80stastic

TOTP 08 APR 1993

Posted on July 27, 2022 by 80stastic

Right, I haven’t done this for a while and it doesn’t always go down well as this is a music blog but I’m just going to delve quickly into what was happening in the football in April 1993 as I have a specific memory of this time. The race for the very first Premier League title is hotting up as Manchester United, Aston Villa and surprisingly Norwich City are all in with a shout. It’s all a bit nip and tuck with United just behind Villa as they head into the weekend fixtures two days after this TOTP aired. I’m working in the Our Price store in Rochdale still and around 4.30 ish on a Saturday I would find some reason to nip upstairs into the back room where the shop radio was located to try and catch the last bit of action and results from the footy. This Saturday was no exception and the big game being covered was Man Utd against Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a crucial game in the title race and United find themselves 0-1 down late into the game – a disaster for their title challenge if the score stays the same.

Meanwhile, in another North Western Our Price store (Bury I think) is one Mick Jones. I knew Mick from when he worked in the other Manchester store in Piccadilly whilst I was down the road in Market Street. Mick was/is a big United fan but he had a problem that day – he had no access to finding out the score. Now this sounds ridiculous in 2022 where everything is at our fingertips and available on our mobile phones. Need to know the score? No problem- there’s plenty of score update apps available or there’s the goals as they go in coverage of shows like Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling or the BBC’s Final Score with Jason Mohammad. Back in 1993, such resources were not around and so we all relied on the good old radio. Sadly, poor old Mick couldn’t get a signal for the shop radio where he was and so was left completely in the dark.

Somehow I became aware of his predicament (a phone call about work presumably) and, taking pity on him, was phoning him up with score updates. As the game reached the 86th minute and with United still behind, an unlikely saviour appeared in the shape of centre back Steve Bruce. A header from a Dennis Irwin cross pulled United level and so I was straight on the blower to Mick. Relief but they really needed a win. In the final minute Bruce did it again and I was back in the phone with the good news for Mick. Salvation and although it wasn’t my team Chelsea winning (we lost 0-1 at Southampton that day), I felt like I had been a Good Samaritan at least with my score update service. The win sent United top and they would stay there until the end of the season winning their first league title for 26 years.

The football theme continues (very tenuously) with the first band on tonight’s show who are called Sub Sub (geddit?). Their single “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” was one of those records that had no choice but to be a massive hit. Imprinted on your brain from the very first hearing it was immensely immediate and yet also had a baked in credibility courtesy of being released on the Rob’s Records label. Rob, of course, was the late Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order and co founder of Factory Records. I’m pretty sure that a work colleague called Paul introduced me to this track as he was intent on buying anything that the label released. Their other acts included Mr Scruff and A Certain Ratio.

Anyway, Sub Sub were brothers Andy and Jez Williams and school friend Jimi Goodwin who had become regulars at the legendary Manchester club The Haçienda in the early 90s and were inspired to record music of their own. Their 12” single “Space Face” was an underground club hit but it was “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) that the band’s name would become associated with. And what a tune to be known for! A retro disco sound that sounded box fresh at the same time featuring Philly soul strings, wah-wah guitar and the vocals of Melanie Williams, it was just impossible to ignore. That lolloping bass line was courtesy of a record the Williams brothers won at a fair (no really) and it was this from the musical Hair (you can hear it if you listen closely enough)…

Sub Sub went to No 3 and stayed inside the Top 10 for six weeks. I could have sworn that the record came out in 1994 but here I am showing that my memory isn’t what it once was again. Now I was very careful with my words earlier when I said that “Ain’t No Love Ain’t No Use)” was what Sub Sub are best remembered for as the Williams brothers and Jimi Goodwin are surely more well known for something else. After a fire burnt down their recording studio in 1996, they literally rose from the ashes and reinvented themselves as rock band The Doves who would go onto have three No 1 albums and score hit singles like “There Goes The Fear” and “Pounding”.

It’s the Sybil video for “When I’m Good And Ready” that gets to soundtrack the Top 40 rundown to No 11 this week. This is the third time this song has been on the show so I’m kind of out of things to say about it. The normally reliable @TOTPFacts has taken the week off as well so I can’t even pinch any of his content.

Erm…how about this? Twelve years on, Sybil performed on the ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time which showcased pop stars of yesteryear singing their biggest hits alongside a cover of a (then) contemporary song. The watching TV audience voted for a weekly winner to go through to the grand final. In her heat, Sybil was up against Kelly Marie of “Feels Like I’m In Love” fame, the lead singer from Cutting Crew, those three Cleopatra girls and Chesney Hawkes. The winner? Nobody but nobody could defeat the legend that is Chesney Hawkes! If you’re interested though (and I’m certainly not) here’s Sybil doing her contemporary cover of Shania Twain’s “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”…

Another song we’ve seen before next as Jade are back in the studio to perform their hit “Don’t Walk Away”. I can’t find a clip of this performance but it’s almost identical to the previous one even down to the long white drapes set. The only difference is that the trio have black, customised hot pants on this time as opposed to full length black leggings.

This uniformity didn’t translate into everlasting unity though. After the group petered out in 1997, the three members formed their own careers. However, when a reunion was planned last year as part of a retro concert called 90s Kickback, original lead vocalist Di Reed wasn’t invited to perform. No explanation was given by her former band mates Tonya Kelly and Joi Marshall who instead recruited one time The Voice contestant Myracle Holloway and rebranded themselves as ‘The Ladies Of Jade’. Attempts by Reed to contact Kelly and Marshall went unanswered and Reed was said to be considering action about the legality of her band mates use of the name Jade but remained hopeful it wouldn’t come to that. It all sounds a bit Spandau Ballet/ Bucks Fizz esque to me where they all ended up in court. I guess it just goes to show that bands of the longevity and democratic nature like U2 are the exception and not the rule.

Woah! Wasn’t expecting this! David Essex on TOTP in 1993! Right, I need to fess up straight away that I love David Essex mainly due to his starring role in the two wonderful films That’ll Be The Day and Stardust which are two of my favourite movies of all time. He’s also made some great pop tunes and seems like a thoroughly decent sort. By the 90s though, the hits had dried up. Indeed his last Top 40 appearance had been in 1985 with “Falling Angels Riding”. So why was he suddenly back on the show? Well, it was due to an unexpected hit album called “Cover Shot” which was, unsurprisingly, a covers album that, with the aid of a TV ad campaign, would rise to No 3 in the charts, his biggest hit since his mid 70s heyday. The album featured some fairly uninspired choices of songs by the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens and this one – “Here Comes The Night” by Van Morrison’s band Them.

Despite my stated admiration of Essex, I have to admit this isn’t his finest hour. His distinctive voice just about holds up but the whole thing felt like a big anachronism in 1993. David still had his long locks back then but never mind his barnet, check out the mahoosive mullet on his bass player. He still thought it was 1985 apparently. I’m glad David found some success at this time but I just wish it had been with a better project.

Wasn’t Robin S on the same show with Sybil the other week as well? I think she was. Back then, Sybil had a trio of backing dancers/singers to enhance her performance whilst Robin S took to the stage in complete solitude. This time however, she seems to have half inched Sybil’s entourage as she’s now got three dancers behind her. I wonder how the logistics of these things were decided upon? How was it deemed OK for Robin S to have no backing singers one week but three the next? Who sorted all this stuff out? The TOTP production team? The artist’s management? The label? Whatever the mechanics behind it all, “Show Me Love” was up to No 6 which would be its peak position despite this performance.

The Breakers section is jam packed with four tunes this week meaning each of them hardly get any airtime at all. As with the thought process behind the number of backing singers earlier, I wonder how the amount of Breakers was worked out each week? Sometimes it’s as low as two and I’m sure it’s been as high as five on occasion. Was it all just down to Head Producer Stanley Appel to have the casting vote?

However it was worked out, Dr. Alban was the first artist to make the cut this week. Yes, “It’s My Life” wasn’t the only hit he had. There was another one but only one. “Sing Hallelujah!” was its name and it was actually a hit on four separate occasions around Europe including in Hungary this year. In the UK though, once was enough and no wonder as this was a steaming pile of horseshit. I think the thing about the good doctor was that he was actually a really bad rapper. His voice was monotone and he garbled his words. This track had a gospel choir added to some perfunctory Italian house piano lines which we were somehow expected to be wowed by. Hadn’t (MC) Hammer already done that trick with the infinitely better “Do Not Pass Me By”?

“Sing Hallelujah!” made it to No 16 on the UK charts but surely Dr Alban’s legacy is his association with a Tampax advert.

Not only do we have David Essex on the show tonight but there’s also one of his 70s contemporaries. Yes, after last week’s in the flesh performance, Barry Manilow has crashed into the charts at No 22 with “Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix”.

Copacabana is of course a real place being a neighbourhood located in the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro and is famed for its 2.5 miles of beaches . Its New Year’s Eve celebrations are renowned across the world and in 1994 included a concert by Rod Stewart that was attended by…this can’t be right surely?…3.5 million people!

As for Manilow , Bazza’s no slouch in the touring department. Wikipedia lists twenty seven tours in his own right not including residency shows nor his early career stints as the opening act for the likes of Helen Reddy and Roberta Flack.

Encouraged by the success of the “Copacabana” remix, a follow up single was released, this time a remix of “Could It Be Magic” which grazed the charts at No 36. Maybe in 1993, people had become to used to the Take That version? This was Barry’s last UK Top 40 entry. Similarly, David Essex would only have one more visit to the charts in 1994 when a duet with Catherine Zeta Jones covering “True Love Ways” made No 38. Both would continue to be big live draws to this day though.

Next to a legendary US rock band but one which had a curious relationship with the UK charts. My knowledge of Aerosmith was non-existent until 1986 saw them team up with Run-DMC for their genre-bending hit “Walk This Way” but in my defence, they’d never had a song in the UK Top 40 to that point. That hit revitalised their career in the US and they released their “Permanent Vacation” album to commercial and critical success the following year.

Meanwhile, back in the UK we had returned to our habit of steadfastly ignoring them. None of the singles from “Permanent Vacation” were hits here. Fast forward a couple of years and we finally saw fit to give them another hit in the form of “Love In An Elevator” which was taken from the “Pump” album and which made No 13. After that had been and gone though, we reverted to type and ignored all the other singles from the album. As the new decade dawned, UK record buyers decided that maybe we’d made a mistake in not buying some of their previous stuff and so a rerelease from the “Permanent Vacation” album became a Top 20 hit. That song was “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and was possibly rereleased off the back of it featuring heavily in the Robin Williams movie Mrs Doubtfire. And so to 1993 and it was time to indulge Steven Tyler, Joe Perry et al in another hit single. This time it was “Livin’ On The Edge” from the album “Get A Grip”. Was that the one with the cow’s udders on the cover?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yeah, thought it was. Anyway, the single was written in response to the Los Angeles riots incited by the acquittal of the white police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King. Nearly thirty years later and the world was to witness such tragic scenes again in America with the killing of George Floyd. Aerosmith had already made their position clear on the political and societal mood in the country that the Donald Trump era had ushered in when they sent a cease and desist letter to the president after “Livin’ On The Edge” had been played at one of his rallies in 2018. Good on ‘em.

As for how the song sounded, it didn’t seem too dissimilar to “Love In An Elevator” to me but it was criticised in the press for sounding too much like Bon Jovi! The single made No 19 at which point the UK decided it did rather like Aerosmith after all and made five of the six singles released from “Get A Grip” Top 40 hits. We seemed to have taken the album’s title to heart.

The final Breaker sees the the Lazarus like return of Duran Duran carry on at a pace with the release of “Come Undone” which would furnish the band with another hit following the surprise success of “Ordinary World”. A further example of their new, mature yet radio friendly sound, it wasn’t as immediate as its predecessor to my ears but became a rapidly established ear worm once heard a few times.

The track was actually a very late addition to their eponymous album referred to as the “Wedding Album” and was cooked up musically by Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo with the lyrics hastily developed by Simon Le Bon. I always quite liked the line “Happy Birthday to you was created for you” a lyric that Le Bon literally inserted as it was his wife Yasmin’s birthday at the time. Despite appearances to the contrary in the video, apparently John Taylor doesn’t play on the track as the bass line was created by a synth in his absence.

