vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 25, 2014 0:10:33 GMT 1
80. Cardiacs
Has there ever been a band that has been so prolific and so influential with such little success? 8 albums, a dozen singles and EPs, 30 years of intense, complex, vitriolic and sado-masochistic gigs, plus tribute albums and myriad spin-offs. And a style all of their own. Often called prunk, a portmanteau of prog and punk, there has never been anyone like them. Ever.
They also seemed hell-bent on sabotaging their own chances of success. In the mid-80s, when it looked like they might just graze the charts, Tim Smith claimed that his saxophonist wife Sarah was actually his sister - which, coupled with stage performances which saw them become rather intimate, led to the obvious inferences from the tabloids. And the NME banned them for a decade. Yet they could sell out decent venues by word of mouth, and their fanbase (which includes Steve "Interesting" Davis, Robert Peston, Matthew Wright and Steve McFadden) is so devoted that one chap even wrote a book about 101 Cardiacs gigs he had seen. And as for influence? They are Damon Albarn's favourite band. And acts like Radiohead, Faith No More and Supergrass have claimed to be imitating Cardiacs in various ways. In Radiohead's case not closely enough.
In 2008 Cardiacs were in the final throes of another album. And it seemed the tide had finally turned. Gigs had never been better attended, 6Music were playing them to death, America had expressed interest in touring and there was the rumour of an Albarn tie-in. Even the NME were calling them indie legends. It looked as if Cardiacs might finally make it. And then, following a My Bloody Valentine concert, Tim Smith suffered a stroke that nearly killed him. His mind is still active but his body has not recovered.
There were a few other well-known acts who made it to 80 - The Go-Betweens, The Godfathers and Tom Waits - and the generally-overlooked Voodoo Queens, but none can compare to Cardiacs.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 25, 2014 0:18:35 GMT 1
79. fields.
Some numbers are easier than others. 80 was easy because one act overshadowed all the opposition. And 79 is easy because there is only one good act which peaked there. fields. (I hate that typography) packed an entire career into 18 months, with about four albums' worth of material coming out spread amongst EPs, singles and their one LP, and then, because they had not scored six number ones, Atlantic Records refused to promote their second album, but wouldn't release the rights. So that basically forced fields into a silent spring.
There is only one other act of note that peaked at 79. Seona Dancing. Fronted by a certain Ricky Gervais.
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vya
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Post by vya on Dec 25, 2014 2:23:50 GMT 1
I love the Go-Betweens, and am quite familiar with (a) all of their albums and singles, and (b) their near complete lack of commercial success, both in the UK and their native Australia and more or less everywhere else (for all that a bridge is now named after them in Brisbane). But I am genuinely shocked that neither Tom Waits nor the Godfathers got highter than no 80....
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 25, 2014 12:13:48 GMT 1
I could have gone for another underperforming Antipodean for no. 78, in the shapely shape of Bic Runga, but instead I'm going for more typographic weirdness...
78. múm
At least they have the excuse of being Icelandic. It astounds me that not only did they get to 78, but they actually had a second top 100 hit. One of the more leftfield acts to have hit the charts. When I first heard them they were fronted by twin sisters Gyða and Kristin Valtysdottir, but Gyða left to continue her studies in 2002 and Kristin left after their brief chart brush. However they both made the top 10 of the UK album charts in an unexpected way; they are on the front cover of Belle & Sebastian's Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant. The band now is more or less a mass collective, led by founding members Gunnar Orn Tynes (I don't think he's related to Sugarcube Einar) and Orvar Smarason.
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Post by Earl Purple on Dec 25, 2014 17:23:52 GMT 1
This list is based on the highest position the artist has peaked in the singles chart?
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TheThorne
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Post by TheThorne on Dec 25, 2014 19:40:45 GMT 1
This list is based on the highest position the artist has peaked in the singles chart? yep, be quite interesting to do myself although a few of these I might agree on anyway.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 25, 2014 23:02:41 GMT 1
And when we get to the top 40 I'll be giving rankings of some sort for the positions themselves. 77. The Shop AssistantsI eulogized the Shoppies in the 100 Club thread, and with this single they were 2 scant positions away from a unique double. It was from them that Motorcycle Boy briefly emerged, but as The Shop Assistants, or their earlier incarnation Buba &, they were almost peerless. " Somewhere In China" is a Desert Island Disc pic, but really everything they ever did was absolutely top notch. Wonderful group, wonderful sound. What's more, had they managed to sneak up two positions, it would have left no. 77 free for a group that is nearly as good - Tilly & The Wall, albeit I prefer their earlier material when Jamie Pressley's tap dancing gave them their rhythm.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 26, 2014 10:48:57 GMT 1
76. The Bodines
Geoff Bodine was a NASCAR driver who won the Daytona 500 in 1986 and is perhaps more famous for a tremendous crash there some years later; brother Brett also won a NASCAR race, although other brother Todd failed to do so. This act were not named for these Bodines, but the family in the Beverly Hillbillies.
