80stastic

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

Posted on December 13, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve reached the middle of July 1995 in these BBC4 TOTP repeats and there was a lot going on in the world of pop music at this time. Four days on from this broadcast, hearts of teenage girls everywhere in the UK were breaking as the news that Robbie Williams had left Take That! Shock! Horror! More of that later though as there’s another musical separation that rocked the industry just a day after this TOTP beamed into our homes when George Michael finally parted ways with Sony Music after being in dispute with them for over a year. As if all of that wasn’t enough, get this…Dale Winton was the guest host on TOTP! I know! It’s hard to be sure with these ‘golden mic’ hosts how big a name they were at the time that might have informed the decision to invite them on the show. Having checked Dale’s Wikipedia entry, it looks like he’d been presenting Supermarket Sweep for a couple of years by 1995 which, if my memory serves, started out as cult viewing for students but which rapidly grew in popularity. I could be wrong about this but, assuming I’m not, Dale may or may not have been instantly recognisable to TOTP viewers depending on which demographic you fell into. Sadly, Dale died in 2018 aged just 62 but I shall always remember him fondly for completely trashing Lulu whilst he was on an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Excellent work Mr. Winton!

We start tonight with yet another song and artist that I have obliterated from my memory. It turns out that Jinny wasn’t a person but a band (just like Toyah and Nena) and this track – “Keep Warm” – was the first and biggest of their two UK chart hits. Now, listening to this it sounds very much like Black Box to me which makes it a bit of an anachronism in 1995. Its back story supports my theory. It was originally released in 1991 and failed to chart presumably as the Italo House phenomenon spearheaded by the likes of the aforementioned Black Box and Starlight had run out of steam. However, it was given a second chance when the UK went mad for Eurodance in the mid 90s – meh, Italo House, Eurodance…what’s the difference?* – and it became a No 11 hit.

* I’m sure the dance heads out there will tell me that there is and what it is but I’m really not that interested

Now I believe that the blonde woman fronting this performance is one Carryl Varley who would go on to have a TV career presenting quiz shows and featured on the children’s Saturday morning show Scratchy & Co. Just like the woman from Black Box, it’s rumoured that she didn’t actually sing on any of the Jinny records and that it was the woman behind the Corona hits that supplied the vocals. Not the woman who did the TOTP appearances and whose face was on the artwork of the singles and albums though as she didn’t do the actual singing either! Confused? You will be…a point to anyone who knows which US sitcom that tagline is from**. We should probably ask queen of the quizzes Carryl Varley. She’ll know.

Oh don’t tell me I’ve got to find something to say about MN8 again! OK, well “Happy” was their third consecutive Top 10 hit and it turns out that it wasn’t actually their single at all. It was originally recorded by British funk band Hi-Tension in 1984 and then by American R&B group Surface in 1987. What do those previous two versions sound like? I don’t know and to be honest, I can’t be arsed to find out either it being such a dreary, lifeless thing.

Oh and Dale? Mate, it’s M-N-8 (as in emanate) not M – and – 8! Got that? Great! Or should that be GR8?

Next, the first of two songs on the show tonight that the artist behind them doesn’t like that much. And it’s another bloody rerelease. “Kiss From A Rose” was originally out in 1994 as the second single from Seal’s sophomore album “Seal II” when it made No 20. That chart placing always seemed quite low for such an accomplished, fulsome and lavish ballad and fate determined that its story wouldn’t end there. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher asked Seal for permission to include it in the film and its soundtrack and once given and the song rereleased – Holy Heidi Klums! – a tsunami of sales engulfed the charts. It went to No 4 in the UK and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

A second promo video was hastily put together for it featuring clips from the film and Seal singing next to the Bat Signal. With “Kiss From A Rose” and U2’s song from the film in the charts at the same time, it made for a nice little display in the Our Price store I was working in at the time when you needed to fill a tower with something. That was if you could get hold of the stock of course. I seem to recall there being some availability issues with the supplier for both singles.

So why doesn’t Seal like possibly his most well known hit? Well, apparently it was written in 1991 but Seal felt embarrassed by it and never even showed it to producer Trevor Horn when it came to recording his debut eponymous album. He still wasn’t very enamoured by it when his sophomore follow up was being laid down but quite liked the fact that Horn turned it into an eight million selling record. You don’t say.

The first of two bands who are associated with the Britpop movement now as Cast make their debut. I seem to have rather a connection with this lot despite hardly being a superfan. Rising from the ashes of The La’s after they imploded, Cast were an outlet for the creativity of their bass player John Power. Switching to rhythm guitar, he went through a number of different line ups before settling on the one in this TOTP appearance. So my connection with Cast was really a connection with Mr. Power. I’d caught The La’s live twice before they self-combusted; once as the support for Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently but ignorantly informed my wife that they were called The LA’s (as in the abbreviation for Los Angeles). The other time was when I saw them as the headline act in Manchester (must have been around 1991) when I’m pretty sure one of the band walked off stage in a huff never to return. Fast forward three years and I’m at the Manchester Opera House awaiting Elvis Costello on stage as my wife is a big fan. Who should be the support band that night? Yep, Cast. I’m not sure I twigged that this was John Power’s new band despite being sat a few rows from them as they watched Costello after their set was done but as I recall they were pretty good.

I’m guessing that they played “Finetime”, their debut single that they perform on this TOTP. Now, I may have refuted the notion of being a superfan earlier but I did buy this single. Some melodic, indie-ish guitar rock? I’m in. Someone I worked with at the time reckoned it sounded like Abba but I couldn’t understand what he was on about. If you were a scouser watching this TOTP then you might not have understood what Dale Winton was on about either when he pronounced their name as ‘Carst’. Oh dear. Incidentally, the drummer looks like he could be a mate of Damon Grant’s from Brookside. Boss!

It’s Dale’s favourite Summer ballad now (according to the man himself) and it’s “Grapevyne” by Brownstone. I really haven’t much to say about the song or group on this one. Sultry R&B was never really my bag and it wasn’t high on the list of priorities to listen to in that aforementioned Our Price store as I don’t remember hearing it played at all. My colleagues were more likely to put on Aphex Twin or Autechre or DJ Shadow – something like that anyway (yes, I was the uncool member of staff). Still, Brownstone’s performance here is very…erm…competent I guess, especially the a cappella bit at the end. Not sure why they spelt ‘grapevine’ with a ‘y’ in it though unless it’s the American spelling? Where’s Carryl Varley when you need her?

Before we move on to the next video, a momentary pause to highlight the fact that, yes, that is a young Iain Lee in the studio audience behind Dale’s left shoulder. Iain would have just turned 22 years old at the time but he was presenting The 11 O’Clock Show by the end of the decade which would give the world Ali G. Iain would enjoy a career as a writer, comedian and broadcaster and is currently working as a counsellor.

Back to the music and it’s time for a video exclusive from Hole. The follow up to their first ever UK hit “Doll Parts”, “Violet” was supposedly written about Courtney Love’s chaotic relationship with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins. It’s a riot of raucous guitars, power chords and Love’s strangulated vocals. As you might guess, this wasn’t for me. Far too…well…loud. The spooky video just served to alienate me from the song even more. Look, I know that some people swear by her but I think I’m with Dale when it comes to Courtney Love; she’s a bit of a worry.

So to that Take That news that both Dale and I promised earlier. Dale plugs the fact that they will be on the show next week to plug their new single (“Never Forget”) but as I said at the top of the post, Robbie Williams would leave the group three days before that TOTP appearance. Did they show up without him? I can’t remember so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, it’s a third (by my calculations) outing for Edwyn Collins and “A Girl Like You” on the show and yet again it’s the same clip of Edwyn’s first TOTP performance from about a month previous. I assume Edwyn was too busy touring or promoting his hit in other territories to come back on the show?

Now, whether you love it or hate it, you have to admire a song that features the words ‘acknowledge’, ‘metaphorically’ and ‘allegorically’ in its lyrics. I think it’s only outdone by “This Kiss” by Faith Hill which includes the phrase “centrifugal motion” in its song words. No, really…listen…

And so to one of the songs that will forever scream “Britpop!” at the top of its voice. Just as Pulp had had a couple of polite knocks at the door of the UK charts before smashing them in with a sledgehammer with their seminal “Common People” single, so Supergrass did the same with “Alright”. Both songs enjoyed almost identical chart trajectories, crashing in at No 2 on the first week of release, staying there for a week and then slipping to No 3 and spending a month inside the Top 10. It’s a great, knockabout song that, like “Wake Up Boo!” before it earlier in the year, had radio stations playing it endlessly it seemed. It became the band’s calling card, their signature tune – call it what you will – but it would become their albatross as well. As with Seal earlier, the band would come to dislike “Alright”. They stopped playing it live before the end of the decade; something I can confirm as I saw them in York in the early 2000s and it certainly didn’t make the set list then.

Unlike Pulp for whom “Common People” was the lead single from their seminal album “Different Class”, “Alright” was actually the fifth and final single from Supergrass’ “I Should Co Co”. Strange that the last release from an album should also be the biggest hit off it. I wonder why they kept it back so late? Given the band’s subsequent misgivings about it, maybe they were never that sure of its hit potential? And yet bassist Mick Quinn is on record as saying that he knew the song would be enormous because its backing track was “bulletproof”. Who knows the truth but release it they did and Supergrass made a super fast leap to superstardom.

“We’re baaaack!” they hollered at the message to camera piece at the top of the show and that’s exactly what I would like to see – the back of them. The Outhere Brothers are still No 1 with “Boom Boom Boom”. What more do you expect me to say about these two berks? OK, how about this? Their real names were Keith ‘Malik’ Mayberry and Lamar ‘Hula’ Mahone. The latter see seems rather apposite in the year that we lost Shane MacGowan as The Pogues took their name from the expression ‘Pogue Mahone’, an anglicisation of the Irish phrase ‘póg mo thóin’ meaning ‘kiss my arse’ – The Outhere Brothers certainly can.

The play out track is “Love Enuff” by Soul II Soul. I lost sight of Jazzie B and co after the “Joy” single in 1992 so I have no recollection of this track which was the lead single from the band’s fifth studio album “Volume V Believe”. It featured ex-Snap! vocalist Penny Ford and its peak of No 12 meant it was Soul II Soul’s biggest hit since the aforementioned “Joy”. And that rather dry, fact based analysis is all I have to say about it.

** Yes, it was of course from Soap

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jinny	Keep Warm	Nah
2	MN8	Happy	No thanks
3	Seal	Kiss From A Rose	I didn’t
4	Cast	Finetime	YES!
5	Brownstone	Grapevyne	Nope
6	Hole	Violet	No
7	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Supergrass	Alright	No but I had the I Should Co Co album
9	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	As if
10	Soul II Soul	Love Enuff	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/m001t61j/top-of-the-pops-13071995

TOTP 06 JUL 1995

Posted on December 7, 2023 by 80stastic

Sometimes these TOTP repeats throw up some names that I haven’t thought about for ages but that are lodged in the recesses of my brain somewhere. On other occasions though, there’s a person on screen in front of my eyes that I literally have no idea who they are. This is the case with tonight’s show. Who the hell was / is Wendy Lloyd?! Well, it turns out that she was briefly a Radio 1 DJ who joined from Virgin Radio but who moved on to Talk Radio within a year or so. She now works as a voice over artist and podcast host. Mind you, just about every other person in the country is a podcaster these days. OK, well let’s see how I go on with remembering the names of the actual acts on the show tonight…

Well, I’m one for one as I certainly recall Diana King and her No 2 single “Shy Guy” as we sold shed loads of it in the Our Price store in Stockport where I was working at the time. Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK – she had two further medium sized chart entries with covers of “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Say A Little Prayer” – but this was certainly her crowning glory outside of her home country of Jamaica. Fusing dancehall reggae with swingbeat to produce an ultra commercial sound, this song was also aided by being included on the soundtrack to the successful film Bad Boys. I’ve never seen the movie or either of its sequels but my wife caught the first one and said that it was one of the loudest films she’s ever watched in a cinema. I think there were lots of scenes featuring explosions and stuff being blown up. Despite the soundtrack predominantly featuring hip-hop and R&B artists and despite the film starring Will Smith, the Fresh Prince himself didn’t contribute a track to the album. He was in a fallow phase following the end of him being part of a duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the start of him recording under his own name in 1997. If these TOTP repeats make it that far, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Smith.

For now though, let’s concern ourselves with Diana King. I’m guessing that “Shy Guy” must have had a lot of airplay pre-release as it crashed straight into our charts at No 4 and would spend seven consecutive weeks inside the Top 10. Like I said, we sold shed loads of it. It sounded to me like it was a close relative of “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze from the year before, an association which was never going to make me a fan I’m afraid but it certainly rode the zeitgeist back then. It would go on to sell 400,000 copies in the UK alone and become our 25th best selling song of the year. “Shy Guy” it may have been called but it was no shrinking violet when it came to racking up those sales.

Who couldn’t remember Shaggy eh? Certainly not me but I wish I could forget him. After achieving a UK No 1 in 1993 with “Oh Carolina”, we hadn’t seen or heard much from the Shagster since. The follow up to that huge hit had failed to make the Top 40 and for a while it seemed like he would be that classic version of a one hit wonder – one chart topper from out of nowhere and then nothing ever again. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. OK, there’s a lot to unpack here so let’s start with the song. Shaggy needed another hit to avoid the aforementioned one hit wonder status and the best way to do that is…all together…”DO A COVER VERSION!”. Yes, of course he came back with a cover and chose “In The Summertime”, originally a huge hit back in 1970 for Mungo Jerry. This being Shaggy though, it was never going to be a straight remake and before long we get the inevitable patois rapping and him banging on about ‘sexy little women’ or something. Seeing as Shaggy can’t carry a tune, he’s brought a pal with him to do the heavy lifting singing wise. So first things first, Rayvon is not this guy…

Ah, if only it was. No, Shaggy’s mate Rayvon is a Barbadian singer whose real name is Bruce Brewster – no, really that was his name. He should have just stuck with that; much better than his stage name. Talking of names, you know what Shaggy’s true moniker is? Orville Burrell. And you know what the real name of the Shaggy character in Scooby Doo is? Norville Rogers! Norville and Orville?! That can’t be a coincidence can it? Is that why Shaggy is called Shaggy? Because his real name sounded like that of Scooby Doo’s best pal? Anyway, aside from Shaggy’s toasting interventions, the lyric “Have a drink have a drive” has been altered to “I’m gonna drive and ride” presumably after the Mungo Jerry original had been used in a public information film series about the dangers of drink-driving in 1992.

