It’s Summer 1990 and World Cup fever is on the rise. The England national team have just secured a place in the quarter finals of the competition two days prior to this TOTP broadcast when David Platt produced a swivelling volley moments before the end of extra time against Belgium to win the game 1-0 for England. Platty’s memorable intervention saved the nation from a penalty shoot out, something we had no experience of back then but which, by the end of the tournament, we would know the heartache and darkness of only too well.
But for now, the nation rejoiced and, labouring under the misapprehension that we had a bye into the semi finals as we faced Cameroon next, were starting to believe something truly special might be afoot. So were there any ‘special’ tunes in the chart to match the nation’s mood? Let’s see…
…well we start with “Oops Up” by Snap! and a bizarre performance that includes a rubber duck (supplied by presenter Gary Davies from the side of the stage via a throw of admirable accuracy) that appears to get squeaked throughout the song. I hadn’t noticed that sound effect on the original recording but, having checked, it is there.
If the rubber duck was meant to soften the image and reputation of rapper Turbo B, it had a lot of work to do. Around this time, he was involved in a very unsavoury incident at a benefit show. The group had been asked by a promoter to do a PA at a nightclub for a benefit event but what Turbo hadn’t realised was that it was for an AIDS charity and the event took place in a gay nightclub. When the lights went up, Turbo found himself in a room full of drag queens and freaked out. Demanding to see the club owner, he allegedly proclaimed “If you ever book me in a place like this again, I’ll kill you”. The owner replied, with hands on his hips, “This is a gay club seven nights a week” at which point Turbo got him by his throat and began throttling him and then all hell broke loose. In a Smash Hits interview when quizzed about the incident, Turbo B’s version was a bit different:
“…if a man gets his ass grabbed by another man he tends to be upset. I tried to talk to this guy and tell him this is not supposed to be like this. His justification of my ass getting grabbed was that it was cool. It wasn’t, so he got choked.”
Despite his protestations that he wasn’t anti-gay later in the interview, it seems pretty clear that Turbo B was not exactly well informed nor accepting of anything that wasn’t strictly heterosexual. As a result of the incident, an organisation called Zap Snap! formed who would protest at Snap! gigs and this would inform singer Penny Ford’s decision to leave the group. In a songfacts website interview she stated:
“And that was another reason why I decided to leave Snap! Because my sister was a serious, staunch gay advocate, and it was like a blow to my family to have me out there being represented with a gay basher. So that’s what started Turbo’s decline“.
Sadly, I think we will be seeing more of Turbo B and his prejudiced views before 1990 is through.
Onto much safer and non-threatening ground next (or is it?*) as we get Jason Donovan and his latest single “Another Night”. From late ’88 to the end of ’89, Jase’s run of hit singles looked like this in terms of their chart peaks:
5 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2
However, as the new decade dawned, the spell appeared to be broken. His first single release of 1990 (“Hang On to Your Love”) peaked at No 8 whilst “Another Night” would really set alarm bells ringing when it failed to even make the Top 10 (topping out at No 18)! When asked about the charts and his position within them in Smash Hits at this time, Donovan had this to say:
“Do I worry about where my records get to in the charts? Oh yeah, of course I do. It wasn’t so great that “Hang On to Your Love” didn’t do as great as some of my other singles have done but looking back on it, I think I would have to put the blame on the strength of that particular song….I think it was a bit of a grower and not nearly as catchy as say “When You Come Back to Me”.
So how did you explain the chart performance of “Another Night” then Jason? It didn’t shift the required amount of units because it was a basically proper dog shit? It is actually dreadful. It sounds like a failed Song For Europe entrant, not good enough even for the Eurovision Song Contest.
*Donovan of course had his own homophobic incident in 1992 when he sued The Face magazine for publishing allegations that he was homosexual. The lawsuit led to a backlash in which he was accused of being homophobic. In his 2007 autobiography, Jason stated that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life.
Pretty sure we are on safe ground finally with Maureen and her version of “Thinking Of You”. I’m very doubtful that there are any scandals surrounding Ms Walsh. As Gary Davies mentioned, she was the vocalist on Bomb The Bass’ “Say A Little Prayer” back in ’88 and…what? She lied to Tim Simenon about what she did for a living when she met him in a nightclub by telling him she was a singer when she wasn’t? So there is a skeleton in her cupboard (albeit a small one). So what was her job at the time? Well, it was either (depending on the date of that nightclub meeting) working in Miss Selfridge or working in an admin position in the police force. Lying whist she was employed by the rozzers? Shameful.
