These TOTP repeats are bloody relentless! If you get a bit behind with them like I did last week as I was away for a few days, it takes a real effort to get back up to date. It’s the double bills with two shown every Friday on BBC4 that makes it so hard to keep up. Why can’t they just show one a week like they would have done when originally broadcast?
*checks schedule for next week*
That’s what I’m talking about! There’s only one show on this coming Friday for some reason. Why can’t they do that all the time?! For now though, I’m still on catch up so time to get writing…
What can I tell you about this week in May 1993. Well, on this very day Chris Waddle was voted the Football Writers Association’s Player of the Year. Waddle had returned to English football after a spell in France with Marseilles and helped his new club Sheffield Wednesday to both domestic cup finals that season. In fact, the second of those took place two days after this TOTP broadcast. A 1-1 draw with Arsenal meant a replay was required (the last one ever in an FA Cup final) the knock on effect of which was that TOTP was shunted to the Friday the following week to allow for BBC’s coverage of the second match on the Thursday. Waddle even scored in that replay but his team still went down 2-1 to a last minute extra time winner.
Waddle, of course, wasn’t just known for football. No, there was that mullet hairstyle and his own dalliance with being a pop star in the 80s alongside his then team mate Glenn Hoddle. Yes, three years before Gazzamania saw Paul Gascoigne become a chart star, Glenn and Chris beat him to it with “Diamond Lights”, a genuine contender for the title of the worst record of all time.
Waddle stayed at Wednesday until 1996 before the inevitable descent down the leagues which had him seeing out his playing career in non-league football with the likes of Glapwell and Stockbridge Park Steels. To paraphrase that famous milk advert, “who are they?!”. He also entered popular culture as a comedy reference (not for his hairstyle though) but for this…
Excellent stuff! Anyway, on with the ‘proper’ music. Now I would count myself as a fan of OMD but I don’t remember this track at all. In fairness, the band’s career had been a series of boom and bust periods so there were always going to be some singles that slipped under the net. “Architecture And Morality” was a definite boom time whereas “Dazzle Ships” was misunderstood and misfired. “Junk Culture” took them in a more mainstream pop direction resulting in chart success but “Crush” and “The Pacific Age” mustered just one Top 20 hit between them. With the band splintering at the end of the 90s, that could have been that but a remarkable resurrection took place in 1991 with Andy McCluskey masterminding two consecutive Top 10 singles on the bounce and a successful album in “Sugar Tax”.
With their comeback officially confirmed, another album for the new look band was required. “Liberator” was that album with “Stand Above Me” its lead single. Even McCluskey isn’t keen on it describing it as “busy and messy” in a 2019 Record Collector interview. He went on to say “I was aware that Britpop was approaching and I didn’t know what I should do”. In the end, he basically rewrote “Sailing On The Seven Seas” and called it “Stand Above Me”. In fact, quite a few of their songs had started to morph into one at this point. There wasn’t much between say, “Dreaming”, “”Call My Name” and “Pandora’s Box” – all good pop tunes but a million miles away from those more experimental early hits like “Enola Gay”, “Joan Of Arc” and “Genetic Engineering”.
Still, Andy McCluskey gives the impression of being happy with his lot in this performance although his opening shout of ‘Kick it!’ was ill judged. There’s something that doesn’t compute watching three of them on stage swinging guitars around with a banner behind proclaiming them to be OMD. With three guitars on display? No wonder McCluskey said it had all got a bit messy.
“Stand Above Me” peaked at No 21.
What?! Shabba Ranks again?! No, I absolutely refuse to talk about him anymore. I’d rather watch Maxi Priest play football which is handy as here he is…
OK, he’s no Chris Waddle but check out this about him courtesy of @TOTPFacts…
“Housecall” peaked at No 8.
Ah, I thought we hadn’t seen her for a few shows but she’s back with yet another of a seemingly infinite number of singles from her album “So Close”. Seeing as it’s 1993, it can only be Dina Carroll that I am referring to. “Express” was the fifth single released from the album in just under twelve months and yet surprisingly was the biggest hit of the lot to that point peaking at No 12.
I’ve said it before in just about every post that’s featured Dina but her chart history is really intriguing. The fact that she could get her biggest hit of five with the fifth release is odd enough on its own but when you throw in the massive curveball that is “Don’t Be A Stranger”…there’s so much to be explained. Why did A&M wait five months after “Express” before releasing it? They’d released three singles in the same time period up to that point. Why was it left to being the sixth and final single to be released when they knew they had it up their sleeves all along? I read somewhere recently that so many singles were taken from the album as it wasn’t crossing over from the limited UK soul market and A&M were trying to promote it to the mainstream market. That theory doesn’t really add up though as it spent fourteen weeks in the Top 10 between January and September before slipping down the charts. True, when “Don’t Be A Stranger” was a huge hit, the album rocketed up the charts again spending three consecutive weeks at No 2 but the idea that the album wasn’t a success before that doesn’t really hold water for me. God, I sound a bit obsessed by all this don’t I? I don’t even have any of Dina’s records so I don’t know why I should be.