As I write this, the band have just played at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in their home city of Birmingham. Not everyone was watching though. Here’s comedian Mark Lamarr…

I'm reliving my youth tonight. Ah, those wonderful nights throughout the 80s when I avoided watching Duran Duran at all costs. Takes me right back.
— Mark Lamarr (@lamarr_mark) July 28, 2022

Harsh! If you follow the thread, Lamarr doesn’t hold back on his dislike of the band. “Come Undone” peaked at No 13 in the UK and No 7 in the US.

Wait! What? There was more than one hit from The Beloved’s “Conscience” album? I’ve been thinking these past thirty years that only “Sweet Harmony” had made the charts but here’s indisputable proof that I was wrong. “You’ve Got Me Thinking” made No 23 and was actually a double A-side with “Celebrate Your Life” (which I had no idea about either). Watching this performance back though, I’m realising that it’s quite the tune. Understated yet hypnotic, it perfectly fits Jon Marsh’s idiosyncratic vocal style. Yes, the performance is hardly scintillating with everyone on stage sat down throughout but that kind of feels right for such a blissed out tune somehow. A nice little find I think which you don’t get to say too often in these TOTP repeats.

To rack up one infamous TOTP appearance would be enough for most bands but two? I guess New Order weren’t most bands. Their 1983 appearance on the show to perform “Blue Monday” live has become almost legendary and will often appear on those When TV Goes Wrong list type programmes. It was a shambles but the band’s reputation came out of it intact on account of them being seen as edgy, daring heroes for trying to subvert the show’s by then stuffy, established format. Fast forward ten years and they were back with another turn that would go down in the annals of TV history for being…well…just bizarre.

After the collapse of the aforementioned Factory Records in 1992, New Order signed with London Records, something they were able to do without impediment as they didn’t actually have a formal contract with Factory. Indeed, the reason that a proposed buy out of Factory by London failed to happen was due to the fact that Factory didn’t own their artists’ material. The first release on their new label (indeed their first since “World In Motion” in 1990) was “Regret”. The lead single from their sixth studio album “Republic”, it’s surely one of their most well known songs thanks in part to that distinctive, stop start intro. It easily fitted into daytime radio playlists just as “True Faith” had done six years earlier and ended up being a huge hit when it peaked at No 4.

But aside from all that, there was this…the TOTP performance from Venice Beach, LA on the set of Baywatch. What. The. F**k? How did this happen? Well, the band were touring America in support of the album and wanted to keep the single selling as it was helping to get their Haçienda nightclub out of the financial shit. TOTP were always keen on a performance they could promote as an exclusive and so the band plotted and planned about what was the most extreme and ludicrous setting they could come up with for their appearance. They settled on the TV series Baywatch, a show as ludicrous as New Order’s proposal. Most of the cast bailed out that day except one man, a man of no inconsiderable musical career himself – David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff. Rumours abound (though denied by the band) that he wanted to somehow join in musically with the performance – possibly the only thing that could have made the whole shebang even more out there. As it was, the sight of four pasty skinned Mancs miming next to extras in thong bikinis on a golden beach with frisbees flying about and a game of volleyball going on behind them was ludicrous enough. I’m sure I read somewhere that The Hoff proved to be a lovely guy and when some photos were taken with the band afterwards for posterity, he stood in a hole dug in the sand so as not to tower over the band too much.

Did I think the performance was mad at the time? Probably not. I probably just foolishly thought well, David Hasselhoff is famous and New Order are famous so why wouldn’t they know each other? With the hindsight of thirty years, it was all clearly bonkers!

It’s a second week at the top for The Bluebells and “Young At Heart” but instead of being in the studio as they have been on both previous appearances, we get the video this week. I actually like the fact that they didn’t bother making an updated promo and we just get the original from 1984, Clare Grogan and all. There’s also a cameo from Scottish actress Molly Weir who would have been known back in 1984 for her role as Hazel the McWitch in barmy childrens show Rentaghost. In 1993, I doubt she would have been as widely recognised. And is that Craig Gannon in the band line up who would go onto replace Andy Rourke in The Smiths briefly and whom Morrissey would label as ‘undiscussable’? I think it is.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sub Sub	Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)	Thought I did but singles box says no
2	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
3	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	No
4	David Essex	Here Comes The Night	Not released as a single
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my bag
6	Dr. Alban	Sing Hallelujah!	Never happening
7	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix	Nope
8	Aerosmith	Livin’ On The Edge	Negative
9	Duran Duran	Come Undone	No but I have it on something I think
10	The Beloved	You’ve Got Me Thinking	No but it’s a lost gem
11	New Order	Regret	No but I regret it now
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvp/top-of-the-pops-08041993

TOTP 01 APR 1993

Posted on July 24, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re up to April Fool’s Day 1993 in our BBC4 TOTP repeats but in a surprising turn of events, the biggest prank pulled that year actually came two days later when the Grand National that never was happened. This was the year of the false start that the majority of the field hadn’t realised had been called and therefore carried on running. Seven of the field even finished the race. I had that Saturday off work for some reason and as me and my wife walked into Manchester City centre, we popped into a Ladbrokes on the way to watch the race – I’m guessing I must have put a bet on. It was a weird experience with the committed gamblers all going crazy about whether the result would stand or would/could the race be rerun and if so, when. They were all to be disappointed as it was eventually declared void with the Jockey Club deciding that it couldn’t be rerun and the bookies had to refund an estimated £75 million in bets staked. As I said, a surprising turn of events. I wonder if tonight’s TOTP has any surprising turns on it?

We start with a tune that could possibly be the moment when Italian House music morphed into Eurodance. Or something. Look, I’m no expert on dance music despite working in record shops for the whole of the 90s just about. What I do know is that Cappella were Italian and they had first come to prominence during the late 80s when Italian House music was in its pomp, brought to the masses by huge hits like “Ride On Time” by Black Box. They had a UK hit of their own when “Helyom Halib” peaked at No 11. It took three years for them to feature in our charts again when they returned to that Black Box blueprint and sampled Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” on their Top 30 single “Take Me Away”.

This stealing other people’s work to grab a hit of your own idea obviously appealed to the guys behind Cappella (actually just one guy essentially, producer Gianfranco Bortolotti) as it happened again for this hit “U Got 2 Know”. Taking the riff from “Happy House” by Siouxsie and the Banshees and completely butchering it to make it fit into a Eurodance anthem was crime enough but they compounded that by not crediting Siouxsie and Steve Severin and ended up getting sued. Good!

“U Got 2 Know” managed to crash the Top 10 despite its legal issues and they would follow it up with the No 2 hit “U Got 2 Let The Music”. Cappella there creating texting language years before we knew what it was.

Nothing very surprising about the next artist being on the show as Madonna was one of the most famous people on the planet at the time. Does she still hold that status in 2022? I don’t know how you measure these things. Back in 1993 though, she seemed to have a new single out every other week. This latest one “Fever” was the fourth of five tracks taken from her “Erotica” album. A cover of the old Peggy Lee hit, it would continue Madonna’s run of Top 10 hits from the album by peaking at No 6. Despite that consistency of success, I hadn’t liked any of them that much. The one I did have time for hadn’t been released yet – “Rain” wouldn’t be released for nearly four months in direct contrast to the four weeks between “Bad Girl” and “Fever”. What was the reasoning behind that? It feels like it was just an afterthought.

The video shown on TOTP isn’t the official promo for “Fever” but a compilation of clips of previous Madge videos which I originally thought must have been because some scenes in the proper release were deemed too racy for pre-watershed viewing. However, having watched the official version, although Madonna is spray painted silver Goldfinger style, I don’t think there’s anything in there too provocative. I think the reason for it not being shown on TOTP was simply that it hadn’t been made yet. According to Wikipedia, it was filmed on 10-11 April 1993 so ten days or so after this TOTP aired.

Sound wise, I think I would have preferred a straight Peggy Lee style cover rather than the housed-up version we got here. As a rule I think cover versions shouldn’t be replicas of the original but Madge’s take here just sounds antiseptic and sanitised. As so many of us have been wishing in the recent heatwave, bring on “Rain”!

When I saw the running order for this show and that Mica Paris was performing a song called “I Never Felt Like This Before”, I immediately thought that it was yet another cover, this time of that song by Stephanie Mills. I was quite mistaken though as that was called “Never Knew Love Like This Before”. Easy mistake to make in my defence. Mica’s tune was actually written by American singer- songwriter and producer Narada Michael Walden and was the lead single from her third album “Whisper A Prayer”. It sounds very generic 90s R&B the likes of which we’d heard before and would do so again many times over and also the lyrics are rubbish. Look at this:

Ooh baby, used to be a bird inside a cage but now I’m free, I’m flying higher

Baby, my skies are blue since you came into my life

Dear oh dear. How much time did Narada put into coming up with those? 30 seconds? 20? Mica herself seems to be going through an identity crisis as she’s come dressed as Seal but is singing in the style of Michael Jackson with every line seeming to end with an ‘Oww!’. All very disconcerting. A poor effort from all involved.

“I Never Felt Like This Before” peaked at No 15.

Not Sunscreem again! Like the Tory party leadership contest, their run of appearances on TOTP at this time seemed never ending. We’ve got one of those excruciating interviews with the band beforehand explaining why they can’t perform on the show in person due to one of their number being ill. TOTP seemed very keen on this rather niche activity. I’m sure they’ve done it a few times now though I don’t know why. It might make more sense if the reason for their crying off wasn’t the usual sore throat or, as in this case, the common cold. Something a bit more unforeseen and unlikely might have made an interview worth it like dropping a bottle of salad cream on your foot. Actually, a footballer did that once. Goalkeeper Dave Beasant missed eight weeks of a season after severing the tendon to his big toe when he dropped a 2kg glass bottle of salad cream on his foot. Now that might seem like an unexpected turn of events but then Dave Beasant was also capable of these howlers…

“Pressure US” peaked at No 19.

Talking of howlers, there’s a couple in this week’s Breakers starting with Coronation Street actor Bill Tarmey and his version of the Barry Manilow song “One Voice”. We all knew him as Jack Duckworth of course as he’d been on our screens in that role for over a decade by 1993. However, Bill had been a club singer (you don’t say!) in the late 60s before his time on the cobbles of Weatherfield so perhaps it was inevitable that this moment would arrive at some point. After all, soap actors had become interchangeable as pop singers in the 80s with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and…erm…Stefan Dennis from Neighbours all making the transition whilst EastEnders had given us Nick Berry and Anita Dobson. So why not Coronation Street?

Unfortunately for us all, this trend would go into overdrive in the 90s with a list of soap stars as long as Phil Mitchell’s rap sheet clogging up the charts. By the end of the decade we’d have seen huge hits by Adam Rickitts (Coronation Street), Will Mellor (Hollyoaks), Sean Maguire, Sid Owen and Martine McCutcheon (EastEnders) and, if you widen the net to include dramas, John Alford and Steven Houghton (London’s Burning) and of course, the dons of the whole family, Robson and Jerome (Soldier Soldier). Gee, thanks everyone!

Bill Tarmey’s own contribution to this genre was not limited to this one single. He made five (!) albums and also did two duets – one with Ruth Madoc of Hi–de–Hi! fame and, inevitably, one with his Coronation Street partner Liz Dawn (Vera Duckworth). The terror didn’t end there as “One Voice” was produced by Stock & Waterman (who seemed to be taking any old job since the break up of the SAW trio) and was performed with the St. Winifred’s School Choir – yes, the little darlings that brought us “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” and “It’s ‘Orrible Being In Love When You’re Eight And A Half”. A combined canon of quality and distinction there I’m sure you’ll agree. Should have stuck to pigeon fancying Jack.

Some proper music next as we get a third consecutive hit from Arrested Development with the inevitable rerelease of “Tennessee”. We saw a performance of this track on the show almost a year prior as part of the US chart feature but it failed to make the Top 40 over here. After “People Everyday” and “Mr Wendal” were massive hits back to back though, “Tennessee” was shoved back out and managed a peak of No 18 this time.

The track uses a sample – just the word Tennessee – from Prince’s “Alphabet Street” which was uncleared. The band heard nothing from Prince until it had been a huge hit in the US and had started to descend the charts. Once it had peaked, Prince’s legal team swooped in and began proceedings knowing that they could make a claim for royalties against an optimum amount of sales. The cost of that one word sample? $100,000! Think that qualifies as an unexpected turn of events.

