(Credits: Far Out)
Fri 26 December 2025 12:30, UK
As the 1970s were coming to a close, spirits were high in the offices of the British indie label Cherry Red Records. In just the second year of its existence, the upstart company was already making an impact, with releases by American punk bands The Runaways and Dead Kennedys performing well above expectations.
When Cherry Red founder Ian McNay looked at the UK singles charts, however, he wasn’t seeing music that reflected the energy and enthusiasm he was observing with his own eyes in and around London clubs and record shops.
While young people were talking about the bands on labels like Cherry Red, Rough Trade, and Mute, the charts were suggesting that Pink Floyd, ABBA, and Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ were still reigning supreme in the culture.
“I woke up one morning in December 1979 thinking, ‘Why doesn’t someone compile a proper independent chart based on accurate sales information?’” McNay recalled to the Guardian in 2009. “Any record was eligible if it didn’t go through the major distributors.”
Fighting capitalism with a smaller version of capitalism might not have been the dream scenario the Dead Kennedys had in mind. Still, the idea was far too interesting not to pursue. Just a month later, on January 19th, 1980, the trade magazine Record Business had done enough due diligence to publish the first-ever Indie Record Chart.
So, what was the first song at the top?
Topping that debut edition of the indie world’s top sellers was a Rough Trade single by Spizzenergi, titled ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’ and yes, it was a post-punk song themed around Star Trek, but this was not your typical Top of the Pops novelty jam.
“When I awoke from the dangers of space / I looked and I saw a familiar face / The time warp in space made a change in me / For I was the Captain and the Captain was me,” they sang.
Led by frontman Spizz (AKA Kenneth Spiers), Spizzenergi might have been pleased to be an unlikely chart topper, but it certainly didn’t make them serious about their marketing strategy going forward. The band was famous for changing its name every year, with Spizzenergi merely being their moniker of the moment, in-between brief spells as Spizz Oil, The Spizzles, and Athletico Spizz 80, among other even less commercially viable trademarks.
Rough Trade was slightly more interested in capitalising on the success of ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’, going as far as to reach out to James T Kirk himself, William Shatner, about doing a photoshoot with Spizzenergi. Shatner was almost certainly up for it, but CBS – the owners of the Star Trek franchise – supposedly shot down the idea, unsure about the potential punkification of their recently revived sci-fi cash cow.
‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’ had narrowly edged out the number two track on the first indie chart, ‘Day Trip to Bangor’ by Fiddler’s Dram. The latter was certainly an indie single by definition, released by Dingle Records in Middlesex, but being a folk song with considerably wider appeal, ‘Day Trip to Bangor’ had already crossed over to the mainstream UK singles chart, with Fiddler’s Dram earning the obligatory spot on Top of the Pops.
Overall, though, the first indie chart had proved a big success. “It quickly led to overseas licensing, radio play, and shops knew what to order,” McNay said. “It had no marketing machine; it was something of substance.”
Ironically, by the time “indie” had become more of an everyday buzzword in the early 1990s, the “substance” of the old indie chart had already run its course, as the major labels had figured out how to market their own artists on faux-indie subsidiaries.
“By 1993 the indie chart had become a farce,” McNay recalled to Mojo, “Many of the records in it had nothing to do with independent companies and had become meaningless.”
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