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Words: Matt ‘Woebot’ Ingram

The seven-inch single has recently celebrated its 60th Anniversary [this article was originally published in 2008]. While to some collectors Reggae, Funk or Pop are the ultimate genres for the format, my own choice would have to be Post-Punk as manifested in the great singles which came out at the tail-end of the seventies and dawn of the eighties.

As a sophomore collector I used to look at the back wall of the Rough Trade shop in Ladbroke Grove with vacant longing, but these days, with somewhat jaded eyes, the selection there seems slightly less impressive. There are masterpieces pinned up by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Raincoats, The Slits, Wire and Scritti, but The Lurkers, The Alarm, The Rezillos and Echo & The Bunnymen and The Redskins? Not so cool, but such is the benefit of hindsight.

This 20 Best for FACT focuses on singles from that era which not only seem more relevant than ever before but which make a case for the importance of the single in and of itself. I have tried to select records which, though they have in some instances been mopped up on subsequent album collections, were not released as tasters for an LP. They are not fragments of a “greater work” but function as works of art in their own right. The immaculate sleeve design they all feature underscores this idea of them each being minute aesthetic universes. Their brevity of purpose is very refreshing, and I have always found buying singles to be a welcome antidote to always amassing LPs and twelve-inches.


01: THE RESIDENTS
‘DUCK STAB’
(RALPH, 1997)

Conceived as pop satire and all but disowned by The Residents upon its adoption by NME, Sounds and Melody Maker who proclaimed it as evidence that the band were finally making “worthwhile” material. There’s a special place in my heart for 7″ singles which play at 33rpm, and this, like The Minutemen’s ‘Paranoid Time’, is essentially a 7-track miniscule album. Every song is a masterpiece of illogical pop; ‘Sinister Exaggerator’ in particular sounds alarmingly fresh 32 years later, and would sit comfortably beside the works of Shackleton and Mordant Music. These tunes, of course, can be found on the Duck Stab/Buster & Glen LP, but sadly the other tracks compiled with that release can’t hold a candle to them.


02: DNA
‘YOU & YOU’ / ‘LITTLE ANTS’
(MEDICAL, 1978)

‘You and You’ is Lower East Side Minimalism. Built upon an insistent synth vamp, the drums here practically carry the melody while Arto’s guitar sprays convoluted racket over the whole assemblage. ‘Little Ants’, the B-side, is stop-frame urban hoodoo. DNA, like the other No Wave bands, put out a slew of singles; thanks to Michael Zilka’s efforts at ZE, many of them ended up on 12″ rather than 7″.


03: IAN DURY AND THE BLOCKHEADS
‘HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM STICK’
(STIFF, 1978)

Ian Dury’s work has been ignored in the recent post-punk gold-rush. Was Dury really a pub-rocker? I don’t think so. Pub-rock is better represented by the R’n’B-flavoured work of Nick Lowe, Rockpile, Dr Feelgood, John Otway, Graham Parker and (yes, sorry) Elvis Costello. Pub-rock tends to be a) Americanised b) all about the Rock, as opposed to dance, dynamic. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just less interesting! Dury and Jankel on the other hand made the kind of punky disco that (would they had the chops) Rip, Rig and Panic would love to have been able to conjure up. With it’s exquisite Barney Bubbles sleeve and glorious #1 chart placement, years before New Pop graced the charts this was definitely post-punk. Eventually all the Dury singles were wrapped up, along with their excellent B-sides, on the Juke Box Dury LP.


04: THE HUMAN LEAGUE
‘BEING BOILED’ / ‘CIRCUS OF DEATH’
(FAST, 1978)

The inspiration for Richard X‘s ‘Being Scrubbed’ bootleg, ‘Being Boiled’ still stuns with its walk-in freezer bass-line. To this day it’s hard to reconcile this Human League with THAT Human League atop the Christmas Charts of 1981. However, the 7″ single format is quintessentially one geared towards pop, so in a sense even the most skronky 7″ is a trojan horse.


