It seems like a folk memory already. Could there really once have been a pop chart that was topped, variously, by a portly middle-aged man's cod-opera single, by an anarchist collective from Essex, by Australian soap stars, by black-clad goths from Leeds, by – well, by pretty well anyone you can think of?
The indie chart began as an industry aid for dozens of minute labels around the country in the post-punk DIY boom, and ended up as the sire of a musical genre that conquered the mainstream. If that sounds a little over the top, remember that Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch was the first independently produced and distributed single of the punk era; two decades later Green Day, Busted and McFly were boiling its formula down to a radio-friendly, sucked-smooth pop pastille. "Indie" gained the prefix "landfill" and became synonymous with blandly petulant lad rock, a feeble, sulky V-sign to the teacher when his back was turned.
But now plans are afoot to try to give the kiss of life to the idea of "independent music" by establishing a new indie chart. One of its prime movers is Iain McNay, the founder of the veteran indie label Cherry Red, whose brainchild the original indie chart was 30 years ago. He has worked with the Official Charts Company, the people behind the Radio 1 top 40, and changed the rules to ensure the charts can't be infiltrated by the fake indies that have grown like weeds since the early 90s. "The old chart was based on distribution, which made sense in 1980 but has been a nonsense for the last few years," he says. "The main independent distributor, Pinnacle, was owned by SonyBMG, who are not exactly independent," McNay says. "Now, any label eligible has to be 50% owned by an independent source." There will also be a "breakers" chart for any act "that hasn't been in the top 20 national chart. It should be full of up-and-coming acts."
The old independent chart was the result of a morning whim of McNay's. "I woke up one morning in December 1979 thinking, 'Why doesn't someone compile a proper independent chart based on accurate sales information?'" he says.
He suggested the idea to the music industry magazine Record Business, outlining what records would qualify: "Any record was eligible if it didn't go through the major distributors."
The first independent chart was published in January 1980, and was an immediate success, McNay says. "It quickly led to overseas licensing, radio play, and shops knew what to order. It had no marketing machine; it was something of substance."
Al Martino's Here in My Heart has passed into legend as the first No 1 in the first-ever pop chart, the NME's Hit Parade of 14 November 1952. The independent chart's own Martino was Midlander Kenneth Spiers – aka Spizz, of the itchy punk band Spizzenergi, whose single Where's Captain Kirk? spent seven weeks at the top.
"Before the independent chart, Sounds and NME would have charts from different small shops, the alternative charts they were called – maybe Brighton one week, Newcastle the next – and our singles were in them occasionally," Spizz says. "The music papers were proper trade papers then, they had news in them. There was an instant nostalgia when the independent chart became official, no longer knowing what was big in Plymouth or wherever. But we were quite excited to be No 1. We enjoyed our time as punk royalty."
Where's Captain Kirk? easily sold enough in total to reach the national top 40, but never did because sales "weren't in a big avalanche. Rough Trade kept selling out and repressing it. It was in the independent chart for a whole year."
Glancing at the first chart, Spizz recalls the acts kept at bay by Where's Captain Kirk?: Delta 5 ("They were in our zone, scratchy guitars, on Rough Trade"), the Monochrome Set ("Ah yes, they were modern"), the Dead Kennedys ("Jello Biafra bit my leg in San Francisco – sounds like a Sun headline, doesn't it?"), Scritti Politti ("clever"), and, at No 2, Day Trip to Bangor by Fiddler's Dram. "That was not a punk record," Spizz says, gravely.
"Happy days. It was quite an exciting chart, wasn't it? There's spirit there."
Geoff Travis's Rough Trade label released several of the records on the inaugural chart, including Where's Captain Kirk?. "We used to do our own Top 10s in the shop," Travis says, "but they were personal taste. The first independent charts were very important. It was significant if the Fall's LP was No 1: it gave you a sense of achievement. We were happy in our own world – there was a logic and beauty to it. And the real world's taste is so terrible."
Within months, the nascent Smash Hits began to publish the chart, which is where I first stumbled across it in late 1980. Song titles and band names conveyed vast mystique: Get Up and Use Me by Fire Engines; Cabaret Voltaire's Seconds Too Late; Simply Thrilled Honey by Orange Juice. At No 5 was the Cramps' Drug Train. There could never be a song called Drug Train in the real chart, whose No 5 that week was Feels Like I'm in Love by Kelly Marie.