And now… back to the bollocks and just like with Bill Tarmey, it was all a devilish plot by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman who were joined by a third witch at the cauldron of shit in Simon Cowell. The phenomenon of American wrestling that had already spawned one UK hit single in “Slam Jam” was back for another bout with a track called “WrestleMania”. Bizarrely, that first single had been credited to The WWF Superstars but this follow up was officially by The World Wrestling Federation Superstars. I’m guessing it was a legal thing. Thankfully, this No 14 hit was the final time the US wrestling fraternity troubled our chart compilers and the whole craze petered out.

I’m not sure what I was doing whilst working in a record shop at this time but it doesn’t appear that I was taking note of the singles I was selling to punters as here’s another one I don’t remember. “Go Away” by Gloria Estefan anyone? Apparently this was taken from her “Greatest Hits” album that was a big seller over Xmas ‘92 and was the follow up to the “Miami Hit Mix /Megamix” single that promoted it.

It’s an uptempo mamba infused number and was also used in a film I have never come across in my life before entitled Made In America starring Ted Adamson, Whoopi Goldberg and a fledgling Will Smith in a very early big screen role. There’s some clips of it in the video for “Go Away” and it looks dreadful. The plot description for it in on Wikipedia only confirms its awfulness. One to avoid I think.

“Go Away” made it to No 13 on the UK charts and Gloria’s next release in the Summer of this year was a Spanish language album called “Mi Tierra”.

We arrive at the show’s exclusive element which is, as host Mark Franklin advised at the top of the show, gatecrashing a Bruce Springsteen concert. Was this a live link up? Wikipedia tells me that the Glasgow date of Bruce’s world tour where this performance comes from was on March 31st, the day before this TOTP aired so it wasn’t live as we watched it. However, the show was recorded on a Wednesday before transmission so presumably it was all just edited together after the event to make it look seamless. Surely the recording wasn’t scheduled to coincide with the Springsteen gig? Wouldn’t the BBC just have got permission to record that one track for broadcast and put it all together in the editing suite? I know Bruce introduces the performance with a shout out to TOTP joining the gig but that could have all been prearranged surely? Oh I don’t know.

What I do know is that the song being promoted by all this was “Lucky Town” which was the title track of one of his two albums released simultaneously in March 1992 (the other being “Human Touch”). Only one single from that album had been a hit – “Better Days” had struggled to a peak of No 34 – but this live version of “Lucky Town” was actually to promote not that album but his “In Concert / MTV Plugged” set which was released eleven days after this TOTP aired. No, that’s not a typo; the album was called “MTV Plugged” not Unplugged as was the usual format as The Boss wasn’t happy with the acoustic arrangements of the songs in rehearsal and so only agreed to the recording if it was with amplified instruments. So, if I understand it correctly, you couldn’t buy this live, in concert version of the track that we saw on TOTP but the MTV Plugged version? It all seemed an overly complicated bit of promotion which didn’t really work as the single failed to make the UK Top 40, bottoming out at No 48. I guess his label Columbia would argue that the album was a success by peaking at No 4. However, Wikipedia tells me that it only made No 189 in the US. That can’t be right can it?!

As for the song itself, I like Springsteen but this isn’t a particular favourite. I know some people who are huge Bruce fans though who are very excited about his UK tour next year. I’ve seen some reports of extortionate ticket prices though – an average of over £200 each with some even going for £4,000! I say again, that can’t be right can it?!

Now this really is an exclusive! Barry Manilow on TOTP! The target of many a music snob’s put downs over the years, Bazza still retains an iconic status especially amongst his devoted fan base. Despite his success in the US where he notched up three No 1 singles, his hits over here were rather more sporadic and…well…unlike his nose (sorry – had to!) rather small. He managed just one UK Top Tenner (the innuendo laden “I Wanna Do It With You” in 1982) and yet his songs are just as well known in this country. Why, in this very show his song “One Voice” was covered (albeit by Jack Duckworth) and just a few weeks prior to this Take That had a huge hit with their version of “Could It Be Magic”.

Why was Barry having a hit in his own right at this time though? Well, it was to promote a Best Of collection of course. If it was good enough for 70s contemporaries like Boney M and Sister Sledge than why not Manilow? “Greatest Hits: The Platinum Collection” included this single – “Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix” – which is just brilliant and ridiculous at the same time. A remix of the 1978 story song telling the tale of Lola the showgirl and Tony the bartender, it’s gloriously camp but fun with it even if the song’s denouement ends in tragedy. The song inspired a 1985 made for TV film in which Bazza himself plays the part of Tony but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It also became a musical which ran in London’s West End for two years.

The staging in this TOTP performance is not quite convincing mainly because Barry sits down for the whole song – I wonder if he had a bad back or something? There’s a lot of fast cuts of stock footage padding it out as well which adds credence to my theory that Manilow maybe couldn’t move that freely plus the secretarial image for the two backing singers looks a bit dated now.

I once worked with a colleague called Justin at Our Price and this song always reminds me of him. Juzza used to call me Rico sometimes (what with me being a Richard and all) and so occasionally he would sing me the line ‘his name was Rico’. Ah, good times.

The 1993 remix of “Copacabana (At The Copa)” peaked at No 22.

The Bluebells have knocked Shaggy off his perch to claim the No 1 crown with “Young At Heart”.

For what is quite a slight song for me, this track has had a hell of a long life. Originally recorded by Bananarama (with whom Bobby Bluebell wrote it as Siobahn Fahey’s then boyfriend) for their debut album “Deep Sea Skiving”, it became a Top 10 hit in 1984 before its use in a car advert sent it to the top of the charts in 1993.

It didn’t stop there though. Here it is again in the wonderful Scottish sitcom Still Game in 2019:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Capella	U Got 2 Know	I did not
2	Madonna	Fever	Nah
3	Mica Paris	I Never Felt Like This Before	No
4	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
5	Bill Tarmey	One Voice	As if
6	Arrested Development	Tennessee	No but my wife had the album
7	The World Wrestling Federation Superstars	WrestleMania	Never happening
8	Gloria Estefan	Go Away	I wish she would – no
9	Bruce Springsteen	Lucky Town (Live)	Negative
10	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix	No but I think my wife had that Best Of album
11	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvm/top-of-the-pops-01041993

TOTP 25 MAR 1993

Posted on July 16, 2022 by 80stastic

I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about the unholy trinity of the three S’s of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow dominating the charts. Well, guess what? I’m still doing it in this post as two of them are on the show again this week. It’s come to my attention though that they weren’t the only members of the ‘S’ brigade. This week’s show is jam packed with them and no I didn’t like a single one!

We start with an ‘S’ and it’s ‘S’ for Sybil, she of the hit “When I’m Good And Ready”. Sybil was never as popular again as she was at this moment in terms of sales. Her run of two consecutive big hits comprising this single and previous No 3 smash “The Love I Lost” with West End was brought to an abrupt halt when the next single “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” peaked outside of the Top 40 at that most unfortunate of places No 41. It wasn’t for the want of trying though. She even did two different versions of the song- a pop ballad version for the UK market…

And a hip-hop remix with a rap in the middle for the US territories…

It made no difference as neither version was a hit. Off the top of my head I can only think of Climie Fisher also doing a similar thing where there was a straight ballad version of their single “Rise To The Occasion” and a hip-hop remix complete with the ubiquitous and annoying ‘aaah yeaaah’ sample.

The track had also previously been recorded by Lonnie Gordon and released as a follow up to her “Happenin’ All Over Again” hit but had also missed the chart peaking at No 48. All of this despite the claim by writers Stock, Aitken and Waterman that it is one of the best songs they ever penned. And if you thought the chart performance of “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” was unlucky, Sybil followed up taking it to No 41 in the charts by releasing another single from her “Good ‘N’ Ready” album called “Stronger Together” and that peaked at…yep…No 41.

No S’s in sight next as we once again witness the power of an advert to make us buy a song that had already been a hit once all over again. This time the product being soundtracked by an old hit was the Volkswagen Golf and the song that benefited from it “Young At Heart” by The Bluebells. Normally I don’t go back and see what I’ve already written about a chart hit that I’ve reviewed in a previous blog post for fear of just regurgitating the same words but I did in this case. I think it’s because I view their chart histories separated by nine years as almost completely different entities, relating to two disparate records.

Originally a hit in the Summer of 1984 when I had not long turned 16, “Young At Heart” was never off the airwaves. Radio 1 seemed to play it four or five times a day at least which was not good for me as I couldn’t stand it. In my post on the track in my 80s TOTP blog, I made a point of saying I liked the band but hated this song and I stand by that. I still have a soft spot for The Bluebells but their most well known song is also their worst to my ears. Back in 1984, they followed up “Young At Heart” with the wonderful “Cath” but it only just scraped into the charts at No 38. A final single called “All I Am (Is Loving You)” was released which missed the charts completely and the band fizzled out.

The song’s second coming seemed nothing to do with the band and indeed it wasn’t. They weren’t actually even together in 1993 and hadn’t been for some years. I think I’m right in saying that the story behind its 1993 reactivation was that the person working for the ad agency that was looking after the Volkswagen account had come up with a song for the advert but that there were some issues with copyright and it couldn’t be used and so she had to come up with another song fast. Thinking back to her childhood, she remembered that jolly song that she used to hear on the radio. The rights owners were sought out and contacted and the rest is history.

For many record buyers though, they may not have known anything of the record’s past or the career of the band who made it. They just knew it as the song from that car advert with the twist at the end when instead of getting married, it turns out that the ‘bride’ is actually celebrating getting divorced. The single’s cover was just a still of said actress from the advert reinforcing this new identity for the song as something separate and somehow itself divorced as it were from the band. It even has the Volkswagen logo in the corner. It was corporate and false and in some way, it devalued the original even though I hadn’t liked it.

On hearing of the success of the rerelease (it outstripped the original’s chart peak easily in the first week) the members of The Bluebells reconvened and agreed to reform to promote the single with appearances like this one on TOTP. They look like they’re treating it as a laugh which is probably the correct attitude to have taken. They weren’t under any record company pressure to maximise sales presumably. Whatever it did commercially was a bonus. Subsequent performances would be taken even less seriously as the band struggled to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events. “Young At Heart” would go to No 1 for four weeks and be the twelfth best selling single of the year in the UK in 1993.

We’re back with the S’s now and it’s the most hateful of the lot – Shabba Ranks with “Mr Loverman”. I could never understand the appeal of this record. I mean, I didn’t like Shaggy nor Snow’s songs either but I could just about appreciate why they were successful. “Mr Loverman” though? Nah, that was just nasty. Aside from Ranks’s own despicable views which were enough to put any sane thinking person off anyway, I just couldn’t take the song seriously with all those ridiculous ‘Shabba!’ shout outs. Now I learn it’s not even Ranks name checking himself but Maxi Priest sampled from their “Housecall” single.

The whole stupid business was parodied in a sketch by the team behind the US comedy TV series In Living Color to whom I shall leave the last word…

All female US R&B groups seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. At the start of the decade we had En Vogue and then as the years passed we saw the likes of SWV, TLC and Brownstone right up to the titans of the genre Destiny’s Child. And those were only the ones that crossed over to the UK. Back in America there were groups who never managed to translate acclaim at home into huge overseas success. I’m thinking of Xscape, 702 and Total. Here’s one for you that did manage to straddle the pond as it were but who rarely get talked about anymore.

Jade were Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed from Chicago who are best remembered for their hit “Don’t Walk Away” though they did have a few others. In 1993 they were always going to be compared to En Vogue who were having transatlantic hits at the time and I guess their sound wasn’t too dissimilar. “Don’t Walk Away” was a radio friendly piece of sassy R&B that enabled the trio to pull out some slinky dance moves when performing it. It rose to a lofty No 7 position in the UK charts and an even higher peak of No 4 in the US selling 2.5 million copies worldwide. Their album “Jade To The Max” racked up substantial numbers and a lengthy tour had them looking fair set for superstardom. They appeared in both film (The Inkwell) and TV (Beverly Hills 90210) and contributed tracks to a couple of soundtracks as well. A second album followed in 1994 and then…nothing. Everything just seemed to stop. Were they dropped from their label? Did they just decide themselves to jack it all in?

