We’re well intro the Autumn of 1995 with these TOTP repeats now but away from which artists were in the charts, who else was in the news around this time? Well, the day before this show aired, Everton striker Duncan Ferguson was making headlines of the wrong kind when he was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment for making lines on the head of Raith Rovers defender John McStay after head butting him during a game. As such, he became the first British footballer to be given a custodial sentence for an on-field offence. I wonder if there are any criminal records on this TOTP that deserved to be sent down?

Here’s one for a start! PJ & Duncan should have been locked up and the key thrown away for this rubbish. Eighteen months on from their first hit, the novelty was wearing thin. “U Krazy Katz” was the duo’s seventh Top 40 single and what a stinker it was! Everything about this song honked not least its awful title. ‘Crazy’ spelt with a ‘K’ and ‘Cats’ spelt with a ‘K’ and a ‘Z’ with the obligatory ‘U’ replacing ‘You’. Who did they think they were? Slade?! As for the track, it’s like Modern Romance doing their mambo styled hit “Don’t Stop That Crazy Rhythm” but instead of singing it they‘ve rapped their way through the damned thing. Vile stuff.

Although their music was still crap, something had changed with these two. Yes, obviously they’d gone for 40s style suits and brogues (and an ill judged cane for Dec/Duncan) for this appearance rather than the usual baseball cap, jeans and trainers look but it’s something else I’m referring to. A small but defining detail that would shape their future careers to this day…yep, they swapped sides! It’s not for the whole performance but there are definite points where they swap over so that PJ is on the left (as we look at the TV screen) and Duncan on the right. Do you think they watched this back and thought “Haway man! We look better this way round ‘n’ that!”. Think of Ant & Dec now and I’m betting your mind’s eye places the former on our left and Dec the right. It’s hard wired into our brains but up to this point, their stints on TOTP had their positions reversed. By the way, that’s another more obvious change that is on the way – the dropping of the PJ & Duncan monikers and the adopting of the Ant & Dec brand. There’s only two more PJ & Duncan hits to endure after this one before they switch.

The solo career of Suggs was the equivalent of a one man crime wave. It should have been illegal and actionable. After his disastrous cover of “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles as his debut offering, the Madness frontman followed it up with this original track called “Camden Town”. A fusion of ska and pop with a side order of reggae, it was jaunty for sure but oh so insubstantial. The verses remind me of the theme tune to Only Fools And Horses but set in Camden rather than Peckham. Ah yes, that title location. Was that a deliberate and contrived attempt to drum up some credibility for Suggs off the back of the epicentre of the burgeoning Britpop movement?

Now, I like Madness and have seen them in concert but whilst Suggs’s character makes sense within the structure of the band, out on his own, his affected delivery and stilted movements just grate on me. Worse was to come with his cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” released from his album “The Lone Ranger” the following April.

So what links Mariah Carey and Simply Red? Well, the former’s video for her single “Fantasy” was set in an amusement park and saw Mariah riding a rollercoaster and the latter were at No 1 at the same time with “Fairground” and the promo for that one was filmed at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with The Big One rollercoaster prominently featured. There was another link between Mariah and a fellow resident in this week’s chart. Ten places below her at No 16 were folk-rockers The Levellers with their new single…yep…”Fantasy”. Fancy that!

Next, a second consecutive studio performance for Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue with their murder ballad duet “Where The Wild Roses Grow”. I mentioned in the last post that I performed this song in a guitar class I used to attend back in 2010 as a duet with a student called Lisa and that it was recorded for posterity. The guitar teacher gave me a CD of our performance and I added it to my iTunes library. I thought I could maybe embed it into this blog but I’ve run into a few tech issues. I got a new Mac a while back and never got around to importing everything from my old one onto the new one including my iTunes library (well, we’re all on Spotify now aren’t we?). When I’ve gone back to said library on the old Mac, it says that the file for the track can’t be located. It’s all a bit of a mess. If I could find the original CD, maybe I could upload it to the new Mac? Can’t find it anyway so it looks like you’re all have to live with the disappointment of not hearing my Nick Cave impression but rest assured it was immense!

My duet with Lisa wasn’t as unexpected as Nick and Kylie’s what with us both attending the same guitar class and all but there have been other pairings throughout musical history that rivalled their unlikeliness. How about Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry on “7 Seconds” or Marc Almond and Gene Pitney with “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart”. Yeah, Richard and Lisa from guitar class doesn’t sound as left field as some of those names I admit. As for musical crimes, “Where The Wild Roses Grow” is an excellent song and should never be considered in those terms but if you listen to the lyrics, well that’s literally a different story altogether.

After Jimmy Nail used his Auf Wiedersehen, Pet fame to launch his music career in 1985 with a cover of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, it took him seven years to come up with his next hit single, the chart topping “Ain’t No Doubt”. However, once he’d made that comeback, he was determined to stick around and in the mid 90s, he was prolific. He released three albums in three years between ‘94 and ‘96, the middle of which was “Big River”. Coming after “Crocodile Shoes” and before “Crocodile Shoes II” (a “Crocodile Shoes” sandwich?), it was a sizeable success going platinum in the UK and making the Top 10. Its lead single was the title track which made No 18 on the UK charts. A love letter to the River Tyne and its heyday at the heart of the once thriving shipbuilding industry that also acknowledges its decline, it features the guitar work of fellow Geordie Mark Knopfler. It’s a decent enough song that was a good platform for Nail’s gruff voice but quite why it needed a rerelease three months later as “Big River ‘96” is beyond me and also most of the record buying public as it stalled at No 72.