"The word 'indie' wasn't bad back then," says McNay. "Indie meant independence, whether it was pop or post-punk, not just a jangling guitar sound. It was not about image, it was about giving people the chance to do something different, beating the multinationals at their own game without marketing and resources. This made the chart look weird to an outsider."
It rarely looked weirder than when Renee and Renato's Save Your Love topped both independent and national charts in 1982. "That's not indie-sounding, is it?" deadpans McNay. "It was just some ordinary bloke putting a record out. I liked that. I felt the same when PWL were in the independent charts – Pete Waterman had independent ethics, he went off and made it happen. He's not a purist. There was always the danger of musical snobbery."
There was no K-Tel compilation of the early independent charts (though in 1987, the Beechwood label launched a series called Indie Top 20 that ran for nine years). In fact, the elusiveness of these singles made them all the more fascinating. I splashed out on Simply Thrilled Honey and, once I got over the production – it sounded like cats fighting in a dustbin – I never looked back. Not alone, I'm sure, I began to log the independent charts in an exercise book.
Soon the stats of this alternative pop world began to accrue. Like Billy Fury and the Who in the Radio 1 chart, the Fall never had a No 1, just several near misses. The Beatles of the independent chart were Depeche Mode, who had a No 1 with their debut Dreaming of Me in early 1981 and only got bigger, clocking up 15 No 1s by the end of the decade: Never Let Me Down Again was their Strawberry Fields Forever, held at No 2 by MARRS' Pump Up the Volume in 1987.
It didn't take long for the indie chart to evolve from its original role as a haven for those unwelcome elsewhere. For some groups it became a shop window, in which they would display themselves for the major labels. Bands would be signed and lose their character and charm in the face of increased expectation. The indies themselves sought links with the majors – in 1983, Travis and Cherry Red's Mike Alway won support from Warners to establish Blanco Y Negro, a halfway house between the two labels, which took the Jesus and Mary Chain from the indie label Creation after just one single.
"The Jesus and Mary Chain weren't interested in being indie," says Travis. "They had experienced that with their first single and it wasn't that great. So with Blanco Y Negro there were no indie politics but the acts felt protected by indie people. It worked out pretty well."
Nevertheless, the launch of Blanco – home also to Everything But the Girl and the Dream Academy – and its ability to have hits signalled the start of a unalterable change in the indie chart, and the whole idea of indie.
The Chart Show, a simple compilation of official video clips launched on Channel 4 in 1986, would overtake Top of the Pops's viewing figures over the course of its 12-year run. It showed clips for the singles and album charts, and for one "specialist" chart, which alternated between dance, rock, and indie. And so a genre was born: one that excluded the variety of the independent chart at the expense of one style, consisting of clanging guitars and carefree tuning. Suddenly James Blood Ulmer, Renee and Renato and even indie-chart mainstays like Crass and Discharge seemed to be disqualified for a lack of mimsy. A generic "indie" record in 2009 sounds much as it did in 1986.
But if the music had been neatly boxed and packaged, the concept of being "indie" seemed ever more credible. And so to buy instant hipness for edgy new signings, the majors launched faux indies, such as the Virgin subsidiary Hut. McNay pinpoints the death of the indie chart to the moment in the early 90s when "the multinationals started boutique labels with independent distribution, meaning they hogged the indie chart. It was all hunky-dory for 10 years, the only chart that mattered for many people, and then the majors hijacked it. That's where it went off the rails for me."
"Indie became a term that just meant wearing a T-shirt and looking at your shoes," says Spizz. "It should mean you ain't got much money, you can't afford pyrotechnics."
Whether a revived indie chart can really be a shot in the arm for underground pop is questionable, but it's an intriguing possibility. "It'll be interesting to see," says Geoff Travis. "The charts are so devalued. Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now being at No 11 [in the national top 40] was a pinnacle of achievement for Rough Trade, but what does No 11 mean now? It doesn't mean anything. Top of the Pops going changed the landscape entirely. Kids I see don't mention the charts at all."
There is, Travis adds, one other benefit the chart will bring – clearing up an argument that has trailed on for years. "It will tell you what indie music is today," he says. "Maybe Katie Melua and Charlotte Church will hold the top two places for the next three years. I'd rather it was the XX and Micachu, but we'll see."