I think they all stayed in music one way or another and two of them reunited in 2021 with the improbably named Myracle Holloway (a finalist on The Voice). The curious tale of Jade – a gemstone amongst the Brownstones.

We’re back amongst the S’s now and it’s another stone related artist – Robin Stone better known as Robin S. This New York singer songwriter’s legacy would be formed upon and based around this one track, the house anthem “Show Me Love”. We sold loads and loads of this in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. And then we went home, had a sleep, came back to work and sold some more of it the next day. I’m surprised that it wasn’t a bigger hit than its final chart placing of No 6 though it did return to the Top 40 a further two times as remixes. In fact, it seems to have been released eight times in total. See what I mean about Robin’s legacy being totally built around this one track? I’m sure there are some Robin S super fans out there who would dispute that claim but it’s true. And there’s many would say that being known for “Show Me Love” would be recognition enough. It regularly appears in lists of the best dance tunes of all time and its influence is still felt today in the music of the likes of Clean Bandit and is sampled in Beyoncé’s latest single “Break My Soul”.

Interesting to note the difference here between Sybil’s performance at the top of the show with her three backing singers and Robin’s with nothing but some dry ice for company while she belts her tune out. I recall the cover of the single was just a very basic generic design in green with a cream header with the label’s name (Champion) repeated in lines all over it. Very poor. Maybe they didn’t expect it to be a big hit outside of the clubs and so didn’t bother designing a cover to be shipped in huge quantities to retailers?

Oh Hell! Cliff’s back again. Yes, despite the charts being jam packed with dance tunes of every hue and genre, a little corner of them was still reserved for Cliff Richard and whatever piece of garbage song he was peddling in 1993. “Peace In Our Time” was the offending article this time and it was at its peak of No 8. This is just a horrible tune with its backing that sounds like a speeded up version of “The Living Years” by Mike And The Mechanics and its insipid lyrics but it’s Cliff’s performance which really grabs the attention.

As with his last time on the show the other week, I can’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Unlike then, Cliff has ditched all his entourage of backing singers and has done a Robin S and gone solo albeit that he still has the remnants of the Sting set from the other month with him for company. It’s Cliff’s movements that are so spellbinding though – spellbindingly awful that is. They’re just so weird and unnatural. Plus he’s turned up in the bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket and trainers combo. It looks…completely unconvincing and actually very safe. In the 50s he would have been seen as a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth in that get up but in 1993, he just looked lame. The 90s weren’t kind to Cliff. Yes, he had two Xmas No 1s at the start and end of the decade but they were both gut wrenchingly awful and the intervening years were populated by instantly forgettable singles like this one. Those great airplay hits of the late 70s and early 80s like “We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Carrie” and “Wired For Sound” seemed like a life time ago even then.

And onto the Breakers and I’ve realised that we have arrived at a rather poignant moment as this blink and you miss it moment is the last we’ll see of Bananarama on TOTP for twelve years! Regulars on the BBC show since their first hits in 1982, this was, by my calculations (I make host Tony Dortie wrong with his figure of thirty-one) their twenty-third Top 40 hit, ten of them being Top 10 hits. None of those Top Tenners had been in the 90s though and their commercial appeal was definitely on the wane. The decision to leave the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable to make records with hip producer Youth had not resulted in healthy sales of the “Pop Life” album and so a revamp was required for next album “Please Yourself”.

That revamp took the form of jettisoning ‘new girl’ Jacquie O’Sullivan (who had actually been in the group since 1988) and re branding themselves as a duo. To quote one of their previous album titles, wow! Would it work, could it work and indeed should it work? To give themselves some extra insurance on this bold move, Sara and Keren returned to their previous producers who were now a duo themselves, Stock and Waterman. It was the latter who came up with the theme that the album should promote a new hybrid sound of ‘ABBA -Banana’. It would turn out to be a good idea but not for Bananarama.

The album was poorly received and limped to a chart peak of No 46. It produced just two hits, a pair of No 24s, in “Movin’ On” and this one, a cover of the Andrea True Connection song “More More More”. I’m guessing this was released as previous single “Last Thing On My Mind” had missed the charts completely and as we all know, if you find yourself in need of a hit, what do you do? Altogether now… you release a cover version! It’s a pretty faithful take on the disco classic and probably made sense as a choice of single given the resurgence of disco songs in the charts at that time from the likes of Boney M and Sister Sledge. In fact, the Bananas would maybe have done better with a whole disco themed album than an ABBA one. Maybe the ABBA revival had been sooo 1992? Either way, it gave them a chart hit, the last they would have for twelve years by which time TOTP itself was on its last legs.

As Bananarama seemed to be slipping into pop oblivion, Pete Waterman looked for another vehicle for his ‘ABBA-Banana’ concept – thankfully though the era of Steps was still four years off. As for the Nanas, they would continue to perform live as a duo before pulling off the event that their fans had almost never dared to hope could happen- a reunion tour with Siobahn Fahey in 2017. The tour was a huge success and led to Keren and Sara being revitalised to write and record new material. “In Stereo” was well received on its release in 2019 and they have a new album called “Masquerade” due out literally in a few days time.

Another ‘S’ now as the band called Sunscreem are on the show with yet another hit. Sunscreem are becoming quite the curiosity for me. I was always aware that there was a band called Sunscreem because they were a chart act and I worked in a mainstream record shop and we stocked their music. I could even tell you that they were a Sony artist. What they sounded like though was a different matter. I haven’t recognised any of their tunes that have featured in these TOTP repeats so far and “Pressure US” is no different. Apparently this was a remix of the band’s debut single which had been a No 1 hit on the US Dance chart. Given its success across the pond, it was rereleased in the UK with the ‘US’ suffix added to make it clear it was a remix.

In the nicest possible way, Sunscreem were my ghost poo*. You know when you know you’ve had a poo but there is absolutely no evidence on the toilet paper or in the toilet bowl that anything actually took place. So it was for me with Sunscreem. I knew they existed but my memory banks have zero evidence about what they sounded like.

“Pressure US” would peak at No 19, a whole forty-one places higher than the original version from 1991.

*There is no nicest possible way is there?

Now I might have been pushing it earlier to suggest the existence of Robin S super fans but I know for a fact the next artist has a multitude of them so I need to tread carefully here. David Bowie spent much of the very early 90s dicking around with (no, think of the fanbase – definitely not dicking around, think of something else) ‘experimenting’ with his side project rock band Tin Machine the results of which had failed to convince many of their merits. However, 1993 saw the first proper Bowie album for six years with the last being the poorly received “Never Let Me Down”. Expectations were high for a return to form though with “Black Tie White Noise” and it duly went to No 1 though it got a mixed reception in the press.

Lead single “Jump They Say” though was pretty good I thought and it would provide Bowie, rather unbelievably, with his first Top 10 hit since “Absolute Beginners” in 1986. Inspired by the tragic story of his half brother Terry who committed suicide in 1985 by walking out in front of a train, it also had a powerful video that has been described by some critics as Bowie’s finest hour as an actor in a music promo. Bowie’s acting credentials though are a mixed bag. Brilliant in The Man Who Fell To Earth but hammy in Labyrinth and downright awful in Jazzin’ For Blue Jean (Shush! Remember the fan base!). “Jump They Say” was easily the biggest hit of the three singles released from the album but my favourite of his in 1993 was none of those but the theme song he wrote for the TV adaption of Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha Of Suburbia novel.

In a post a few weeks back, I admitted to my complete dislike of Lulu. Imagine my delight then when I read the running order for tonight’s show and saw that she’s on again. I remembered her single “Independence” that she performed then but I really thought we were shot of her until much later in the year when she would pop up on Take That’s “Relight My Fire” single. I was wrong as she literally sings “I’m Back For More” on her duet with Bobby Womack. I have zero memory of this song probably because it is so unmemorable. A complete drag. Don’t get me wrong, Bobby’s vocals are as great as you’d expect them to be but Lulu’s scratchy, annoying voice really grates.

Of much more interest are the dance moves of the studio audience members positioned behind the pair. I’m especially drawn to the guy extreme right of the screen who’s turned up in clobber as if he’s expecting a call up to be the sixth member of the aforementioned Take That. That ‘curtains’ haircut and waistcoat combination is oh so early 90s.

“I’m Back For More” peaked at No 27. The parent album “Independence” stalled at No 67. It was Lulu’s only studio album of the decade and yet bizarrely her record label saw fit to release a collection album in 1999 called “I’m Back For More: The Very Best Of Her Nineties Recordings”. Eh? Isn’t that just the “Independence” album then? Well (or rather ‘wellllllllll’) I checked and yes, it pretty much is. If she could sell that then maybe she was the woman who sold the world.

It’s a final week of two at the top for the final ‘S’ of the night – Shaggy and his “Oh Carolina” single. I’d forgotten that the track appeared on the soundtrack to the film Sliver, a erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone (wait, add another three S’s to the tally!). That soundtrack would also feature another No 1 song which would become the second biggest seller in the UK of 1993 – UB40’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.

As it’s the final week for Shaggy, I’m going to shoehorn in another and much more tenuous link between “Oh Carolina” and Sliver. Shaggy of course was also the name of a character in the legendary cartoon Scooby Doo the theme tune of which includes these lyrics:

Come on Scooby Doo, I see you pretending you got a sliver

But you’re not fooling me ‘cause I can see the way you shake and shiver

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
2	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Not in 1984 and not in 1993 either
3	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Mr Dickhead more like – NO!
4	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	Nope
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my thing
6	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	As if
7	Bananarama	More More More	No No No
8	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
9	David Bowie	Jump They Say	I didn’t…jump or buy it
10	Lulu and Bobby Womack	I’m Back For More	No
11	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	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/m00196dt/top-of-the-pops-25031993

TOTP 18 MAR 1993

Posted on July 13, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve got into a very steady pattern with these TOTP shows in terms of the presenters. Back in October of 1991 at the very start of the ‘year zero’ revamp there were more new presenters than Tory MPs in a leadership contest. By March 1993, all those other wannabes had fallen by the wayside leaving a core of just two – Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie. If, like in the race to be Prime Minister, a vote was out to the TOTP fan community as to who was the best, which one would triumph? I think my choice for Prime Presnter would go to Franklin. A reliable, safe pair of hands, he always seemed unflappable and that nothing could disrupt his focus. A bit on the dull side? Maybe but I think I’d take that over Dortie who was always appeared to be one word away from a gaffe or misplaced street slang phrase. Also, I’m not convinced he really was across his brief on…you know…pop music which does seem like a basic pre-requisite of the job. It’s my pick on hosting duties tonight. Let’s hope he serves up a presenting master class to justify my choice and not come across as, to quote that master of the nonsensical put down Boris Johnson, a ‘Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest’.

Franklin begins in off screen, word perfect style when introducing the show’s opening act Hue And Cry. Just like Heaven 17 recently, Pat and Greg Kane were experiencing something of a revival of their 80s heyday thanks to the release of a Greatest Hits album. Best known for their hits “Labour Of Love” and “Looking For Linda” (they liked a bit of alliteration with the letter ‘L’), their fortunes had been in decline since the turn of the decade. True, their 1991 album “Stars Crash Down” had made the Top 10 but that was a last hurrah. There would be only one more album that graced the charts at all (1992’s “Truth And Love” made No 33) and then nothing but chart wilderness. We hadn’t seen them on TOTP for four years which was how long it had been since their last hit single.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and so record company Circa stepped in with a Greatest Hits compilation album called “Labours Of Love – The Best Of Hue And Cry”. It did the trick but as former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis might have said, in a limited and specific way. Yes, the Best Of album made the charts but its No 27 peak was surely below Circa’s expectations. And yes, the release of a remixed “Labour Of Love” provided both a hit single and a TOTP appearance but a No 25 chart high paled in comparison to the Top 5 placing achieved by the remix of “Temptation” by the aforementioned Heaven 17. It all seemed a tad underwhelming.