The cover version strategy worked and took Shaggy (and Rayvon) to No 5 paving the way for the second of his four UK No 1s later in the year with “Boombastic”. Looking at the track listing of the CD single there’s a remix of it called the Sting vs Shaggy remix. That’s not Mr Sumner is it who Shaggy would make an album with years later?

*checks Discogs website*

No it isn’t. It’s someone called Shaun Pizzonia who went by the name of Sting International. Sting, Shaggy, Norville, Orville…it’s all very confusing.

Now of course I remember the artist in the next video. Bobby Brown had a notorious profile especially in 1995 when he was charged with the assault of a nightclub patron, accused of urinating in a police car and cited for kicking a hotel security guard. Even Wendy Lloyd refers to his misdemeanours in her intro by saying he was giving his wife Whitney (Houston) a few headaches. However, when it comes to his discography, it’s me that suffers from a Bobby Brown migraine. I think it’s to do with all these K-Klass remixes that cause my perplexed state.

Look at “Humpin’ Around” for example. This had already been released once in 1992 when it made it to No 19. Fast forward three years and in its remixed form it peaked at No 8. This followed a similar rerelease strategy applied to “Two Can Play That Game” when it was a minor No 38 hit in 1994 but a Top 3 smash the following April. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going or indeed Humpin’around or playing a game. The fact that “Humpin’ Around” sounds like “Two Can Play That Game” and vice versa just adds to the confusion. Brown would have two more hits with remixes of his previous singles before the chart entries dried up for good. Just as well. My poor brain can’t stand much more.

There was no way I wasn’t going to remember any of the people involved in this next one. With that said, in the last couple of days, I rejected the chance to reacquaint myself with one lot of them. Over the weekend, I met up with my friends Steve and Robin whom I hadn’t seen since before COVID struck. Meeting at Steve’s gaff, a good catch up fuelled by many, many beers was had. Robin had done a cull of his CD collection and brought the unwanted titles with him to see if Steve or I wanted any of them before they were deposited at his local charity shop. I refused them all as my wife and I have been having our own declutter exercise recently. One of the titles I turned down was “Epsom Mad Funkers: The Best Of EMF”. My reasoning was that I already have a CD of their “Afro King” single which acted as a mini Best Of with the extra tracks being their first three hits. It seemed like good logic but was I right to refuse a double album including a whole CD of remixes? You know what? I think I can live with my decision.

Obviously “I’m A Believer” – the band’s collaboration with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer – is included on said Best Of but the chance to own that track wasn’t going to make me change my mind on Robin’s offer. I’m not sure of the back story surrounding how this pairing came about or why (other than EMF needing a career revitalising hit perhaps) but it would prove to be their final UK Top 40 entry. They released the aforementioned “Afro King” as the follow up but it stalled at No 51. And it’s not even on that Best Of album. I was definitely right to turn it down! The band are not all about the past though. They have a new album coming out called “The Beauty And The Chaos” but if I can’t be arsed to accept a free copy of their Greatest Hits, I’m not sure I’m ready for any new material from them.

Now here we have a case of not remembering the song rather than the artist. Nobody could ever forget about Michael Jackson but this song, “Childhood”? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it before. Wikipedia tells me that it was the other song on the double A-side single “Scream” but I don’t remember it at all. So why are TOTP showing the video for it when “Scream” is already going down the charts? Clearly, it was an attempt by Jackson’s record label Epic to drum up some sales for his “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1” album which, despite all the promotion they’d thrown at it, had been toppled from the top of the charts after just one week by Bon Jovi.

And so we get, billed as an album exclusive, the video to “Childhood” and for the love of God, it’s the most puke-inducing, vomit-rendering bucket full of sick you could possibly imagine. Clearly based around Jacko’s obsession with Peter Pan, there’s flying galleons transporting baseball playing kids while Michael himself sits at the base of a tree lamenting his lost childhood – it really is nauseating. Now, if I was a more fair-minded individual, I could maybe make a case in defence of Jackson given his own relationship with an abusive father that he would record a song like this but the whole package is just so overwhelmingly mawkish that I can’t get past it. He would top even this level of self indulgence at the 1996 BRIT awards show and his Christ-like performance of”Earth Song”. I think it’s time to move on…

…to what Wendy Lloyd describes as another exclusive performance but it’s not really is it? D:Ream were in the TOTP studio just the other week performing their new single “Shoot Me With Your Love” before it was in the Top 40. That was the ‘exclusive’ performance. This is just them being on the show again because they have entered the charts at No 7. Surely an ‘exclusive’ relates to something nobody else has so unless D:Ream had signed some sort of contract with the BBC that had an exclusivity clause in it not to perform on any other pop music show than TOTP, could poor old Wendy Lloyd be done under the Trades Description Act?

Anyway, Peter Cunnah does his best to get the studio audience over excited and sells the song like his life depends on it but the writing was on the wall for D:Ream. They would only have two further UK hits (and one of those peaked at No 40) before Cunnah descended into a cocaine addiction and rehab. From then on, all the band had to look forward to was a life of perpetual rereleases of “Things Can Only Get Better” and the perception (wrongly) that it was the only hit they ever had.

I guess you could be forgiven for forgetting about Amy Grant as she only ever had three UK hits, the last of which was this, her version of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”. Now, if ever a single had a chart life span in the 90s that experienced cautious traction, this was it. Bucking the dominant trend of records going straight in and straight out of the charts, its Top 40 run was:

29 – 27 – 27 – 26 – 20 – 21 – 29 – 39

Slower than a taxi ride in the London rush hour. Or displaying remarkable tenacity and durability you could argue. Grant continues to records and release new material though they mostly seem to be either Christmas or Christian music albums.

Although I’ve never really made the time to listen to this next artist, I certainly haven’t forgotten her. For years, I lumped PJ Harvey into the same basket as Björk; not musically but as an artist who I believed I could never get into. As such, I studiously avoided her and her work. She was too weird and dark for my pop sensibilities and, as with the EMF Best Of album earlier, I was happy with my choice. Fast forward nearly 30 years and, just as with Björk, I wonder if I was maybe mistaken. I’ve quite enjoyed some of the Icelandic singer’s appearances in these TOTP repeats and watching PJ Harvey here on her debut on the show, I actually don’t mind “C’mon Billy”. Taken from her third album “To Bring You My Love”, it creeps about menacingly but with a hook that resounds in your head long after the song has finished. Maybe I should investigate some of her back catalogue. Maybe.

I wasn’t the only person who felt like I used to about PJ Harvey MBE back in the day. My aforementioned friend Robin saw her on an episode of Later…with Jools Holland when he was in the studio audience and disliked her performance so much, he gave her the rods at the end of it as the camera panned round. I’m not sure which appearance it was though and haven’t managed to spot him fingers aloft on the ones I’ve found on YouTube yet.

*checks again*

Still nothing. Ah well. As with investigating PJ Harvey’s back catalogue, I’ll keep on checking.

Robson & Jerome have been toppled (for now)! Hurray! Oh shite! They’ve been replaced by The Outhere Brothers! BOO! BOO! Yes, for the second time in 1995, this pair of dolts have secured themselves a UK No 1 record with “Boom Boom Boom”. How?! Why?! Was it anything to do with the track being taken up by other fanbases. For example, Newcastle United fans adopted it as a terrace chant by changing the words to “Toon, Toon, Toon”*. No, surely not.

*Toon is how they refer to themselves and being a reflection of the way the word ‘town’ is pronounced in a Geordie accent despite Newcastle being a city and not a town. Yeah, that’s just mad isn’t it?

Apparently, the duo were the first act to have their first two singles go to No 1 in the UK since New Kids On The Block in 1990. If I remember them correctly, their hits, like The Outhere Brothers, also relied upon nonsensical, shout-a-long choruses, in their case mainly revolving around the word “oh”.

Here’s something we’ve not had for a while on the show. – a single that never made the UK Top 40. That may be the reason why I don’t recall Heavy Stereo. Wikipedia tells me that they never actually had a single that got past No 45 in the charts despite four attempts of which this one, “Sleep Freak”, was the first. Listening to it now, it sounds very derivative with a definite glam rock beat to it. Hang on! There is something familiar about them! Yes, the lead singer is Gem Archer who would later join Oasis and go on to play in both Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye and his brother’s Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Maybe some things are definitely best left forgotten.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Diana King	Shy Guy	No
2	Shaggy featuring Rayvon	In The Summertime	As if
3	Bobby Brown	Humpin’ Around	Nope
4	EMF / Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer	I’m A Believer	Nah
5	Michael Jackson	Childhood	God no!
6	D:Ream	Shoot Me With Your Love	I did not
7	Amy Grant	Big Yellow Taxi	Negative
8	PJ Harvey	C’mon Billy	No but maybe I was wrong
9	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	Away with you!
10	Heavy Stereo	Sleep Freak	It’s a 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/m001sx1m/top-of-the-pops-06071995

TOTP 29 JUN 1995

Posted on December 5, 2023 by 80stastic

We arrived at an unusual episode of TOTP whereby the executive producer Ric Blaxill incorporated what might now be called a ‘heritage’ slot into the show but which I’m sure wouldn’t have been labelled as such at the time. Host Mark Goodier refers to it only using the generic, catch all term of ‘exclusive’ which is the description that was used for just about any non standard performance on the show around this time. The band featured in this slot are pretty special though and retain a huge legacy – it’s only the bloody Ramones!

All in good time though and we start with the antithesis of the legendary punk rockers with one of the worst examples of naff dance music that the 90s spewed forth. Clock (even their name was terrible) followed the classic Eurodance blueprint of a female singer and male rapper even though they were actually from Manchester as opposed to Holland or Germany like many of the acts of that genre. Where they did divert from the template was in their decision to pursue chart hits via that well trodden route of the cover version. After a couple of minor hits with their own compositions in 1994, they went Top 10 with a cover of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and that success convinced them to carry on in that direction. Next up was their version of Tag Team’s 1994 No 34 hit “Whoomph! (There It Is)”. Now this track has quite the backstory which I’ve already discussed in the post covering the TOTP featuring Tag Team so I don’t propose to go over all that again. What I will say is that when Clock first started releasing singles and I wasn’t aware of who they were despite working in a record shop, when I was asked about them by a customer I presumed they were asking about Clock DVA, the experimental industrial pioneers from Sheffield who formed in 1978 and were contemporaries of Cabaret Voltaire. I might as well have been talking a different language trying to explain Clock DVA to the young punter who just wanted to buy his favourite Eurodance tune.

Depressingly, we’ll be seeing lots more of Clock in these TOTP repeats as they went on to (ahem) clock up a further nine UK Top 40 hits throughout the 90s including covers of “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)”* by the Four Seasons, “You Sexy Thing”* by Hot Chocolate and “Blame It On The Boogie” by The Jacksons. You lucky people!

*They truncated the titles to differentiate them from the originals though.

I think my patience with Jamiroquai wasn’t so much wearing thin by this point as had completely perished to reveal an embarrassing hole in its pants. To my ears, everything single they’d released by this point sounded the same as the one before. “Stillness In Time” was a case in point. It meanders along with the promise of breaking into this really cool groove but never actually goes anywhere. Do you think Jay Kay, when laying down these tracks, would say to himself “Yes! We really nailed it there!”? And yet, this single entered the chart at the highest position (No 9) the band had ever achieved so maybe it was me that was out of step with public opinion? The performance here is sooo muso – there’s even a man wearing an oversized poncho for Chrissakes! Nah, not for me thanks.

And now…a single that has gone down in the annals of time as one of the very worst ever laid down in a recording studio from an album that Q Magazine decreed as the worst of all time in a 2006 poll. It is now received knowledge that Duran Duran made the biggest career misstep ever by releasing their covers album “Thank You” as the follow up to 1993’s career reviving “The Wedding Album” but is that a fair take on the reviled collection of songs? I mean, Lou Reed said that their version of “Perfect Day” was the best cover ever of one of his songs. Indeed, “Thank You” wasn’t even the commercial catastrophe we might have expected from the worst album ever – it made No 12 in the UK album charts and sold half a million copies in the US. So what’s the deal with it?

I think the answer lies in the track listing and the songs the band chose to cover. Some of them were seen as sacrosanct and untouchable and certainly by some faded 80s pin up pop stars. How dare Duran Duran take on the back catalogues of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Elvis Costello etc! The ultimate act of heresy though appears to be their decision to cover Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke” and Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)”. The latter was released as the second single from the album and like Clock earlier, they changed the title slightly to “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”.

So it’s cards on the table time – I don’t mind the Duran Duran version. I think it’s alright in the same way that I thought Gun’s rocked up cover of “Word Up” by Cameo was OK. Is it better than or even as good as the original? No, I don’t think so but that doesn’t make it utter shite by default. I even think the black and white video works and adds something to the track. What didn’t work though was the album’s standing both critically and within the band’s own oeuvre of work. In fact it derailed them. A follow up album (“Medazzaland”) wasn’t released in the UK and by the end of the decade, the band had lost both their record label Capitol / EMI and bass player and founding member John Taylor. They would not have another hit album until 2004 when the original line up reformed to record “Astronaut”. And yet…I wonder if it’s time for “Thank You” to be revisited and reappraised. There are surely worse albums out there. Surely?

Who remembers All–4–One? “I Swear” yeah? Sure. Great. Who remembers their other hit though? Not so many hands up now are there? Well, they did have one and it was called “I Can Love You Like That” and remarkably, just like “I Swear” before it, this was a song originally recorded by country singer John Michael Montgomery. I guess if it had worked once, why wouldn’t it work again? And it did, in America at least where it was a No 5 hit. Over here though, we decided that one huge song from All-4-One was quite enough thank you very much and it struggled to a high of No 33 despite this live TOTP performance (which I can’t find a clip of by the way). The group would never return to our charts though they are still together to this day and last released an album in 2016.

