FEATURE:
Get Up Off Our Knees
The Housemartins‘ London 0 Hull 4 at Forty
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I think that…
it might have one of the best album covers ever. The colour scheme and font. That is The Housemartins’ debut, London 0 Hull 4. Released on 9th June, 1986, I wanted to celebrate its fortieth anniversary by bringing in some features and reviews for it. Happy Hour, Flag Day, Sheep and Think for a Minute, not only some of the best songs on the album, but also some of the best of the 1980s. It was many people’s introduction to Paul Heaton. He would obviously then lead (in terms of songwriting; they had several lead singers through the years) The Beautiful South and now has an amazing career as a solo artist. He has recorded with his former The Beautiful South mate, Jacqui Abbott, and now he records with Rianne Downey. One of the greatest songwriters who has ever lived, there is so much wit, personality and all forms of human life in his music. With The Housemartins, social observation and political commentary. It is also worth noting The Housemartins also featured Norman Cook. Later rebranded as Fatboy Slim. The line-up was completed by Stan Cullmore and Hugh Whitaker. Whitaker was replaced on drums by The Beautiful South’s Dave Hemingway for the second studio album, The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death. Both albums co-written by Paul Heaton and Stan Cullimore. Reaching number three in the U.K., London 0 Hull 4 was released shortly before The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead. Morrissey getting all this recognition as a world-class lyricist, though I have always felt Paul Heaton is superior – and a much nicer bloke too (and we share a birthday!). I will come to reviews for one of the truly great debut albums. However, first, there is an interview published in November 1986 by International Musician & Recording World. Maybe obvious to most, but The Housemartins’ debut album takes its title from where the band were from, Hull. In the form of a football score, Paul Heaton cheekily digging at London and suggesting there were no great bands there in 1986, but at least four great ones in Hull! The other three in that score included Everything But the Girl:
“People like the Housemartins. Some people think they're the future of Pop music, some girls think they're the sexiest bunch around, but most people just like them.
There's obviously something Machiavellian about this. This group was obviously constructed from Plasticene prototypes, the product of many years' market research, a modern day Monkees. The funny thing is, the faceless media persons at Go-Disc Records, the hub of this exercise, consist of Andy and Juliet McDonald, faithful assistant Porky, and a rather scraggy dog. So how did it all start, guys? Stan Cullimore:
"We met because Paul (Heaton, singer) put this advert in the paper saying buskers wanted, and together we just started busking as a two piece in Hull, purely because we were both a bit skint at the time. Then we moved from busking, because we wanted to play a few gigs indoors, and we became a four-piece and started getting normal gigs. We still used to busk as a four piece,though, in York and Hull, which was good fun, with just a snare drum, acoustic guitar, and a bass amp with a little battery in it..."
These extra personnel were Ted on Bass, (who left earlier this year due to what The Sun called 'political differences' in their 'Top Group Want To Kill Off Royals' expose), since replaced by Norman Cook, and Hugh Whittaker on drums. Somethings might have changed since then, but they've still managed to keep everything pretty portable.
"We don't take much gear out with us these days — we're surprisingly lightweight. We've done gigs where we're the headliners and the other bands are taking their stuff off stage before we go on and they're bringing up these enormous artics full of flight cases with their names sprayed on them in big letters. Then we arrive in a Transit van with seats in it, back it up, chug chug chug, and everyone shouts 'Hey, Noddy's arrived!' We've got two guitars each, our amps are about this big, and the drum kit fits into two shoeboxes."
'This big' is about the size of a Sessionette, which Stanley swears by. The bass amp is a small HH combo. Guitars consist of a Rickenbacker 610, and Tokai Tele, with a Fender Contemporary bass. Not that they're really equipment buffs, as Paul reveals:
"We spend about 10 minutes a year talking about equipment, we spend most of our time talking about football, our relationships..."
Stan interrupts: "In a way we feel it's quite naughty, like not doing your homework. I have to remind Hugh to get a pair of drumsticks before gigs a lot of the time. We don't have a lot of technical interest, though I suppose we have a comfort interest, like Norman wants a bass that isn't too heavy, I want a guitar that doesn't break any strings, Hugh wants a drumkit that he can put up quickly."
Mind you, it wouldn't do for Hugh to have a drum kit that he could put up too quickly, because that would cut down on the football. In true Housemartins fashion the rest of the band plays soccer while he sets up his kit. Presumably their choice of support for their tours is heavily influenced by their competence as an opposition football team. Even if their gear's still minor league, though, they're now firmly in the First Division. To some people it looks as if they've come from nowhere, but that isn't really the case:
"Everything's happened in such a gradual way that we haven't really noticed. For a start, we were working together for a year before signing any record contract, and we had Flag Day as our first single, which we were really excited about, but which didn't really do anything. Then we were in Peel's chart last year, the Festive Fifty, and we got a little following that way, and by playing around the country. Then the next single, Sheep, just got in the bottom of the charts, about number 50, so to us it seems like a slow process of growing. To people who only take notice of what's in the Top 40, which I suppose is the majority, it does appear that we've just arrived like that. To us it seems like we've been going for years..."