I don’t think their revival masterplan was helped by either the remix of the single nor their appearance here. The addition of that nasty, generic dance backbeat did nothing but dim the splendour of the original version of “Labour Of Love” and then there’s the guitarist and bass player on stage with Pat and Greg. Who the Hell were those two blokes and why had they come dressed like they were auditioning for a part in the musical Rock Of Ages? This wasn’t the Hue And Cry I remembered and liked. Thankfully, I have a more recent and better memory of the band. I saw them do a live gig in Cottingham at the back end of last year and they were great. It was a small venue so Pat’s enormous voice easily filled it and Greg is a fine musician demonstrating not just his keyboards skills but his prowess on guitar as well. That TOTP appearance was a nice reminder thought that they both used to have hair.

Franklin remains off camera as he does the shortest of segues into the next act who is…be afraid…Snow! Ah, the dreaded third component of the unholy trinity of the three S’s after Shaggy and Shabba Ranks. The three dancehall men of the musical apocalypse. Snow (real name Darrin Kenneth O’Brien) was a Canadian reggae musician and rapper who had come to prominence on the back of his “Informer” single which spent seven (!) weeks at No 1 in America before slinking back to obscurity. He was basically the reggae Vanilla Ice.

For me, he wasn’t the most offensive of the three S’s (that was Shabba Ranks clearly) but he was the most ludicrous. For a start, what was he actually singing/rapping about because it sounds like he’s going on about ‘licking bum bums down’! WTF?! The lyrics are actually ‘lucky boom boom down’ which all makes everything much clearer! Here’s @TOTPFacts with a more lucid explanation of the story behind “Informer”:

The lyrics of "Informer" relate to Snow being charged with two counts of attempted murder (related to a knife fight in a pub) in 1989. The charges were later reduced to aggravated assault, and he was eventually acquitted. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 8, 2022

OK, so actually Snow was more like the Canadian Smiley Culture than the reggae Vanilla Ice…

Unlike Smiley though who had hidden his ganja before the police pulled him over, Snow was taken downtown to the cop shop where a rectal examination took place. No really. That’s what it says in his lyrics! Look:

“Well the destination reached in down-a East detention, where they whip down me pants look up me bottom”

Apologies for any lingering mental images that may have caused you. “Informer” would peak at No 2 meaning the three S’s would have the Top 3 chart places covered between them with Shaggy bagging a No 1 and Shabba Ranks going all the way to No 3. What a time to be alive!

I think we all need to calm down after that and just in time, Mark Franklin finally appears on screen to reassure us that everything will be OK, even making a quip about trying to sing “Informer” at karaoke. Look how calmly he deals with the jostling from the assembled members of the studio audience. He could teach Rishi Sunak a thing or two about not flapping when under pressure like being asked, I don’t know, say about his family’s tax arrangements.

Talking of cash, here’s Right Said Fred (and friends) to ask us to dig in our pockets for Comic Relief by buying their “Stick It Out” single. The promo video for it is largely unwatchable (though I don’t suppose I felt that way in 1993) with various celebs contributing to the ‘fun’ like Clive Anderson, Hugh Laurie and Linda Robson and Pauline Quirke from Birds Of A Feather. The latter two seem to have no problem leaving their dignity at the door as they leap into the action with some awful dance moves and shouting of ‘stick it aaart!’. Didn’t Linda Robson come out as a big Boris Johnson fan on Loose Women recently? Explains a lot.

“Stick It Out” peaked at No 4.

After The Jesus Lizard were on the show the other week, here comes another unlikely act in the shape of Therapy? It turns out that there was more connecting the two bands than my casual observation. Wikipedia tells me that Therapy?’s sound was influenced by The Jesus Lizard and that the Irish rockers went on to support the Teaxan grunge merchants in their early days. Maybe head TOTP producer Stanley Appel was majorly into his grunge on the sly.

I think the first time I became aware of Therapy? I was sat on a bus in Manchester and glanced out of the window to see a poster advertising their major label debut single “Teethgrinder”. It wasn’t a pleasant sight but it got my attention and put their name in my head. Both the single and parent album “Nurse” achieved Top 40 placings, establishing them as a chart act. The band had signed with A&M after releasing a couple of albums via indie label Wiiija so they could clearly see potential for a big career.

If that early success gave the band a place on the backbenches as it were, then 1993 saw them promoted to ministerial status with three EPs all hitting the charts. The first of those was “Shortsharpshock” with “Screamager” being the lead track. I didn’t think I knew this but the “screw that, forget about that” bridge into the chorus is definitely familiar. It’s a pretty decent tune in fact. They won’t thank me for this comparison but they come across here a bit like a grunge version of early era Busted even down to the bass player wearing long shorts.

Greater success was just around the corner with 1994 album “Troublegum” making the Top 5. The band are still going to this day and have released fifteen studio albums in total.

Mark Franklin is having a good night. Not only has there been nothing approaching a cock up but now he pulls off a difficult segue in slick style. We move from Therapy? across to the neighbouring stage where we find Big Country who launch into action with not a word of introduction. As Stuart Adamson finishes his initial vocal and the guitars kick in, Franklin’s disembodied voice comes in and times his intro to perfection before Adamson restarts singing. A masterclass.

You would be forgiven for saying though, “never mind Mark Franklin, did you just say Big Country are on the show?!”. Yes, yes I did. “Weren’t they just an 80s band though?”. No, no they weren’t though it’s true that their golden era of 1883-86 was well behind them. Like Duran Duran though, those other superstars of the previous decade who were just expected to retire once the 90s came around, Big Country weren’t for giving up. Despite witnessing a downturn in commercial fortunes that began with their final album of the 80s “Peace In Our Time” and a near collapse of the band with 1991’s “No Place Like Home”, they returned in 1993 with a much better received effort in “The Buffalo Skinners”.

The lead single from it was “Alone” and it certainly sounded like a return to form and the sound that had brought them so much success. Those chugging guitars that came to be described as ‘bagpipe rock’ allied to Adamson’s unmistakable growling vocals was a potent brew. Actually, Stuart looked great here, sleek of leather trousers with an into the 90s haircut replacing his previous gravity defying barnet, how many of us watching that night could have predicted his tragic demise just eight short years later at the age of forty-three?

“Alone” peaked at No 24 whilst the album almost mirrored that with a placing of No 25. It would prove to be their last stand commercially. Subsequent albums failed to make any impression and they folded after Adamson’s death. A twenty-five year anniversary reunion in 2007 sparked the band back to life and they are still a live pull to this day with guitarist Bruce Watson’s son now in the line up.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Mike Pickering never met a singer called Heather Small but a big tall dude called Elton instead, got off his tits on illegal substances, laid down a track called “Crystal Clear”and called his band The Grid not M People. And it sounded like this. This is completely bonkers and yet I have no memory of it at all. The track I mean, not The Grid. I do remember them though my knowledge is limited. This is what I know about The Grid:

Dave Ball from Soft Cell was a band member
They had a No 3 hit in 1994 with “Swamp Thing”

From what I have read online, if you were out clubbing at this time then this track was an absolute banger especially The Orb remixes of it on the 12”. I wasn’t and so I don’t even remember it let alone have good memories of it. The whole thing looks bonkers and yet….it could have been so much more insane. The original plan was for the project to form around the nucleus of producer and DJ Richard Norris and…wait for it…Psychic TV’s Genesis P. Orridge! Holy shit! Talk about avant-garde!

“Crystal Clear” peaked at No 27.

The Breakers are back this week and finally Mark Franklin makes a misstep when he says in his intro to Hot Chocolate that he can’t quite remember them but he’s told they’re rather good. Oi! Franklin! Enough with your “I’m so young that I can’t be expected to know about old fogey music” attitude! Just how old was Mark at this point? I can’t find a definitive answer but seem to recall Tony Dortie saying that he was only seventeen when he got the TOTP gig. Let’s do the maths then. “It Started With A Kiss” was a No 5 hit in 1982 originally so Mark would have been six maybe? He might have a point I guess. He probably wasn’t even born when they were having hits like “You Sexy Thing” in the mid 70s. Even so, surely everyone knew Hot Chocolate didn’t they?

Well, if you didn’t then helpfully there was yet another Greatest Hits album out in 1993 for you to get acquainted with them. Yes, like Big Country before them, Errol and the boys have more compilations to their name than studio albums. I guess they were more of a singles band to be fair. “It Started With A Kiss” was the track chosen to promote it and it was a good enough choice though maybe the aforementioned “You Sexy Thing” might have been wiser. A horrible early 90s dance remix of it would surely have been a bigger hit. As it happens, that’s exactly what happened four years later when a Ben Liebrand remix of it went Top 10 off the back of The Full Monty film. “It Started With A Kiss” itself got a second rerelease in 1998 and made No 18 beating its 1993 peak by thirteen places.

Unlike Mark Franklin, I was old enough to remember “It Started With A Kiss” first time around and have a memory of hearing Steve Wright playing it and at the point where Errol sings “You don’t remember me do you?” interjecting with “Sure I do, bald fella, sings a bit”. Steve Wright – phoning it in for forty years. Thank God he’s going.

More grunge rock! That Appel fella was definitely into it! This time it comes courtesy of Alice In Chains and their single “Them Bones”. The second single from their “Dirt” album, this is supposedly one of their most well known songs but I can’t say it rings any bells with me. It’s all very stereotypical grunge to my ears but it’s my eyes which are more offended by it. Not the video but the title of the song. “Them Bones”? Surely they meant “Those Bones”? Or even “Dem Bones” as in the ‘leg bone connected to the knee bone etc’ song. Alice In Chains defo referred to the Platinum Jubilee as ‘Platty Jubes’.

“Them Bones” peaked at No 26.

“When I’m Good And Ready” could be the official line coming from Boris Johnson about when he will finally leave No 10 but it’s actually the title of Sybil’s follow up single to the Top 3 hit she had in “The Love I Lost” with West End. This time she totally on her own (except for her backing singers who include the backing singer’s backing singer Miriam Stockley) and it’s another upbeat, breezy Eurodance anthem courtesy of Stock and Waterman (but not Aitken).

I thought this wasn’t anywhere near as good as “The Love I Lost”. It was all a bit forced and clunky. It was a song for Sonia basically. It turns out that Stock and Waterman knew their market though and this was a big hit in the clubs which drove its sales enough for it to peak at No 5. The video missed a trick though. Sybil and her pals are clearly performing against a green screen backdrop but instead of using something interesting as the background image, they’ve got some basic colours (including green) and a sofa that gives it a Friends opening titles vibe.

Remember Ugly Kid Joe that did that anthem to nihilism “Everything About You”? Well, they’re back with a cover of Harry Chapin’s “Cats In The Cradle”.

Now what I knew about Harry Chapin could have been expressed in just four letters back then “W.O.L.D.”. Yes, the 1973 minor hit that DJs often couldn’t resist playing as it was all about…a DJ. Did I know “Cat’s In The Cradle” his platinum selling US No 1 single from the following year? Probably not as it was a flop over here. Reading up on Chapin though, he actually released a lot of material during his career – nine studio albums between 1972 and 1980 before he perished in a car accident in 1981. Apparently “W.O.L.D.” was the inspiration behind an American sit com I used to watch bank in the day called WKRP In Cincinnati. Remember that? No? Well, here’s the theme tune anyway…

Back to Ugly Kid Joe though and their version of “Cat’s In The Cradle” is OK I think though why they retitled it “Cats In The Cradle” without the apostrophe I don’t know. Maybe they went to the same school as Alice In Chains? I presume they were in need of a hit as anything they’d released after “Everything About You” had fallen on deaf ears and so went down the well trodden cover version route. It did the trick going Top 10 here and in the US though they never managed another hit after that.

Anything Harry Chapin can do, Monie Love can do better! You’ve got a song with a four letter acronym title? Well, I’ve got one with five! “Born 2 B.R.E.E.D.” was taken from her second album “In A Word Or 2” and the biggest hit of the four singles taken from it. The title’s acronym stood for ‘Build Relationships where Education and Enlightenment Dominate’ whilst “W.O.L.D” stood for…erm…nothing really. The lyrics tell the story of a DJ being let go by his radio station as he has got too old for their target audience hence the last three letters but I think that’s where the messaging ends. Monie’s message was a strong one though about empowerment and the prejudice facing young mothers and was co written with Levi Seaver Jr and Prince and recorded at the latter’s Paisley Park studio.

Despite the success of “Born 2 B.R.E.E.D.” (it made the Top 20), the album didn’t sell well and Monie disappeared from view. She never released another album but instead transferred to a career in US radio working for various stations including Philadelphia’s WHPI-FM, WTLC in Indianapolis and WALR in Atlanta. Sadly though not WKRP in Cincinnati nor, indeed, WOLD.