Heeeere’s Edwyn! Yes, the rather fabulous Edwyn Collins is back on the show to perform his brilliant but surprising hit “A Girl Like You”. Edwyn, of course, started his musical career as the lead singer of Orange Juice who criminally only had one UK Top 40 hit. However, alongside the likes of The Adventures, Icicle Works and It Bites, they really should have had more. “Flesh Of My Flesh”, “Lean Period” and “What Presence?!” were all great singles that were habitually ignored by the record buying public. Their back catalogue has been revisited retrospectively though including a six CD box set called “Coals To Newcastle” and a compilation called “The Glasgow School” the latter of which featured a cover of “I Don’t Care” by The Ramones. I’m guessing then that Edwyn would have been stoked to be on the same show as the Queens punk rockers. Except he wasn’t. The clip shown here was just a repeat of an earlier performance from a couple of weeks before. Bloody scheduling! Rip it up!

We now turn our attention to Menswear and I don’t mean that awful tank top that host Mark Goodier is wearing. It looks like an off cut of the rug in my dining room. No, I mean the poster boys of Britpop – they even had a Levi’s modelling contract – who are experiencing their first chart hit in “Daydreamer”.

More than perhaps any other artist of this era, Menswear’s is a cautionary tale of running before you can walk, going too far too soon and all those other advisory idioms. Being lauded by the press and courted by record labels whilst only having four songs inevitably led to egos bigger than their talent and it would all end in tales of drug abuse, mental health issues, a sacked drummer and a massively over budget sophomore album that only got a release in a Menswear obsessed Japan. Back in June 1995 though, the band looked like they had the world at their feet. A distinctive, Roxy Music infused single and a frontman in the modish, angular Johnny Dean who had perfected the art of looking right down the camera lens long before ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg did it at the 2010 General Election live TV debates. God, even that is now 13 years ago! Oh to be young and watching Menswear on TOTP again!

Boo! Rubbish! Get off! It’s The Outhere Brothers again whom I referred to as “those two pricks” in a previous post. By way of contrast, Mark Goodier calls them “those naughty boys”. Yeah, I stand indubitably by my comment mate. Their single “Boom Boom Boom” is up to No 2 on its way to the top of the charts where it will stay for four weeks. It came from an album called “1 Polish, 2 Biscuits & A Fish Sandwich” which were not that subtle references to the penis, buttocks and vagina. They went on to release a Best Of album in 2002 called “The Fucking Hits”. It’s not big and it’s not clever is it? Like I said, pricks.

And so to the Ramones. Now I wouldn’t describe myself as a super fan but I certainly can appreciate the influence that the band had despite little in the way of commercial success. Their hi-speed, pop-punk sound would mobilise a generation of bands and shape their futures in a way that they surely couldn’t have predicted. That said, would the pop kids of 1995 have known or cared who the Ramones were? Maybe they did. Or maybe it was just that executive producer Ric Blaxill was a fan and wanted to get them on the show. I don’t know. On the show they were though and they were there to plug their fourteenth and final studio album “Adios Amigos” of which “I Don’t Want To Grow Up” was the lead single. Now, I already knew this Tom Waits song as my wife is a fan and had the “Bone Machine” album it’s taken from. It’s a great track, all raggedy, shuffling and shambolic but also captivating.

This version by the Ramones is pretty good too and the fact that the tempo of it can be ramped up so much shows the quality of the song. You could be forgiven for thinking it was a Ramones original.

Given the trademark brevity of the Ramones’ material, there’s time for another song from them so we get an album track called “Cretin Family” from them. Mark Goodier’s attempt at looking genuinely surprised that there was more doesn’t convince anyone. He must have known – there’s even a caption on screen that says ‘Yes more!’. It’s sobering to think that Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy are now all no longer with us.

From the Ramones to Robson & Jerome. That’s quite a leap! The duo are still at No 1 with “Unchained Melody” for a seventh and final week. When the dust finally settled, it would have spent 14 weeks in the Top 40 and 25 inside the Top 100. That’s just under half a year! Just as it finally dropped out of the charts, their follow up “I Believe / Up On The Roof” went straight in at No 1. 1995 – what a time to be alive!

The play out track is “This Is A Call” by Foo Fighters. I have a history of missing out on bands that I really should have been into and Dave Grohl’s post Nirvana vehicle was another to add to the list. I think because I’d never really got Nirvana either (although clearly “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a monster tune), my musical antenna weren’t pointing in the Foo Fighters direction in the first place. That said, “This Is A Call” is a banger so why it didn’t lead me to investigate more of their stuff at the time I don’t know. Still, it’s much easier these days to explore music unknown to you what with the likes of Spotify and all so I really have no excuse. I’ve got until their next appearance in these TOTP repeats to report back…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	Whoomph! (There It Is)	As if
2	Jamiroquai	Stillness In Time	No
3	Duran Duran	White Lines (Don’t Do It)	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
4	All-4-One	I Can Love You Like That	Nope
5	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Menswear	Daydreamer	I did not
7	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	Hell no!
8	Ramones	I Don’t Want To Grow Up / Cretin Family	Negative
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody	Of course not
10	Foo Fighters	This Is A Call	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m001sx1h/top-of-the-pops-29061995

TOTP 22 JUN 1995

Posted on December 1, 2023 by 80stastic

These mid 90s TOTPs were all over the place musically. I’m looking for some sort of thread that links the acts on this particular show together and apart from an over arching theme of dance music, I can’t really detect one – it’s all a bit…not exactly eclectic but more…well…haphazard. There’s Britpop, soft rock, cover versions, a novelty record…and Mike And The Mechanics. If the running order is unpredictable one thing that is completely, absolutely unequivocally guaranteed is that host Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo will trot out a string of lame lines that he thinks are shit-your-pants funny. What a plank.

1995 really was in the midst of an identity crisis. Look at the opening act – the prince of Eurodance Haddaway had somehow managed to secure himself four consecutive Top 10 hits between 1993 and early 1994 but the wheels had pretty much come off by this point. His second album “The Drive” did nothing in the UK (I’m not sure we even stocked it in Our Price as I don’t know it’s cover art at all) but somehow its lead single “Fly Away” propelled him into our charts one more time despite everybody knowing (including himself surely) that he was living on borrowed time. Being a resourceful lad, he’s decided the best way to extend his shelf life was to do his best 2 Unlimited impression complete with bringing in a female vocalist to accompany him just to hammer home the Ray and Anita comparison. I guess it worked as “Fly Away” made it to No 20 but this track surely didn’t live long in anyone’s memory.

It’s the aforementioned Mike + The Mechanics next with the title track from their latest album “Beggar On A Beach Of Gold” though curiously they’ve added an ‘A’ to the title of the single. “A Beggar On A Beach Of Gold” was the follow up to “Over My Shoulder” which performed well reaching No 12 in the charts. Its successor couldn’t repeat that though peaking at No 33. Was there a reason for this? Well, this track has Paul Young (not that one) on lead vocals whereas “Over My Shoulder” saw Paul Carrack doing the heaving lifting when it came to the singing. Now, wasn’t their biggest hit “The Living Years” also sung by Carrack so is there a pattern emerging here?

*checks Mike + The Mechanics discography*

Hmm. Not really. Paul Young was the vocalist on “Word Of Mouth”, “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” and “All I Need Is A Miracle” which were all UK Top 40 hits. I’m sure OMD went through a small phase in the mid 80s where their singles sung by Paul Humphreys were hits but those that had Andy McCluskey on the microphone didn’t though. The only other band that comes to mind where the vocals were shared is Tears For Fears but they had big hits with songs sung by both Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal. I seem to be looking at a theory that doesn’t hold water so I’ll move on.

The sadly departed Paul Young (still not that one) was also the singer in Sad Café best known for the hits “My Oh My” (not the Slade song!) and “Everyday Hurts” though I have to say that watching Paul here, I’m not reminded of those hits but taken aback by his resemblance to the actor, screenwriter and novelist Mark Gatiss or rather Mark Gatiss as a League Of Gentlemen character. Perhaps Les McQueen of Crème Brulée?

We’re back to the dance music now with another airing of the video for “(Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving” by Baby D. A take on The Korgis’ hit of the same name (almost), it was at its chart peak of No 3 this week so not quite equalling the success of their chart topper “Let Me Be Your Fantasy”. Baby D herself was one Dee Fearon and if that surname sounds familiar then it could be due to this guy…

Yes, Dee is married to Phil Fearon of Galaxy fame. You may recall him having a clutch of jaunty pop hits in the mid 80s. A little known fact is that Phil also had a song with the word ‘fantasy’ in it that also got to the top of a chart – sadly for Phil it was the Best of the Rest chart as his single “Fantasy Real” peaked at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41 in 1983. Yes, Phil’s fantasy of a No 1 record wasn’t real. He should have asked his wife about how to bag a chart topper. “What Do I Do?” indeed.

As predictable as a controversial VAR decision every weekend, here comes Simon Mayo with some inappropriate reference during his link to the next act. Introducing “Shoot Me With Your Love” by D:Ream, he makes some asinine comment about selling bullets to Iran which I’m assuming was his attempt at being topical as the US imposed oil and trade sanctions on Iran over their sponsorship of terrorism, pursuit of nuclear weapons and hostility to the Israeli – Palestinian peace process in this year. Yeah, nice one Mayo. Nothing was off limits to you was it in your pursuit of a cheap gag. What a prick! And look at what he’s wearing to present a music programme reflecting current trends – a shirt and tie! He was only three months away from his 37th birthday at the time of this broadcast – not exactly down with the kids was he?

As for D:Ream, this was the lead single from their second album “World” and the majority of the online reaction to it after this TOTP repeat aired on BBC4 recently went along the lines of “Bloody Hell! Robbie Williams nicked this tune for ‘Let Me Entertain You’!”. I have to say I concur. The chorus hook of both songs is interchangeable. I didn’t I notice this at the time, probably because:

Robbie’s song wasn’t released until nearly three years after D:Ream’s single
“Shoot Me With Your Love” was hardly that memorable a tune in the first place. Come on, D:Ream are remembered for one song and one song only by the vast majority of people!

Anyway, it did reach No 7 which isn’t to be sniffed at (“Let Me Entertain You” peaked at No 3) whilst parent album “World” also did pretty well with a chart high of No 5 though it sold five times less copies than its predecessor “D:Ream On Vol 1”.

More identity crisis stuff now. A big ballad from a dance act? Maybe it’s more of an anthem than a ballad but even so. Despite being one of M People’s best known songs, “Search For The Hero” is not one of the band’s biggest hits. The third single from their “Bizarre Fruit” album, it did stretch their run of consecutive Top 10 hits to eight but I would have thought it peaked much higher than No 9. Not so. Its status might be due to the fact that its profile was raised not once but twice by external factors. Firstly, a year after its release, it was used as the music for a Peugeot 406 car advert and then, on 29 June 1996, M People performed it at a celebratory concert at Old Trafford to mark the final match of the Euro 96 football tournament. Heather Small was so attached to the idea of the song that she basically rewrote it as her first solo single in 2000 and called it “Proud”. Again, it was latched upon for a sporting purpose becoming the official theme for the London 2012 Olympic bid and, of course, was used as a running gag throughout the BBC sit com Miranda.

It wasn’t just Heather Small who liked to recycle though (as she did by taking “Search For The Hero” and turning it into “Proud”). M People’s record label Deconstruction reused the whole “Bizarre Fruit” album by rereleasing it as “Bizarre Fruit II” just a year later with the radio edits of “Search For The Hero” and “Love Rendezvous” replacing the original album versions plus the band’s version of “Itchycoo Park” by Small Faces added to the track listing. Cheeky blighters.

And now, perhaps one of the most pointless cover versions of all time – Amy Grant’s take on Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”. Why? Just…why? Well, to get a hit obviously but sheesh, this is totally without merit. A sanitised, horribly 90s version of a song when the original is so well known? No thanks. Amy doesn’t even do the infamous high/low vocal followed by the cringy laugh at the end. Maybe she thought that was a step too far? Maybe she thought that would be disrespectful to Joni? Maybe she thought she was being respectful by not doing it?

For whatever reason, enough punters bought this to send it to No 20 in the UK singles chart, Amy’s biggest hit since “Baby Baby” made No 2 in 1991. Surely it isn’t possible that people didn’t know the 1970 original? Or maybe they were reminded of it but in the pre-streaming days of 1995, the closest thing to having access to Joni’s song (unless you shelled out for the “Ladies Of The Canyon” album it was on) was to buy the Amy Grant version? Not everything was simpler back in the day I guess.

It’s the kings of the TOTP exclusive next as, for what seems like the umpteenth time, Bon Jovi are here with, yep, another ‘exclusive performance’. This time it’s to promote their new album “These Days” which was released the week after this show aired and which would knock Michael Jackson’s “HIStory” Best Of off the top of the charts. There’s no Niagara Falls or American Football stadium location tonight though as they are in the TOTP studio in person. The song they perform here is the album’s title track and, for what it’s worth, it’s pretty good I think. Now I have been known in the past to not be immune to the guilty pleasure that is the Jovi – I once refused to leave a nightclub in Sunderland until I’d danced to them despite being legless through drink – so I may be a little biased but still, I think the song holds up. More reflective and mature than some of their earlier, bombastic stadium rock.

Jon seems to have grown out that shorter haircut he was sporting for the “Always” single back in the Autumn of 1994 and there’s also a change in the band line up as original bass player Alex John Such has been replaced by Hugh McDonald. This track would eventually be released as the fourth single from the album in February 1996 so we may see it again when the BBC4 repeats get to that point in time.

Simon Mayo has another one of his ludicrous non sequiturs for us next as he states that Bon Jovi had recently picked up two Kerrang! awards and a Kerplunk award. For God’s sake man, please just stop!

Right, on with the music and what’s going on here then? Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer teaming up with EMF to do a cover of “I’m A Believer”? Well, it seems to me that in the case of Vic and Bob, they had a history both with this song (it was performed by Vic on the first ever TV show of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out) and with teaming up with indie rock bands to do cover versions (they, of course, collaborated with The Wonderstuff to take Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” to No 1 in 1991). As for EMF, it looks to me like a desperate attempt to restart their career which had exploded with UK No 3 and US No 1 “Unbelievable” in 1990. The success of that single and parent album “Schubert Dip” hadn’t sustained and their latest album “Cha Cha Cha” (released in March 1995) had peaked at No 30 and yielded just one minor hit single. By comparison, Vic and Bob were flying with a second series of The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer having just finished airing. It made sense to associate yourself with a successful act when you’re trying to regain your own popularity and if the plan was to bag themselves a massive seller then it was a case of mission accomplished as “I’m A Believer” peaked at No 3. However, this would prove to be a temporary return to glories. One final throw of the dice in the form of the wonderful follow up single “Afro King” failed to make the Top 40. The band split not long after though have reformed at various points down the years and are currently a functioning entity.