I will have a lot more to say about them in due course, but in this place, one short of the official charts, it's appropriate to tip the wink to a couple of decent Irish acts who have both missed out - The Chalets and Cathy Davey - and also mention The Jeff Healey Band, who had quite a bit of success in the States and who also got to the top 50 in the UK album charts, but who bubbled under 6 times without ever making the 75...
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Post by Earl Purple on Dec 26, 2014 12:03:49 GMT 1
It is interesting, if I were to do this I could probably only start at #75, and might miss some later ones that I didn't know about.
For #75 I would probably have to disqualify Paul Heaton's two "acts", Biscuit Boy and "Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott" both of whom have spent one week at #75. And so my own choice may well be Goldfinger who had a #1 in my chart albeit not with the song that peaked at #75 in the UK chart. "Open Your Eyes" was a #75 in 2002. The follow-up #1 in my chart but just missing the top 75 was "Spokesman".
My #74 would be Laptop (Jesse Hartman) who peaked at that position in 1999 with "Nothing To Declare".
I'll await to see who Vas chooses, and decide whether or not to do my own topic, although aside from those whether I will know artists who have peaked in all the positions and then again who I count, e.g. Cinerama had a #71 peak under that name but then the post-2004 Wedding Present was really just Cinerama changing their name and they had a top 40 hit so really I can't count them either.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 26, 2014 21:39:24 GMT 1
I can't really count Cinerama as different from The Wedding Present. It's like The Fall - if it's Gedge and anyone else it's the Weddoes. There is more in common between Cinerama and The Wedding Present than early and late Sugababes. But rest assured there is going to be quite a bit of cheating to get the numbers to work... Anyway, let's get into the chart proper now. 75. The LikeAt least with this number it's easy enough, as I went through them all for The 75 Club. Was tempted to go with The Adicts, if only for getting their Clockwork Orange act onto Cheggers Plays Pop, or Terry, Blair & Anoushka, who came up with one of the best singles ever, not merely the best peaking at 75, with " Ultra Modern Nursery Rhyme". But I've gone with The Like, on the basis that, fair dos, I've got 2 albums by them and they're top quality. I still feel they're capable of making something a little bigger, if they stick with it - although with a line-up change between their LPs I'm not entirely sure they have a long-term plan...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 27, 2014 15:07:22 GMT 1
74. Liars
It seems suspiciously easier to peak at 75 than 74, there was very little choice for this number. I went with Liars in part because they are always trying, in part because pretty much everyone else at 74 was hopeless, in part because they can be euphoric at times, and in part because I can't think of many more extreme acts making the UK singles charts. One of the advantages of low sales, allowing people who actually like music to have more of a say in the charts rather than people who, to put it kind, have musical tastes that are catastrophically and comprehensively moronic.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 27, 2014 16:42:15 GMT 1
73. The Australian number
The Triffids
Another not-a-very-good number. It's not even a 91, let alone an 80. I struggled with this one for two reasons; one, most of the acts peaking here were one hit wonders, and even then most of them were rubbish (I will grant an exception for Eric & The Good Good Feeling though - Eric did hit the top 10 with S'Xpress); secondly, there were not that many.
There was a coincidental Antipodean congregation though. The theme from Home & Away peaked here, although God preserve whichever peons were self-hating enough to want to buy a god-maceratingly Dante-ninth-circle-diabolic ear-evicerating dismembered abortion of a "tune" which they could bloody well here twice per day in their hopeless, useless, oxygen-wasting "lives", but a couple of well-regarded bands - Skyhooks and The Triffids - also landed up here. Not difficult to choose between them though. The former were standard Aussie cock-rock time-wasters, whereas the latter were in the sort of Echo & The Bunnymen-lite post-indie frame and quite decent indeed. Unlike Skyhooks though The Triffids never really had success back home and indeed had more off the back of European support gigs in the 80s. Until they broke up before they broke through.