He’s done it! Shaggy is No 1 with “Oh Carolina”. Now many of us, me included, may have thought at the time that Shaggy was a prime one hit wonder candidate, riding the dancehall zeitgeist for one huge hit then gone, never to be seen or heard of again. A bit like Jeremy Hunt who can’t seem to get a high profile job again however hard he tries. We were all wrong though (about Shaggy not Hunt). Two short years later he did it again pulling off another chart topper with “Boombastic”. Roll on another five years and he was at it once more with two consecutive No 1s in “It Wasn’t Me” and “Angel”. Even today he’s still around making hit albums with Sting no less. Deliciously, he’s also collaborated with someone called Rayvon which was also the name of the DJ character in Phoenix Nights that used to shout out “Shabba!“ as popularised by fellow three S’s member Shabba Ranks. Sometimes this shit just writes itself.

Mark Franklin rounds of his superb performance with another word perfect outro and we’re out. And that’s how you address an audience Liz Truss, Rishi Sinai, etc etc…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Hue And Cry	Labour Of Love (Remix)	Not the remix but I bought the original on 10″for my brother for his birthday. Think I’ve got that Best Of album as well.
2	Snow	Informer	Hell no!
3	Right Said Fred	Stick It Out	Not even for charity
4	Therapy?	Shortsharpshock EP	I did not
5	Big Country	Alone	Nah
6	The Grid	Crystal Clear	Nope
7	Hot Chocolate	It Started With A Kiss	No
8	Alice In Chains	Them Bones	Negative
9	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Not for me
10	Ugly Kid Joe	Cats In The Cradle	Not bad but no
11	Monie Love	Born 2 B.R.E.E.D	Another no
12	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	And one final 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/m0018zsw/top-of-the-pops-18031993

TOTP 11 MAR 1993

Posted on July 10, 2022 by 80stastic

1993 was not a year I was looking forward to reviewing and one of the main reasons for that has now arrived in this TOTP – the unholy trinity of the three S’s. I speak of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow. The first two are both on tonight’s show whilst the latter makes his debut entry into the Top 40 this week. Somehow these three crystallised for me everything they was wrong with the charts around this time. The fact that they all arrived together at the same time probably had something to do with it. Could I have been wrong in my initial assessment? Let’s see if a gap of twenty-nine years has changed my perspective.

Opening the show though are another act who were all about the S’s so much so they had two of them in their name – it can only be Sister Sledge. Well, it could also have been Sam Smith or Sandie Shaw or Shakespear’s Sister or (God forbid) Shakin’ Stevens but let’s not go there. Seriously.

After they’d scored a hit for the third time in fourteen years with yet another remix of “We Are Family” earlier in 1993, perhaps the most obvious rerelease of all time was unleashed upon us – yes it was time once more for “Lost In Music”. Why obvious? Well, every time one song was released as a single, the other came out shortly after. Look at this lot:

26 May 1979 – “We Are Family”
21 Aug 1979 – “Lost In Music
07 Sep 1984 – “Lost In Music”
17 Nov 1984 – “We Are Family”
24 Jan 1993 – “We Are Family”
13 Mar 1993 – “Lost In Music”

I mean they’re both disco standards but is that just a teeny bit of overkill? Couldn’t they have mixed it up a bit? How about a rerelease of “Thinking Of You” instead? What? They did do that as well! It was their third hit single of 1993 when it came out again in the June. Oh come on! Wait…

*blogger is gripped by sudden panic*

They didn’t rerelease “Frankie” as well did they?! Please God no!

*checks Sister Sledge discography*

Oh thank f**k for that. They didn’t. I couldn’t have hoped with a second helping if that on the show. I’d have barfed for sure.

The 1993 version of “Lost In Music” peaked at No 14.

What’s that you say Tony Dortie (in your daft hat)? Bruce Dickinson is leaving Iron Maiden? Did he? I have to say that this piece of blockbusting news must have passed me by at the time. Having read up on the story, it seems that Bruce had announced he was leaving the band before they headed out on a forty-six date world tour. It doesn’t sound like a good idea and indeed it wasn’t. Both his band mates and their fanbase were pissed off with Dickinson for putting the group’s future in doubt. Maybe keeping schtum about leaving to pursue your solo career until after the tour is done may have been the way to go Bruce?

Anyway, this live single “Fear Of The Dark” wasn’t from Dickinson’s final tour as it hadn’t yet happened. Instead it was, rather obviously, from the previous year’s Fear Of The Dark tour which was enshrined forever in the resultant album “A Real Live One”. Now, I wouldn’t need every finger of one hand to list the number of Iron Maiden songs that I like but this one starts off in a rather un-Maiden-esque style with Dickinson laying off on the over the top throaty vocals and with a low key intro but then they resort to type and it loses my interest immediately. It peaked at No 8 thanks to that newly pissed off but still sizeable fanbase.

And so we return to those pesky S’s now as we find Shaggy on his way to the top of the charts with “Oh Carolina”. Up to No 2 this week and with 2 Unlimited now in their fifth week at the pinnacle, Tony Dortie’s prediction of it being No 1 the following week was hardly the stuff of Nostradamus. Yet it was, at the same time, an unlikely chart topper. Apparently “Oh Carolina” would be the first ‘reggae’ No 1 since Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” in 1988 if you can classify that as a reggae track and if you ignore the dub reggae of “Dub Be Good To Me” by Beats International in 1990. The following week, Snow’s “Informer” would storm to No 8 meaning there would be three reggae influenced singles in the Top 10 simultaneously for the first time ever. It was a strange time in the UK charts but why and how had this shake up of the charts come to be? Maybe it was just the law of averages and probability – it had to happen some time.

I worked for Our Price throughout the 90s and we used to source the majority of our reggae stock from the supplier Jetstar. In my memory, they are who we ordered the Shaggy single from though I could be wrong about that. Whenever you used to ring their telesales team with an order, you were guaranteed to talk to someone effortlessly cool on the other end of the line. It always sounded like the atmosphere in the Jetstar office was just one long, chilled out sesh with the occasional bit of work done now and then if they felt like it. I’m sure they are all really hard working but that was the vibe that was projected. I was jealous. Also having a good time is Shaggy who is clearly enjoying himself in this performance probably riding on the confidence of knowing he’ll have a No 1 record soon enough.

And so we come to easily the most objectionable of the three S’s of 1993 – “Mr Loverman”, Shabba Ranks. I hated everything about this; the song, its success and of course Ranks himself not least of all because of this interview on The Word:

Let’s have it right, what a f*****g arsehole! Thankfully Mark Lamarr was on hand to call him out unlike Dani Behr who wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and move on. That took place in 1992 and by March 1993, Ranks had put out a public apology for his grotesque words. Funnily enough it coincided with the rerelease of the “Mr Loverman” single. Do you think his record company Sony put some pressure on him to retract what he had said so that their product wasn’t dead in the water before it started? Yes, I did say rerelease as the single had already been a hit once the previous August when it got to No 23. Presumably the rising profile of dancehall and the success of Shaggy convinced Sony to roll the dice again and so it became a No 3 hit second time around.

The track became infamous for the use of the ‘Shabba!’ shout out which became a catch all catchphrase for just about any situation. My favourite use of it though was by Ray Von from Phoenix Nights…

It’s a third time on the show for Bryan Ferry and his treatment of “I Put A Spell On You”. Now originally I had thought that this might be just a rebroadcast of the first time Ferry did a studio performance as the staging is almost exactly the same but it isn’t as the cut away to the next act reveals. This raises the question of quite why Ferry just gave an identikit performance again? I mean I think there’s less dancers this week but everything else including the performers outfits are the same. I guess I expected a bit more creativity from Bryan than that.

“I Put A Spell On You” peaked at No 18.

I find it hard to remember but there was a time when Jamiroquai’s sound was regarded as fresh and new and exciting. That sensation didn’t last long as petty soon everything they released sounded exactly the same as..well…everything else they’d ever released. Back in 1993 though Jay Kay was a hip, young groover bringing his brand of acid jazz, soul/funk vibes to the nation. I guess he’s always been a divisive figure though. Early on he suffered from accusations of plagiarising Stevie Wonder and of being a hypocrite for espousing environmental themes in his lyrics whilst having an obsession with the collection of fast, expensive cars. Subsequent misdemeanours like being charged with assaulting a photographer and waxing lyrical in concert about how great his then partner Denise Van Outen’s breasts were didn’t do his image any favours.

I always thought “Too Young To Die” was Jamiroquai’s first single but there’d been one before it called “When You Gonna Learn” in 1992 which had made No 28 on the charts but which had escaped my attention completely. It was their first single for Sony though which may account for my confusion. As for the performance here, you have to admit that Jay Kay (it’s all about him really in much the same way that Simply Red is all about Hucknall) makes quite the impression. His vocals are good (though the ‘de de de de do’ chorus is unmistakably Wonder-esque) but it’s his look which grabs the attention. Watching him now, the first thing that springs to mind is how hot he must have been under the studio lights in his oversized clobber. Ah yes, the clothes or more specifically that hat! It would become Kay’s signature look and inform the ‘buffalo man’ logo that would be the face of the band’s brand featuring on the art work for the covers of their first four albums. Some thought had clearly gone into this from a marketing point of view.

Did I like their sound? Yeah, initially. My wife liked it so much she bought that first album “Emergency On Planet Earth”. I think I got bored with it quite quickly though. “Too Young To Die” made it all the way to the Top 10 and the album was a platinum selling No 1. The time of Jamiroquai had begun.

Next a band who, like many before them, suffer from the misguided belief by many that they were a one hit wonder. PM Dawn really weren’t though their biggest and most memorable success did rather overshadow the rest of their back catalogue which is a shame. The Spandau Ballet sampling “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” was that huge hit of course from the Summer of 1991 and we hadn’t heard that much from the duo since. The follow up single “Paper Doll” had been scrunched up and binned when it failed to make the Top 40 whilst two further singles had at least charted though neither got further than No 29. “Looking Through Patient Eyes” would correct that though when it peaked at No 11.

Turning from Spandau Ballet to George Michael for inspiration on this one – the track heavily samples “Father Figure” – it was another great example of their wordy rapping (hood) allied to a mellow yet catchy sound. It was taken from their second album the title of which confirmed their verbose credentials – “The Bliss Album…? (Vibrations Of Love And Anger And The Ponderance Of Life And Existence)”. They really did have a thing about word heavy album titles. Their debut was called “Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience” whilst their fourth carried the title of “Dearest Christian, I’m So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here. Love Dad”. Like the Ferry album “Taxi”, Our Price got a promo copy of the album which ended up in my possession. My wife even made a cover for it.

Sadly, Prince Be died in 2016 after suffering for years from diabetes related conditions including having one of his legs amputated at the knee due to gangrene.

If it’s…we’ll any year since 1958 actually…then there must be a Cliff Richard single out. 1993’s first offering of that particular year was a song called “Peace In Our Time”. This is yet another song I don’t recall at all. I wonder what it sounds like?

