CORRECTION: In the post relating to the TOTP broadcast on 22 Aug 1991, I mistakenly reported that this was Bruno Brookes’ last ever appearance as a host on the show as he was removed along with all the other Radio 1 DJ presenters in the ‘year zero’ revamp. I also stated that we would see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the following weeks. Whilst it was true that the above names were replaced by a batch of new presenters from Oct 1991 onwards, it has been brought to my attention that four of those six would return to the TOTP family in 1994 as the year zero revamp was reversed. Only Gary Davies and Jakki Brambles did not reappear. Consequently, my claim about the show not being presented again by Bruno Brookes, Mark Goodier, Simon Mayo and Nicky Campbell is not true although we won’t be seeing them for over two years. Thank you to Matthew James for pointing this out.
Right, now that’s cleared up, I can say that this show was Jakki Brambles final TOTP appearance. Jakki always gave off the impression to me that she was quite disinterested in all this pop music lark and I never found her that convincing as a host. She also seemed to have an issue with the temperature in the TOTP studio with many a Winter coat being worn when surely it must have been boiling under those hot studio lights. She emigrated to the US in 1994, changed the spelling of her name to ‘Jackie’ and stayed there for eleven years as a news radio morning anchor and occasional television news anchor for the CBS network. She returned to the UK in 2005 and presented Loose Women until 2009 and owns her own digital media business called Broadstance Digital Media Production. She currently works on Greatest Hits Radio which seems to be some sort of retirement home for ex Radio 1 DJs as their roster also includes, yes you guessed it, Simon Mayo and Mark Goodier alongside other ‘star’ names as Andy Crane (has no brain) and Pat Sharp.
Right on with the show as we have 14 (FOURTEEN) songs to get through in this one. We start with Oceanic and “Insanity”. I’m pretty sure that this one would have been labelled as a ‘banger’ back then (and maybe even today). A huge anthem, it started life on a short run promo 12″ sending crowds of North-West ravers erm…insane.. whenever it was played. Inevitably, it was picked up for a wider commercial release by Dead Dead Good records and would go on to spend four months on the Top 40 and three months in the Top 10 including three weeks at No 3. Could it have made it to No 1 if that Bryan Adams song had never been released? Possibly although it would probably have got stuck at No 2 behind Right Said Fred. We’ll never know. What I do know however, is that around this time, rave music seemed to be taking over the world or at least the UK anyway. Just about anything that was a ‘dance’ track seemed to attract the ‘rave’ label. Oceanic obviously came under that umbrella but there were also Bassheads (from the same neck of the woods as it happened), K-Klass, Bizarre Inc, Altern 8 etc. Predictably, the scene became homogenised when all these club anthems started to be lumped together on compilation albums like Virgin’s “The Ultimate Rave”. Was that the point where it all started to go wrong? Look, when it comes to dance music, I freely admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about despite having spent the majority of the 90s working in record shops.
As for Oceanic, despite two further Top 40 hits, they were never able to move on from the success of “Insanity” but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the band. Back in 2012, in an interview with The Liverpool Echo in a piece about the reopening of a Liverpool nightclub called The State where the band were due to play a set, singer Jorinde Williams said:
“I love getting the metaphorical rave horn out now and again and singing Insanity. It still gives me shivers to see a crowd of grinning, dancing strangers singing back these words I wrote 20 years ago, and that it means something to them.”
The metaphorical rave horn?! That either sounds like something very rude or a band that did a session for John Peel in 1993.
Talking of rave, this next lot were also one of the acts that must have featured on that “The Ultimate Rave” compilation. The Prodigy were up to No 3 by this point with their Public Information Films themed hit “Charly”. Famously sampling the 1973 cut out animation warning children of the dangers of strangers, falling in the water, matches etc via the characters of a boy called Tony and his ginger cat, I notice that the spelling of the cat’s name originally was ‘Charley’ but The Prodigy dropped an ‘e’ (ahem) for the title of their single. That must have been deliberate and an in joke within the band surely?!
Sonia was still having hits into the Autumn of 1991?! That was over two years since her Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced No 1 single “You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You”! In the intervening period she’d eked out a further six hits all of which had gone Top 20. Clearly Sonia wasn’t going to give up on this pop star lark easily. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” however would break that run of Top 20 singles when it peaked just outside at No 22. Our Sonia’s got a band of seven up there on stage with her to deliver the song but no amount of hired hands can distract from the notion that this seemed so incongruous with the rest of the contemporary charts acts. A rave anthem this was not! However, it was a firm favourite amongst the Northern Soul scene – no not Sonia’s version obviously but the version by The Tams which was a minor UK hit in 1970.
Looking at Sonia’s discography (not something I would have thought I would ever be doing) I can see that she still has another three Top 40 entries stretching into 1993 to get through before her well of chart hits finally ran dry. However, two of those were more cover versions and the final one was the UK’s Eurovision entry – so much for Jakki Brambles comment about ‘self-penned tunes’ on Sonia’s second album called …erm…”Sonia” that was released a month after this TOTP appearance. Jakki also refers to her as ‘a good old girl’ at the song’s end. She was 20 when this show was broadcast!
