sings hesitantly in the chorus, which is an odd line in itself. As tall as a church? Why not the Empire State Building, or the Post Office Tower? But no. Too urban, too dangerous. Churches tower over their immediate surroundings without being threatening. They're safe, holy places. Skyscrapers are the products of humans aspiring to something The Pastels cannot comprehend. So it's best to build someone up to high expectations within reasonable, non-threatening boundaries. Except...

The next line is "Just to watch her falling down" at which point he has a frantic dialogue with himself, "I just can't see her again/ I've got to see her again", he moans contradictorily. He's building a love affair and obsession out of nothing, out of ideas of what somebody could be, then terrifying himself with the stature of them, and backing off into isolation.

Frankly, "Crawl Babies" could be straight off a Syd Barrett solo LP - I was just getting into Barrett at the point I first heard this, and it triggered immediate associations for me - and some of the other lines are even peculiarly Barretty in a bleak post-Floyd way; "I go blind and my bones start to rust", for example. Doubtless the band would claim that Daniel Johnston was the actual reference point they were going for, but nonetheless, "Crawl Babies" has a very eerie sense of something not quite right within its hesitant, innocent delivery, whilst still carrying a marvellous and rather intricate melody - those guitar lines running towards the end of the track are beautiful, for example.

On the surface, you could call this twee indiepop, but no way is it just that. And The Pastels were certainly guilty of being twee at other points in their career, but "Crawl Babies" is a marvellous, full-bodied and beguiling single, and one of my favourites from the period.



4. The Soup Dragons: Head Gone Astray (Raw TV)

Mind you, this Soup Dragons track has an air of despondency about it, and a similar sense of childlike disappointment: "Climb a big tree to see what I can see/ But then find out that nothing's for free" sings Sean despondently. What was in the water at this point? Was the music press attention getting to these people, who until this point had lived in a world of flexidiscs and fanzines? (Though credit is due to Chet and Bee for seeing the possibility of sticking this after "Crawl Babies" in the track listing).

If "Hang Ten" was supersonic indiepop, "Head Gone Astray" is a bit more contemplative and jangly. It also gives clear pointers to where the Soup Dragons heads were at during this point in their careers - this has the Bellshill sound running through it like a stick of rock, and the band's roots are incredibly apparent. Eventually they would go careering all over the place with their sound, exploring strange T-Rexy indie-glam sounds with "Backwards Dog" and baggy with "I'm Free", but it's possible that if they'd held their nerve they could have developed this particular direction into something much more successful, akin to Teenage Fanclub's later achievements.

Ignoring the "What-ifs", "Head Gone Astray" doesn't make its strengths fully apparent on the first play, but does steadily worm its way into your affections with each subsequent listen. And releasing it straight after "Hang Ten" was a canny move - it certainly did a lot to cause critics and listeners to realise that they weren't just a thrashy indie band producing two-minute punk pop songs. Why, they could take faintly Byrdsian melodies and string them out to three-and-a-half minutes instead.

This was also the first song of theirs to chart in the "grown up" Gallup charts, albeit at a modest number 82. But for a band of their ilk in 1987, these achievements were rare and important. Suddenly, The Soup Dragons were music press cover stars and future bright hopes. No, really. This happened. I saw it. I was there.



5. Mighty Mighty - Built Like A Car (Chapter 22)

Mighty Mighty drop the polite, considered indiepop for this single and really let rip in the chorus, making it sound almost like a sixties garage band having a rave-up. Still, though, the stretched syllables in the vocals as the track begins are pure Morrissey, and root the band firmly in eighties territory.

"Built Like A Car" is a sturdy and confident sounding single, and yet another example of an indiepop group suddenly waking up and smelling the coffee and getting into a better recording studio to produce a brighter, leaner piece of work, perhaps in the expectations of bigger things. Of course, this is a serious problem for some purists of the genre who really see this period as the moment a lot of bands went off the boil, whereas I obviously disagree.

Whatever your thoughts, this was Mighty Mighty's biggest indie single, climbing to number 6 in the indie charts. Their career was shortlived, however, as they split the following year, sensing that the tide was already turning against their music. They weren't wrong. Things moved quickly in those days. 

