Your Heart Out 30 - Consequences

Within 18 months the audience‟s idiot dancing had been replaced with flag waving and lighters held aloft at the Hammersmith Palais. By then Dave McCullough, exiled to the London listings magazine City Limits, welcomed the zest of mod outfit Makin‟ Time as an antidote to REM‟s traditional rock solidity. He also wrote that Makin‟ Time‟s singer and organist Fay Hallam was god, just as a few years earlier he had declared Vic Godard was god when Stop That Girl was released on Bernard Rhodes‟ Oddball label through Rough Trade.

It would be the summer of 1989 before REM had a single in the UK Top 30. The group was hardly struggling, but the British media had a prevailing preoccupation with the importance of hit singles. The charts have never been a true indicator of how well records are selling in Britain. In 1984, for example, reggae was really successful, and independent UK labels like Fashion and Ariwa were thriving.

Greensleeves was as strong as ever. Lovers rock still had a massive audience. A new generation of UK toasters or MCs were developing a fast chatting style. Smiley Culture‟s Cockney Translation and Police Officer became hits in the real world. The likes of Papa Levi, Ranking Ann, Lorna Gee, and Asher Senator also had an impact. The massively popular 1984 Reggae Sunsplash was held at Crystal Palace‟s ground featuring Aswad, Dennis Brown, Black Uhuru, Prince Buster, King Sunny Ade, and sponsored by Capital Radio.

The London lovers rock turned soul group Cool Notes began a series of hits in 1984 on the Abstract Dance label, as label mates with The Redskins. This was an off-shoot of the punk label Abstract that was home to The Gymslips, Hagar The Womb, Joolz, Three Johns and Five Go Down To The Sea. And there were the phenomenally successful electro Street Sounds compilations which found an audience beyond the kids with a ghetto blaster and a roll of lino behind the shopping centre.

So the hollow victory of The Smiths making the Top 20 on Rough Trade meant very little, apart from creating a climate suggestive of the suffocating smugness of students‟ halls of residence, where The Smiths‟ records nestled next to tapes of Prefab Sprout‟s Swoon and Lloyd Cole‟s Rattlesnakes. The ascent of Madonna was far more fun and the Style Council‟s My Ever Changing Moods and You‟re The Best Thing were wonderful examples of perfect radio pop.

But, against a backdrop of the Miners‟ Strike and the Government‟s war on left-wing local governments, there was a new earnestness abroad, which benefitted the likes of The Alarm, Redskins, New Model Army, Billy Bragg, Chameleons, Red Guitars, Easterhouse, Spear of Destiny and Three Johns. For those already depressed by such developments, things got far worse when Bruce Springsteen released Born in the USA. As if the bombast was not wearisome enough, the sight of drunken yuppies bellowing along with Dancing in the Dark was enough to send many scurrying for something spikier and rougher.

That summer Alan McGee‟s Creation label and his venue The Living Room became a focal point for a burst of frantic „back-to-basics‟ pop activity. A number of groups were coming through that had been shaped by early Rough Trade and Postcard singles, but were looking further afield for inspiration, and most crucially each featured very talented songwriters who were beginning to find their own voices. The Jasmine Minks, for example, off-