I read Bob Mortimer’s autobiography recently and he comes across as a very humble, vulnerable and warm human being. He was actually very shy as a school kid which looks at odds with his exuberant performance here. One last thing, what was the deal with EMF and songs with the word ‘believe’ in them? “Unbelievable”, “I Believe”, “I’m A Believer”…I would liked to have heard them take on Bucks Fizz’s “Land Of Make Believe” – now that really would make for an interesting cover version!

Six weeks now for Robson & Jerome at No 1 with “Unchained Melody”. SIX WEEKS! I never watched Soldier Soldier, the TV series that spawned this duo so I dug out the infamous clip on YouTube. Here it is…

Hmm. I can’t really see why this scene would have ignited a clamour to be able to buy and own a copy of these two actors doing “Unchained Melody” if I’m honest. If only YouTube had been around back then, maybe all those people who bought the record would have been satiated by being able to watch this clip over and over again instead and we wouldn’t have had to endure Robson & Jerome at all!

The play out track is “Daydreamer” by Menswear but they will be in the studio on the next episode of the show so I’ll keep this short. This was the band’s second single release but their first to be made available extensively after debut “I’ll Manage Somehow” was only printed in very limited quantities meaning that it couldn’t sell enough copies to get in the charts. “Daydreamer” therefore became the band’s first Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 14, also its debut entry position.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	Fly Away	Never happening
2	Mike + The Mechanics	A Beggar On A Beach Of Gold	Nope
3	Baby D	(Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving	No thanks
4	D:Ream	Shoot Me With Your Love	Nah
5	M People	Search For The Hero	No
6	Amy Grant	Big Yellow Taxi	Negative
7	Bon Jovi	These Days	I did not
8	Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer / EMF	I’m A Believer	I wasn’t – no
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody	As if
10	Menswear	Daydreamer	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/m001snq6/top-of-the-pops-22061995

TOTP 15 JUN 1995

Posted on November 28, 2023 by 80stastic

As I begin writing this post, it turns out that today (29th November) is the 40th anniversary of the release of the first ever Now That’s What I Call Music album. Unbelievably, the series that started in 1983 is still going strong in 2023 with Now 116 having just come out. I bought that first album way back when but it would prove to be the first and last Now album I would ever purchase. I wonder why I stopped my allegiance to the series so suddenly? I recall being quite excited about that first album as it did something no other compilation album had ever done before – it was a joint venture between two of the UK’s biggest record labels EMI and Virgin meaning the amount of singles available to be licensed to appear on it was much bigger than at any time before. Plus, they were the original songs not some dodgy knock off covers that appeared on those awful Top Of The Pops compilation albums from the 70s. Incidentally, Mark Goodier had a T-shirt on in one of the BBC4 repeats the other week that was advertising the Top Of The Pops compilation album that got launched in 1995.

Anyway, back to that first Now album and why I never bought another of them after that one. Did I think maybe they were a bit naff and not cool enough? After all, not all the songs on them would have earned any street cred points at school. That first one had the likes of Bonnie Tyler, New Edition and Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack on it. It’s possible. The next time a Now album appeared on my radar was when my wife bought Now 13 around 1988. Then, in the 90s, I would see them on a regular basis as I was working at Our Price by then and selling them for a living. I remember in 1991 there being a big fuss about the landmark of Now 20 being reached. Incidentally, at one point around 1995, they thought about doing away with the numbers scheme as there was a fear that as the volume numbers got bigger and bigger, it would make the series seem outdated as no compilation series had ever gone on for that long. Anyway, I was still at Our Price (just) to help sell some of the 2.3 million copies that the best selling volume in the series (46) shifted in 1999. I’m getting ahead of myself though. I wonder how many of the songs featured in this TOTP made it onto a Now album?

By the way, tonight’s host is Michelle Gayle in the ‘golden mic’ slot which I guess was a canny choice by executive producer Ric Blaxill seeing as she brought with her both the glamour of being a pop star and the technical craft of being an actress so she could handle a few scripted lines whilst presenting.

Tonight’s opening act are Wet Wet Wet who are in the studio to promote their latest single “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now”. However, we’ve seen them do this one on the show before as, back in April, they performed the song in the album chart slot to promote their album “Picture This”. As such, I’ve already reviewed this track so what am I supposed to say about it now? Well, there was a reaction of astonishment online to Marti Pellow’s suit, specifically that it consists of a split pattern between stripes and checks (or is it spots?). Even I, about as anti-fashion as it comes and almost allergic to buying clothes, knows that’s a fashion faux pas. It’s like putting tomato ketchup on a Sunday roast; you just don’t do it.

Chart peak: No 7

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Oh no! Not these two jokers again! In a year that included Robson & Jerome, it’s quite the feat to be possibly the worst chart act of 1995. I couldn’t stand The Outhere Brothers with their child-like call and response nonsense and the fact that they wrote filthy lyrics but were quite prepared to peddle a heavily edited and sanitised version of them so as to pursue mainstream success. At least have the courage of your convictions! After “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” went to No 1 earlier in the year, the duo weren’t prepared to be one hit wonders and repeated the trick with follow up “Boom Boom Boom” by inexplicably convincing the UK record buying public to buy another of their moronic tracks in enough quantities to make it a second chart topper.

Enough of those two pricks though. Id rather discuss how the word ‘boom’ historically figures heavily in pop music culture. Look at all these songs that include the word (or variants of it) in their title:

Boom! Shake The Room – DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! – Vengaboys
Boom-Shack-A-Lak – Apache Indian
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker
Boombastic – Shaggy
Sonic Boom Boy – Westworld

Then, of course, there’s The Boomtown Rats and for the fans of obscure 80s bands (like me) there’s Boom Boom Room. I guess it’s such a great word ‘boom’. Onomatopoeia at its finest.

Chart peak: No 1

Now album? Yes – Now 31

A second outing now for the video to “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2. Now I always quite liked this song. It seemed a good fit for an superhero action movie; all swooping and soaring and dramatic. Plenty of others agreed with me as it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. However, it also had its fair share of detractors which resulted in a nomination for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song. It won neither so maybe they cancel each other out?

Aside from “Miss Sarajevo” from the “Passengers” side project, U2 wouldn’t release another single until “Discothèque” in 1997 which was another divisive song but then if you have a lead singer like Bono, you’re always going to divide opinion.

Chart peak: No 2

Now album? Yes – Now 32

Still with Bitty McLean? Yep, a whole two years on from his debut and biggest hit single “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”, UB40’s former sound engineer was still cranking out medium sized chart hits most of which seemed to be reggae’d up versions of classic pop songs. This particular one was his take on “We’ve Only Just Begun” by The Carpenters. He’d previously done “Dedicated To The One I Love” made famous by The Mamas & The Papas and indeed that first hit was originally recorded by Fats Domino. Did he write any of his own stuff? A quick check of the track listing for his first album “Just To Let You Know…” reveals that he wrote three out of the eleven tracks on there. Hmm. Not that many then. Poor old Bitty can’t do right for doing wrong by me though. I criticise him for not writing his own stuff but I also don’t like his cover versions. This one is just drivel and would prove to be his final UK Top 40 hit. Still, he did know how to rock a super slick suit. Marti Pellow take note.

Chart peak: No 23

Now album? No

From a killer suit to a killer tune. Perhaps the most unlikely comeback of 1995 belonged to Edwyn Collins, a man without a UK hit single since 1983 when his ex-band Orange Juice reached the Top 10 with their one and only Top 40 entry “Rip It Up”. The band split in 1985 after being unable to consolidate on that success so Edwyn went solo and despite releasing a couple of albums and a handful of singles, nobody was really listening. All of that changed with “A Girl Like You” from third album “Gorgeous George”. Originally released on November 1994, it became a massive hit in just about every territory on the planet except here where it stalled at No 42. Huge airplay support saw it given a rerelease in the UK in the Summer of 1995. A shimmering, slinky, retro sounding pop song that you could have easily believed came from the soundtrack to a super cool 60s spy movie set in Paris, it finally broke the UK’s collective resistance when it went Top 5.

Having read both the account of Edwyn’s double cerebral haemorrhage in 2005 by his wife Grace Maxwell and a book detailing the history and adventures of Postcard Records, I have to conclude that Edwyn’s had quite the life and is a man of superb character and resilience. He looks great in this performance and yes that is a ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook up there on drums as he played on the record.

Chart peak: No 4

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Before we get to the next act, we have an interloper in the studio but no need to worry, it’s not a protester with a cause but rather Louise from Eternal who surprises Michelle Gayle with a gold disc presented for sales of the latter’s debut album. Michelle seems genuinely surprised at this turn of events but retains her cool sufficiently to introduce the next act.

As with Bitty McLean earlier, here’s another artist that I’m amazed was still bothering the chart compilers in 1995. After her debut album made huge waves around the world and especially in the US, Paula Abdul went away for a couple of years and pulled off a follow up with second album “Spellbound” including the hits “Rush Rush” and “Vibeology”. Expecting her to complete a second comeback a lengthier four years on looked a forlorn hope but she managed to (sort of). Third album “Head Over Heels” would achieve gold status but those sales were drastically down on 1991’s “Spellbound” (three times platinum) and 1989’s “Forever Your Girl” (seven times platinum). Lead single “My Love Is For Real” sounded like Paula had been paying a bit too much attention to Kylie’s recent comeback hit of her own “Confide In Me” what with its Eastern influences and all. As with Bitty McLean, this would prove to be Paula’s last UK Top 40 hit.

Chart peak: No 28

Now album? No

I quite often rely on chart statistics in this blog to make a point or sometimes (whisper it!) pad the posts out a bit. They can be a barometer of what was happening in the charts but sometimes they don’t always tell the whole story I feel. Look at East 17 for example. I think there’s a decent argument that the band reached the pinnacle of their career with their Christmas No 1 “Stay Another Day” and that inevitably it was a slow descent from that point on. And yet…they had nine more hits after that chart topper of which six went Top 10 including two No 2s and a No 3. However, can you name any of them? Even looking at their discography, the only one that means anything to me is the single they did with Gabrielle. For me, their golden era was 1992-94. Everything past that I kind of struggle with. “Hold My Body Tight” is a case in point. There’s really not much to it at all. Lightweight doesn’t really cover it. It was the last single to be released from their “Steam” album and it did kind of feel (and sound) like an afterthought.

Chart peak: No 12

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Robson & Jerome are still at No 1 with “Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. At this point, there was talk of it becoming the biggest selling single in the UK ever but in the end such chatter was well wide of the mark. As it stands, it’s No 15 in the all time list though there’s two songs ahead of it that hadn’t been released yet in 1995.

Chart peak: No 1

Now album? No

And so to that exclusive screening of the video for “Scream” by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson that Michelle Gayle has been bigging up all show. So was it worth the wait for this $6 million promo? Ah, I don’t know. All of these huge, blockbuster videos from past eras are always constrained by the technology that existed at the time they were made. In 1995, it looked impossibly slick and right at the cutting edge of what was possible. The black and white film, Janet’s dark make up making her look otherworldly and a spacecraft themed plot with image morphing special effects all combined well but watching it back in 2023, it doesn’t seem as impressive as my son’s FIFA computer game. It did receive eleven MTV Video Music Award nominations in 1995 – more than any other video had ever received – if that helps answer the question.

Chart peak: No 3

Now album? No

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Wet Wet Wet	Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now	No
2	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	As if
3	U2	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Bitty McLean	We’ve Only Just Begun	Nah
5	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Surely I did? No? Bah!
6	Paula Abdul	My Love Is For Real	Negative
7	East 17	Hold My Body Tight	I did not
8	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	Never happening
9	Michael Jackson / Janet Jackson	Scream	Nope

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/m001snq0/top-of-the-pops-15061995

TOTP 08 JUN 1995

Posted on November 24, 2023 by 80stastic

I was never a member of the TOTP studio audience. Despite watching the show religiously since about 1982, it was never really an ambition of mine. It didn’t actually look like that much fun, being herded around a studio, told where to stand and when to cheer in the faint hope you would end up in shot behind the presenter so you could mouth “Hello Mum” to the camera or just generally act daft. Obviously, there was the appeal of occupying the same space as and being up close and personal with a pop star or band but you were completely at the mercy of the running order for whatever show you got tickets for. Take this one for example. June the 8th, 1995 was not a vintage episode. The biggest star in the studio that week by a mile was Annie Lennox. Of the other five acts actually there in person, two are fairly anonymous dance groups, one is a band just breaking through but who would come to be seen as a second tier Britpop artist, a singer who would be remembered for just one song that isn’t this one and two actors turned unlikely and unlikeable pop stars. It’s not a great haul is it?! Even the host is just a Radio 1 DJ (Nicky Campbell) rather than a ‘golden mic’ guest presenter. I think I would have felt short changed had I have been in the audience that week.

We start with one of those dance groups in Loveland who had notched up three middling sized hits before this one – “Don’t Make Me Wait” – took them to No 22 in the charts. Their resident vocalist was Rachel McFarlane who sings on this track but her status within the group seemed to be constantly up for debate. Sometimes their records were described as ‘Loveland featuring Rachel McFarlane’ and sometimes they carried the legend (as this single did) ‘featuring the voice of Rachel McFarlane’. Wonder what that was as all about? A legal / contractual thing? As for the song, it’s a pretty standard house dance tune, the like of which I thought had mainly been in the charts in the early part of the decade. Indeed, it puts me in mind of Ce Ce Peniston’s 1992 hit “Finally”.

Next that aforementioned Britpop band. Although I referred to them as second tier, I did rather like Dodgy and even had one of their albums. I think I used that phrase to distinguish them from the likes of Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Supergrass who I saw as the real vanguard of the movement. In 1995 though, I didn’t really know too much about Dodgy other than their name as someone I’d worked with at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester knew them personally. After a debut album with an awful title (“The Dodgy Album”? Seriously?) in 1993 that didn’t set the world alight – it peaked at No 75 in the charts – they regrouped and came back the following year with “Homegrown” that performed much better achieving gold status in the UK. It also provided the band with three Top 40 singles the first of which was “Staying Out For The Summer” which made No 38 in October 1994. Perhaps realising that they’d made a balls up with the release date, label A&M authorised a second assault on the charts in, you know, the Summer and the song was back in June 1995.