The Housemartins are obviously in a good position with Go-Discs; they've now had the predictable offers from the big companies, who think that temptation is personified by large advances. All the same, after one success, the pressure is obviously going to increase. Stan:
"I think even now that Go-Discs, and Chrysalis, will be looking for another hit record — they won't be looking for any self-indulgence from us. From now on every record will have to be aimed at the top. I really do reckon that we'll be one hit wonders..."
"I think we'll get a hit next year," Paul Heaton continues. "I don't think we really give a toss, but you can never tell. After we've had a flop, we might get really depressed about it, but at the moment we don't really mind. There's an unsaid and unwritten pressure, there's a natural progression where you have to get higher".
I want to turn to The Vinyl District from 2023. They go deep with London 0 Hull 4. Making some keen observations about an album I hope gets a load more love on its fortieth anniversary. Some not entirely sure of the exact release date, though I am going by what a few sites say. Other say it is July 1986. I am not sure if Paul Heaton would know the exact date?! It is strange that there is not a definitive record, as it makes marking the fortieth anniversary a bit tricky:
“You’ve gotta love a band of chipper Christian lads who deliver lines like “Don’t shoot someone tomorrow that you can shoot today.”
I’m talking, of course, about The Housemartins. Hailing from Hull, England, these Socialists for Jesus dressed up their angry agitprop in jangly pop clothing, but there’s no denying their righteous anger–they didn’t like what they saw in Margaret Thatcher’s Green and Unpleasant Land, and they lifted their cheery voices and, well, raged.
On their 1986 debut LP London 0 Hull 4, The Housemartins denounce fence sitters, sheep (“They’ve never questioned anything”), surrender monkeys (“Now apathy is happy that/It won without a fight”) and people who “listen without their ears.” The Housemartins practiced a radical Christianity, as is evidenced by the lines, “We’ve got to form a congregation and sink down the nation/Batter all the sinners to the ground.”
Ignore the words and what you get are a bunch of fey and frothy tunes with great soul vocals; this quartet of Hullensians could almost be mistaken for Wham!, except Wham! never advocated shooting anybody–they were too busy inspiring people to shoot them.
Sanctimony never sounded so divine as it does on London 0 Hull 4. What you get are four choirboys who sound like they just tossed off their cassocks and surplices, and their angelic (and very soulful) voices and jangly guitars put a deceptively ear-pleasing gloss on their very subversive messaging. Which basically amounts to “Wake up you complacent wankers, the rich and indifferent are bringing our country down around your working class ears.”
They certainly get their point across on “Get Up Off Your Knees,” the pleasantly upbeat tune that includes the “shoot someone today” lines. Radicals that they are, the lads forego the power of prayer in favor of more direct action–“Time to end the praying,” sings Paul Heaton, “Listen what they’re saying.” That said, their message isn’t always so clear; I can’t for the life of me decide whether the very happy-making “We’re Not Deep” is a simple anthem to sleeping late, or a pointed jab at folks who refuse to wake up and smell the bitter coffee.
On the melancholy piano rocker “Flag Day” (think Elton John circa Blue Moves) Heaton writes off staging appeals for the poor (“It’s a waste of time if you know what I mean”). Which doesn’t make him a fucking Libertarian so much as a wild-eyed radical looking for, er, more drastic means of wealth distribution–“Too many Florence Nightingales/Not enough Robin Hoods,” he sings, “Too many haloes and not enough heroes/Coming up with the goods.”
“Happy Hour” is a bouncy salute to the dubious joys of joining your workmates for a drink after work–haircuts smile, you’re out with the boss, everybody’s busy opening their wallets and closing their minds. No wonder Heaton sings–and I have to say he reminds me a bit of good old Morrissey–”It’s happy hour again/I think I might be happy if I wasn’t out with them.”
“Sheep” is as happy-making musically as it’s straightforward lyrically; “It’s sheep we’re up against,” sings Heaton, and that’s a message that always rings true. “Think for a Minute” goes against the grain insofar as it’s downbeat on all fronts–the song’s medium tempo fits the lyrics about England’s decline into hopelessness and apathy like a glove. It’s an enjoinder to stop and think, but Heaton doesn’t sound so sure anybody’s listening.