05: CABARET VOLTAIRE
EXTENDED PLAY
EP
(ROUGH TRADE, 1978)

In his book Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds pares this EP with epochal seven-inch releases by Thomas Leer, Robert Rental, Throbbing Gristle and The Normal. I make no apologies for including all five releases here. All of these pioneering monochrome slabs of electro-rock were seemingly influenced by nothing at all. This, the Cabs’ first release, is steam-piston-powered Clockwork Orange funk.


06: THE NORMAL
‘WARM LEATHERETTE’
(MUTE, 1978)

Surely one of the most anthologised, utterly unavoidable post-punk tracks there is? Though for good reason. Daniel Miller’s received pronunciation here always made me wonder, half seriously, whether this was a context which could weather class refugees. RIP JG Ballard.


07: ROBERT RENTAL
‘PARALYSIS’ / ‘A.C.C.’
(COMPANY REGULAR, 1978)

While the Cabs/Throbbs/Miller Electronic singles grew like mutant fungi hidden from one another in the debris of a post-industrial wasteland, Robert Rental and Thomas Leer were Scottish buddies who moved south together. The cute argument that these singles (f*** guitars!) were the true punk rock falls down rather with these two tracks which veteran blogger Gutterbreakz accurately compared to the moth-eaten psychedelia of Skip Spence and Syd Barrett.


08: THROBBING GRISTLE
‘UNITED’
(INDUSTRIAL, 1978)

Their best track? This is effortlessly creepy in stark contrast to the heavy-handed shock tactics of their later work. In a way the Throbbs pick up from where the Gang of Four left off, but settle not on the politics of the inter-personal but the inherently bizarre nature of intimate relationships.


09: THOMAS LEER
‘PRIVATE PLANE’ / ‘INTERNATIONAL’
(COMPANY / OBLIQUE, 1978)

Allegedly recorded under his blankets at night, almost whispered so as not to wake his girlfriend from sleep. Very little outside the krautrock canon – Gang Gang Dance’s debut LP immediately springs to mind – manages so effectively to convey the expansiveness of inner-space.


10: DELTA 5
‘MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS’ / ‘NOW THAT YOU’VE GONE’
(ROUGH TRADE, 1979)

Forget Tommy the opera or Christian Marclay’s Record Without A Cover, as a disc this double A-side is one of the most perfect conceptual statements ever released. Over a nagging locked bass and drum pattern ‘Mind Your Own Business’ documents the arguments in a relationship; then on its flipside ‘Now That You’ve Gone’ takes the same groove, hollows it out and describes the aftermath. Where once repetitively oppressive, rhythm becomes grippingly tedious.

11: FATAL MICROBES
‘VIOLENCE GROWS’
(SMALL WONDER, 1979)

In spirit a punk record pure and proper but one which chooses to slither along at a malevolent half-speed in an obviously post-punk-ish manner. Sadly on the B-side the tempo shifts up a gear. I’ve always thought there was some profoundly cosmic semantic connection between this and The Germs’ ‘Forming’.


12: MINUTEMEN
‘PARANOID TIME’
(SST, 1980)

Like The Meat Puppets’ 5-track In a Car 7″ EP, this, with its great Raymond Pettibon sleeve, is an unmissable slice of West Coast post-punk, though naturally Boon, Watt and Hurley would have seen themselves as punky contemporaries of The Clash. ‘Paranoid Chant’, with its “I try to talk to girls and I keep thinking of World
War Three” line is the masterpiece here, but the others follow close behind.


13: …AND THE NATIVE HIPSTERS
‘THERE GOES CONCORDE AGAIN’
(HEATER VOLUME, 1980)

Self-consciously oddball post-punk like Family Fodder, and like that band it’s easy to hear their influence on Stereolab. ‘There Goes Concorde Again’ was recorded in a bedroom and its original covers were made from cut-up billboard posters, the close-up pixels an exquisite metaphor for the effect you get from closing in on the details of modern life.


