Category Archives: Songs from 1988

Album: If I Should Fall from Grace with God, 1988

Justification: Happy nearly St Patrick’s Day!

My, don’t they look smart!

The Pogues have a very special place in my heart not because I like a drink or because I have any particular fondness for Celtic folkery, but because they were about the only band that my cousins and I could agree on. The tastes of the Adelaide- and Sydney-based Streets were very different but we all found common ground with the London-based Irish punk-folkers, and I was absolutely going to see the band at the Hordern with my cousins last year but it clashed with something else I went to instead. Damned if I can remember what, mind. 

This is also the first album without bassist Cait O’Riordan, who had quit to work with her new husband Elvis Costello (who she’d met when he was producing the Pogues’ 1985 album Rum, Sodomy & the Lash).

She’s missed, but the band regrouped and expanded for what is probably their masterpiece – bringing in a bunch of new worldish musicish influences to their standard frenetic folk. However, the title track is heartland Poguery and proves that there’s more to them than the (admittedly brilliant) perennial number-one-song-in-heaven that is ‘Fairytale of New York’, which was also on this disc. And while you’re here, click through to this song by the late, great Kirsty MacColl, who was the duettist on that track.

And then when you get maudlin, come back to this – a truly rollicking celebration of damnation.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: The most underrated Pixies song ever: ‘Dig for Fire’.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: The Hold Steady’s jubilant ode to problem gambling: ‘Chips Ahoy!’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

521. The Stone Roses: Elephant Stone (7 Dec)

522. Gene: Be My Light, Be My Guide (25 Jan)

523. Space and Cerys Matthews: The Ballad of Tom Jones (30 Jan)

524. Flight of the Conchords: Carol Brown (8 Feb)

525. The Cure: A Night Like This (1 Mar)

Album: single, 1988; The Stone Roses (CD version only) 1989

Justification: This was the first “proper” Stone Roses single (it’s easy to ignore their actual debut ‘So Young’ because a) Mani wasn’t in the band, b) it sounds nothing like what was to come, and c) it’s shit), and that rollicking wah-wah driven chug is just catchy as all get out. Sure, they were to go on to do better songs – ‘Made of Stone’, ‘She Bangs the Drums’, and obviously ‘Fools Gold’ – but this has a special place in my heart because it reminds me of an absent friend.

Jo Robinson was a pal of mine in Adelaide in the 90s: small, gothy, Kewpie-doll cute and boasting a wicked sense of humour and impeccable taste in music. She also loved this song and would always emerge from whatever corner of the Procenium or whichever club we were all haunting at the time to dance to this, usually with a cigarette in one hand and a Ventolin inhaler in the other. She also had a magnificent mondegreen for the chorus hook, since she thought it was “It seems like there’s a hole in my jeans / I sew the seams”. When corrected, she scowled for a second, thought, then shrugged and replied “My version is better.”

And you know what? I think she had a point.

We drifted apart over the years as narcotics came into her life, and when I got the call that she’d overdosed it was as heartbreaking as it was predictable. But I still remember her in lace gloves and black dress, gothic two-stepping to this under crappy indie-club lights.

She left a tiny daughter behind, who it just dawned on me would be almost ten now. My god.

You’re missed, Jo.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: Look, just because it was obvious didn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been Franz Ferdinand and Take Me Out.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: The sole real hit for Michael Pen, the still-awesome No Myth.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

516: Sandie Shaw & the Smiths: Hand in Glove (2 Oct)

517. The Fauves: Self Abuser (8 Oct)

518. Beastie Boys: Hey Ladies (26 Oct)

519. Elliot Smith: Son of Sam (8 Nov)

520. The Birthday Party: Nick the Stripper (22 Nov)

Album: Daydream Nation, 1988

Justification: Sonic Youth have been on my mind recently, as evidenced by yesterday’s entry with the Scientists who opened at the last Sydney Sonic Youth show, which is probably the last time I’ll ever see them. The news that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon have separated after 27 years of marriage was a shock, not least since it puts the future of the band in considerable doubt – and I’d never really thought about a world without Sonic Youth (or REM, for that matter. It’s been a hard year for US alt.rock heroes).

It just never occurred to me that Sonic Youth could split up. For my entire music-obsessing life there’s been a new SY album every three years or so, generally of high quality. I still adore Sonic Nurse and The Eternal, dammit, although it’s the pop trilogy of Daydream Nation/Goo/Dirty that forms the bedrock of my love of the band). And this, the first single of their pop period, is still amazing. And apparently was inspired by a dream Moore had that J. Mascis was president. That’s a world I can get behind, frankly.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: Falco was making one of the oddest singles of all time in the form of ‘Rock Me Amadeus’.