As for “Express”, it stood out from some of her other mid tempo soul singles as it was a definite attempt to incorporate some funk into proceedings including a parping sax noise that just about avoided being annoying. I think the kids today would call the song ‘sassy’.
A second studio appearance for Robert Plant now whose “29 Palms” single is this week’s highest climber (he’ll go no further than this peak of No 21 though). Not a lot of thought seems to have gone into the staging of this performance by the TOTP production team. There’s a couple of palm trees at either end of the stage (palms – geddit?) and some neon signage that’s meant to give the impression of an American diner (do you get diners on beaches?). To add to the imagery, one of Robert’s band has come dressed as a surfer dude/beach bum.
Another of the band (the guitarist in the green shirt) is Kevin Scott Macmichael whom, seven years prior to this appearance, I interviewed when he was in the band Cutting Crew. They were riding high in the charts with “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” and I’d just become a student at Sunderland Polytechnic and interviewed them for the student newspaper before a gig that they were playing at the Poly. As I recall Kevin was quietly spoken and generous with his time to an 18 years old me who didn’t really know what I was doing. Kevin sadly died of lung cancer in 2002.
By 1993, it had been ten years since Tina Turner’s music career comeback began with “Let’s Stay Together” and the “Private Dancer” album. More huge hits followed – 1989’s “Foreign Affair” album sold six million copies worldwide whilst her “Simply The Best” Best Of collection two years later went eight times platinum in the UK alone. Despite all this success and profile (or maybe because of it), the world still needed to see and hear more of Tina and so a biopic was the next logical step. What’s Love Got To Do With It was that film starring Angela Bassett as Tina. I watched it on TV once – it wasn’t bad. Obviously given its subject matter, the film would have a soundtrack album and promoting it was this single “I Don’t Wanna Fight”. Written by Lulu (no, really) it’s actually a pretty accomplished soul pop ballad which would go Top 10 both here and in the US, the last time she ever achieved that feat in the latter territory.
The normally reliable Mark Franklin gets the song’s title wrong in his intro referring to it (I think)) as ‘I Don’t Want To Go Fighting’ making it sound like her reply to Elton John’s rallying cry of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”. Tina seemed as keen on song titles beginning ‘I Don’t Wanna…’ as Sting did for those starting with the word ‘Every’. “I Don’t Wanna Lose You” was a No 8 hit for her in 1989. She should have done one called “I Don’t Wanna Perform This Song In A Virtually Empty Theatre Venue In Monte Carlo” as this ‘exclusive’ was yet another example of TOTP thinking they were bringing us something special when it really wasn’t. An empty venue devoid of atmosphere in an exotic location like Monte Carlo is still an empty venue devoid of atmosphere.
There’s a good mix of Breakers this week according to Mark Franklin so let’s put that claim to the test. We start with The Waterboys who were last in the charts two years earlier when a rerelease of “The Whole Of The Moon” finally got the chart placing it deserved when it peaked at No 3. The single promoted a Best Of album that was released by EMI as one final attempt to milk the cash cow before their artist jumped ship to Geffen. The first new material of that move was the album “Dream Harder” which was preceded by the lead single “The Return Of Pan”. This was the second time that Mike Scott had written a song about the Greek deity after “The Pan Within” from 1985 album “This Is The Sea”.
I remember the album coming out but I’m not sure it ever got a spin on the shop stereo in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. I probably should have found a quiet Tuesday afternoon to give it a proper play. After all, my association with The Waterboys stretched back to 1983 when I heard their very first single “A Girl Called Johnny” which I had on a compilation album called “Chart Stars”. If that makes me sound like I was a very cutting edge 14 year old, I really wasn’t. That album also included Galaxy, Bonnie Tyler and (gulp) The Kids From Fame! Quite how the first single by The Waterboys made it in to the running order I’m not sure but a flop single by The Teardrop Explodes was also on there so it was an odd thing. Presumably the compilers filled it with whatever they could get licences for.
Anyway, supposedly “Dream Harder” had a much more of a rock guitar vein to it than their previous work but then I’ve always struggled to describe their musical style. When I went for my initial interview at Our Price for a Xmas temp position in 1990, there was a music quiz and one of the sections was to identify the musical genre of an artist. One of those artists was The Waterboys. My answer? ‘Folky/bluesy type thing’. The correct answer was, of course, Rock/Pop.
“The Return Of Pan” peaked at No 24.