Only other real thought for this slot was Den Hegarty; not for his solo hit, which was novelty nonsense (indeed he had better material that missed the charts), but for his mad-eyed lunacy as the bassman in Darts, his manic energy translating seamlessly into the last series of Tiswas.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 27, 2014 19:21:24 GMT 1
72. Stump
"Lights! Camel! Action!"
There are many things wrong with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The railways, the weather, Robbie Williams, the FA and so on. But whenever I think of what the greatest country in the world is, I continually think back to the week of 13 August 1988, which saw at number 72 in the charts the Cork quartet of Mick Lynch, Kev Hopper, Chris Salmon and Rob McKahey. And then I think that there is not one single country in the entire world that would ever have put Stump in the charts. Which means that, automatically, the UK is winner. The only problem with the quixotic brilliance of the Beefheart-flavoured Stump (there must be a fetish for that somewhere; Rule 34 refers) is that it prevents two other acts from making the list. Pale Saints were another shoegazey 4AD band with s omething of a darker edge to them, and The Woodentops had a strong run in the indie chart, " Well Well Well" being their first chart-topper there. Given that indie singles of the mid-80s generally did OK in the main chart, it's a bit odd that they never broke higher.
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Post by vya on Dec 27, 2014 20:41:25 GMT 1
Really can't fault the inclusion of Stump here - odder still to recall that Woolworth's policy of stocking the entire top 75 singles then meant that this wonderful bit of weirdness was available, briefly, in every high street of the land. The Pale Saints were quite special too (but not so much as Stump), but their "big hit" wasn't quite their best single....
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 0:00:13 GMT 1
Stump are one of those weird secret bands. I come across the most unlikely people to be fans of them in all sorts of unlikely scenarios. They're one of those bands I suppose who are not easily forgotten. To some extent, they're a sort of Vic Reeves Big Night Out. If you don't get it, you will deride it as incomprehensible nonsense. If you do, it's a work of genius.
Bit like the next act, I suppose.
71. The Velvet Underground
Surely the absolute easiest choice for the entire list. Thank God for Dunlop, who used "Venus In Furs" for an advert and got the Velvets into the singles chart for the first time. And indirectly making this number a lot easier. Without that re-issue, I would have been stuck with a load of dance crap and some landfill indie. The Gyres and Witness only notable for making 71 twixe each, with Witness getting minus points for nicking the name of a genuinely indie band A Witness, so I would probably have had to fall back on Comsat Angels, faute de mieux.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 10:51:21 GMT 1
70. Spectrum
Spectrum, aka Sonic Boom, aka Experimental Audio Research, aka Peter Kember. Perhaps easier to say he was one of Spacemen 3. Not as successful a spin-off as Spiritualized, but I do have the distinct belief that Kember has kept the S3 flame alive a little better. Albeit using electronic music rather than guitars to create the same sort of dreamscape. The only other act I had under consideration for this number was Colleen Fitzpatrick, the current vice-president of music of Nickelodeon USA. No idea whether she was involved in getting another entry on this list an unexpected American job, but she did have some solo success Stateside under the name Vitamin C, a name given for her erstwhile bright red hair. Her solo material was pretty atrocious; however as frontwoman of Eve's Plum - named after the one member of the Brady Bunch who did not take part in their variety show (lampooned in the Simpsons Spin-off Family Extravaganza, where Lisa took the Plumb [sorry] role) she came up with some rather startling brilliance. A change reminiscent of that episode of Only Fools & Horses when A Bunch Of Wallies went from naif outsider garage punk to Spandau Ballet...