It’s a pretty cool track and I was reminded of that recently. To explain, I recently started volunteering as an usher at Hull Truck Theatre and one of the first plays I worked was called Pop Music by Anna Jordan. Set at a wedding where the two characters meet years after they were at the same school together, it tells the story of their lives since; the highs and mainly lows and how pop music has soundtracked their life landmarks. It’s a great play and the version I saw (six times) featured two wonderful actors. Their time on stage is accompanied by a constant playlist of pop songs including a selection from the Britpop era. The first one to feature? Yep, “Staying Out For The Summer”! My time watching the play reminded me what a great (and possibly underrated) tune it is. Sure, it displays its Beatles influences pretty heavily but that’s not a bad thing in most people’s book is it? Dodgy would return in 1996 with their biggest album and single in “Free Peace Sweet” (the one I had) and “Good Enough” respectively. Nigel Clark and Andy Miller would look pretty different from this TOTP appearance sporting peroxide blonde, bouffant locks. Dodgy barnets anyone?

It’s a time for a repeat of that performance by Bon Jovi of “This Ain’t A Love Song” now. Filmed in Milan, this was shown the other week as an ‘exclusive’ but is recycled here as the single is at No 7 in the charts. TOTP had history when it came to re showing Bon Jovi exclusives – the Niagara Falls one for “Always” was on about three times. Maybe executive producer Ric Blaxill thought the band was too big a name to just show it once. To be fair, despite having become globally successful in the 80s with an image of being one of those ‘hair metal’ bands, the stats say that they were more successful in the 90s. In the UK for example, they only had one Top 10 single between 1986 and 1989 out of nine releases. By comparison, the band’s first nine singles of the 90s yielded six Top Tenners. “This Ain’t A Love Song” would become the seventh and the fifth in a run of eight consecutive Top 10 placings. OK, the album sales might tell a different story but TOTP was historically based around the singles chart and this ain’t an album blog so…

That second dance act now and it’s yet another from the seemingly eternal conveyor belt of German Eurodance artists. Following on from Snap!, Real McCoy, Haddaway, Culture Beat, Captain Hollywood Project and preceding Sash!, Fragma and ATB came Jam & Spoon. This duo (real names Rolf Elmer and Markus Löffel) had been having hits all over Europe since 1992 but the UK had proved a tough nut to crack. Indeed, this hit “Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)” had already had a tilt at our charts the year before but had to be satisfied with a peak of No 31. As was the trend around this time for minor hits being given a second chance, it was rereleased to become a Top 10 hit. The track would be revived in 2008 by an artist who is also on this very TOTP. All will be revealed later.

As these things go (and I certainly wasn’t a fan of Eurodance), this one isn’t the worst example of the genre and the flamenco guitar interlude serves to distinguish it from some of the dross we’d heard this decade so far. A word on vocalist Plavka. She started her career singing as a soprano with the Santa Monica opera before decamping to London to join electronic dance pioneers The Shamen on their “En-Tact” album and then working with Jam & Spoon. That’s quite the varied career.

Now if we thought Bon Jovi was a big name worthy of an exclusive performance repeat, what about this fella? Not just perhaps the most famous person on the planet at the time but he’s brought his superstar sister along for good measure. I can only be talking about Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson (and indeed I am). “Scream” was their much talked about duet and a taster of Jacko’s forthcoming double album “HIStory: Past, Present And Future Book I” a studio album of new material coupled with his first Greatest Hits package. Much was expected of “Scream” and its $6 million video and the single did debut on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at No 5, no other single before it had entered the chart at a higher position. However, it got no further than that peak and it was a similar story in the UK where it topped out at No 3. The reason why? Was it a backlash against Jackson following the recent child sex abuse allegations brought against him by Jordan Chandler and his family which were settled out of court by Jackson at a cost of $23 million. Certainly host Nicky Campbell felt emboldened to make a few jibes at the King of Pop calling him “dodgy” and declaring that he had written bigger cheques than the cost of the “Scream” video recently. All fairly distasteful given the nature of the source material. Back to the point about “Scream” and its failure to top the charts though. I think the main reason for its disappointing sales was the fact that it wasn’t very good. There’s hardly a proper song structure in there, rather it was mostly a riff and some trademark Jacko squeals.

As for the video shown here, it appears to be a hastily cobbled together montage of previous videos and clips of Jackson in concert owing to the fact that the official promo wasn’t ready for release yet. Ric Blaxill would have to show it the following week when it was slipping down the charts from No 3 to No 5, thereby breaking the show’s own rule about not featuring songs that were going down the charts. That’s how big a name Michael Jackson was. Eat your hearts out Bon Jovi!

The answer to that query about who did a cover of Jam & Spoon’s “Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)” now – yes it was “Saturday Night” hitmaker Whigfield who gave us her take on it in 2008. Wanna hear it? OK…

Hmm. Not bad. Possibly better than the original. Back in 1995 though, Whigfield was pursuing a much more pop vein with this, her third hit, “Think Of You”. Not as annoying as “Saturday Night”, this would still worm its way into your brain and take root for the Summer once heard. Impossibly catchy (some might even say cutesy), it would take her to No 7 in the chart. A one hit wonder she may be remembered as but the reality was that she wasn’t anything of the sort. Two more chart entries would follow this year though one was an ill advised cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”. You know that Christmas game Whamageddon where you try and avoid hearing said song from 1st to 24th December? Yeah, I don’t think there will ever be a game called Whigageddon.

After launching her cover versions album “Medusa” with a little known track from the 80s that never even made the UK Top 40, Annie Lennox went to the other extreme in her choice of follow up single by going with one of the most famous No 1 songs of all time. Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” was a chart topper around the world in 1967 and went on to sell 10 million copies. In comparison, “No More ‘I Love You’s’” released by The Lover Speaks in 1986 made it to the dizzy heights of No 58 despite being absolutely wonderful. Annie’s version, though not bad at all, was inferior to the original and so it was to be with “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”. Some may say that she was always onto a loser taking on a song which sits on such a pedestal.

The performance here is a continuation on a theme from the drag ballet dancers that accompanied her for “No More ‘I Love You’s’” though this time they are dressed in French maid costumes. The Minnie Mouse headgear is still there though. Annie would release a third single from the album, a cover of Bob Marley’s “Waiting In Vain” which I came across the other day as it is featured in the rather charming John Cusack film Serendipity. Knowing that I would be writing about Annie in this post, that discovery was…well…serendipitous.

No Jacko style video premiere issues for this next song. U2 had not released anything since 1993 before they contributed “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” to the Batman Forever soundtrack. Apparently the film’s director Joel Schumacher tried to shoehorn in a cameo role for Bono in the guise of his MacPhisto alter ego which he used during the Zoo TV Tour. When that didn’t materialise, Bono agreed to give a song to the soundtrack instead. And it was quite a song. Worked up from a demo from the “Zooropa” sessions and playing on the title of the song made famous by Mel Carter in 1965 and revived just the year before by Gloria Estefan, it swoops and soars around a jagged riff which does admittedly sound very similar to “Children Of The Revolution” by T-Rex.

The video directed by Kevin Godley and Maurice Linnane works pretty well I think even if the animation would be seen as clunky by today’s standards. Working in the MacPhisto / The Fly characters alongside clips from the actual film, it has a certain charm I think. Oh yeah, the film. Was it any good? Well, for me it was inferior to the Michael Keaton movies but so much better than the Batman And Robin flick with George Clooney as the Caped Crusader. Val Kilmer played it straight without the idiosyncrasies of Keaton’s portrayal but then he was probably wise not to try and outdo Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones as The Riddler and Two-Face respectively.

The single would lead a charmed chart life spending eight consecutive weeks inside the Top 10, even going back up the charts after falling initially when the film hit UK cinemas on July 14th. It also benefited from another song from the film being in the charts at the same time as Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” was rereleased after peaking at No 20 in 1994 but making it all the way to No 4 a year later. I think both singles helped raise the other’s profile.

And so it came to pass that the musical legend that was Michael Jackson wasn’t able to dent Robson & Jerome’s hold on the No 1 spot* as their version of “Unchained Melody” reigned supreme. This was just getting silly now.

*Not only that, he couldn’t even dislodge Pulp from the No 2 position.

The play out tune is “Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?” by The Bluetones. The first chart entry for another band forever associated with Britpop, it would peak at No 31. This was the sound of a band gearing up for the big time. Within eight months they would have a No 2 single in “Slight Return” and a No 1 album in “Expecting To Fly”. I think their success is sometimes overlooked and get remembered by those that didn’t invest in the band just for that one song. In fact, they would have thirteen Top 40 singles in total and two further Top 10 albums after “Expecting To Fly”.

The band continued to release new material and tour long after Britpop had withered before splitting in 2011 only to reform four years later.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Loveland	Don’t Make Me Wait	I did not
2	Dodgy	Staying Out For The Summer	No
3	Bon Jovi	This Ain’t A Love Song	Nope
4	Jam & Spoon	Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)	Nah
5	Michael Jackson / Janet Jackson	Scream	Never happening
6	Whigfield	Think Of You	Negative
7	Annie Lennox	A Whiter Shade Of Pale	Sorry Annie but no
8	U2	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody	As if
10	The Bluetones	Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?	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/m001sfw6/top-of-the-pops-08061995

TOTP 01 JUN 1995

Posted on November 22, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s June 1995 and I’ll be 27 years old in five days time. Where does the time go? Well, I’ve been writing this blog for the last 8 years for a start! Seriously though, time and the passing of it can really bend your head if you think about it for too long. Do you reckon these BBC4 TOTP repeats have a similar effect on the acts who actually appeared on the show? Being reminded of your glory days that have now faded and of a time when you were young and beautiful as opposed to the person ravaged by middle age that they are now?

Take opening act Reef for example. I wonder if lead singer Gary Stringer still has all that hair?

*googles Gary Stringer*

Yes he does! It has gone grey though and he’s grown a huge beard but still. Not a bad effort. I tried convincing myself a few years back that I didn’t look much different from when I was in my 20s. It was complete tosh of course and I was clearly lying to myself.

Anyway, Reef. This lot were pretty big for a while in the mid 90s, somehow benefitting from the rise of Britpop even though they weren’t your archetypal Britpop band. Nothing of the sort really. I think it may have had something to do with them doing a jingle for TFI Friday. Remember “It’s your letters” based around their biggest hit “Place Your Hands”? Somehow Britpop, lad culture and Chris Evans all seemed to mesh with each other, in my mind anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself though. That’s all a year or so away. Back in 1995, “Naked” was the band’s second Top 40 hit from their debut album “Replenish”. It’s not bad either. Hardly revolutionary and highly derivative but a pretty good blues rock work out. I’m sure that descending guitar riff is nicked off something else but I can’t put my finger on what. Somebody else who was having trouble putting his fingers somewhere was Reef’s bass player – what was the deal with those loose strings flapping all over the place. Tighten your tuning heads man! One last thing about this performance – was the stage invasion by members of the studio audience pre-arranged or impulsive do you think? Can’t make my mind up.

Next a man who I was convinced only had two hits (both back in 1992) but here he is again three years later with another one. Curtis Stigers is said man and helpfully he has joined in with my ‘time’ intro by releasing a single called “This Time” from an album called “Time Was”. Nicely timed Curtis. And talking of the passing of time, in those intervening three years since his last hit, he’s lost his flowing locks that he had when he was in the charts with “You’re All That Matters To Me” and “I Wonder Why”. In fact, if you take Reef’s Gary Stringer with all his hair and stood him next to Curtis, it would be like a ‘before and after’ picture. As for the song itself, it’s a radio friendly little ditty but it doesn’t live long in the memory as was illustrated by its No 28 chart peak.

Another song with the word ‘time’ in the title now. Baby D scored a No 1 in late 1994 with “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” but it took them six months to come up with a follow up and when they did it was just yet another dance version of a classic pop song. “(Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving” was basically a straight cover version of The Korgis’ 1980 Top 5 hit but with a skittering jungle dance beat added to it. As if that wasn’t enough to differentiate it from the original, they messed around with the song title by adding a line from the lyrics and putting the original title in brackets. What was all that about? I couldn’t get onboard with this at all. It just seemed lazy and pointless to me. As ever, the record buying public disagreed with me and sent it to No 3. Ah, what did they know eh?

Next a band that I always find hard to write about; not because I don’t like them – it would be easy to crank out a few derogatory words accusing an act of being the shittiest of the shitty – but because I don’t actually have any feelings about them one way or the other. I think my state of mind concerning Therapy? is partly due to the fact that they mostly passed me by at the time. I mean, I knew of them – I worked in a record shop for heaven’s sake – it’s just that my knowledge of them pretty much ended with what their album covers looked like. Somehow I never really heard how they sounded. Or maybe I did hear them but it made no impression on me and so I didn’t retain them in my head? Either way, needless to say, I don’t remember this hit “Stories” at all. Listening to it now, it’s more of their brand of driving rock but this one has a sax thrown in for good measure. Singer Andy Cairns is a supporter of my beloved Chelsea and I’ve heard him interviewed on the Chelsea fancast that I listen to and he seems like a lovely guy but somehow his music just hasn’t cut through to me. Sorry Andy.

Two huge songs of this era coming up now starting with “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead. What a tune this is!*

*Makes that awful T-shaped hand signal*

For me, this could be their best ever song though to be honest my knowledge of their material past “OK Computer” is nearly nonexistent so if you’re a Radiohead super fan reading this and snorting in derision at my suggestion then obviously you have more material to pick from than me. The third single to be released from “The Bends”, it’s a slowly building banger dripping with aura and imagery and Thom Yorke’s vocal that almost sounds like it was recorded under duress, it’s almost unignorable (if that’s a word). Maybe ‘striking’ would be a better one. I think it was probably this track that convinced me that I must own a copy of “The Bends”.

Others weren’t quite as convinced albeit the most famous example was a fictional character in a movie. Alicia Silverstone played Cher in Clueless who describes “Fake Plastic Trees” which features in the film as “crybaby music”. Asked if he was bothered about that line, Yorke said in an interview in Vox magazine that the character of Cher wasn’t the type of person he’d want to like Radiohead anyway as she was a two dimensional Beverly Hills kid and he was all about 3D people. Fair comment I think and it put me in mind of another music artist who felt the need to publicly distance himself from someone famous. In 2006, former Prime Minister and renowned dead pig f****r David Cameron appeared on Desert Island Discs and chose as one of his songs “This Charming Man” by The Smiths. When Johnny Marr became aware of this, he issued a statement that said Cameron was banned from liking The Smiths and rightly so. Also on Cameron’s list of songs? Yep, “Fake Plastic Trees”. Cameron also famously declared that one of his favourite songs ever was “Eton Rifles” by The Jam. In response, Paul Weller said “Which bit didn’t you get?”. David Cameron ladies and gentlemen…a complete bellend of the highest order.

