The Housemartins 'Think For A Minute'

Chart Peak:
YouTube

Charted at No. 47 on 30th September, had progressed nicely to reach No. 18 by 28th October. 'Think' is the group's second Top 20 success following 'Happy Hour'.

Sadly the last time we get to hear from the Housemartins on this blog, it being rather unfortunate that their brief span of success was in the days of only two Now albums per year. I don't have the toilet-shaped picture disc of this single, but I was lucky enough to obtain the original 12" for less than a pound, as pictured to the left.

If their debut album London 0 Hull 4 has a flaw, it's that a lot of the tracks do sound quite similar, and the original album version of 'Think For A Minute' (a title which I always thought should have an exclamation mark in it but doesn't) is a little bit Housemartins-by-numbers with its typical jangly guitars in the same tempo as many of their other songs. I love a jangly guitar, but so long into a running order of similar tracks it sells itself a bit short.

For single release we get an entirely new recording of the song, in an acoustic arrangement. Obviously slowing a song down can have mixed results, though the most common one is boredom. That's not the case here, thanks to the quiet intensity of the playing and Paul Heaton's outstanding vocal - there can't be many vocalists who've been so successful and yet so underappreciated. It concentrates attention on his more recognised talent as a lyricist, in which he's produced a susprisingly compelling song about apathy. A lovely trumpet solo from Guy Barker serves to preclude any monotony. And of course one of the reasons I've always loved the Housemartins is because they temper whatever messages they have with humour, as in the video for this song where drummer Hugh Whittaker mocks his minor role on the track by attempting to dominate the performance. Of course, the fact that he later served time for attacking somebody with an axe makes this slightly less funny now but we didn't know about that in 1986. For an indie band of the era they have some surprisingly good dance moves too, but then their interest in other music is also demonstrated by the affectionate parody B-side 'Rap Around The Clock'.

"Top pop stars or total willie noses?" they ask on the back cover of the 12". I'm voting for the former this time.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 9, 10
Available on: London 0 Hull 4 - Deluxe E Album Set

The Housemartins 'Caravan Of Love'

Chart Peak: 1 (1 week)

YouTube

Charted at No. 23 on 2nd December 1986, had flown to No.1 by 16th December. It was their third consecutive Top 20 single of the year.

There are quite a few unusual things about this single, none of which are really accounted for in the sleeve note. I suppose they were too busy congratulating themselves on that "flown" joke. It's chiefly notable as the UK's second and - to date - last a cappela Number One single, after the Flying Pickets version of 'Only You'; interesting to note with hindsight that they were so close together in time, and that both were cover versions released in the winter. Indeed, 'Caravan Of Love' was only a week shy of being a Christmas chart topper (as previously mentioned, it had to play second fiddle to the late Jackie Wilson), which makes it an odd record to be writing about during the biggest heatwave for several years.

Of course, the big difference between the Housemartins and the Flying Pickets is that the latter were stylistically consistent, whereas the other Housemartins hits were all self-penned and featured instruments. They weren't strangers to unaccompanied singing though, having occasionally appeared as their own support act under the pseudonym Fish City Five and released a version of 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' on the CD version of their debut album. Had this stayed on top for that extra week it would have been the first religiously-themed Christmas Number One since 1978, though in the event the nation had to wait another four years for Cliff Richard's 'Saviour's Day'. This too is a slight diversion for the band who, unlike Cliff, were not known to be truly religious; though Paul Heaton seems not to have been as fiercely anti-clerical as he later became, his stated aim in the use of Christian imagery was to "take religion away from the right-wing" and reflect the Christian Socialist tradition he obviously felt some sympathy with. He and the rest of the band evidently had a genuine love of gospel music too. 'Caravan Of Love' was originally written and recorded by Isley Jasper Isley, a spin-off group of the members who'd joined the Isley Brothers in the Seventies, after their Motown hits but in time for their groundbreaking funk-rock success: Marvin and Ernie Isley and their brother-in-law Chris Jasper. During their tenure with the group, the Isleys became masters of the cross-genre cover version so it's somehow fitting that the most famous song written by those members went the other way. As sung by Chris Jasper it's a lilting call to evangelisation swamped in treacly 80s production, but the Housemartins obviously strip it down considerably and draw attention to the lyric and Heaton's vocal (easy to forget how good a singer he can be). Presumably buying into the song more as an anthem of togetherness and co-operation rather than one about God, they even sneak in a bit of humour during the call-and-response fade, appearing to sing "He's coming/run for it".