Well, in terms of ‘a mix’ of music, Mark Franklin was right but ‘a good mix’? That’s surely not the right word if one of those records in the mix is this. “The Jungle Book Groove” by The Disney Cast was presumably released to cash in on the fact that The Jungle Book had been made available on VHS this year. As I remember, Disney employed a very strategic release strategy around this time. They’d deleted all their classic film titles and then rereleased them one at a time so as to focus full attention on that one product as opposed to just making them all available on mass. This created a discounting price war with retailers looking closely at what everyone else was doing to guide their pricing policy. Whilst we all nipped into each other’s shops to see what they were selling the video for, one of the supermarkets stole everyone’s thunder (was it Asda?) by selling it at the cheapest price but with the added gimmick of qualifying for a free banana in the process! Genius!
There’d already been a Disney medley single by The UK Mixmasters called “Bare Necessities Megamix” which had been a hit over the Xmas of 1991 but that didn’t put off the Disney money men from selling it to us all over again by releasing “The Jungle Book Groove” on the Disney affiliated label Hollywood Records. Now look, I don’t mind a Disney film nor the songs in them but I do mind them being cynically packaged and turning up in the Top 40. No Disney, I don’t wanna be like you.
The final Breaker comes from Bon Jovi who have released a third (of six in total) single from their “Keep The Faith” album. This one was “In Your Arms” and was pretty standard Jovi fare that sounds like they could have knocked it out in a couple of hours with their thumbs up their bums, minds in neutral as my old History teacher was prone to saying. Perfect daytime radio fodder though.
My main memory of this song is hearing a news feature on Radio 1 whilst travelling in a car with my work colleague Andy on the way to a concert in Sheffield.* “In Your Arms” had just been released and the feature covered the story that, presumably in a coordinated promotional move by the record company, The London Trocadero had just installed a waxwork of Jon Bon Jovi and a crowd of fans had gathered for the unveiling. I think Jon was there in person at the event as the crowd were chanting “We want the flesh, we want the flesh…”.
A couple of years later, I found myself alone and at a loose end in London on a visit to my friend Robin who lived down there. I decided a trip to The Trocadero was in order and found myself having my photo taken with the waxwork Jon. For some reason, I thought this would be a good souvenir of my visit and purchased said photo! So proud was I of it that I put it on display on the staff room wall in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working. What was I thinking?! My work colleagues didn’t half take the piss and, to be fair, I absolutely deserved it. No idea where it is now – the photo not the waxwork which must have surely been melted down by now.
“In Your Arms” peaked at No 9.
*Yes, it was that concert, the Michael Bolton one and no, I’m not about to go into how that came about all over again.
After the Breakers come the Abominations or Inner Circle as I like to call them. “Sweat (A La La La La Long)” is up to No 5 on its way to a peak of No 3 and so another studio performance is in order. The thrifty TOTP producers have recycled the stage that Robert Plant used with its palm trees to made it look like a beach party.
If you search for Inner Circle on the internet today, one of the results is for an online dating app. It’s a good job that online dating wasn’t around when Inner Circle the band were in the charts. I don’t think having these lines on your profile would win over potential partners:
Girl I’m want to make you sweat, sweat ‘till you can’t sweat no more
And if you cry out, I’m gonna push it some more
Just nasty.
Another week at the top for the “Five Live” EP and another different track from it on the show. This time it’s George Michael’s take on “Killer” by Adamski which is mashed up with “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” made famous by The Temptations. This wasn’t from the 1992 Freddie Mercury tribute concert but was recorded at Wembley Arena the year before.
By my reckoning, this is the third time “Killer” had been a hit. The Adamski original was No 1 in 1990 and then Seal took his own version into the Top 10 in late 1991. As for “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”, aside from The Temptations’ 1973 US No 1, it was a Top 20 hit for Was (Not Was) in 1990.
There’s a little bonus clip before the credits roll as the BBC promote the Eurovision Song Contest that took place two days after this TOTP aired. As such, we get the video for the UK entry who in 1993 was Sonia with “Better The Devil You Know”. Sonia came second taking the result to the final set of points allocated before losing out to Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh. Her performance meant that the single got a small boost sales wise and reversed its descent down the charts meaning its seven week run looked like this:
22 – 18 – 25 – 17 – 15 – 40 – 57
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | OMD | Stand Above Me | I did not |
| 2 | Shabba Ranks / Maxi Priest | Housecall | Do one will ya! |
| 3 | Dina Carroll | Express | Nope |
| 4 | Robert Plant | 29 Palms | No but I had that promo CD of the album |
| 5 | Tina Turner | I Don’t Wanna Fight | No |
| 6 | The Waterboys | The Return Of Pan | Nah |
| 7 | Disney Cast | The Jungle Book Groove | Never happening |
| 8 | Bon Jovi | In These Arms | See 4 above |
| 9 | Inner Circle | Sweat (A La La La La Long) | As if |
| 10 | George Michael | Five Live EP | Don’t think I did |
| 11 | Sonia | Better The Devil You Know | And 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/m001b0cb/top-of-the-pops-13051993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 