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 Beautiful South 'How Long's A Tear Take To Dry?'

Chart Peak: 12

Muzu

Following in the footsteps of last year's smash hits 'Perfect Ten' and 'Dumb'. 'How Long's A Tear...' is their latest release - due on 8th March '99... The video for the track features a Scooby-Doo-style cartoon version of the band!

I don't normally bother to quote the part of these sleeve notes where they plug the album the track comes from, but this one is notably inaccurate, attributing the song to their 1990 album Choke - it's actually from 1998's Quench, although the single version is a shorter edit. In fact the version on Now 42 is edited still further, a clean version which cuts the second half of the exchange "Will you be my locksmith tonight?/Will I shite!" entirely. Other versions drop only the last word, if anything at all (in the video, the cartoon Jaqui Abbot's mouth is covered during that line).

As the quote above suggests, the lyric finds Paul Heaton on familiar territory, as one half of a bickering couple. It's one of the lighter examples in the catalogue though, feeling more like sparring than anger (though in the light of today's headlines it might not seem as amusing as it usually would). Heaton being Heaton he can't resist throwing "the flowers smell sweeter, the closer you are to the grave" into the chorus, though the fatalism is also brightened by the music which shows the influence of "rhythm consultant" Norman Cook. It's a funky track, driven by low electric piano and a flute lick vaguely reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron's 'The Bottle'. Maybe closer to the music Heaton enjoys than what he's famous for making.

I was always fond of this one, although as my dad had the album and the B-sides weren't very interesting I never bought it. Enough people did for it to become their last Top 20 single, and maybe with hindsight their last real standout track, though they continued well into this century. 

Also appearing on: Now 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 28, 32, 35, 36, 41
Available on: Solid Bronze - Great Hits

The Beautiful South 'You Keep It All In'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Following the success of 'Song For Whoever' (No 2 in July), Dave, Dave, Dave, Paul & Sean teamed up with guest vocalist Brianna Corrigan to score a second Top 10 smash with a highest position of No. 8 on 1st October 1989.

Your eyes do not deceive you, the original lineup of The Beautiful South was 60% Daves (Brianna Corrigan was, as noted above, officially a guest musician on the first album, although she was considered a full member of the band for the next two. Although this is one of only two occasions when the band scored consecutive Top 10 hits, it seems like a bit of a forgotten song now. It was always a big favourite of mine, though.

Of course, when I was eleven I couldn't claim to understand what Corrigan and Paul Heaton were arguing about. Even now I don't really get all the references but I can still enjoy the dark domestic comedy; and this is also a great showcase for the fact that the band usually had three singers (Dave Hemingway gets a go towards   the end) and even though they didn't all sing on every track, it lent them a variety that makes you wonder why so many bands use the same vocalist all the time.

What really stands out for me is the music though. The soul influence on the band isn't always noted (though they covered a relatively obscure Bill Withers song as a B-side), but it's clearer here than in most places. It's impressively tight, packing bundles of energy into less than three minutes, the complex twists and turns, the luxuriant arrangement and the massed backing vocals give it a light jollity that contrasts with the uncomfortable lyric. You can hear more of this on the instrumental version that backed some formats of the single. The bass playing is also excellent, despite being by one of the rebellious band members who weren't called Dave.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 18, 22, 27, 28, 32, 35, 36, 41, 42
Available on: Welcome To The Beautiful South

The Beautiful South 'Don't Marry Her'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Top British pop group, The Beautiful South, had another smash with 'Don't Marry Her'... It followed 'Rotterdam' into the Top 10 in late '96

I know the question you're going to ask - and yes, of course it's the censored version. I remember my Dad got the Blue Is The Colour album for Christmas that year and had to be advised to heed the sticker warning of "blue language" on the opening track before he played it in the presence of the various assembled grandparents. Even in sanitised form (complete with the "tribute" to Sandra Bullock") this is a much darker record than its spotless MOR sound might fool you into thinking, clearly a product of Paul Heaton at his most misanthropic.