Now, I might be slightly biased here because if there are two acts I particularly associate with my childhood, it's the Housemartins and the Isley Brothers. A Telstar-label Isleys compilation (which featured 'Caravan of Love' as one of  two Isley Jasper Isley tracks) was a regular on my Dad's car stereo back then, and the songs became so familiar to me that I was actually surprised when I grew up and met other people who didn't know them all or even hadn't heard of the Isley Brothers at all. So a combination of the two bands was bound to press all my buttons and indeed it does, as well as the nostalgia I have about hearing this song itself; I also remember the video, which is just as well since it seems to be blocked to UK viewers online. The TotP performance I've linked to up there is notable not only for the band showing their usual glamorous dress sense but also for the fact that the camera operator seems to trip over at about the three-minute mark and they left it in. Anyway, even if the song isn't really as great as I think it is, it's certainly highly distinctive, very different from the rest of what was high in the chart at this time and the rest of the album. That might be one reason why it works for me where the Blow Monkeys don't.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 10
Available on: True Acoustic (3CD Set)

The Housemartins 'Happy Hour'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

'Happy Hour' charted at No. 58 on 3rd June 1986 and had raced to No.3 by the end of that same month to give "the fourth best band in Hull" their first hit.

That's more like it! Although this was already their third single, it's the first time I (and many others) became aware of them, and the semi-claymation video alone had my attention instantly. And the song sounded like I thought a pop song should sound when I was eight, all bouncy and jangly. Only gradually did it dawn on me that the song is actually a rather caustic satire on power relationships in employment and sexism, but then that's probably for the best at that age; I don't even think I'd heard of a happy hour outside this song.

Of course, drinking culture has proved to be a regular motif in PD Heaton's songwriting (and indeed in his life)
so with hindsight this is just one chapter in the story. But from a 1986 perspective this remains a classic example of why the Housemartins seemed the ideal pop group during their brief existence: they had something to say, but more to the point they made you want to hear it because they had enough swing and soul, and they weren't afraid of the mainstream. Most of all, they get through the whole song, even the bells solo, in a sprightly 2-and-a-half minutes. That's a lesson many others on this album could do with learning. 

Also appearing on: Now 8, 9, 10
Available on: Dad's Jukebox

The Housemartins 'Build'

Chart Peak: 15

YouTube

Unlike the Erasure track, this is a song I know very well - indeed it's the first record on this blog that I actually have the original physical single of - so I didn't think there'd be any surprises. Then I looked it up on YouTube and found a version that had been subtitled into Portuguese because it was the theme tune to a Brazilian soap opera.

The Housemartins seem like a big part of my childhood, mainly because I remember my dad buying their first album London 0 Hull 4 and playing it a lot. He didn't actually have the follow-up The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death, which this comes from, but one of the first CDs I remember was their compilation Now That's What I Call Quite Good, complete with the classic record company slogan "Go! Discs - makes other labels seem crap". I thought that was really brilliant when I was 11 or 12. But I liked the music too; not that I understood all the political or religious imagery in it, but then I didn't need to. Perhaps more than any of the bands you might compare them with, they wrote brilliant pop songs. And they knew how to make a video too.


'Build' is one of their less frenetic moments, but it's got an impressive melody. It's also notable for the fact that drummer Dave Hemingway sings part of the chorus, prefiguring his co-vocalist role in The Beautiful South. Indeed, 'Build' was almost the final Housemartins single, as you can see at the end of the video, but the record company were less than happy, and insisted on another single (this proved to be the Peel session track 'There Is Always Something There To Remind Me', which I like even more than this but it was never much of a hit). I think this has aged as well as anything the Smiths did. It's just as well I have an excuse to post a picture of this 45 though - it turns out to be almost entirely unplayable.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 9
Available on: The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death