The Indie Years 1984

Ah 1984! The Mid-Eighties - when popular songs dealt with the drugs, racism, famine, homophobia, war, the afterlife and going to nightclubs, standing on your own and leaving on your own.  But it wasn't all social commentary and right-on politics some established artists like Paul Weller just wanted to shout to the top in a repetitive manner and the fledgling Red Hot Chili Peppers were just enthusiastic about jumping.  Good times! 

1) Original Sin by INXS

This song is about social conditioning and growing up with the beliefs of your parents. It was produced by Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers who suggested introducing the interracial relationship which in 1984 was considered controversial enough to get the song banned from several US radio stations.  It was a number one hit single in Australia and France and heralded the arrival of their fourth album The Swing.

2) The Killing Moon by Echo & The Bunnymen

Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch humbly describes this as “the best song ever written”.  Undoubtedly it the best song ever written by him.  He hasn’t described what the lyrics mean preferring to keep it mysterious and allowing the listeners to reach their own conclusions.  Ian said the “Fate up against your will” refrain was influenced by “To Be Or Not To Be”.  Typically Ian thinks his lyrics surpass William Shakespeare’s.

3) Thieves Like Us by New Order
Peter Hook rates this as New Order’s greatest song. Appropriately for a song called Thieves Like Us, Hooky admits he stole the baseline from a 1974 Hot Chocolate song called Emma.

4) Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow by Felt
Felt released ten albums between 1982 and 1989 before they disbanded leaving a distraught cult following.  They were too cult for me so I was unaffected at the time. 

5) Shout To The Top by The Style Council
Paul Weller takes his brand of white soul elevator music and sings "shout to the top" over it.

6) How Soon Is Now? by The SmithsT
his classic Smiths track was originally released as a B-Side to William, It Was Really Nothing.  A distinctive guitar intro displaying some of Johnny Marr's tightest riffs and some of Morrissey's bleakest lyrics.  A firm favourite of bedsitters wallowing in their self imposed isolation.       

7) A Sort Of Homecoming by U2

The rousing opening track from U2’s fourth album.  The lyrics include powerful imagery of bomb-blasts, explosions, fields of mourning and crucially “the land grows weary of its own”.  But the message is of overcoming the troubles tearing down walls and building bridges.

8) Don’t Go Back To (Rockville) by R.E.M.
 The Rockville in brackets could be replaced with any small town and the songs warns against moving backwards, wasting your time and getting stuck in a one horse town.  A sort of homecoming to be avoided. 

9) White Lines (Don't Do It) by Melle Mel & The Furious Five

Grandmaster Flash had already left the group over a dispute about the royalties from their previous hit The Message. Grandmaster Melle Mel, the leader of the Furious Five penned this social commentary on cocaine.  To make it commercially acceptable Melle Mel cynically inserted the “don’t do it” refrain.  Flash called out this hypocrisy saying “Now the guys are saying no to drugs on this new record, but I bet they’re out looking for the dope man just like me.”  The music was a re-recorded cover of a song called Cavern by liquid Liquid.

Incidentally the story about the businessman caught with drugs and released on bail was based on John DeLorean owner of the iconic 80s car. 

10) Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen
I always used to turn this off thinking it was an awful piece of  jingoistic crap with his arse on the cover.  It was only recently that I listened to the lyrics and realised it was actually a story about the psychological fallout of the kids drafted into the Vietnam War, brutalised  and rejected by their society when they returned - with his arse on the cover.

11) Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat 
An autobiographical story from Jimmy Somerville about getting away from the gay-bashing provinces and seeking a new life in more cosmopolitan city.  

12) Looking From A Hilltop by Section 25
A band five years ahead of their time - the opening beat sounds like The Shamen circa 1990.  This is a Blackpool band on the Factory Records label.

13) I Walk Away by Split Enz
By 1984 Tim Finn had quit the band and his younger brother Neil had taken over as the main songwriter.  I Walk Away was a taken from the final Split Enz album which was only released in Australia and New Zealand.  Neil Finn loved the song but felt it was overproduced and it was re-recorded as a stripped down version two years later and included on the first Crowded House album.  Whilst the best version is obviously subjective, and debate rages in some very nerdy corners of the internet, my preference is the Split Enz version.  

14) The Caterpillar by The Cure

The Caterpillar was the only single taken from The Top - a collection of psychedelic Cure rock songs mixing paranoia, pop and Eastern influences with mixed results.

15) Plateau by The Meat Puppets
A song about searching for the promised land or the afterlife and when you reach it there’s “nothing on top”.  A big influence on Nirvana who later toured together and performed this and two other Meat Puppet songs with them on their MTV Unplugged appearance.

16) Let's Go Crazy by Prince
Prince had a more uplifting view of the afterlife.  Starting with organs and a sermon on never ending happiness in the next life, Prince advised enjoying your mortal life before the grim reaper visits you.

17) 2 Minutes To Midnight by Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden’s song about the Atomic Armageddon Clock and the vested interests of the military industrial complex pushing the nuclear arms race.  It was released against a backdrop of increasing high tension between the West and the Soviet Union in the early eighties.  President Reagan described the Soviets as an Evil Empire after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1980 and the US announced the development of a spaced based missile defence system dubbed Star Wars in 1983.  