I’ve said before in this blog that you could do worse than give Jimmy’s 1997 Best Of album “The Nail File” a spin on your streaming platform of choice. Tracks like the Paddy McAloon penned “Cowboy Dreams” and “Country Boy” are just great songs and you can’t deny that Jimmy has a distinctive voice. A crime against music? Hadaway and shite!

Something serious now. The War Child International charity was founded in 1993 to ensure war child victims have access to protection, education and psychosocial support both in conflict and post-conflict areas with the UK arm established in 1994. A year later, they worked with British and Irish artists to create “The Help Album” to raise funds for the charity. Featuring the likes of Oasis, The Stone Roses, Suede, The Charlatans and Sinéad O’Connor, it took John Lennon’s “Instant Karma!” as its inspiration and was recorded, mixed and released within five days. So quick was the process that initial copies hit the shops with no track listing printed on the sleeve. Despite that drawback, the album went to No 1 in the compilation album chart. A single and an EP were taken from the album, the former was a cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together” by supergroup The Smokin’ Mojo Filters whose membership included Paul McCartney, Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Steve Craddock, Steve White and Carleen Anderson. It peaked at No 19. The “Help EP” was a four track release that included contributions from Portishead, Guru, PJ Harvey but was headed up by this song – “Lucky” by Radiohead.

For some reason, and I don’t recall this but Wikipedia assured me it happened, Radio 1 refused to support the EP with airplay which contributed to it only making No 51 in the charts. TOTP had no such qualms and so we got this video exclusive which gave us an early taste of a Radiohead track that would end up on their third album, 1997’s “OK Computer”. This is a great song, epic in its sound and ambition but also moving in its intensity – the sort of song that has the power to send shivers up your spine. For some reason, it’s always reminded me of the theme tune to the 1981 BBC2 adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

The affecting video could sadly have been made in 2024 what with the world witnessing the Russia/Ukraine and Gaza/Israel conflicts, the only difference being that such images (and much, much worse) are now beamed directly into our heads via our mobile phones.

On a much lighter note, “The Help Album” included some great cover versions such as Suede taking on Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding”, Terry Hall and Salad doing “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” and this one by the Manic Street Preachers…

All three tracks on the spin to end the show we have seen before so I’m going to rifle through them beginning with “When Love And Hate Collide” by Def Leppard. Like many artists, the Sheffield rockers recently went down the orchestral versions of their back catalogue route (see also Midge Ure, Embrace and even Cutting Crew) with an album called “Drastic Symphonies”. Said album includes an orchestral version of “When Love And Hate Collide” which does make it sound monumentally epic.

An orchestra can’t do anything about the song’s lyrics though which are straight up dreadful. Clichéd, hackneyed and in places non sensical. Look at these:

I got your number on my wall but I ain’t gonna make that call

When divided we stand baby, United we fall

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Richard Savage / Joseph Elliott
When Love & Hate Collide lyrics © Bmg Platinum Songs Us, Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

How can you stand divided but fall united? And who had a phone number on their wall? I know this was pre-mobile phone ubiquity but wouldn’t you have written a phone number on a telephone pad or Filofax even? Then there’s stock phrases like “Heart of Stone” and “hits you right between the eyes” and some dreadful rhyming couplets like “fighting for” and “act of war”. What do you expect though from grown men who wrote a song in “Let’s Get Rocked” from the point of view of an American teenager with references to ‘taking out the trash’ and ‘tidying your room’?

I seem to have used the word ‘epic’ a lot in this post but if there’s anyone in the history of music for whom that word was invented it must be Meatloaf. However, he’d also give Def Leppard a run for their money when it came to wonky lyrics. I mean, just look at the title of this one – “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)”. Clever play on words or just plain dumb? On top of that there’s more clichés like ‘selling your soul’, ‘holding your hand’ and ‘moving mountains’. Somehow though, Meat manages to sound the right side of ridiculous just by the sheer force of his personality and stage persona. He’s joined for this performance by an un-name checked woman but whom my research (OK Wikipedia!) tells me is Patti Russo who toured and recorded with Meatloaf between 1993 and 2013. She still tours and “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” regularly appears in her set list (and that’s no lie).

It’s a third week (of four) for Simply Red with “Fairground” at the top of the charts and we are still yet to see that aforementioned Blackpool Pleasure Beach video. To date, the single remains the band’s only No 1. In fact, despite all their hits over the years (31 Top 40 entries by my reckoning), very few have come close to getting to the peak. “Holding Back The Years” and “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” were both just one position away from hitting top spot but as for the rest – well, only one other made the Top 5. I guess they’re more of an albums band. A quick check of their discography shows that indeed they are with them racking up four No 1 studio albums plus a Greatest Hits collection that also topped the charts. Now that’s a criminal record!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	PJ & Duncan	U Krazy Katz	No chance
2	Suggs	Camden Town	I did not
3	Mariah Carey	Fantasy	Never happened
4	Nick Cave / Kylie Minogue	Where The Wild Roses Grow	Sang it, never bought it
5	Jimmy Nail	Big River	Nope
6	Radiohead	Lucky	No but I had their OK Computer album
7	Def Leppard	When Love And Hate Collide	Nah
8	Meatloaf	I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)	No
9	Simply Red	Fairground	As if

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/m001wsmk/top-of-the-pops-12101995?seriesId=unsliced