14: YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS
‘FINAL DAY’ / ‘RADIO SILENTS’ / ‘CAKEWALKING’
(ROUGH TRADE, 1980)

Coming out in the June 1980 after the February release of the Colossal Youth LP, this is now bundled up with the LP on an excellent re-issue by Domino. YMG are self-effacing to the point of abstraction. ‘Final Day’ so awesome it’s easy to overlook the nearly as fantastic ‘Radio Silents’ and the sublime ‘Cakewalking’. Tucked away at the back there’s even a un-named demo! Sadly the Testcard EP didn’t scale such heights.


15: BLUE ORCHIDS
‘THE FLOOD’ / ‘DISNEY BOYS’
(ROUGH TRADE, 1980)

Or ‘Symbolscrash’ as the 7″ refers to itself. This can still be seen on the Rough Trade wall. The Blue Orchids sound is grounded closely in the reality of its organ, untreated guitar, barked vocals, and slugging drums. It is at once unapologetically sandpaper-rough, yet brazenly melodic. Usually a band with such psychedelic intent would choose to bury what they were doing in a rainstorm of reverb. The Blue Orchids on the other hand, in a stroke of genius, sought the infinite present of Cargo Studios, Rochdale on 30th August 1980.


16: BUSH TETRAS
‘TOO MANY CREEPS’
(99 RECORDS, 1980)

Head honcho Ed Bahlman had exquisite taste and everything in the 99 records catalogue is worth tracking down. 3/4 female, the presence of former-Contortion Pat Place on this fingers Bush Tetras as No Wave but I’ve always thought that the 99 records output had a little too much warmth to be classed as such.


17: Y PANTS
‘Y PANTS’
(99 RECORDS, 1980)

Exquisite left-footed 12-tone Pop, Y Pants were like a more assured Raincoats. Another 99 records gem, this time produced by Glenn Branca. I was amused to see the tell-tale folded bottom left-hand corner of my copy in not only Marc Master’s excellent No Wave book, for whom I contributed a raft of scans, but also at the Discogs entry for this record.


18: ANDREAS DORAU & DIE MARINAS
‘FRED VOM JUPITER’
(ATATAK, 1981)

Any number of NDW singles might have filled this token slot, I have a particular fondness for Abwärt’s ‘Computerstaat’, Die Radierer’s ‘Angriff auf’s Schlaraffenland’ and Der Plan’s ‘Da vorne steht ‘ne Ampel’ but for heavenly pop kicks this must be your first port of call. This single was licensed in the UK by Daniel Miller at Mute, thus I feel justified including it, but is a bit of a cheat as it did appear on Andreas Dorau’s subsequent solo LP.


19: ORANGE JUICE
‘POOR OLD SOUL’
(POSTCARD, 1981)

Was Postcard the quintessential 7″ label? This is my favourite Orange Juice track. Later singles like ‘Love…Love…Love…’, ‘Flesh of my Flesh’ and ‘Rip It Up’ are nice, but there’s a clarity to the production, which rings like a bell, and a bite to the tune which shows off the band better than anything else. Also particularly magnificent on Postcard is Josef K’s ‘Chance Meeting’. Again, Domino have collected these singles on their The Glasgow School Orange Juice compilation.


20: PULSALLAMA
‘THE DEVIL LIVES IN MY HUSBAND’S BODY’
(Y RECORDS, 1982)

Stepford wives meets the B-52s in this hilarious hyperstitional tale. Like the Fatal Microbes and Native Hipsters records this could be classed as a wonderful one-hit-wonder. Their second and final release contained the charming ‘Pulsallama On The Rag’. I’ve always been intrigued by how what might be called The Slits “trope” survived in discs like this but also on much later releases like Bananarama’s ‘Really Saying Something’, We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It’s Rules and Regulations EP and Madonna’s early singles like ‘Holiday’ and ‘Dress You Up’. This track and a number of others mentioned here are collected on the excellent CD compilation which accompanied the book ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’.

Matt ‘Woebot’ Ingram


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