It’s the video for “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N Pepa next. In a Rolling Stone magazine article in 2017, Salt (Cheryl James) made the distinction that:
“The song was about talking about sex. The song was not about sex. The song was about communication and talking about a subject that nobody wants to talk about”
Pepa (Sandra Denton) added:
“It wasn’t a dirty song. It was an enlightenment song”
So powerful was the song’s message that it was re-worked in 1992 to help promote discussions about AIDS and HIV. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:
However, the song has also been used in a much more light hearted way. After Liverpool had secured their sixth European Cup when winning the Champions League in 2019, manager Jurgen Klopp was so overjoyed that he couldn’t help bursting into a rendition of it with the lyrics altered to reflect his club’s achievement. Someone then mixed it with the original track and….
In direct contrast to Sonia earlier with her seven piece backing band packing out the stage, here’s Zoë with with just a sole guitarist for company as she performs her hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”. Was Zoë’s style of dancing a thing back then? You know, feet rooted to the floor with the arms supplying all the movement? I guess Susanne and Joanne from The Human League made a 40 year career out of a similar thing.
As the track is coming to an end there’s a shot where you can see Jakki Brambles in place to do the next link in the gantry. What surprised me was that she isn’t even looking at the stage as Zoë is still performing. Look I know she had a job to do but it’s a good 20 seconds before the camera actually comes to her. Remember earlier when I said Jakki always seemed disinterested in the whole pop music thing…? “Good to see that one in the charts at long last” she tells us as she segues into the next act. Well, you didn’t see it Jakki, you weren’t even looking in the right direction! “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” peaked at No 4.
So that next act is Martika with the video for “Love…Thy Will Be Done”. As Jakki tells us, her latest album “Martika’s Kitchen” (terrible, terrible title) has four songs on it that were co-written with Prince including the current single which I think we were all meant to take on board as meaning that she was leaving her pop past behind and becoming a serious artist.
We also knew this because the accompanying video was shot in black and white, that classic trick to ensure that we understood what we were watching had some gravitas to it. No pop fluff this you know. When I was a student at Sunderland Poly we had to make a video short for one of the modules and my group employed the black and white tactic for ours. The point we wanted to make though was that black and white meant dull and boring before the film came alive with the introduction of colour. Out of our way Federico Fellini! Our video was entitled Wet Dream but it’s not what you might think. The black and white footage had a guy called Ian falling asleep in a particularly dull lecture before he went into a dream in colour where he is kidnapped and thrown into a swimming pool. As he awakes from his dream back in black and white he is soaking wet. Genius! We were all do pleased with ourselves! Ah, the folly of youth. I must get around to uploading it one day. “Love…Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9.
Meanwhile back in the studio we find some more ravers in Utah Saints with a guy up front on bass guitar looking like what I’m sure Boris Johnson (but not me) would describe as a ‘crusty’. Their performance of “What Can You Do For Me” illustrates perfectly the issues TOTP was facing with showcasing this new fangled rave music. There are no vocals apart from the short samples from Gwen Guthrie, Eurythmics and an intro from a Kiss concert. That leaves the four members of the band having to fill the time somehow. So we have the aforementioned bass player strutting about, a drummer, someone on keyboards and a DJ scratching like his life depending on it. No wonder the show’s producers decided to pad it out with some images from the promo video. To be fair, the track was good enough to not be undermined by the performance and would go up the charts the following week.
Jakki Brambles’ comment on Utah Saints? “They’re a good bunch of lads”. Hang on didn’t she say something similar about Sonia? Yes she did (“ a good old girl”). Presumably this was her default style of phrases she would go to to fill time. A bit like a Tory politician being asked a difficult question and replying “I don’t accept your characterisation of ***”.
Kylie Minogue is up next adding to the female pop star count for this show. We’ve already had Sonia, Zoë, Martika, Salt ‘N Pepa plus Oceanic fronted by Jorinde Williams and now here’s Kylie with her latest single “Word Is Out”. As Jakki says it was her fourteenth consecutive hit but it was also the first to fail to reach the Top 10. Were UK pop fans getting bored of her? No I don’t think so – it was just a shit song. Really weak. It was the lead single from her fourth and final album with Stock, Aitken and Waterman and she seemed to be a bit lost in this stage of her career. Maybe she was just finding her feet in the creative process (she shared song writing credits on six of the tracks). The album had a mixed reception both critically and commercially (it also failed to make the Top 10, her first album to do so). Very much a forgotten Kylie single (when was the last time you heard it on the radio?), its failure to rack up massive sales wasn’t due to a lack of effort on Kylie’s part as she gives the usual energetic performance here, crammed full of more dance moves than Zoë could wave her arms at. That would all be gone come her next single though which (psst… pass it on) was a big R’n’B ballad with Keith Washington. The word was out.
This is totally unfair! Just six minutes left of the show and they cram in another six songs in that time! My poor fingers! This is due to there being four Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe with a song called “Primal Scream”. What? I’d rather that sentence read Primal Scream with a song called “Motley Crue”.