“Freedom”’s message is simple enough: “So this is freedom/They must be joking.” But if that sounds like a bummer, just try to not sing along. As for “Lean on Me” it’s the LP’s odd song out, a stripped down, straight-up gospel number (not to be confused with the Bill Withers’ classic) that limns the limits of despair: “Down and out without hope” sings Heaton over and over again to the accompaniment of a piano, and his voice is as lovely as it is doeful.
My only complaint with London 0 Hull Four is that while its lyrics are pointed, they may not be pointed enough–they lack the ugly specifics and quicksilver imagery of your best agitprop. That said, if you’re looking for an album that will make you happy and make you think, this one will be your cup of tea.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-“.
The final review I want to introduce is from The Line of Best Fit. Released in 2009, they looked at the Deluxe Edition of London 0 Hull 4. It is one of the absolute best albums ever. Even though The Housemartins were together for two albums, they definitely made their mark on music:
“Two years ago, The Guardian ran a blog citing Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine as the most successful, yet least influential band in recent memory ”“ a fair point, well made. That said, The Housemartins’ two-album career was arguably just as successful, with two top ten albums and a glut of increasingly chartbound singles, with just as little influence; aside from spawning the underappreciated Beautiful South (whose early albums are, if anything, even more deserving of a reappraisal) and the overexposed Norman Cook, they’ve hardly spawned a legion of imitators ”“ now that Jack Peñate’s “gone Afrobeat”, anyway. With no specific anniversary in sight, this “deluxe edition” of 1986’s London 0 Hull 4, the first and most successful of their albums, seems like a randomly deployed attempt to address this issue, boasting a shiny remastering job and the obligatory second disc of bonus tracks.The original album itself remains a pretty comprehensive guide to everything right and wrong with Thatcher-era indie. Though the crystal clear remaster makes it an essential repurchase for anyone who already owns the almost-unlistenable earlier CD version, the production remains as reassuringly leaden as anything released on an independent label in the ‘80s. Likewise, the songs’ influences are similarly limited, veering almost exclusively between northern soul and The Smiths. This combination occasionally strikes gold, as on ‘Get Up Off Our Knees’, the album’s most dynamic moment and, classic single ‘Happy Hour’ aside, its bona fide floor-filler, as well as the riotous ‘We’re Not Deep’, which wins points for its gloriously tongue-in-cheek “ba-ba-ba” chorus, and its audacious placement before one of the album’s deepest soul cuts, ‘Lean on Me’.
Sadly, it’s hard to listen to much of the album without involuntarily breaking into ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’, especially ‘Reverend’s Revenge’ which as a throwaway instrumental all but invites the comparison, and ‘Sitting on a Fence’, which is at least saved by Paul Heaton’s keening falsetto and still painfully relevant lyrics (“He’d rather not get his hands dirty/He’ll still be there when he is thirty...”).Indeed, Heaton’s socially-aware lyrics have dated remarkably well, at least compared to those of labelmate Billy Bragg, and this is perhaps thanks to the broadness of their messages. The band’s crowning glory is ‘Flag Day’, which criticises “too many hands in too many pockets [and] not enough hands on hearts,” while condemning the self-righteousness of those who’d “like to change the world [by] deciding to stage a jumble sale...for the poor.” The mix of withering bitterness and resignation in Heaton’s voice as he intones the last three words is almost palpable. The single version which opens disc two makes this even clearer, as a solitary trumpet chimes in with a mournful refrain; compared with the album version’s overdramatic production flourishes which just ring false given the lyrical content (pseudo-Jools Holland piano? Check. Ill-advised melodica interlude? Check...), this stripped-back rendition is arguably its definitive version.Sadly, it’s also the best thing on disc two, which otherwise relies on b-sides, covers and BBC session tracks which are almost indistinguishable from the originals. The band’s charming acapella take on Curtis Mayfield’s ‘People Get Ready’ anticipates their number one hit ‘Caravan of Love’, and tracks like ‘I Smell Winter’ and the vitriolic ‘Drop Down Dead’ would have been right at home on the album proper, but studio antics like the painfully long ‘Rap Around the Clock’ are simply a joke too far, and strictly for obsessives. Still, for all its flaws, the album proper sounds better than ever and if a new generation of bands starts making a career out of ripping off ‘Happy Hour’ (unlikely though that scenario may be), there won’t be any complaints from this corner”.
I am pretty sure it is 9th June. In any case, we are about to celebrate forty years of The Housemartins’ wonderful debut album, London 0 Hull 4. I don’t think a group like them had come around for a long time. Paul Heaton then going off to have this successful career in another band. Norman Cook would soon become an established D.J. and artist. Stan Cullimore went on to become a writer and author. Despite the fact The Housemartins shone brightly for a short time, their extraordinary debut album…
STILL sounds so utterly compelling.