18) Two Tribes - Annihilation Mix by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Two Tribes covers the same theme with pounding rhythms, American funk, Russian strings and a huge chorus. It spent 9 weeks at Number 1 in the UK and was a global hit.  I had the 12” and liked the air raid sirens, Ronald Reagan impersonations provided by Chris Barrie and apocalyptic yet calming public service announcements about radiation fallout and tagging your dead grandmother. 

19) Get Up And Jump by Red Hot Chili Peppers
This is the debut single from LA punk funk band Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

20) Do They Know It's Christmas Time? by Band Aid

This charity record to raise money for the Ethiopian famine was written and recorded in a rush to be released in time for Christmas.  Midge Ure of Ultravox and Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats collected their pop/rock star friends (Sting, U2, Bananarama, Duran Duran, Boy George) and gave them lines to sing.  The charity record raised over eight million pounds in a month and became the UK’s highest selling single holding that record for 13 years.  They followed Band Aid with the Live Aid concerts in 1985 to raise more funds.

Further Reading...
The Indie Years 1986
The Indie Years 1985
The Indie Years 1983
The Indie Years 1982
The Indie Years 1981
The Indie Years 1980
The Indie Years 1979
The Indie Years 1978
The Indie Years 1977

The Indie Years 1982

By 1982 indie music was heading in numerous directions - old punks were branching out into pop, jazz, funk, dance and erm ...poetry.  Hip Hop also got political and the Falklands War inspired several of the songs on this playlist.

1) Rip It Up by Orange Juice
Edwyn Collins Scottish indie band takes a poppy soul direction whilst singing about his favourite Buzzcocks song.

2) Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars) by R.E.M.
Taken from their debut Chronic Town E.P., R.E.M. emerged from Athens Georgia as a mumbling art rock party band and went on to become one of the great rock bands of the Twentieth Century.

3) A Strange Day by The Cure
The Cure had evolved from a post punk band into masters of minimalism and on their fourth album they went full blown gloomy goth.  After this they evolved again adding chirpy guitar pop to their repertoire and started troubling the charts with a string of catchy singles. 

4) The Missionary by Josef K
Another Scottish band on the Postcard label who recorded this spiky single during a John Peel Session, released it and then split up.

5) Suburban Home by Descendents
L.A. band with witty lyrics celebrating being average in a furious punk racket. "I wanna be a clone, I wanna suburban home".

6) Jet Set Junta by The Monochrome Set
Recorded in the aftermath of the Falklands War, this is a great poppy satirical song.

7) The One Thing by INXS
INXS began as the Farriss Brothers oiginally formed in 1977 in Perth Western Australia.  By 1980 they had renamed themselves for their debut album and this early classic displays all the elements that they would be known for - synthesizers, guitars, drums, big choruses and err...saxophone solos.

8) Are You Ready by Crispy Ambulance
On Manchester's Factory Records label they released a handful of singles and one album but were unfairly panned by the critics of trying to be Joy Division as they shared the same manager and label.
Tony Wilson Factory Records owner said they had the worst band name of all time.

9) Blister In The Sun by Violent Femmes
One hit wonder from this Milwaukee band.  But what a great hit!

10) Temptation by New Order
Producer Martin Hannett was largely responsible for the Joy Division sound and whilst he produced New Order's 1981 debut album Movement, he failed to hide his contempt for the band members who weren't Ian Curtis.  When New Order started programming sequencers and drum machines and producing their own records they soon decided they were better off without Hannett. They released a trilogy of seminal electronic tracks Everything's Gone Green, Temptation & Blue Monday.  New Order rarely played encores and decided they should program some songs that the machines could play so they could knock off early.

11) Lucinda by A Certain Ratio
A great Mancunian indie funk workout released on Tony Wilson's Factory Records label.

12) The Message by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
This was one of the first political hip hop tracks.  Before this it was mostly party music with daft rhymes then they decided they could put a social message on their records and changed the direction of hip hop and rap.

13) Town Called Malice by The Jam
The Jam had been together for six years and Paul Weller was more interested in expanding his musical horizens beyond their punk origins.  The motown and jazz influences of The Jam's later work were alienating some of the band's fanbase and when Paul Weller decided that his band mates lacked the musicianship to match his artistic vision, he decided to end The Jam in 1982.

14) Under The Big Black Sun by X
Another melodic LA punk band that was largely ignored by the mainstream - they were around fifteen years earlier than Nirvana and it may have been a different story if they had been contemporaries.

15) Down Under by Men At Work
Reggae inspired, Australian New Wave band who enjoyed their Vegemite and spliffs in equal measures.

16) Urban Struggle by The Vandals
Punk cowboy anthems is a genre I never expected to discover.

17) Over The Edge by Wipers
Powerful alt-rock from Portland, Oregon. 

18) Six Months In A Leaky Boat by Split Enz
One of my favourite songs by Split Enz which was written by Tim Finn inspired by his unhappy experiences of  his short lived marriage.  Banned in the UK during the Falkland's War as they didn't want to hear songs about leaky boats. 

19) Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt
Keeping on a nautical theme is this anti-war protest song based in a port where the local population scrape a living working for the military industrial complex.

20) Cocktails by Attila The Stockbroker
British poet who recorded this brilliant take down of the early 80's yuppy scene - hilariously vicious.


Further Reading...
The Indie Years 1986
The Indie Years 1985
The Indie Years 1984
The Indie Years 1983
The Indie Years 1981
The Indie Years 1980
The Indie Years 1979
The Indie Years 1978
The Indie Years 1977