This blog appears to have gone umlaut crazy. After the nonsense of the Marc Bölan story the other week and the appearance tonight of Zoë, we have the LA hair metallers with a single to promote their first Greatest Hits album. Hang on, what hits? They’d had just three Top 40 entries before this in the UK and none had hit higher than No 23. To be fair, they were more successful in the US where they’d had six including two Top 10s but I’m not about to let something like the truth get in the way of a petty swipe at them! According to the band’s Nikki Sixx, the song was written about Arthur Janov’s 1970 book The Primal Scream. Yeah, maybe or maybe they just stole the idea off Tears For Fears who named themselves after said book. “Primal Scream” the Mötley Crüe song kept their run of UK singles that failed to breach the Top 20 going when it peaked at No 26.
Another dance anthem now. Sabrina Johnston may only be known for this single “Peace” in this country but she’s not without musical pedigree. She toured with The Sugar Hill Gang in the 80s and was signed to Sugar Hill Records as part of West Street Mob so you know…respect and all. “Peace” was just a huge, uplifting chunk of positivity in the form of a gospel -ish dance track that was written during the Gulf War as an antidote to the feelings of dread and horror that conflict engendered. It was a tune! Peaking at No 8, it returned to the charts the following year as a double A-side with a remix of “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters to promote the “Red, Hot + Dance” charity album.
Talking of whom….now I would have laid money on Crystal Waters having been a one hit wonder but no as here she is with the follow up to No 2 hit “Gypsy Woman” with a song called “Makin’ Happy”. I didn’t much care for her first hit and this one wasn’t going to do it for me either seeing as it was very much in the same mould – indeed it was described as ‘Gypsy Woman, Part II’ in some of the music press. Even in this short clip it just seemed so damn repetitive. Her discography tells me that she had nine Top 40 hits in this country. NINE?!! Don’t panic though, I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again until these TOTP repeats hit 1994 (assuming that they carry on that long).
Roxette complete the Breakers with the third single from their third studio album “Joyride” called “The Big L.” (no punctuation after the ‘L’ , no points). It’s a bit bland this one and it really reminds me of another song (who said anything else by Roxette?!) but I can’t put my finger on it. An ABBA song maybe?It wasn’t released in the US for some reason – not sure why their American record company wouldn’t have had faith in it given their last seven singles released there had peaked at:
1 – 14 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2
Now, remember that guy who interviews Jurgen Klopp in that ‘Let’s Talk About Six’ video. Well, his name is Jan Åge Fjørtoft (the theme was umlauts Jan not…whatever they are) who is an ex-professional footballer who turned out for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley in this country but that’s neither here nor there. Look at him again. He could be the guy in Roxette surely?
OK, what week are we onto now with Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”? Nine? Ten? I’m struggling for any more content on this song now. What has @TOTPFacts got for me…
Oh, great, thanks very much! Balls! Well, in a Smash Hits interview (Bryan was not only in the magazine but on the front cover -who’d have thought it?!) he was asked:
Are you mightily chuffed with the single then?
His reply was:
“You could say that”
Bryan Adams there with a magnificently downbeat show of being chuffed about something that has only been matched by David Batty when he was interviewed in Lee Chapmans’ house in Boroughbridge when Leeds Utd won the league in 1992. Asked how he felt about the achievement he replied:
“Well, it’s a bonus”.
Who’s this? Runrig? Oh yes, I remember them. Like a celtic Dire Straits weren’t they? Too glib? OK, well “The Hearthammer EP” was their first Top 40 hit despite having been around since 1973 and as I recall they were a very popular live draw. Indeed, there are almost as many live Runrig albums as studio albums. To prove the point, the video shows the band playing what seems to be a massive outdoor gig. The single was taken from an album called “The Big Wheel” which went gold in the UK. This really does sound like Dire Straits though.
And that’s it from Jakki Brambles. Her comment at the show’s end “Right, I’m off to the Darby and Joan Club” suggests maybe she knew she was for the bullet?
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Oceanic | Insanity | I didn’t |
| 2 | The Prodigy | Charly | Nope |
| 3 | Sonia | Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy | As if |
| 4 | Salt ‘n Pepa | Let’s Talk About Sex | Liked it, didn’t buy it |
| 5 | Zoë | Sunshine On A Rainy Day | See 4 above |
| 6 | Martika | Love…Thy Will Be Done | Nope |
| 7 | Utah Saints | What Can You Do For Me | See 4 above |
| 8 | Kylie Minogue | Word Is Out | Nah |
| 9 | Mötley Crüe | Primal Scream | Never happening |
| 10 | Sabrina Johnston | Peace | See 4 above |
| 11 | Crystal Waters | Makin’ Happy | Soundin’ crappy more like – no |
| 12 | Roxette | The Big L. | F******g ‘ell more like – no |
| 13 | Bryan Adams | (Everything I Do) I Do It For You | I did not |
| 14 | Runrig | The Hearthammer EP | No |
Disclaimer
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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00103fv/top-of-the-pops-06091991
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 