But what kind of man was I? When it's over and you find yourself staring at the smoking rubble, your principal emotions are liable to be shock and awe. GRAVITATE TO ME. The drops of semen & the clots of blood. And crazy Matt Johnson, the seer on the hill, knew it all along. And just in case the point is insufficiently hammered home, 'The Violence Of Truth' - dense, scrabbled blues-rock whirling around an organ riff and daubed with mean harmonica - surges in to jab a finger at you and demand: Why is it that everything in this world we do not understand, If you want to know what Britain looked and smelled and felt like in 1986, you can do either one of two things. By this time, Marr's trademark shuddering guitar has taken to circling the beat with a measured, sharp-edged funk riff and the entire business has gathered a torpid but terrifying momentum that can only end with it, and its protagonist, rolling unstoppably atop its object of desire. The track that had the most impact on my friends and subsequently the one I heard most often was “I’ve Been Waitin’ For Tomorrow (All Of My Life)” – a sharply personal track that still makes me remember that period of my life. But the reason it stuck with us in the first place, the reason we did this bit over and over, was because we were listening to it over and over. In case that doesn't clinch it, he winds up repeatedly keening, "I KNOW YOU! As for the rest of it: I'm not laughing now. Matt Johnson was right. There he was, a lifesize head glowering off the textured white LP cover above bloody title letters - an Old Testament glower which, if it concealed the hint of a smile, surely did so only to indicate that this crop-headed young Isaiah knew just what dregs stir at the bottom of your filthy soul. A crucifixion of a kind. Doesn't that make him neat? Well, they opened up our minds, and through that big black hole in perception came records like ‘Soul Mining’ – ones worth selling your last safety pins and rubber t-shirts for. It comes as light relief. We are pushed onto our knees to worship or to damn? This June, Sony will release a 30th Anniversary deluxe vinyl version of The The’s, 1983 album Soul Mining.. It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds. Bassist James Eller and drummer David Palmer weren't famous, particularly (the former had played for Clive Langer and Julian Cope, the latter was a member of ABC's classic line-up), but they were just the men for job, as Marr would have been regardless of his fame. But three tracks in and that's all over. Then Johnson's voice, a tense, febrile tenor, a voice living on its nerves, near breaking point, teetering here and there into an aspirated growl, sizzling when pressed against the side of the pan. Has anybody since DH Lawrence invested the sexual act with such portent, such moment? Even if you're not entitled to another person, you're entitled to your feelings about them. The thing about metaphors is that they aren't literal, but Johnson had a damned good crack at making them seem that way. Some of the best of British 80s Pop was made under this moniker and Soul Mining is the prefect album to start with. This is, I suppose, the opposite of solipsism. The expression of a burning blue soul was his business. An actual honest-to-God white dove, for Heaven's sake. Punk’s direct influence was more pervasive and longer in the reaping, spawning a thousand awful and thankfully short lived bands, but in the process producing musicians and writers who were prepared to take its open minded creative aesthetic and bend indigenous music to their will.