The siren voice of Jacqui Abbot tempts a man away from his imminent marriage by painting a dystopian picture of settled domestic life. Of course, it's unclear how literally we're supposed to take this since the early lyric "I'll never grow so old and flabby, that could never be" is one of the most transparently empty promises in pop, but even if it's just the man's fantasy it's a pretty bitter pill, even when sugared by the charming melody and brilliant musicianship. I loved this record at the time as a subversive masterpiece, but I admit to finding it slightly harder going as a fully-fledged adult.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 28, 32, 35, 41, 42
Available on: The Beautiful South - Gold

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 Beautiful South 'Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)'

Chart Peak: 23

YouTube

'Good As Gold' or 'Carry On Regardless' or 'Stupid As Mud' is the new single from the outfit that have "a unique claim on the middle gound between Andrew Lloyd Webber & The Clash"... The lads have now been joined by new singer Jacqueline Abbott.

I don't normally bother to illustrate album covers on here, but I thought some people might be interested to see my copy of Miaow with the original artwork rather than the version that replaced it. Mind you, if you can see the £1:95 price sticker you'll notice that it's not exactly a valuable rarity.

This confusingly-titled song was one of their many smaller-than-you'd-think hits, although it did manage to spend two consecutive weeks at 23 before it began to drop out of the chart. Perhaps if they actually had called it 'Carry On Regardless' it would have made the Top 20. It was a huge airplay hit anyway, with its big bold chorus and the lively brass section that coincidentally fits in with the Britpop sound that was breaching the mainstream in early 1994 (it's performed by the Kick Horns, who are on legions of other hits by Blur, Shed Seven et al and even got a co-credit on a Dodgy single once). It has a happy-go-lucky air which perhaps draws your attention away from the downtrodden protagonist you tend to find in Heaton's songs. He seems to have been in an especially dark place at this point, in fact, and the two big hits from the album (this and a rather pointless version of 'Everybody's Talking') belie the rather miserable and bleak tone of the remainder; to say nothing of the (possibly ironic) sexism in some lyrics that caused former lead singer Briana Corrigan to leave and thus occasioned the arrival of Abbot. She's only really a backing vocalist here, but she does a good job.

Perhaps I don't love the band as much as I once did but this remains as good a track as we've heard on the album so far.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 16, 18, 22, 28, 32, 35, 36, 41, 42
Available on: Miaow

The Beautiful South 'Pretenders To The Throne'

Chart Peak: 18

YouTube

Noting their fairly large number of appearances, I'm slightly surprised that this is the first time we've encountered the Beautful South round these parts, though of course two of their number have shown up before as part of the Housemartins. This was the first new Beautiful South material since the "mega-platinum selling" Carry On Up The Charts singles compilation made the band a household name, even if not many people in those households would know unprompted who David Stead and Jacqui Abbot were.

At the time, I thought this was just an advance single for a fifth album, and not being a completism-level fan of the band I spurned the option of buying the single, even the cheaper 1-track version (quite a novelty in those days). As it turned out, when that album did show up about a year later in the shape of Blue is The Colour, this track wasn't on it (I don't know whether this was the intention all along, or whether they just decided to drop it when they'd written the other songs for the album) and apart from this appearance it didn't show up again until 2002. It's very much the forgotten Beautiful South hit, which I don't think I've heard on the radio or seen on telly since its original chart run. In fact, I even forgot it a bit myself despite it being a significant selling point of the best-of album I have it on. Then when I obtained my copy of Now 32 for the princely sum of 50p and ripped it to MP3 for the purposes of this blog, on the spur of the moment I added this track to my player and it's served me well ever since.

Even after fifteen years I've never totally figured out what the song's supposed to be about, though. It lists the merits of various towns and cities (a faint echo of 'Song For Whoever'?) before ultimately seeming to reject them in favour of an unnamed destination that has "class [and] excellence like you've never seen." But notably, one of the places they dismiss is "Hull with its musical flair" so they're not pleading for their own hometown. Presumably the key line is "if you've been, it's not where I mean" - they're dissociating themselves from whoever the song's being sung to and anything they could possibly appreciate. The middle eight develops this theme with what's perhaps the definitive Paul Heaton lyric; "As I watch them drop the grain into your fishtank brain/How can you like this place when it never even rains?"

As usual, they wrap this confrontational lyric in a pretty little tune, another example of that surprisingly unique sound of theirs. It's also one of their first tracks to show traces of an electronic influence, albeit rather subtly at the end. It's not their strongest track by any means, but neither is it anywhere near their worst. And I don't really know or care whether it's a cool thing to say in 2010 but it's the best track on the album so far.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 28, 35, 36, 41, 42
Available on: Solid Bronze - Great Hits

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