Back to the music though and that guy who comes on and raps in the middle? What was with the cane?
Three Breakers next and we start with Double Trouble and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Were these the guys who had a hit with “Street Tuff” along with that Rebel MC bloke? A quick search of Wikipedia says they are and that their cover of the Rose Royce classic was actually on their album “As One” which features ‘Street Tuff”. Coincidentally, they also did a remix of tonight’s opening song “Oops Up” by Snap!.
I don’t recall them doing this track though and on hearing it back, I’m not sure why they bothered. Jimmy Nail’s version back in ’85 was far more interesting and I’m not joking.
Hell, I’d even choose Madonna’s version over Double Trouble’s and her take on it was rubbish.
“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (the Double Trouble version) peaked at No 21.
Right, what’s this? Bobby Brown and Glenn Medeiros? WTF?! Really?! How? Why? So many questions. This seems an even more unwanted pairing than last week’s Sonia and Big Fun coupling. So, apparently this collaboration came about through Medeiros’s friend Rick James who …wait a minute! Rick James?! Funk legend Rick James?! He was a friend of wimpy Glenn Medeiros of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” fame?! That requires more explanation than the Bobby Brown connection even. Anyway, it was Rick who put Glenn in touch with Bobby Brown who was looking for someone to produce while he had some free time on his hands and so they worked on a song called “Love Me Little Lady” *pause while blogger vomits* which went on Glenn’s latest album. After Brown called him up to say how much he liked said album, Medeiros asked him to put a rap on the track “She Ain’t Worth It”. And the rest is…
“She Ain’t Worth It” was a No 1 record in the US and a no 12 hit in the UK. This was Glenn’s attempt to beef up his image (he even got a new haircut!) and sound but it’s like something New Kids On The Block would have rejected as trying too hard. In short, it wasn’t worth it Glenn.
Oh OK. I hadn’t realised that Del Amitri had another Top 40 hit in 1990 after “Nothing Ever Happens” at the start of the year but here they are on TOTP again. I knew that they had re-released “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” as a follow up to “Nothing …” but it had failed to be a hit for a second time despite some heavy radio play. I mistakenly believed that the same fate befell “Move Away Jimmy Blue” but it crawled to a high of No 36. Not as intriguing as “Nothing …” nor as immediate as “Kiss This Thing…”, it’s still a pretty good tune I think although not one of my favourites of theirs.
Now then, here was a chart anomaly and a half! A Irish jig complete with accordian, fiddle and a double bass? What the Hell was this?! It was, quite simply, magnificent in my book. The perfect antidote to all this homogenised house music, when asked about the sound of “The Great Song Of Indifference” in a Smash Hits interview, Bob Geldof admitted that it wasn’t a modern sound:
“Nope, it’s not a current record but then I’m hardly a major force in modern music. I’m frankly tired of hip hop and house and that. I know nothing about it except that I hear it a lot but it just sounds old hat”
Well said Sir Bob! This was only the second chart hit of Geldof’s solo career and it remains his last. His first had been the rather worthy sounding “This Is The World Calling” back in ’86 but “The Great Song Of Indifference” was a different beast altogether. Made with his band The Vegetarians Of Love (which was also the name of the accompanying album), its subject matter of world apathy in the face of humanitarian disasters and horror was in stark contrast to its knock about, almost joyful sound. Witness:
I don’t care if the Third World fries
It’s hotter there I’m not surprised
Baby I can watch whole nations die
And I don’t care at all
Supposedly Bob had wanted to infuse it with a cajun feel and had spent some time in Louisiana soaking up the cajun vibe before recording the album. The Irish dancing element of the performance here from the wee guy in the shirt and dickie bow at the front pre-dates Riverdance by four years! Marvellous stuff all round.
A couple of personal tie -ins to Bob and this record before I move on. At some point either myself or my wife must have bought this single as we used to dance around our one room flat to it when we first married. We used to really fling ourselves around. We were skint at the time and this would be what passed for a Friday night’s entertainment. Skint or not, they were happy, simpler times. Right at the end of the record there’s a bit when the musicians fall about laughing before Geldof’s distinctive tones clearly cut in with “Let’s listen…”. One of the guys laughing really sounds like Nick Heyward but I’m guessing it’s not.