That second huge song now and it’s another appearance by Pulp to perform “Common People”. This was a genuinely a career pivoting time for the band. After being together for sixteen years (most of them in obscurity) the stars were now aligning and fame and fortune beckoned. Not only had “Common People” crashed into the charts at No 2 (NO 2!) but this month they would also headline the aforementioned Reef’s hometown of Glastonbury after the Stone Roses pulled out following John Squires suffering a broken collarbone in a mountain biking accident. Success was now definitely coming at Pulp and fast.

Apparently the band learned of that chart position whilst appearing at a Radio 1 Roadshow in Birmingham. As the chart rundown was announced, the various acts at the event were paraded on the back of an articulated lorry as their chart position was called. By the end, there was only Pulp left to learn their fate and, by now, Jarvis Cocker was pissed. Taking to the stage, he slipped and fell leaving bass player Steve Mackey to observe the irony of finally getting to where you wanted to be after years of trying only to end up on your arse in the rain in Birmingham at the moment of triumph. Just perfect.

What’s this? A rugby song?! Yes, we’d only just suffered the trauma of two football songs in the chart thanks to FA Cup finalists Everton and Manchester United and now we had another sporting related hit. The 1995 Rugby Union World Cup was only the third time the competition had taken place since its inaugural event in 1987 but already we were starting to get used to it being commemorated / promoted by the medium of song. More specifically two songs in particular. The 1991 World Cup had brought us “World In Union” by Dame Kiri te Kanawa based on Holst’s “Jupiter” or “I Vow To Thee My Country” as it is more commonly known. That year also saw the England Rugby Squad release a version of the African-American spiritual song and subsequent Christian hymn “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” which had been sung by rugby crowds as early as the 60s though it was adopted as an anthem by the England team supporters around 1988. The song has been recorded on multiple occasions for the Rugby World Cup by the likes of Russel Watson, UB40 and Blake.

In 1995, it was the turn of the unlikely pairing of “Searching” hitmakers China Black and South African male choral group Ladysmith Black Mamboza. Quite how this pairing came about I’m not sure but I guess it was advantageous to both artists. China Black had failed to build on the success of “Searching” and so “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” provided them with another vehicle to the charts. Ladysmith Black Mamboza were prolific album makers but had never had a UK Top 40 single to this point. Their famous collaboration with Paul Simon on “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes” from the celebrated “Graceland” album inexplicably peaked at No 77 though they would team up with B*Witched in 1999 for No 13 hit “I Shall Be There”. Ladysmith Black Mamboza were one of those artists that would get a regular airing when Our Price did their specialist music mornings where the shop would only play music from a particular genre that wasn’t rock/pop. Easy Listening morning meant you were guaranteed to hear The Carpenters Greatest Hits whilst Ladysmith Black Mamboza would get a spin on the store stereo when it was the turn of World Music.

This version of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is not impressive I have to say. The addition of that ubiquitous, nasty dance beat pretty much ruins it for me. It was nice though to see some of England’s Rugby stars of yesteryear in the video like Rob Andrew, Will Carling, Rory Underwood and Jeremy Guscott. China Black would never return to the UK Top 40 singles chart whilst Ladysmith Black Mamboza would achieve a No 2 placing in our album chart for 1998’s Best Of collection.

I said earlier about there being two huge songs of this era being on the show tonight in “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Common People” but how could I have forgotten about this one?! They’re not everyone’s cup of tea but I loved Black Grape. Rising from the ashes of Happy Mondays and the Ruthless Rap Assassins, I remember there being a huge buzz about this second coming of Madchester. OK, it wasn’t really quite like that but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to indulge in some Manchester related hyperbole. “Reverend Black Grape” was their debut single and calling card and what a fabulous shake up of the charts it was. Sample heavy and funky, big beats-tastic, this was Shaun Ryder back to his twisted genius best after the demise of the Happy Mondays and the nadir of their 1992 album “Yes Please!”. Ably aided by Kermit, it would crash straight into the Top 10 at No 9. What? Bez? Oh yeah, he was there as well doing his usual Bez schtick. The “Talking bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit” lyric is obviously edited out for this TOTP performance but like “Yes” by McAlmont & Butler, “Reverend Black Grape” would become one of my go to songs I would play on my way to work if I really didn’t fancy it that day.

The band’s debut album “It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah” would top the charts for two weeks and achieve platinum sales. Packed with great tunes like “Tramazi Parti”, “Shake Your Money” and “Kelly’s Heroes”, it became an essential purchase for me. Sadly, their success would fail off dramatically. Second album “Stupid Stupid Stupid” would underperform commercially and attract criticism in the US for its golliwog and google eyes cover art. It was one of those albums that the buying department at Our Price Head Office had invested heavily in but which failed to sell. We had massive overstocks of it. The band would dissolve in 1998 after Shaun fired the rest of its members. They reformed to release a third album in 2017 called “Pop Voodoo” which I quite liked but which received mixed reviews.

It’s a third week at the top for Robson & Jerome with their double A-side “Unchained Melody” / “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. My amazement at what happened here has not diluted in the 28 years since. What was going on? Why did these two actors appeal so much? It wasn’t just a one off either. They had three No 1 singles and two No 1 albums over a period of 18 months despite the fact that all they ever did was cover versions. I bet Simon Cowell who convinced the pair to record material couldn’t believe his luck. Ladies and gentlemen…Simon Cowell the David Cameron of the music world.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Reef	Naked	No
2	Curtis Stigers	This Time	Nah
3	Baby D	(Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving	I did not
4	Therapy?	Stories	Nope
5	Radiohead	Fake Plastic Trees	No but I bought the album The Bends
6	Pulp	Common People	No but I had the album Different Class
7	China Black with Ladysmith Black Mamboza	Swing Low, Sweet Chariot	Negative
8	Black Grape	Reverend Black Grape	No but I had the album It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody” / “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	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/m001sfvr/top-of-the-pops-01061995

TOTP 25 MAY 1995

Posted on November 18, 2023 by 80stastic

With one notable exception, the line up for this TOTP is one of the most underwhelming and uninspiring I’ve seen for a while. An horrendous No 1 and a load of dance tunes I don’t remember and probably wouldn’t like if I did. At least it’s a ‘golden mic’ presenter slot with an interesting choice of host(s) this week. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring were a comedy duo who met at Oxford University and were contemporaries of the likes of Emma Kennedy. After writing for Chris Morris’ Radio 4 comedy vehicle On The Hour, they switched to Radio 1 writing and starring in Fist Of Fun which would eventually transfer to TV via BBC2. The first series had only just finished by the time of this TOTP so Lee and Herring’s profile was presumably pretty high and bestowed upon them a shot at presenting the network’s flagship music show. I’m not sure that the pair were on my comedy radar at this time though I have seen Stewart Lee live subsequently and he was very funny. The double act seems to be based on Lee being sarcastic and cutting and Herring being frivolous and silly. He strays into something a bit more uncomfortable though at the top of the show by asking if he might be in heaven as he’s surrounded by sweaty, teenage girls. Such a remark possibly wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow back then but in these post Operation Yewtree times, it doesn’t sit well.

Anyway, we start with Incognito who I had forgotten were still having hits as late as 1995. To be fair to myself, my knowledge of them only extends to “Always There” from 1991 and their cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” in 1992. However, there is much more to them than that starting with the fact that they had been in existence since 1979 and have a roster of members past and present (they are still a going concern) they could rival The Fall and The Waterboys. Talking of Incognito members, I had to do a double take but my suspicions were confirmed by @TOTPFacts that the guy on bongos would go on to be pretty famous for something else…

Does Incognito’s white-vest-wearing percussionist look familiar? It should – it’s Max Beesley, future star of TV shows like The History Of Tom Jones, Hotel Babylon and Survivors. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Max Beesley studied percussion and classical piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and toured with/played for the likes of Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Take That and Paul Weller. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Well there you go. Professor Brian Cox wasn’t the only celebrity to play in a 90s band before becoming famous in a different profession. As for Incognito’s tune, “Everyday” is actually quite pleasant as far as it goes but it does smack of being a rewrite of “Always There” which wasn’t even their song in the first place.

After Lee and Herring have a discussion about Jon Bon Jovi’s unusual pronunciation of Milan as ‘Milarn’ from his to camera piece at the top of the show, we move onto a dance tune I certainly wouldn’t have liked back in 1995 (I don’t actually remember it) and definitely don’t like 28 years later. Nightcrawlers were coming off the back of a huge hit in “Push The Feeling On” – you might know it as the “Just Sold My Car” song for the We Buy Any Car ad – and “Surrender Your Love” was more of the same though a bit watered down and (clearly in my case) not as memorable.

Despite or maybe because of his rather extreme look of long blond hair and shades which ages him terribly – he was 31 at the time of this broadcast – the TOTP cameras seem to deliberately avoid having vocalist John Reid on screen for longer than a couple of seconds at a time preferring to focus on the multitude of dancers on stage. It really is quite noticeable. Maybe the show’s producers were trying to recreate the feel of a nightclub where this track would have no doubt gone down well with mid 90s house music fiends. “Surrender Your Love” peaked at No 7.

Next an exclusive live by satellite performance of “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan but, as with many of these ‘exclusives’, it fails to live up to its title. Coming in direct from Los Angeles, you might have thought the location would be the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, the TCL Chinese Theatre, Venice or Santa Monica beach or at least somewhere with the Hollywood sign in the background wouldn’t you? What we get is an outdoor basketball court that could be anywhere. Montell doesn’t even have a cordless microphone so he can’t move around much and it’s left to his three backing dancers to try and liven things up a bit – they don’t. Honestly not sure what executive producer Ric Blaxill was thinking here.

Some more comments from Lee and Herring that have not aged well next. Describing Scatman John as “an old, stuttering man” (Herring) who “didn’t let age or his inability to speak get in the way of having a No 3 hit” (Lee) before introducing him with a stutter (Herring again) might get you cancelled these days or as Lee might say in his stand up shows, “you can get put in jail these days just for presenting Top Of The Pops”. Or something. “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was indeed up to No 3 but it would go no further. Nonsensical novelty hit or genre bending innovation? You decide.

Lee and Herring indulge in a bit of sexual innuendo now reminding the watching audience that if it hurts, you’re not doing it right before introducing “Hurts So Good” by Jimmy Somerville. As with Incognito earlier, I’d totally forgotten that Jimmy was still having hits as late as this. In my head, his chart bothering days pretty much ended with his very successful singles collection album over Christmas 1990. I wasn’t too far off to be fair but I’d forgotten about “Dare To Love” which became his first album released since then when it appeared in 1995. “Hurts So Good” was the second single from it and was a cover of a song made famous by Susan Cadogan who had a No 4 hit with it in 1975. I don’t know Susan’s version and I don’t remember Jimmy’s but I have to say I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Somerville had form for doing reggae-fied covers. He did one of the Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody” to promote that singles collection and “Hurts So Good” falls into the sane category for me. I just don’t think Jimmy’s high falsetto voice suits reggae. For me, he’s always been better on a barnstorming Hi-NRG type track. This would prove to be his final UK Top 40 entry with his first coming back in 1984 with “Smalltown Boy” as part of Bronski Beat.

It’s time for the second live by satellite exclusive performance on the show tonight as Bon Jovi perform “This Ain’t A Love Song” live from Milan (or is it Milarn?). Lee and Herring cue it up for us by the former declaring that he hates Bon Jovi and I, for one, believe him. A simple search of ‘What music does Stewart Lee like’ on Google gives loads of results including a list of his favourite 13 albums. Some of them, I’ve never even heard of the artist let alone the album but the ones I did know include REM (despite him saying how much they’ve disappointed him and are awful), Miles Davis, Madness and The Byrds. He’s also a lifelong fan of The Fall but can no longer listen to Morrissey despite his attachment to The Smiths. I don’t see any room in there at all for Bon Jovi’s brand of rock.

As for said brand, the band were at a bit of a crossroads as to what direction to take after the mega selling “Keep The Faith” album that they’d toured and promoted for two years. That album had seen them develop a more mature sound and lay off the hair metal histrionics of “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey”. The change hadn’t affected their commercial appeal with sales of 8 million worldwide so which direction should they go in now? Some early demos were trashed by Jon Bon Jovi as not being up to scratch and the gap where a new album should have been was filled by a Best Of called “Crossroads” (oh I get that title now) and a couple of new songs. A rethink was required which led the band to a darker album entitled “These Days”. Yet again, a new sound didn’t result in a downturn in sales with the album selling even more than “Keep The Faith” worldwide. It also achieved critical acclaim being ranked No 2 by Q Magazine in their “Top 50 albums of 1995” list. Lead single “This Ain’t A Love Song” would be the first of four consecutive Top 10 singles in the UK taken from the album when it peaked at No 6. It’s an accomplished rock ballad though its verses remind me of their 1987 forgotten hit “Never Say Goodbye”. A word on this TOTP appearance. What’s so exclusive about performing to an empty venue regardless of it being in Milan/Milarn?

Ah, some more dodgy rhetoric from Lee and Herring about following Michelle Gayle around and restraining orders. It sounds awful now but again, was it deemed acceptable back then? Maybe these TOTP repeats should come with those sensitivity warnings that say ‘this programme is from *insert the year* and features themes and attitudes from the time”.

Anyway, Michelle is back with her fourth chart hit “Freedom” though I don’t recall this one either. Nothing to do with George Michael (though Robbie Williams was just a year or so away from a cover version of that particular song), it’s a pleasant if insubstantial pop ditty which Michelle sells enthusiastically even impressively high kicking her way through it at one point. Her all woman set up of two keyboard players and two backing dancers could almost have been designed to flick the V’s at the hosts and their misogyny. I was rather distracted though by the singalong ‘Okay’ bit towards the end which put me in mind of Lenny Henry’s unfortunate early ‘comedy’ character Algernon Razmatazz and his ‘Ooookaaaay’ catchphrase. My god, reviewing these TOTP repeats is a culturally sensitive minefield.