Indie Top 20 Volume 2 - Side One (Crazyhead, PWEI, Three Wise Men, Renegade Soundwave, Bambi Slam)

Indie Top 20 Volume II
Formats: Double Vinyl and Cassette

After the success of the cassette-only Volume one, a decision was clearly taken to join the adult music world and produce Volume two on both double cassette and double vinyl formats (no CDs were being issued yet, but as Now! and Hits were only just starting to get to grips with that format themselves, it's slightly silly to expect Indie Top 20 to have joined the digital audio revolution this early). The double cassette version - which I've never seen in the wild, but that's probably because I was never really looking for it - also came emblazoned with Melody Maker sponsorship across its sleeve, creating a partnership between the series and the IPC music magazine. The connection would become more cemented over the next few LPs.

Other than that, this slipped out on Clive Selwood's Band of Joy label in 1987, much like Volume One, but in terms of track selection shows a slight widening of variety. Indiepop remains very well represented, but also lurking in the grooves on offer here is British Hip-Hop, House music and Folk, and even - unexpectedly for an album so early in the series - arguably the earliest rumblings of the Indie Dance crossover. It still lacks the diversity of a Now or Hits compilation, but is less guitar orientated than you might initially expect.

It's also actually a very solid compilation, with not a single outright stinker in sight, and acts as a far better and more honest barometer of the independent music scene at this point in its history than many Double CD retrospectives and box sets which have emerged in more recent years. The simple truth is that while early Indiepop often sought to charm with its naiveté and amateurism, the more they gigged and recorded, the tighter most of the bands got, especially with their songwriting. For me personally, many of the bands who emerged from C86 and the numerous fanzine and gig networks in the mid eighties really found their feet and realised their potential in 1987. Suddenly, now they were under the media spotlight, the game got upped and some seriously good (and even great) singles emerged. But hey, if you'd prefer to listen to your early flexidiscs, don't let me stop you. It's all a matter of taste.

Let's pop the needle down on to the groove of side one, shall we?



1. Crazyhead - What Gives You The Idea That You're So Amazing Baby? (Food)

Side One of this compilation is uncharacteristically brutal, actually, and opens with Leicester's great Grebo hopes Crazyhead. Snapped up by David Balfe's (of Teardrop Explodes fame) Food label shortly before that very label ran to EMI for major label cash and distribution, Crazyhead were much feted at the time. Indeed, it's easy to hear that their cross-appeal was likely to be immense. One of the few groups of the period to confidently sit on both the Indie and Heavy Metal specialist charts without complaints from either parties, they played a raucous, rapid and noisy eighties approximation of garage punk, of which "What Gives You The Idea...?" is a fairly typical example. It's brash and dumb but FUN with it - and its inclusion here, track one side one, is indicative of the fact that it was a cult indie hit of some stature, climbing to number two on the specialist chart.

Crazyhead never did achieve mainstream chart success, however, and by 1989 they had been dumped by Food Records and ejected straight back into indie-land again, where they never really made the same kind of waves again.

While we're on the subject, there's probably a bigger debate to be had about whether Grebo was a genuine youth movement, a music press invention, a gang of predominantly Midlands groups who all just happened to be scruffs and all knew each other, or some combination of all three. Footage of the gigs these bands played during the period does show an army of fans dressed in combat gear and denim, some with greasy locks and partly shaved hair, but it's highly unlikely that any of them would have identified themselves as being part of a youth movement (most of the music was too bloody sardonic and silly to base your entire life around - Grebo probably wouldn't have come with many rules attached apart from "get pissed on Scrumpy"). Nor is it necessarily easy to create a clear line from the sound Crazyhead made, to Pop Will Eat Itself's beatbox obsessions, to the downright berserk Gaye Bykers On Acid. What most of those groups do have in common, however, is that they were so lacking in glamour that the Britpop era indie music press more-or-less tipp-exed over their contributions.