Album: single, 1988

Justification: At some point I’m going to choose a KLF song for this list, because they keep getting referenced so damn often with regards to other acts – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were freakin’ mad, but UK music would have been painfully dull without them – yet I find their pre-KLF novelty song, ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, far more compelling than, say ‘3AM Transcentral’. Here are several reasons why:

1. It still allows me to talk about how Drummond was the original manager of Echo & the Bunnymen and how when he and the band parted ways after 1984’s Ocean Rain something very special was lost, leaving the band as a competent but unspectacular would-be stadium rock act rather than a quirky, always-one-step-ahead freakshow.

2. It allows me to repeat what I said with regards to the Dandy Warhols’ ‘Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth’, viz: if you have a catchy-as-all-get-out single, CALL IT AFTER THE MOST PROMINENT LINE. That should have been called ‘Heroin Is So Passé’, this should have been called ‘Doctor Who’. Except this went to number one anyway. So, y’know.

3. I have an understandable reticence to celebrate the work of Gary Glitter, what with the whole kiddy-porn thing, despite the fact that he made some goddamned amazing pop songs in the 70s. This – based heavily as it is on his ‘Rock And Roll (Part 2)’ – allows me to nod to a song I do rather adore in a way that doesn’t appear to be a weird endorsement of his creepy, predatory actions.

4. The song itself is so fucking trashy that it’s quite brilliant. And knowing that it’s the KLF (well, specifically, the cusp between the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu and the KLF) means you can love it ironically because you know that they do, which gives you an easy post-modern out if you need one.

5. Drummond and Cauty wrote a book about getting to number one with it, entitled The Manual: How To Have a Number One the Easy Way, which has been cited as a major inspiration for several UK bands including the Klaxons and the Pipettes.

Oh, and that car in the video – Ford Timelord – was Cauty’s 1968 US police car, which is in pretty much every KLF clip too, and was basically their version of the Bluesmobile from The Blues Brothers. That’s just freakin’ great.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Concrete Blonde were being grimly celebratory with ‘Happy Birthday’.

Album: Pop Art, 1988

Justification: One of my best high school friends was freakin’ obsessed with Transvision Vamp – or, more accurately, Wendy James – and he was the first of us to have a car. Hence I heard a lot of this cassette in my late high school years. Most of it I though was OK, if a bit dull, without the frission of thinking that James was the hottest thing on the planet. However there was one song I really dug, and the fact that it had an actual walking bassline rather than a root note dugga-dugga-dugga was something of a clue that it must have been a cover*. And indeed it is: ‘Tell That Girl To Shut Up’ was originally recorded by never-quite-made-it New York trio Holly & the Italians in 1980. And, uncool though it is, I think the Vamp do the better version.

It was the TV’s second single (after ‘Revolution Baby’ and just before ‘I Want Your Love’) and is the main reason I bought their best-of from iTunes six months ago.

I’d also like to go on record as saying that Little Magnets vs the Bubble of Babble is the worst name for an album ever. No wonder it killed their career in 1991.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Weezer were still in their pristine not-sucking period with ‘El Scorcho’.

*Incidentally, the man playing said bassline, Dave Parsons, had a lifetime of dugga-dugga-dugga ahead of him as the bassist in Bush.

Album: This is the Day… This is the Hour… This Is This!, 1988

Justification: Nuclear paranoia had died down considerably by the time Pop Will Eat Itself’s second (and, I’d argue, best) album came out, what with glasnost and east-west brotherhood and the Berlin Wall’s destruction the following year and so on, but the spectre of mutually assured destruction still lurked on the horizon (DEFCON 1 is a US military abbreviation for “defence condition one”, incidentally, meaning “shit’s about to get real”). More importantly for the Stourbridge-based band, they were huge fans of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic Watchmen (“Alan Moore knows the score”, as they pointed out in ‘Can U Dig It’), which is quoted liberally in this song (“Heads up! Ground floor, coming up!”).

It’s also constructed of a bunch of samples, for which – this being 1988 and the legality of such use not having been established – they didn’t seek permission. Thus this album’s mighty hard to get hold of these days, not least since this single’s got three very, very obvious samples in it – the Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ is the chorus, there’s a huge slab of the Twilight Zone theme and the main riff is ‘Funkytown’ by Lipps Inc., all of which wanted royalties. Still, it’s worth pointing out that the Avalanches et al wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the Poppies’ groundbreaking magpie aesthetic.

They toured Adelaide once, in (I think) 1990, and I didn’t go. I still wake up sobbing.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Nuthin’, but have a look through the 1988 archives.

Album: Lovely, 1988

Justification: Well, since this has accidentally become One Hit Wonder week, let’s keep the vibe going with ‘Crash’. The Primitives did admittedly have some other hits (‘Way Behind Me’ is an enduring favourite) but as far as the US was concerned this was the only song they ever made and it was their only UK top ten hit. Even so, when they’re remembered it tends to be when one’s trying to recall whether the song in one’s head is the Primitives, the Darling Buds or Transvision Vamp. It’s usually the last mentioned, and if you’re me it’s their cover of ‘Tell That Girl To Shut Up’. That’s if you’re me, though.