Yes! The notable exception to tonight’s underwhelming running order is here. After being an ‘exclusive’ last week, McAlmont & Butler have crashed into the charts at No 10 with…ahem…”Yes”. There was some debate online about whether Richard Herring calls his co-host a ‘wanker’ or a ‘wassock’ in the intro to this one after this repeat aired but he clearly says the latter. The man himself took to Twitter/X to confirm:

Important correction. #TOTP https://t.co/Kz80NCr52Z
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

This brilliant song has helped me through some difficult times at work in the past and remains a permanent in my life. I was meant to see Bernard Butler live in Manchester around 1998 when he was touring his fine debut solo album “People Move On” but he cancelled at the last minute. Years later though I did catch David McAlmont live in Hull when he did a show of Prince songs. An engaging storyteller, he did a fab version of “Raspberry Beret” restyled as “Guyanan Beret“ – his mother was from Guyana. Sadly I can’t find any clips of it online.

Aargh! I’d forgotten that Robson & Jerome’s No 1 was a double A-side! Not content with hacking their way through “Unchained Melody” they’ve also taken the musical equivalent of a dull spoon to “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. The song recorded by ‘Forces’ Sweetheart’ Dame Vera Lynn in 1942 and one of the songs most associated with WWII has also been covered by the likes of Connie Francis, Bing Crosby, Jim Reeves, Acker Bilk and Steeleye Span. It was also recorded by The Righteous Brothers and was a hit for them in the UK in 1966. Was that the reason why Robson & Jerome laid down a version of it? Because it dovetailed neatly with “Unchained Melody” which Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield also famously recorded? Or is that just me trying to add some synchronicity that isn’t there? It’s just that it seems an odd choice of song – or was it? Was this just more cynical positioning from Simon Cowell. Did he look at the Soldier Soldier audience and work out that an album and single by two of its characters might be most likely to be purchased by an older demographic who maybe wouldn’t normally buy anything that was in the charts and so a version of “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover” would be the perfect track to reel them in?

We end with one of the weirdest song titles of the year, no any year. “The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman” was the latest of EP by The Future Sound Of London. As a pop kid, none of their stuff ever made any sense to me. This one is no different. It sounds like the incidental music to Blakes 7 put through a high spin washing cycle. Thankfully we only get a few seconds of this as the credits kick in.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Incognito	Everyday	I did not
2	Nightcrawlers	Surrender Your Love	No
3	Montell Jordan	This Is How We Do It	Nope
4	Scatman John	Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)	Never happening
5	Jimmy Somerville	Hurts So Good	Nah
6	Bon Jovi	This Ain’t A Love Song	Negative
7	Michelle Gayle	Freedom	It’s another no
8	McAlmont & Butler	Yes	YES!
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	What do you think?!
10	The Future Sound Of London	The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman	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/m001s8tj/top-of-the-pops-25051995

TOTP 18 MAY 1995

Posted on November 15, 2023 by 80stastic

We have a new presenter tonight as Lisa I’Anson makes her TOTP debut. Lisa was the new weekday host of Radio 1’s lunchtime show and presumably was given an opportunity on the BBC’s flagship music programme to raise her profile and promote her appointment. Lisa stayed in that slot until 1996 when she shifted to the weekend lunchtime show. However, her tenure at Radio 1 came to an end in the aftermath of a no show for her…erm…show in August 1998 after a night out in Ibiza where Radio 1 had decamped to for its annual Summer jaunt. The writing was on the wall and she left the station six months later. After the shenanigans Chris Evans had put the Radio 1 management through just a few years earlier including demands for extra holiday and Fridays off and a 17 hour bender that only ended 2 hours before he was due on air, they were always going to come down hard on subsequent misdemeanours. It was a different story over at Talksport though where Breakfast Show presenter Alan Brazil was sacked in 2004 for missing a show only to be reinstated three weeks later.

For now though, Lisa was a fully paid up part of the Radio 1 gang and loving her first TOTP appearance even allowing herself a quick “Hello Mum” to camera before she introduces tonight’s opening artist who is Billie Ray Martin with “Your Loving Arms”. When I first started working for Our Price in the Autumn of 1990, all the hipper members of staff loved Electribe 101. Their album “Electribal Memories” could always be found near the store’s CD player so often was it played. I was never really onboard with the whole thing though probably because I wasn’t one of the hipper members of staff. Anyway, Electribe 101 drifted towards a break up but singer Billie Ray Martin’s vocal talents meant she was never going to just be allowed to disappear without trace and so at the very end of October 1994, her debut solo single “Your Loving Arms” was released. Hang on…October 1994 you say? But we’re in May 1995…what gives? Well, it’s yet another case of a minor dance hit single being rereleased a few months later and becoming a major one. This was all the rage around about now. Think Strike’s “U Sure Do” and “Dreamer” by Livin’ Joy and now this one. Its original chart peak of No 38 was completely eclipsed second time around when it went to No 6. How and why did this keep happening? Were the rereleases remixed by happening DJs or was it just a case of there being a lot of money sloshing around in record labels marketing budgets so giving a record another go was always an option? I’m not sure but “Your Loving Arms” was sleek, stylish and fronted by an artist who was also both of those things so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to us that it became a big hit eventually. Sadly for Billie, she would never have such success again though she did manage two No 29 follow ups from her album “Deadline For My Memories” though the album itself failed to shift in huge quantities.

Now this performance here, what were the angels all about? I’ve checked the lyrics to the track out and can’t see any tie in. Admittedly, their wings are impressive but it all seems rather disconnected and over the top. Billie herself is rather static due to the length of the train her dress has. All a bit odd but I probably accepted it as completely normal back then. Billie Ray Martin’s career choice meant that she continued the timeline of singers called Billie. Before her came Billie Holiday, Billie Jo Spears and she was followed by Billie Eilish and…erm…well Billie!

Celine Dion is back in the studio for another crack at propelling “Only One Road” up the charts “Think Twice” style. It’s yet another power ballad (of course it is, did she ever record anything that wasn’t?) but I would wager that it’s not one that is easily remembered compared to “My Heart Will Go On”, the aforementioned “Think Twice” or even her cover of Jennifer Rush’s “The Power Of Love”. It sounds like it could be from a Disney film which was indeed a road Celine had traveled before when she recorded the theme song to Beauty And The Beast with Peabo Bryson. Whatever you think of her music (and that’s not much in my book), let’s wish her well battling against the neurological condition stiff-person syndrome that she was diagnosed with last year.

Wait, what?! Ali Campbell had a solo career? Yes he did and irony of ironies, he did it whilst he was still a member of UB40 so presumably with the band’s blessing? Given what happened between the two parties subsequently, it strikes me now as a peculiar state of affairs. Was it an authorised project to fill the four year gap between the UB40 albums “Promises And Lies” and “Guns In The Ghetto”? Whatever the reasons behind the endeavour, Ali found himself riding high in the charts with a song called “That Look In Your Eye” and an album called “Big Love”. I don’t remember the single at all which seems quite a slight thing with some very reedy singing on it from both Ali and his duet partner, one Pamela Starks who very little seems to be known about. I can find reference to a Pamela Starks who is a casting director and worked on the Prince film Sign ‘o’ the Times but they can’t be the same people can they? From casting for a music legend to singing a twee little number with the bloke from UB40? It seems an unlikely journey.

Campbell would squeeze out two further solo hit singles, both of which were covers – a version of “Let Your Yeah Be Yeah” by Jimmy Cliff and another duet, this time with his daughter Kibibi on “Somethin’ Stupid” as made famous by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Blimey! Come back Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne – all is forgiven.

Next, the first of two iconic songs in the show beginning with “Yes” by McAlmont & Butler. What a track this is! An instant stone cold classic. The huge Phil Spector-esque wall of sound, the joyously uplifting chorus, Bernard’s immense guitar work and David’s stunning vocals. Not just one of the songs of the year but of the decade too. If there were any doubts about the ex-Suede guitarist’s career potential, they were surely blown away by this track. As for McAlmont, I’d certainly had no idea who he was before this but once you’d heard that voice, you would never forget him.

Despite working in a record shop and selling loads of this single during the week, remarkably, I hadn’t actually heard “Yes” once. This was corrected in some style when I met up with some old Polytechnic friends in Chester at the weekend. My friend Robin had bought “Yes” and brought it with him and insisted on playing it to the group continuously on the first night. When the track had finished and the next track on the CD single began, Robin would shake his head, say “uh-uh” and restart “Yes”. This went on for some time but although people in the group were getting a bit fed up, it certainly resolved my issue of not having heard the track up to that point.

As good as this TOTP performance is, you really have to see their appearance on Later…with Jools Holland to appreciate the true majesty of the song. Bernard wigging out with his guitar, David and his extraordinary vocal range and even more extraordinarily long fingers that gave him an otherworldly quality; it’s quite astonishing and a clip I keep returning to after all these years. The duo will return to the TOTP studio on the next show so I’ll have more to say about them then.

It’s that song from the Guinness advert next. “Guaglione” by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado was the music that soundtracked said advert called Anticipation which you may remember as featuring the guy doing weird dancing whilst waiting for his pint to settle. What you may not be aware of (as I wasn’t until now) is that the campaign started a lawsuit battle. British director Mehdi Norowzian launched the litigation against advertising agency Arks claiming that the company had based Anticipation on a short film called Joy that he had presented to Arks as part of a show reel whilst trying to secure employment with them. Arks did offer Norowzian a job, that of directing an advert for their client Guinness based around Joy and its distinctive jump editing sequence. When Norowzian turned them down as he wanted to do something completely different, Arks went ahead and made the advert without him. Norowzian lost his legal battle and had to pay £200,000 in legal costs. Here are both Anticipation and Joy so you can compare them. I definitely prefer Joy.

wait for it…

The guy in the advert is called Joe McKinney and he spent two years making personal appearances around Europe promoting Guinness. Sound like a dream job? Not for Joe. That lifestyle became too much for him and he gave up alcohol in 1997. He did go on to have a successful acting career but he did not take part in the Guinness 250th anniversary celebrations in 2009.

Next a man who’s singing a song that sounds like it could be Elton John’s latest single followed by…yep Elton John and his latest single. Joshua Kadison is the young pretender in this scenario with his single “Jessie” which has been stuck at No 20 for three weeks (this appearance would push it up to a peak of No 15).

It’s a nice enough song I guess though it does try to be Elton’s “Daniel” a bit too much I think. The irony here is that Kadison sounds more like Elton here than Elton does himself these days…

And so to the man himself. Elton John wasn’t quite as prolific in the 90s as he had been in the 70s and 80s but he was still churning out albums on a pretty regular basis. After 1992’s “The One”, “1993’s “Duets” and 1994’s “The Lion King” soundtrack came “Made In England”. When I think of Elton’s output this decade, what comes to mind first are ballads, mostly of the mawkish variety. The title track of this, his 24th studio album, was nothing of the kind though being a jaunty, upbeat, classic pop song with a singalong chorus.

By the end of 1996 though, it was back to the ballads with a collection called simply “Love Songs”. It included two tracks from the “Made In England” album the song titles of which were all just one word apart from the title track. This performance was from the British ambassador’s residence in Paris. I guess Elton was trying to be humorous.

Time for that second iconic song of the evening. There can’t be many people who aren’t aware of “Common People” by Pulp. Instantly recognisable and perhaps one of the songs most linked with Britpop (whether they liked it or not), it remains the band’s calling card. After years of swimming in the shallow waters of indie-dom followed by breakthrough bona fide chart hits from their “His ‘n’ Hers” album, with “Common People”, their success and fame exploded. Jarvis assumed national treasure status (only increased by his Michael Jackson protest at the BRITS) and sales of their “Different Class” album went through the roof (four times platinum in the UK). In the end it just took one song to cut through to the masses to enable all of this and “Common People” was the perfect vehicle even down to its title.

Written about a real life encounter Cocker had with a Greek art student at Saint Martins College who wanted to move to Hackney and rough it with ‘the common people’, it has become completely entrenched in the national consciousness even transcending the world of pop music to wider cultural realms. Look at this for example…

Such is the song’s legend that it even warranted an hour long BBC3 documentary in 2006. Sadly the film makers failed to locate the Greek art student who inspired the track though the Athens Voice newspaper suggested the wife of a former finance minister and daughter of a wealthy Greek businessman. In 2012, in true Lambert Simnel style, a woman called Katerina Kana came forward stating that the song is about her though Jarvis has not commented on her claim. “Common People” was voted the nation’s favourite Britpop song in a BBC Radio 6 Music poll in 2014 whilst that accolade was repeated the following year in a Rolling Stone magazine poll.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Never reluctant to shoot itself in its collective foot, the good old British public decided that it really couldn’t live without a shonky cover version of a song so well known it had been No 1 in our charts just five years earlier. It’s not quite the national leave of senses that Mr. Blobby was but it’s up there.

I’ve never watched the TV series Soldier Soldier that made pop stars out of actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn but enough people did that when their characters performed a version of “Unchained Melody” in an episode broadcast in November 1994, it started a desire amongst the show’s fans to own a copy of it that only one man could satiate. Step forward the scourge of the charts Simon Cowell to give us Robson & Jerome. Never one to miss out on a sales opportunity regardless of its artistic merit, Cowell pursued the two actors to record an official release of “Unchained Melody” to such an extent that Green threatened him with legal action to stop the harassment. He eventually relented though and the single was released on May 8th.

What happened next was nothing short of a phenomenon. First week sales of 300,000 easily took it to the No 1 position but incredibly it outstripped even that the following week with 470,000 units shifted; the biggest one week sales of a record since Band Aid in 1984. At one point it was selling 10 times more than the No 2 record “Guaglione” by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado and more than the rest of the Top 10 combined. It would become the UK’s biggest selling single of 1995. I distinctly recall the beginnings of its sales story. The morning it was released, we kept being asked for it in the Our Price store I was working in but so under the radar had it been that the buying team at Head Office hadn’t bought in any copies for the chain initially meaning none of the company’s shops had it in stock. Trying to be proactive, we placed our own order for some copies just to meet local demand before Head Office cottoned on to what was happening and placed a massive order for the whole chain. All of this proved that retailers should never underestimate how suggestible the public are to the power of a popular TV show.