And that second Geldof story? I once had a friend who did some freelance PR work and one of the people she worked for was the sadly departed Peaches Geldof. My friend found it all a bit demanding and was ready to jack it in. The final straw that broke the camel’s back? It was when Bob got involved and began calling her to to sort stuff out for Peaches. Not known for his tact and diplomacy, Bob’s phone calls prompted her to throw her work phone into the Thames whilst mid conversation with Geldof!
“The Great Song Of Indifference” peaked at No 15.
Damn. I thought for a moment when Gary Davies said “Still with the charts here’s Bruce…” in his intro to the next artist his next word would be Springsteen. Unfortunately for me, it was Dickinson. Yes, the Iron Maiden front man’s video for “All The Young Dudes” gets another airing for some reason. What? He went up 9 places to No 23 that week? I don’t care! His version of the Mott The Hoople* classic was awful! To be fair to Bruce Dickinson, he does seem to be a man of many talents. He’s a fully trained pilot and worked for a commercial airline for a while. He’s also a published author, he’s been a champion fencer (once rated the 7th best fencer in England), he’s presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010 and he’s even created a successful beer called ‘Trooper’ with Robinsons brewery in Stockport. If only he’d left the singing alone.
*When I first started working in Our Price there was guy who used to come in who was obsessed with Mott The Hoople. He would come in regularly to check what albums we had of the band in stock (not many!) and would hang around for ages hoping to strike up a conversation with an unsuspecting member of staff about his faves. Takes all sorts I suppose.
Nest it’s a re-run of Maxi Priest‘s performance of “Close To You” from the other week next although Gary Davies tries to make out that Maxi is actually in the studio again.
Maxi never really did it for me and I got nothing else to say about this one. Do me a solid @TOTPFacts and help me out will you?
Sorted!
Still at No 1 we find Elton John with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Infamously, both songs on this double A-side had been flops when initially released individually at the end of ’89 but parent album “Sleeping With The Past” also had a truncated route to the top of the charts. Although it debuted at No 6 when released in Sep ’89, it departed the Top 10 the following week and fell out of the Top 40 completely after a month. Inevitably, once the success of the re-activated single kicked in, so the album was also revitalised. After knocking around the lower reaches of the Top 100, it climbed from No 54 to No 2 in one week! After three consecutive weeks in that position it embarked on a five week run at No 1 eventually going three time platinum in the UK alone. Yet for all that, it’s hardly regarded as one of his best albums I would speculate. Apart from “Sacrifice” and “Healing Hands”, are any of the other tracks on the album well known? Follow up single “Club at the End of the Street” didn’t even get into the Top 40. Elton in the Summer of 1990 was a very curious phenomenon indeed.
The play out video is “Unskinny Bop” by Poison. Having checked out their discography, I was amazed to discover that Poison had eight UK Top 40 hits. I could have named …let me think…four absolute tops. “Unskinny Bop” would have been one of the four. The timeline of their hits would have been beyond me though, not helped by a re-release of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with nearly 18 months in between releases. I could not have told you when “Unskinny Bop” had been a hit for example but I can tell you that it did very little for me. It was a bit like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (i.e not that good). And what the Hell was an “Unskinny Bop” anyway? Is ‘unskinny’ even a legitimate word? Supposedly it was just a guide lyric according to guitarist C.C. DeVille, a phonetic place holder until the proper lyrics had been written but it stuck (see also the lyrics to “The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw).
“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
| 1 | Snap! | Ooops Up | Nope |
| 2 | Jason Donovan | Another Night | Another shite more like – no |
| 3 | Maureen | Thinking Of You | Not for me thanks |
| 4 | Double Trouble | Love Don’t Live Here Anymore | No love for this one at my house |
| 5 | Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown | She Ain’t Worth It | And neither was this song |
| 6 | Del Amitri | Move Away Jimmy Blue | No but it’s on my Best Of CD of theirs |
| 7 | Bob Geldof | The Great Song Of Indifference | Yes – present and correct in the singles box! |
| 8 | Bruce Dickinson | All The Young Dudes | As if |
| 9 | Maxi Priest | Close To You | Not my bag |
| 10 | Elton John | Sacrifice /Healing Hands | Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?! |
| 11 | Poison | Unskinny Bop | No |
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6j0/top-of-the-pops-28061990
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
Some bedtime reading?
https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 