Anyway: this was their 1988 high water mark and things went downhill steadily from here until their 1992 split, with three albums under their belt. The band (minus late bassist Steve Dullaghan) reformed in 2009, because of course they did. And then they did a covers record, for no reason that I can imagine.

The Primitives pristine jangle pop emerged from the same scene as the Wedding Present, with whom they toured last year. The question remains: is Tracy Tracy as cute now as she was then, and is she still rocking that hairstyle? The answers, after a quick look at their official website, are “yes, actually”, “no” and “you’re going with Impact as your font of choice? Really? Hmmm.”

THIS TIME IN 2010: They Might Be Giants were riding high with ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’.

Album: Love Junk, 1988

Justification: Poor Moe Berg. The pressures of running a Canadian power-pop band can be hard, especially when you’re its singer, songwriter and lead guitarist. It must have been hard watching The Pursuit of Happiness’ worldwide sales diminish as his third album, The Downward Road was released to broad indifference in 1993 and on this one particular day, perhaps having just looked over a pile of final notices for unpaid studio time, maybe doing interviews for Australian street press wasn’t a big priority. Who knows? Perhaps Berg is one of the lovliest people on the face of the Earth, but that fateful morn the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Only those close to him can say whether it’s even the slightest bit justified, but on the basis of that one interview I have now spent almost two decades responding to any (admittedly rare) reference to TPOH with “You know what? Moe Berg is the only person I’ve ever actually hung up on during an interview. The man’s a fuckstick.”

And I was a huge TPOH fan up until that point. Like everyone else who’s ever heard of the band, this single was my entry point but myself and my childhood best friend Adam R Wigg used to absolutely thrash its parent album, Love Junk (not least because the wry ‘Man’s Best Friend’ beautifully summed up the sort of obsessive unrequited love that was my default setting throughout most of high school). I fondly remember seeing them tear Le Rox a new one when they were in Adelaide touring their 1990 album One Sided Story, and their encore was a kick-ass version of ABBA’s ‘Does Your Mother Know’, which is why it’s on my most-played iPod list to this day.

I had been writing for dB Magazine for a couple of years at that point and was genuinely excited about speaking to Berg about the new album – and, as the above indicates, I was coming from a position of some familiarity with the band’s body of work. However, he was such a jawdroppingly arrogant cunt, offering yes-no answers like Nick Cave at the height of his The Road To God Knows Where wilful prickishness, that I eventually told him I’d stop the interview if he didn’t start giving me complete-sentence answers. Next question got a single word response. I sighed, hung up the phone and promptly stopped giving a shit about him and his band.

Still, ‘I’m An Adult Now’ is a great (if somewhat gimmicky) song. And the line “no more ‘boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl’/More like ‘man tries to understand what the hell went wrong’” neatly foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge, when the guitars remained screaming (screaming! screaming!) but the swaggering machismo of rock was replaced by confusion and self-pity.

Moegate did teach me a valuable lesson about not asking open-ended questions in interviews, though – which Green Gartside from Scritti Politti called me out on some years later. But that’s another story.

Album: Starfish, 1988

Justification: Now this is how to write a great song. Four different melody lines – two guitars, vocals and bass – all intertwining and writhing around each other, with a beautifully economical lyric. There are a lot of incredible songs by the Church – and I’ve been comprehensively reminded of that fact recently after doing some serious interviewing of the band – but this one is possibly their single best song. Not even Smashing Pumpkins could ruin it, which is saying something.

If you haven’t listened to Starfish in a while, I recommend going back. Dear god but it’s good: ‘Reptile’, ‘North, South, East and West’, ‘Hotel Womb’… and yeah, ‘Under The Milky Way’ too.

Album: The Sound of Trees, 1988

Justification: Schnell Fenster – German for “fast window”, of course – was the main non-Crowded House spinoff from the detritus of Split Enz. Percussionist Noel Crombie and bassist Nigel Griggs reunited with long-departed Split Enz co-founder Phil Judd – smarting from the demise of the Swingers – and guitarist Michael den Elzen, who was later to join Deadstar before concentrating on soundtracks. The early line up also included Eddie Rayner, because every single thing that anyone from Split Enz did had to involve Eddie Rayner in some capacity.

The only lasted for a couple of albums before in-fighting tore them apart (that, and Crombie’s increasingly bad tinnitus) but this severely underrated band did some top-flight work: there’s still space in my heart for ‘Love-Hate Relationship’, ‘Heroes Let You Down’ and the glorious ‘OK Alright Uh Huh Oh Yeah’, but this is my hands-down favourite. The way that guitar riff persists through almost the whole song is downright hypnotic.

Incidentally, when I was hunting for somewhere to get hold of the Schnell’s albums I discovered that they’re long, long out of print and damn near impossible to find. Even a digital re-release seems unlikely, with Judd posting on a Split Enz forum that Griggs and Crombie had demanded a larger cut than the four-way split he’d suggested for an iTunes release. So, if you happen to have their albums around, do let me know.

Also: Judd looked freakin’ great at this point. Nice hair there, Phil. Almost Deppian in some places.