Right, I’m nearly done. Just the play out track to go and it may not be an iconic song but it’s certainly by a legendary artist. Despite being dead for 14 years by this point, Bob Marley’s back catalogue kept being raided for ever more releases and chart entries. “Keep On Moving” came from a compilation album called “Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On” which was kind of a continuation of the 1984 Best Of “Legend”. I don’t recall this single at all but it did make No 17 in the UK charts. Right, I’m out. See ya!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Billie Ray Martin	Your Loving Arms	No
2	Celine Dion	Only One Road	Negative
3	Ali Campbell	That Look In Your Eye	I did not
4	McAlmont & Butler	Yes	YES!!!
5	Perez ‘Prez’ Prado	Guaglione	Nah
6	Joshua Kadison	Jessie	Nope
7	Elton John	Made In England	It’s a no
8	Pulp	Common People	Not but I had the ‘Different Class’ album
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody	Are you kidding?!
10	Bob Marley	Keep On Moving	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/m001s8tg/top-of-the-pops-18051995

TOTP 11 MAY 1995

Posted on November 11, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve arrived in May of 1995 here at TOTP Rewind and we know what happens in May – finals. The day before this TOTP aired, Arsenal lost the European Cup Winners Cup Final to Real Zaragoza when Nayim famously lobbed Seaman (ahem) from the halfway line and a week later Everton would upset the odds to triumph over Manchester United in the FA Cup final (more of that later). And then there was the annual music final. This year’s Eurovision Song Contest took place on the Saturday following this TOTP (more of that later). Before any of that though, I bring bad news – tonight’s host is Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo. Expect a procession of oblique and unfunny references to news stories of the time that Simon thinks make him sound clever but which in fact make him look like a prick.

We begin with Supergrass and their second UK Top 40 hit “Lenny”. One of the names that always comes up when Britpop is mentioned, Gaz, Mick and Danny also suffered from being associated with one song in particular despite achieving fourteen Top 40 hits including six inside the Top 10 and two No 2s. That song is, of course, “Alright” which will be along in a few weeks on these TOTP repeats. So damaged were they by its notoriety that when I saw them live in York in 2003, they didn’t include it in the set list which seemed a bit churlish if I’m honest. For now though, they were just trying to follow up their Top 20 hit “Mansize Rooster” from the year before and did so ably with “Lenny” which made it to No 10. A muscular, driving guitar heavy track with a galloping drum backing, it’s a thrilling if short ride – we get just over two minutes worth in this performance.

Visually, I was struck by the band’s three person guitar/bass/drums set up which immediately put me in mind of that other famous UK trio The Jam. Paul Weller would never have sported Gaz Coombes’ lamb chop sideburns though. He went in for those carefully shaped side strands of hair grown from the head rather than the face that curled into a point. Very modish and a look my Weller obsessed brother would sport for years. Anyway, as I said, Supergrass will be back soon enough smoking a fag and putting it out whilst keeping their teeth nice and clean whether they like it or not.

The first Simon Mayo ‘gag’ is here – something about Rugby Union administrators. I can’t be bothered to research what he was blathering on about but fortunately here’s @TOTPFacts so I don’t have to:

Simon Mayo's rugby union quip was presumably a reference to the furore over England captaIn Will Carling being demoted after referring to the sport's administrators as "57 old farts". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 3, 2023

Hysterical work from Mayo there. The second act tonight is Montell Jordan who is the latest (or perhaps he was the original?) to use that nah-ner-ner-nah-nah-ner-ner- nah-nah hook that also featured in MN8’s recent hit “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” and would pop up again on Peter Andre’s “Flava” a year later. “This Is How We Do It” was the first R&B release on the legendary Def Jam label and was No 1 in the US for seven weeks. It didn’t do quite as well over here peaking at No 11.

Instead of being a basketball player (he really was 6’8”), Montell chose a career in music and rather cannily came up with a tune that he himself describes as a “universal idea”. Said idea was that the chorus could apply to doing an unspecified activity by an unspecified group in an unspecified location thereby meaning the song could be adopted by anyone for any project or endeavour. As such, “This Is How We Do It” has been used in numerous films and TV shows such as Glee, The Nutty Professor, 8 Mile, Pitch Perfect 2 and Sonic The Hedgehog 2. Montell would have further hits both here and in the US though none as big as his debut hit albeit that “Let’s Ride”, his collaboration with Master P and Slikk The Shocker (no idea) made it to No 2 over the pond.

And so to the first ‘final’ reference of the night. The 1995 FA Cup final was contested by Manchester United and massive underdogs Everton. The previous year they had completed the league and cup double by beating my beloved Chelsea 4-0 in a rain soaked day at Wembley. This season though hadn’t quite gone to plan. Unfashionable Blackburn Rovers would pip them to the league title and they would lose the cup final 1-0 to Everton to finish the season trophy less for the first time in six years. I watched the cup final in a pub in Chester as a group of us were having a Poly reunion there. It was an unpleasant experience as the pub seemed to be full of horrible racist Everton fans spoiling for a fight and going around asking people who they supported. When one of them approached my mate Robin he defused the situation by replying “Carlisle United”* which totally wrong footed the thug. Just as well he wasn’t as well versed about Carlisle as Eric Morecambe:

“What news of Carlisle?”

49 seconds of joy…#PeterCushing joins Eric,Ern and Ann, in the court of King Arthur…👑

What a legend..#HammerHorror #StarWars #DrWho #LaurelAndHardy #SherlockHolmes #StillBringingSunshine 👓🌞♥️#SaturdaySpecial #ChequesInThePost #PassItOn 👈🏻 pic.twitter.com/fsa1IY8o4L
— The Morecambe & Wise Archive 👓🌞♥️ (@eric_ernie_col) February 19, 2022

*Robin does actually support Carlisle United by the way

Anyway, as it was the cup final, back in the 90s that still meant cup final songs. United’s was officially credited to Manchester United 1995 Football Squad featuring Stryker and was called “We’re Gonna Do It Again”. Unlike last year’s execrable effort with Status Quo*, this time they went rap-tastic with this Stryker character. I’d never heard of him before and nobody else has heard from him since it seems. The fact that United lost the cup final meant that there would not only be no repeat of last season’s glory on the pitch but also the chance of another No 1 record was gone as well with “We’re Gonna Do It Again” peaking at No 6.

*Having said that, the bit that goes “again, again, again” does remind me of Quo’s “Down, Down”.

Next something that goes beyond even the realms of novelty offered up by the genre of the football song. How the hell did jazz scatting get into the charts?! Scatman John was John Larkin, a jazz pianist from LA who suffered from a stutter which had blighted his childhood but which he found didn’t hamper him from scat singing – the art of vocal improvisation to turn the voice into an instrument. Now I can’t really be doing with jazz of the freeform kind and don’t understand at all the appeal of an artist like Dame Cleo Laine so just adding some house beats and a bit of rapping to jazz scatting was never, ever going to win me over. What a racket!

I wasn’t alone in my opinion. My aforementioned friend Robin did a nice send up of Scatman John on that weekend in Chester I mentioned but then I was once on holiday in New York with him where there was nearly a jazz incident. We were over there for my wife’s 30th birthday with him and our friend Susan. On the Sunday afternoon, we’d walked for miles after doing a helicopter tour of the Manhattan skyline and were in need of sustenance and a rest for our feet. After deliberating for ages about which diner or bar to go in, we finally decided on one but as we entered the chosen establishment, Robin came to an abrupt halt and said “We can’t go in there! They’re playing live jazz!”. As a consequence, we all turned around and walked out again. Even allowing for my own mistrust of jazz, the other three of us were none too impressed by Robin’s musical proclivities that day. Another group of people who disagreed with him were the record buying public who took Scatman John (the scat Gareth Gates) and his tune “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” to their hearts and made it a No 3 hit, despite the fact that he looks like a Chuckle Brother at the ambassador’s reception in this performance.

Who are this lot? Blessid Union Of Souls? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Their only UK hit was “I Believe” which went Top 10 in America but only made No 29 over here. Listening to it, I’m surprised it wasn’t a bigger hit. A piano led ballad with a pleasant melody and some social conscience lyrics, it reminds me of “You” by Ten Sharp. Ah yes, those lyrics. Obviously the ‘N’ word is not sung during this performance by vocalist Eliot Sloan though it’s clear that’s what the word is. Sickeningly, that word was used by one of those Everton fans I mentioned earlier in that pub in Chester whilst he was shouting about Paul Ince. All very horrible. One of the few times in my life when it made me root for Manchester United.

The second band inextricably associated with Britpop on the show tonight are Shed Seven. Having broken into the charts in 1994 with three Top 40 singles and their gold selling album “Change Giver”, 1995 saw them release just one new song – “Where Have You Been Tonight?”. The first single off sophomore album “A Maximum High”, this was the sound of a band preparing to enter the peak period of their commercial success. I’d have to say though that this track in particular didn’t quite get them there. It’s not a poor song per se but compared to what came after it, well it was a bit underwhelming and in my mind, remains a somewhat forgotten Shed Seven single. The fact that the album didn’t come out for nearly another year perhaps adds to my perception. It almost feels like a stand-alone single.

By the time “A Maximum High” appeared, Britpop, lad culture and Euro 96 were happening and Shed Seven entered Shed Heaven hits wise – no artist had more Top 40 hits in 1996 than the five the York indie rockers racked up. The BBC’s Euro 96 coverage used two of them to soundtrack some England montage pieces as the national team progressed through the tournament. It was a heady mix and a case of being in the right place at the right time for the band. They might not now where they had been tonight but they had a good idea where they were going.

The second of the ‘final’ themed songs on the show tonight now with the inevitable appearance of the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry. With the competition final just two days away, there was no way that Love City Groove would not have been given one last promotional push via TOTP. Whilst this may have helped propel the song “Love City Groove” up the UK charts, it had no effect on the band’s appeal at Eurovision where they trailed in a disappointing tenth place. “The experiment has failed” Terry Wogan infamously quipped. Also failing was any prospect of a career post-Eurovision for the band. Subsequent single releases failed to break the UK Top 40 and even that fail safe plan of a cover version (Fatback Band’s “I Found Lovin’”) couldn’t reverse their fortunes and the group split for good in 1996. A small part of the UK’s Eurovision history will always belong to those people who sang (and rapped) about the the sun shining in the morning though.

Here comes Celine Dion who’s attempting to follow up a huge, big ballad with…yep…a huge, big ballad. “Think Twice” topped the UK charts for seven weeks having taken an eternity to get there and would end the year as the fifth best selling single in the UK. Following that was always going to be a big ask and “Only One Road” didn’t despite the decent showing of a No 8 peak. It’s all very formulaic and power-ballad-by- numbers which Celine can do in her sleep but which was always more likely to induce zzzzs than ££££s.

The staging of this one is slightly odd. It would appear that the TOTP floor managers have shepherded every studio audience member in grey or pastel coloured clothing to stand at the front of the circle around Celine thereby making her blood red top standout even more than it does naturally. The effect resembles that scene from Schindler’s List with the little girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. Comparing the holocaust with a pop music TV show feels offensive but I guess it does serve to demonstrate the power of that scene and its sustained effect upon me given that it can be brought to mind by even the most banal of incidents.

And so to the No 1 and it’s a third consecutive single to debut at No 1 after Take That and Oasis in recent weeks. At the time, this was only the second occurrence of such a sequence but by the end of the decade, a record going in at No 1 had become a weekly event. Widespread first week discounting by the major labels whereby CD singles were £1.99 instead of £3.99 and the cassette version 99p rather than £2.29 was the major reason behind this with punters cottoning on pretty quick to the strategy and creating huge sales in the first seven days before tailing off immediately in subsequent weeks. Was this the point when that practice started? I can’t remember for sure. Nor can I recall the exact time when record companies started to allow new releases to be delivered to stores ahead of their official release date rather than on the day they came out but I think that was maybe also a factor in driving sales with new singles hitting the ground running from 9.00 am Monday morning.

Whether these factors were in play with making Livin’ Joy the No 1 artist with “Dreamer” or not we’ll never know but No 1 they are despite this single having already been a Top 20 hit the previous Summer. After trundling along the bottom reaches of the Top 100 at the end of 1994, it suddenly crashed back into the top spot when rereleased the following May. I was never a fan of Italo House so the track didn’t do much for me. Nor did I care much for “Show Me Love” by Robin S to which it was compared so it really was a personal non-starter but its legacy is substantiated by those Best Of polls where it regularly turns up in the 90s dance varieties.

The play out track is “Can’t Stand Losing You” by The Police and when I initially saw this on the running order, I assumed it was to plug sister show TOTP2. I was wrong for this was a legitimate chart record despite it having already been a No 2 hit in 1979. How? Because this was a live version. There had never been a live album by The Police though it had been mooted twice before; once in 1982 to plug the gap between “Ghost In The Machine” and “Synchronicity” and again in 1984 after the Synchronicity tour but it was shelved in place of the 1986 “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” Best Of album. A live album finally arrived in 1995 and it was called…”Live!”. Well, it did what it said on the tin I suppose. “Can’t Stand Losing You” was chosen to promote it and made No 27 on the charts – not bad for a ‘live’ single. The original is a classic Police track which I remember my brother having I think (or maybe he taped it off the radio). The lyrics about a teenager committing suicide after losing his girlfriend are entrenched in my brain. It was kept off the top spot by “I Don’t Like Mondays by Boomtown Rats, another song with some pretty dark lyrics.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Supergrass	Lenny	No but we had the album ‘I Should Coco’ with it on
2	Montell Jordan	This Is How We Do It	No
3	Manchester United 1995 Football Squad featuring Stryker	We’re Gonna Do It Again	As if
4	Scatman John	Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)	What do you think?!
5	Blessid Union Of Souls	I Believe	Nope
6	Shed Seven	Where Have You Been Tonight?	No but I had a live album called ‘Where Have You Been Tonight?’ with it on.
7	Love City Groove	Love City Groove	I did not
8	Celine Dion	Only One Road	Never happening
9	Livin’ Joy	Dreamer	Nah
10	The Police	Can’t Stand Losing You (Live)	Negative

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/m001s1j2/top-of-the-pops-11051995

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

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TOTP 06 JUL 1995

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TOTP 29 JUN 1995

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TOTP 22 JUN 1995

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TOTP 15 JUN 1995

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TOTP 08 JUN 1995

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TOTP 01 JUN 1995

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TOTP 25 MAY 1995

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TOTP 18 MAY 1995

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TOTP 11 MAY 1995

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