Charting the 80s

In March 1980, my friend Trevor had a bright idea. And that bright idea has lead, some 36 years later, to me being interviewed by the BBC. Life can be very odd sometimes.

Trevor’s bright idea was as a result of us being frustrated at there being so much disco pap in the charts at the beginning of the 80s, that we should just create our own. The initial idea was to take the official chart and just weed out the stuff we did not like; Cliff, The Nolans, The Brothers Johnson and so on, and just renumber them.

And so on Tuesday 4th March, I wrote what was my first chart. Blondie were at number 1, as I think they were in the real world. And the rest, as you can was filled with some strange and some popular songs.

And this is the way things went until after the summer, when I discovered heavy metal. Yes, you read that right.

I suppose it began with AC/DC releasing Back in Black, but along with my friends, began listening to the Friday Rock Show, and what with just Saxon and a couple of other rock tunes getting into the chart, I sneaked them in anyway: I cheated. So, it was at this point the chart really began to track my taste in music on a week by week basis. The chart featured an eclectic mix of pop tunes and rock tracks, sometimes album tracks.

However, having a few tracks in the lower reaches of the chart was one thing, what would happen if there was a tune, or a band/singer I really liked? Which brings us on to Pat Benatar.

Pat was almost unknown in Britain at the time, and only had a couple of proper hits and that was in 1985, so after hearing her first single, Heartbreaker, on the radio, I began a not so secret fascination with her, which resulted in her dominating the charts for many years, even after getting over the heavy metal thing and being a proper ‘Indie Kid’ in 1982 and beyond, her music still featured in my charts. Even her crappiest songs.

Once that happened, many other sings that had failed to be hits here in the UK were ‘hits’ in my chart, Genesis singing Misunderstanding being another of the first. So, as we entered 1981, the rock tunes dried up for the most part, and then after getting a radio for Christmas, like many others, I discovered John Peel and other evening radio shows.

So, it came to pass that records off the Some Bizzare Album sneaked in, then the singles from Soft Cell, B Movie, Depeche Mode filled my chart. Some got to number 1, some got to the top ten. And like most folks who do this kind of thing, I began to wonder what would be the best selling singles of the year, and in due course, of all time. So I allocated points per week as to where each record got, and ran a running total as the weeks went by. So by the time the last chart of each year was done, I could collect the data and produce the chart of the year. And after a few years, the all time best sellers. The downside being that on occasion, I would want a record to get ‘silver’, ‘gold’ or ‘platinum’ status, so the charts would have to be further rigged to allow this to happen.

As my schooling entered its final year, when every second of spare time was vital, I would spend hours calculating points, or re-writing a few charts, anything other than doing what I should have been, like doing my best to get the best possible exam results so I could enter the world of work once my exams were finished. But, of course, I procrastinated as I would for decades to come.

Family holidays or school exchange trips meant that when I returned I might have two or three charts to do at once, so leaving even less time for school work. However, what is less than zero anyway? I started to buy Record Mirror as it published the top 75, not just the top 40, so enabling me to see more of the new releases. I became fascinated with new music, new bands, and despite not hearing them, anything new by a band I might have heard of got in. This meant that at times in 81, I was producing a top 50, or more, of my own.

So, in 1982, I decided to strip it down to a top 20, fitting the chart on each page of an exercise book, and therefore being really strict about what to put in and leave out. Sometimes this would expand into a top 25 or 30 on a good week, but mostly just 20 tunes, and a mix of electropop chart hits and Peel tunes.

I left school in May 1982, and continued my chart. I had three years mostly unemployed, but I kept doing the charts every week, and after taping tracks of the radio, used to pretend I was on the radio doing my own chart rundown on a Sunday evening. As you do.

And so it continued through the rest of 82 and 83 to 84, more and more eclectic bands and songs having hits; Yello, Icicle Works, B52s among many.

Until 1985. Its hard to say why, but I was getting jaded with the charts; sometimes there was just a top ten, then as the year progressed, I began working full time, and there was little time to listen to evening radio as I was so tired. Some weeks there was just a top 3, compiled weeks later just to keep the records going once I discovered my mojo.

Then in 1987, what with work and the bright new pop world of the real charts and the glitterball of the dancefloor, I took a three month break, then came back with a chart a month, just to mark out what I was listening to. Until the final months when with my head full of Acid House and other dance music, I fully got my mojo back.

Every week I produced the charts as I continued to work at the chicken factory, still Pat Benatar was having hits, and I was still obsessing over what was the best-selling singles of the year and of all time.

Finally, in 1989, I planned my escape; joining the Royal Air Force where I was sure I would grow up and become sensible and so leave the charts behind. But I did keep on, at least for a few months, until in 1991, and with a friend of my parents living in their house, a young lady from Yugoslavia they met on holiday and wanted to study English. We, or at least, I fell in love. We ended up marrying, and then, finally, the charts ended.

Or as it turned out, were just suspended.

By the summer of 1996 I had been married, posted to Germany with my then wife, divorced and posted back to England, arriving back at the end of the Britpop boom, and so with so much music around, and me commuting weekly between Suffolk and Wiltshire, I had plenty of time to listen to the radio and soak up new music. The chart returned. At least for a few months, but with me in another (doomed) relationship, money worries, getting a mortgage and then wedding planning, I ran out of time and the chart final was put to bed.

So, what are you telling us all this, Ian? I hear you cry. Well, a few years ago I scanned some of the charts and it generated some interest on Flickr when I posted them. And then at the end of last year, the BBC asked for people to contribute to a project called The People’s History of Pop. I posted a shot of one of my charts and forgot about it. At the start of this week, I get a Tweet from someone from the BBC asking me to look in my Outlook mail to respond to a request. I looked and arranged a phone call with a producer, the upshot being the BBC will be arriving at Chez Jelltex in April to film me and chat about my chart, getting me to read some of them out.

Me on TV, being interviewed about Trevor’s bright idea: strange world indeed.