*watches Cliff’s performance back*

Oh this is just a glorious tune. So full of life and positivity and…nah, you got me. It’s just the same old Cliff shite that he’d been peddling for years. Apparently a hit for Eddie Money in the US in the late 80s, it’s just sanctimonious crap about having faith, putting songs in our hearts and building a heaven on earth. It even goes on about turning water into wine! Just horrible. If I want a song called “Peace In Our Time”, there’s always this…

Cliff’s got all his usual mates with him here backing him up – Janey Lee Grace, that bloke from Modern Romance – whilst the main man himself does his usual weird arm movements. At one point he’s only a flick of the wrist away from doing a Bruce Forsyth pose. Cliff, of course, was at Wimbledon last week doing his usual cringe fest crowd singalong. For the love of God Cliff, give it a rest and grant us some peace in our time! By the way, I can’t find the TOTP performance so here’s a clip from some German pop show:

It’s the final week at the top for 2 Unlimited with “No Limit”. After positing the theory the other week that dance acts couldn’t sell albums, Ray and Anita completely debunk this by having a No 1 with parent album “No Limits” (note the plural). Released on the PWL label in the UK, Pete Waterman made the decision to remove Ray’s raps from the tracks which only increased the ‘there’s no lyrics’ jibes in the press. The ribbing was continued in later weeks by some unlikely critics – the Scottish popsters The Bluebells who had some fun at 2 Unlimited’s expense by shouting out ‘Techno, techno, techno, techno’ during a TOTP performance of their rejuvenated hit “Young At Heart”. Those cheeky scamps!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	Sister Sledge	Lost In Music ’93	Nope
2	Iron Maiden	Fear Of The Dark (Live)	Never
3	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	Nah
4	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Hell no!
5	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had a promo of the album
6	Jamiroquai	Too Young To Die	No but my wife had the album
7	PM Dawn	Looking Through Patient Eyes	See 5 above
8	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	What do you think?!
9	2 Unlimited	No Limit	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/m0018zst/top-of-the-pops-11031993

TOTP 04 MAR 1993

Posted on July 5, 2022 by 80stastic

When did you first become aware of the term ‘Reality TV’? It’s hard to recall the exact moment so ingrained has it become in our cultural terms of reference. Myriad examples of it infest our TV programming schedules of ever more ludicrous concepts and content. I have to admit at this point that I am no TV snob and have watched (and continue to watch) my fair share of Reality TV but when did it actually enter our lives? Received wisdom would suggest it all began with Big Brother back in 2000. Nasty Nick and all that. I for one was hooked back then and for a number of subsequent series until it disappeared up its own arse.

However, there was an earlier Reality TV show that beat Big Brother to our screens by a whole seven years. Three days after this TOTP aired, The Living Soap entered our lives. I say our lives but I’m not entirely sure how many people were actually aware of its existence let alone how many people were watching it. It centred around the lives of six students sharing a house in Manchester which was of specific interest to me as I was living there at the time (though working in Rochdale) and my wife was working at the University library so often saw the cameras recording around campus. I’d been a student myself as recently as 1989 so a chance to revisit that period of my life, even remotely, was also appealing.

The show’s gimmick was that it was aired immediately after it had been filmed and was edited using the very first Avid editing technology. It was essential viewing in our house and Simon, Spider, Karen etc became celebrities in the student body of Manchester. It even had a groovy, contemporary theme tune – “Renaissance” by M People which was eventually released as a single and became a big hit. Predictably, the attention and intrusion of the cameras forced four of the six housemates to leave the show before its culmination being replaced by other ‘famous for fifteen minutes’ wannabes chosen by a public vote.

I wonder what became of them all? They’ll just about be in their early 50s now (I certainly am). The only two I can trace online are Simon McEwan who ended up as a BBC producer and Karen Bishko who has had an unbelievable career. She studied History of Art at Manchester but went onto become a singer songwriter who would be the support for Take That in 2007 and would end up writing a musical that was performed in New York! Anyway, M People aren’t on TOTP tonight but let’s see who are….

We start with a to camera piece by veteran radio DJ Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman. Why? Well, it’s in aid of Comic Relief and if it’s that time of year then that can only mean one thing – another terrible charity record. Recent years had seen the likes of Bananarama, Mr Bean with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Hale & Pace on single duty. The 1993 vintage was a rather obvious choice – everyone’s favourite fun chart act Right Said Fred. I mean this was an open goal surely? Who else was even in the running?

As with Hale & Pace two years earlier, the song was written specifically for the cause and was based around that year’s theme which was “Stick It Out”. Oo’er and indeed missus. The single was officially credited to Right Said Fred and Friends with the latter being various celebs of the time adding their ‘hilarious’ contributions. I know I’m stating the bleeding obvious here but this song is really, really terrible. An absolute stinker. Completely devoid of any merit – I’m talking musically of course. It’s good that it raised some money for Comic Relief although you’d have to ask who on earth bought this shite?!

As it’s the Freds, there’s the obligatory bit of double entendre in the lyrics where they sing about ‘a tall erection’ and sticking it out ‘on the doctor’s couch’ (which sounds a bit creepy) and the the rest of it seems to be a rewrite of Spitting Image’s “The Chicken Song” with lines like ‘clean your teeth with your feet’, ‘take a sprout for a walk’ and ‘make a sand igloo’. The studio performance is intercut with the official video for the celebrity interventions and almost inevitably, Bernard Cribbins, whose 1962 novelty song gave the band their name, turns up. Not you too Cribbins. Say it ain’t so! “Stick It Out” peaked at No 4.

One of only three songs in tonight’s show that we’ve seen before now as we get the video for “Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz. It’s a basic performance promo but it’s the staging of it that makes it memorable. The circular, tiered arena set has a Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe recalling that scene with Meatloaf as Eddie on his motorbike but it’s the overhead lighting that is the money shot. Consisting of 983 incandescent tubes that could be brightened and dimmed to form patterns of light, it’s a pretty cool effect, certainly for 1993.

Although the parent album was a big success, Kravitz struggled to replicate the title track’s sales with any of the subsequent singles released from it. The “Circus” album followed in 1995 but couldn’t match its predecessor’s numbers but Lenny finished the decade with a surprise UK No 1 single in “Fly Away”.

Well this is confusing. When I saw All About Eve on the running order for this show, I automatically thought it was referring to the “Martha’s Harbour” hitmakers but no. “All About Eve” was the name of the song with the artist being Marxman. I have zero recollection of them or their track so I was surprised to see that they have a decent sized Wikipedia entry. It turns out that they were quite the trailblazers. Perhaps rather lazily referred to as the Anglo-Irish Public Enemy, it’s certainly true that their music was informed by their militant socialist values and their message of ending economic and social injustices. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind the slogans on their T-shirts in this performance:

The slogan on Marxman's t-shirts, "Self defence is no offence", was used in campaigns for the release of women such as Sara Thornton, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990 after being convicted of murdering her abusive husband. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 1, 2022

Wow! Do you think the TOTP producers were aware of what they we’re putting on our screens? I’m sure the show had shied away from such political messaging previously. As for Marxman’s sound, I quite like this track though I am getting some heavy Love City Groove vibes. Who were Love City Groove? This was Love City Groove…

OK, that’s possibly a bit too irreverent a comparison. I’m pretty sure, from what I’ve read, that Marxman’s legacy is a sight more substantial than Love City Groove’s. They toured with both U2 and Depeche Mode and collaborated with artists like The Pogues and Sinéad O’Connor and producers such as DJ Premier of Gang Starr.

“All About Eve” peaked at No 28 and was the band’s only chart hit.

Now here’s a seminal song if ever I heard one. Now hear me out but is there a case for saying that Suede were the indie Take That? No, wait! Come back! Don’t go! Listen, by that I mean they both bands had experienced the unusual career trajectory of generating more press column inches than record sales in their early days; Take That in the teen mags and Suede in the inkies. Both bands would curiously finally correct that with their biggest hit singles to date that both peaked at No 7. For Take That see “It Only Takes A Minute” and for Suede it was “Animal Nitrate”. That’s the end of the Take That comparisons honest!

Despite their media profile, Suede’s first two singles had peaked at No 49 (“The Drowners”) and No 17 (“Metal Mickey”). There were no such brakes on the progress up there charts for “Animal Nitrate”. It just sounded so fresh, so new, so…dangerous. It was an enormous, snarling sound with Brett Anderson’s androgynous vocals allied to Bernard Butler’s irresistible, epic opening guitar riff a potent combination.

Like most of us, I think my first hearing of the song came a couple of weeks before this TOTP on 16th February when Suede performed it at the BRITS. The NME had campaigned for the new indie press darlings to perform on the show despite not being nominated for anything. Their performance that night felt important. They were introduced as “the already legendary Suede” and despite their fledgling career, that didn’t sound like hyperbole. Obviously the focus fell on Brett Anderson with his provocative image of naked chest, bobbed haircut and the slapping of his own arse. It was a genuine WTF? moment.

There was no looking back after that with the single going Top 10 and their much anticipated eponymous debut album going to No 1 on its release later in March. It felt like something significant was happening. In the end something did happen though, for many, the movement that followed Suede’s success would be ultimately unfulfilling.

This week’s live satellite broadcast comes from Hawaii and features k.d. Lang who thus far was best known in the UK for her duet with Roy Orbison on their re-recording of “Crying”. k.d. (it stands for Kathryn Dawn) had, however, been around for years on the country circuit before her 1992 album “Ingénue” (a more commercial and less traditional collection of songs) brought her mainstream recognition and success. The lead single from it was “Constant Craving” which would become both her most successful and recognised song. It took a couple of attempts though to make it a hit. It stalled at No 52 when it was originally released in 1992. I’m pretty sure that I’d heard it then and was aware of who she was but I can’t be sure. It’s thirty years ago!

Anyway, it was a No 15 success the second time around and deservedly so – it’s a good tune. I can’t be sure if it was 1992 or 1993 but in one of those years, some poor sod in the Our Price North West region was tasked with compiling every employee’s favourite musical choices of the year including single. So wide ranging were the replies in this category that the winning song only needed four votes to top the poll. The winner? Yep, “Constant Craving”.

My wife was a big fan and bought the “Ingénue” album. At some point in the decade (I’m not sure of the year and can’t be arsed to check) we even went to see her live at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Her voice was amazing as I recall. As an out lesbian artist, her audience reflected that. As we entered the venue, we were behind one lady with a very short haircut who was wearing a Harrington jacket and big Dr Marten boots. The young guy checking the tickets called her ‘sir’ and got an earful back in reply. I did kind of feel sorry for him. I think he wasn’t very culturally aware and that it was a genuine mistake.

The mix on the performance here is very odd with k.d. drowning out what I presume is a backing track easily. It feels like she’s singing accompanied by a cheap karaoke machine. Although the album sold well going to No 3 in the charts, k.d. never had another UK Top 40 hit. Follow up “Miss Chatelaine” got decent airplay but only got as far as No 68.

Nah, I’ve not really got anything much to say about this next act. Had host Mark Franklin not introduced them I wouldn’t have known just by looking at them that this was Runrig. I mean I was aware that there existed a band called Runrig and that they played Celtic rock music but I didn’t really know any of their stuff at all. To be fair to me, “Wonderful” was only the band’s second charting single after the “Hearthammer EP” in 1991.

Watching this back, I kind of feel sorry for the band. Their first time on TOTP after being in existence since 1973 and they deliver that performance. I mean I know it’s not fair to expect an over the top, all singing and dancing extravaganza when they’re a bunch of forty something guys playing a rather average rock song but come on! They’re like Big Country’s more sensible, straight laced elder brothers. Do you think the lead singer had always been planning on wearing a leather jacket if he ever got on TOTP whenever that might be – the 70s, the 80s whenever? I guess it is a classic item of clothing but it just seems to jar somehow.

Anyway, “Wonderful” peaked at No 29 and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Ah shit. We’re back to four Breakers this week after none on the last show. More content for me to have to come up with then. Super! Now, one political activist group on the show was quite daring but two? What was going on?! Like Marxman before them, Rage Against The Machine’s music was all about political messaging and anti-authoritarian views. Not that I understood any of that at the time. I thought it was all a bit of an unholy racket. Anyway, “Killing In The Name” was their debut single and although it would achieve a respectable peak of No 25 on the UK Top 40, that was by no means the end or indeed the highlight of its chart story.

Fast forward sixteen years and the singles chart is unrecognisable from its heyday with the once much celebrated race for the Xmas No 1 now hijacked and debased by TV talent show The X Factor. Two members of the public had had enough and formed a Facebook group to campaign for people to buy “Killing In The Name” instead of that year’s X Factor winner’ song. The campaign went viral and, with a physical release of RATM’s track not required as it could be downloaded online and still count as a sale, “Killing In The Name” was duly crowned Xmas No 1 for 2009. I felt a little bit for that year’s X Factor winner little Geordie Joe McElderry who got caught up in the whole media frenzy and was asked about whether such galvanising campaigns should be allowed to subvert the chart compilation in that way but ah, what the hell.

After doing a studio performance last week, Bryan Ferry’s cover of “I Put A Spell On You” is now officially a Breaker at No 22. As you’d expect, the video is set in a nightclub and populated by gorgeous models with Louise Brooks hairstyles looking glamorous and seductive whilst Bryan lurks in the shadows. It’s all very Ferry.