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 12:13:39 GMT 1
69. Tribute to bootlegs
The Ex Pistols
I mentioned earlier the Great White Wonder. The first bootleg to break through to mass consciousness. Basically Dylan's Basement Tapes, given an unofficial 'release' long before the official version. Issued in a plain white sleeve, sometimes with the name stamped on it, it spawned an entire industry of unofficial recordings as insiders realized there was money to be made. Sound engineers would surreptitiously sneak a feed from live concerts - better quality than fans with their easily-detectable reel-to-reels which had hitherto been the weapon of choice; studio technicians keeping the out-takes; whatever, obsessive fans would seek them out in numbers. Bands themselves caught on. The Who's Live At Leeds was packaged as if it were a bootleg and it went top five. Monty Python took the joke a stage further with their Contractual Obligation Album and a tracklisting of ever-more-desperate legal actions. But really the apotheosis of bootlegging had already happened. When a band bootlegged themselves. It really had to be that Svengali of punk, Malcolm McLaren, didn't it? Never Mind The b****cks, Here's The Sex Pistols was finished off for the hippie label Virgin to release, but McLaren decided it was too polished a product for the raw Pistols sound. So he decided to do something with offcuts and demos that had been produced by Dave Goodman, and over which McLaren's Glitterbest had the rights. Just before NMTB came out, you could buy copies of Spunk on the Portobello Road... Given that the Pistols' classic line-up only recorded one bona fide album, it's astonishing how many bootlegs the Pistols generated. Interviews, out-takes, live recordings, all packaged, re-packaged and re-re-packaged for maximum sales. And when there was no more Pistols material, then why not cheat? Which is what Goodman did. He created a brand new act, The Ex Pistols, to work around the rushes he had. Including, at times, Glen Matlock, justifiably annoyed at McLaren's re-writing of history. It did not last long, as John Lydon (who had got the SP rights from Glitterbest) injuncted Goodman from the obvious passing-off - you'd need a good eye to spot the clues on the sleeve that this was not a Sex Pistols release (and the Deny bootleg has the name as $ex Pistols) - but long enough for an unlikely chart hit. Even more unlikely that it happened in 1985, long after it was recorded; incidentally, the vocal and guitar parts were from punk failures The Sinix, who therefore become bigger chart successes than genuine punk icons like Eater and The Prefects. Goodman and fellow studiost Dave Rose filled in the rest as "The London Synthphony Orchestra". To be fair, the cover of LOHOG, which got Goodman legal bother as it was still in copyright, is a decent enough track that might have made more of an impact in 1979. But a much better Ex Pistols track - found on the otherwise-Sex Pistols-filled Pirates Of Destiny - is " Schools Are Prisons", a bloody tremendous rocker. Well, it was either that, In Tua Nua or Bonnie Prince Billy. It's not a very inspired number. Songs with 69 in them are much better.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 15:15:40 GMT 1
68. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
A few oddly big names at this number; Tim Booth of James, but also Robert Downey Jr, Nina Hagen (who guested with Adamski for her only chart entry), Trev & Si from Going Live in their Singing Corner guise, David Sylvian and Robert Fripp as a duo, and, for no ostensibly rational reason, Jimmy Tarbuck.
But an easy choice - only one act here one of whose albums I have. CYHSY were part of a naming vogue in the mid-noughties where acts created entire sentences for ease of googling; Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and You Say Party! We Say Die! perhaps the most outstanding. Had the rub from Davids Bowie and Byrne, had a bit of success, then everything shifted again towards the vapid.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 15:18:51 GMT 1
Oh, and one other 78 peaker to refer back to Den Hegarty at no. 73 (as opposed to Number 73) - Fogwell Flax, an impersonator and what would nowadays be termed a beatboxer who gained a transient fame via New Faces had a forgotten Christmas hit peak here in 1981. The next year he was comic relief for part of the final season of Tiswas.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 28, 2014 23:20:30 GMT 1
67. Dot AllisonI think the first time I ever saw One Dove was on TOTP. Possibly The Chart Show. It wasn't on the radio. I was instantly and comprehensively smitten by their come-down sound (love at first listen) and the next day was off to the local HMV for a mooch. It was only then that I discovered that they had a member of Altered Images in them. That link had honestly not affected my opinion of them. Ought to have sussed really - One Dove were also led by a charismatic gamine Scots singer... Despite an intensely promising chart start, and one of the most sublime singles of the 1990s in " Why Don't You Take Me" (sadly the gorgeous lo-fi lo-res mostly black & white video does not seem to be on tinternet), One Dove were more or less sabotaged by their label over their follow-up album, and Allison went solo. At least she managed to put out some outstanding releases, but nothing that matched One Dove's top forty success. Even collaborations with Paul Weller and Pete Doherty (when he was still relevant) did not generate much interest. I note that she is my first solo artist thus far. There won't be many others. I suppose I'm more for the collaboration.
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