2. Pop Will Eat Itself - Love Missile F1-11 (Chapter 22)

Fellow Grebos Pop Will Eat Itself emerge here in a slightly different form from when we last met them on Volume One. While the metamorphosis from scratchy, treble-heavy indie-punk to an alternative British take on Rick Rubin produced Hip-Hop wasn't complete, the boys do rap for one segment of this track, and point the way for their future recordings.

This was an interesting choice of cover version for the Poppies as well. Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Missile F1-11" had only been released the year before, and the group's attempt at cyber-futuristic rock and roll was largely savaged by the music press (and also public) who weren't willing to accept the record company hype. Pop Will Eat Itself actually beef up the original - which always was an unusually stark and minimal top ten hit - and plug the gaps with loud, thrashed guitars and a chugging riff where you would expect the electro loops to be. Whether you feel it sounds better for the treatment or not depends upon your feelings on Sigue Sigue Sputnik, but it was certainly a large indie hit.



3. Three Wise Men - Refresh Yourself (Rhythm King)

British Hip-Hop acts struggled horribly to make the same waves as their American counterparts in the eighties (and actually nineties as well) never really generating the same amount of sales, press or media exposure. The very idea of rappers having regional British accents was actually outright mocked during this period, and Hip-Hop artists in the UK found themselves having to confront the same prejudices that British Rock and Rollers had in the fifties.

Unlike many of the fifties artists, however, most British Hip-Hop acts were usually smart enough to realise that there was no point in adopting American accents and slang. The only way forward was to forge their own identity and talk about their own lives - and Three Wise Men certainly did that with "Urban Hell", a largely-forgotten 1986 single about the since-demolished North Peckham estate in London.

"Refresh Yourself" is an entirely different single, obviously, and perhaps less representative of their sound. Minimal sounding and lyrically simplistic, it's probably one of their most dated sounding pieces of work. For whatever reason, for the three years they were active the group only had three singles and one LP put out on Rhythm King records, after which time was called.


4. Renegade Soundwave - Kray Twins (Rhythm King)

Renegade Soundwave were also signed to Rhythm King to produce their own multi-faceted brand of electronic dance music, but eventually ended up moving to the parent label Mute after a series of "artistic" disputes.

"Kray Twins" hints at just how Rhythm King might have found them totally out-of-sorts with the rest of their roster. It's a seriously rambling, aggressive, frantic piece of work, taking in harsh, punchy, in-your-face samples, burbling electronic noises, sneering cockney vocals, and the periodic emergence of thrashed guitars. Despite the fact that the techniques used to create this single must have been absurdly primitive by today's standards, it actually doesn't sound dated in the slightest - elements even sound close to the minimal rantings of Sleaford Mods, admittedly without the political nous.

Then again, nor is "Kray Twins" necessarily representative of the rest of Renegade Soundwave's work. They would produce a lot of varied material throughout their careers, from the threatening chaos of this track to the pop suss of "Probably a Robbery", and the House dancefloor hit "The Phantom". They would probably be more at home on one of the many Dance compilations that littered the eighties, but future appearances on "Indie Top 20" also occurred. Long before the label "Indie-Dance" was thought of, Renegade Soundwave were probably one of the few true crossover artists of the mid-eighties period.



5. Bambi Slam - Don't It Make You Feel (Product Inc.)

Roy Slam, the lead singer of Bambi Slam (naturally) was a Canadian ex-pat who formed the group on British shores, in the process creating a band with - at the time, at least - an unusual array of influences. There's a clear American underground punk sound leaking through a lot of their work, but also beatbox loops and poppy hooks, combining to create a brew which sounds particularly of its indie moment.

"Don't It Make You Feel" is rough and ready, but melodically sounds as if it could have been written by a successful glam rock band in 1973 - almost everything about the track is catchy and insistent, like a past pop smash being dragged through a cheap recording studio by punk musicians.

The group generated plenty of excitement and became big enough news to be signed to Warner Brothers who released one LP of theirs, the eponymous "Bambi Slam" in 1988. By that time, however, everyone seemed to have lost interest and they were pushed aside in favour of the next trend.