I suggested in a previous post that Annie Lennox had done a superior cover of the song but there is also this by the much underrated Alan Price as well. I do like a bit of Alan Price now and again I have to say…

There was definitely something up with TOTP producer Stanley Appel this week. Not only did he put two political activist groups in the show but he also sneaked The Jesus Lizard into the running order! These Illinois noise rockers (yes, ‘noise rock’ was a thing apparently) were surely one of the unlikeliest of bands to ever appear on the Beeb’s prime time music show but here they were riding on the coat tails of Nirvana’s success with a split single release of their song “Puss” along with Kurt Cobain’s “Oh, The Guilt”. I seem to remember that this was only available on a limited edition 7” but I could be wrong. If I didn’t get Rage Against The Machine then I certainly wasn’t going to be swayed by this lot.

Three years later though I did have my own peculiar little Jesus Lizard moment. It came when I was serving a customer in the Our Price in Stockport who was enquiring about the new George Michael single and wanted to know what it was called. My confident reply? “It’s called ‘Jesus To A Lizard’ madam” before correcting myself to “Jesus To A Child”. Talk about a brain fart. How we laughed!

“Puss / Oh, The Guilt” peaked at No 12.

The final Breaker is the latest single from Madonna. The third single taken from her “Erotica” album, “Bad Girl” is an almost forgotten Madge hit – well, I’d forgotten all about it anyway. To be fair to myself, she’s released eighty-nine singles to date so some of those were bound to skip through my memory cells. I’d also forgotten about the video featuring Christopher Walken who plays the role of Madonna’s character’s guardian angel thereby predating his infamous dancing appearance in Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon Of Choice” by some eight years.

“Bad Girl” kept up Madonna’s run of UK Top 10 singles in the 90s by just creeping in at No 10 itself but in the US it became her first single to fail to make the Billboard Top 20 thus breaking a run of twenty-seven hits starting with “Holiday” in 1983 and ending with “Deeper And Deeper” in 1992. Tellingly for Madonna though, this brief Breakers appearance was the only time we saw “Bad Girl” on TOTP. Back in the 80s, wouldn’t a new Madonna single and video have warranted a much bigger fanfare than this?! We weren’t (gulp) getting bored of her surely?

Just to rub salt into Madge’s wounds, here comes a performance from a legendary female artist that does get the full bells and whistles treatment with host Mark Franklin even going so far as to say he was proud to introduce her. He was talking, of course, of (Miss) Diana Ross. If “Bad Girl” is a forgotten Madonna single though, what does that make “Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)”? This was yet another single to be lifted from her “Force Behind The Power” album that had already been out eighteen months! It’s one of those songs that you’ve forgotten about as soon as the last note has disappeared into the ether. So vacuous was it that it was hardly there at all. A bit like Michelle Donelan being Secretary of State for Education for thirty-six hours or however long it was. As I say, hardly there at all.

There was one thing to note here though. Diana’s clearly borrowed that bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket for this performance – maybe I was wrong to ridicule him after all. “Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)” peaked at No 31 – don’t ask me how it even got that far up the chart.

Still top of the pile are 2 Unlimited with “No Limit”. I think they’ve got one more week after this but that won’t be the last we’ll see of them as there’s at least another four Top 10 hits to come from them in the next couple of years.

What do you think the pinball themed video was all about? Was it some sort of Elton John / Tommy / The Who tribute?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy it?
1	Right Said Fred And Friends	Stick It Out	Not even for charity
2	Lenny Kravitz	Are You Gonna Go My Way	No
3	Marxman	All About Eve	Nope
4	Suede	Animal Nitrate	No the single but I had the album
5	k.d.Lang	Constant Craving	Not but my wife had the album
6	Runrig	Wonderful	Never
7	Rage Against The Machine	Killing In The Name	Nah
8	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had a promo copy of the album
9	The Jesus Lizard / Nirvana	Puss / Oh, The Guilt	Negative
10	Madonna	Bad Girl	I did not
11	Diana Ross	Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)	As if
12	2 Unlimited	No Limit	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/m0018s7p/top-of-the-pops-04031993

TOTP 25 FEB 1993

Posted on July 1, 2022 by 80stastic

After having last week off due to Glastonbury, we’re back with a double helping of BBC4 TOTP repeats to review. To be honest, I wouldn’t have said no to another week’s holiday. I’ve only just caught up and suddenly were off again! At least there’s only eight artists on the show this week as there aren’t any Breakers and, with one notable and entirely permissible exception, they’re all in the TOTP studio.

We start with Bizarre Inc with a track I don’t recall at all entitled “Took My Love”. As with previous hit “I’m Gonna Get You”, it features Angie Brown on vocals and was taken from their album “Energique”. Actually, I don’t remember the album either. I thought they were a singles band.

*checks Bizarre Inc discography*

Nope. I don’t recognise that album cover but then I probably didn’t sell many copies of it in the Rochdale Our Price I was working in as, despite the presence of three hit singles, it only got as high as No 41 in the charts. In fact, did any of the dance acts from this period have big selling albums? Did the likes of Altern 8, K-Klass, Felix, Shut Up And Dance, Rozalla, Kym Sims, U.S.U.R.A. etc translate their singles success into album sales? Check these stats out:

Artist	Album	Chart peak
Altern 8	Full On… Mask Hysteria	11
Felix	#1	26
K-Klass	Universal	73
Kym Sims	Too Blind to See It	39
Rozalla	Everybody’s Free	20
Shut Up And Dance	Death Is Not the End	38
U.S.U.R.A.	Open Your Mind	Did not chart

OK, it’s not an exhaustive list but all of these acts had decent sized hit singles in the proceeding twelve months to this point and I’d have to say I don’t see a massive crossover trend for the parent albums. Anyway, back to Bizarre Inc and I didn’t find this track anywhere near as effective as their previous hits. It followed the same formula but didn’t quite have the same immediate impact. Also, what was the deal with the synths on swings? Didn’t another dance act use this prop on the show recently? I’m sure they did but I’m not going back in the archives to check who it was. Just chalk it up to another failed attempt by the TOTP producers to make dance acts look visually interesting.

“Took My Love’ peaked at No 19.

From a single I don’t remember at all to one which always brings to mind early 1993 when I hear it these days. The repositioning and relaunch of Annie Lennox as a solo artist after Eurythmics went on a decade long sabbatical had gone as well as it could possibly have been expected to. Her debut solo album “Diva” went straight in at No 1 and furnished Annie with two Top 10 singles. Then, just nine days before this TOTP aired, it won a BRIT for Best British Album. Annie won another for Best British Female Artist. It was heady stuff but she still wasn’t finished.

“Love Song For A Vampire” was a track Annie recorded for the Francis Ford Coppola directed film Bram Stokers Dracula starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. For me, it was easily the best thing about the film. I just couldn’t get past Keanu’s disastrous English accent or the odd way that Oldman glided around the set as Dracula. The sexual imagery seemed like it existed just to create a headline and the whole thing just felt like a big letdown and a missed opportunity to reboot the classic tale.

Annie’s song (no, not John Denver’s) though was a fine piece; with her vocals being hauntingly beautiful and yet unsettling at the same time. Its unusual structure helps to create that feeling of otherworldliness that resonates from it. It doesn’t have a chorus as such and is built around a constant, pressing synth refrain. The track wasn’t on “Diva” so not wishing to miss out on a chance to plug it again, her record label made it a double A-side with “Little Bird” which was from the album. It was “Love Song For A Vampire” though that got all the airplay and it was an enormous hit peaking at No 3.

For Annie’s turn here, it looks like the TOTP production team have been busy repurposing sets from previous performances by other artists. We saw those candles and burning torches just the other week when Sting was on and the dry ice coming from that little run of steps looks familiar as well though I can’t think who else used that as a prop. They’ve added a window behind Annie presumably for a vampire to fly through. Thankfully there are no fake bats anywhere to be seen on stage.

Of course, Annie’s song (still not John Denver) isn’t the only hit single to come from a film about vampires in the 90s…

The only act not in the studio tonight is Michael Jackson and in all honesty I don’t think the show can be criticised for not pulling off the coup of a personal appearance by the self styled King of Pop himself. Despite it being 1993, in true Jacko tradition, he’s still releasing songs from an album that came out two years ago. “Give In To Me” was the seventh single of nine in total to come from “Dangerous” and was released an astonishing fifteen months after the album. That didn’t seem to matter though as it scaled the UK charts all the way to No 2 (it wasn’t released as a single in the US).

Jackson’s profile was higher than usual though even by his phenomenal standards at this time owing to the recent broadcast of his Oprah Winfrey interview that host Tony Dortie references in his intro. Maybe that helped shift a few units. I’m sure the tabloids would have been full of comment about Jacko’s explanation of his ever whitening skin which we now know was due to a condition called vitiligo and nothing to do with deliberate skin bleaching. Nobody was buying it at the time though (his explanation not his single).

As for the song itself, it just sounded like a rehash of previous hit “Dirty Diana” from the “Bad” album to me. As if to confirm my opinion, the CD single came with “Dirty Diana” as an extra track along with another song that included a heavy metal guitar solo in “Beat It” from “Thriller”. That came courtesy of Eddie Van Halen whereas the solo on “Give In To Me” was the work of Slash from the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses. As with previous single “Heal The World”, the 7” came in a poster bag sleeve. I hated those things! Such a faff to put back together if you dared to open it up to look at the poster.

The ubiquitous Dina Carroll next who seemed to be on the show every other week around this time. Having released three singles in 1992, none of which got any higher than No 26, Dina was back on the chart trail in 1993 with a song called “This Time”. Nothing to do with the Bryan Adams song of the same name nor indeed the England World Cup squad of 1982’s ditty ( I would have liked to have heard Dina tackle that one!), this was another slushy sounding ballad just like previous single “So Close”. It could just as easily have been sung by the likes of Eternal.

I’ve said it before but why were her record label A&M pissing about with these nice but average tracks when they could have just released “Don’t Be A Stranger”. The album had just come out but they didn’t release the ace up their sleeve until nine months later. I’ve never worked in marketing nor promotions but the strategy behind Dina’s release schedule still leaves me baffled.

“This Time” peaked at No 23 thereby becoming Dina’s worst performing single at the time. Even then, A&M didn’t turn to “Don’t Be A Stranger”, instead opting for the uptempo “Express” as the next single. You deserve a big, Johnny Rotten style raspberry for that A&M!

We arrive now at one of the names that I will always associate with 1993 though the artist concerned has gone onto successes way past those twelve months. I speak, of course, of Shaggy or as I think of him, one of the three ‘S’s – the unholy trinity of Snow, Shabba Ranks and his good self. Now when I was growing up, the name Shaggy only meant one thing – Scooby Doo’s best mate. Not in 1993 though. Shaggy was a chart sensation with his ragga / dancehall take on obscure ska song “Oh Carolina”. With samples of James Brown and the Peter Gunn theme thrown into the mix alongside Shaggy’s gruff vocals, it sounded fresh and new in 1993 despite actually having quite the retro roots.

Needless to say, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t be doing with all that growling, wind-it-up, raggamuffin ‘toasting’ Shaggy did although the song was as catchy as hell. In his defence, I would say that if I had to choose (with a gun to my head), I found Shaggy to be the most tolerable of the three ‘S’s. My Dad taught me as a kid that the three ‘S’s referred to your daily ablutions routine – shit, shower and shave. If I had to associate those with the musical three ‘S’s of 1993, I think I’d go:

Shit – Shabba Ranks (because he is/was)
Shower – Shaggy (because you felt dirty after listening to his record)
Shave – Snow (because he looked like he needed one to get rid of his bum fluff)

Back to “Oh Carolina” though and I always thought that it sounded like Shaggy was singing “yer arse” in the chorus. You know that bit is immediately after the words “Oh Carolina”? There. The actual lyrics are “Prowl off, jump and prance” but if you watch The Story of 1993 video on iPlayer, Shaggy suggests that him and his mates in their youth used to sing an expletive in there when listening to the original by the Folkes Brothers.

A success all around Europe, “Oh Carolina” was nowhere bigger than in the UK where it went to No 1 so we’ll be seeing it again soon and for that reason I’ll leave the Shaggy discussion there for now.

Here comes another young female solo artist who was a big deal for a short while in the 90s but who, like Dina Carroll before her, didn’t quite manage to sustain a career of longevity. Tasmin Archer scored one of the biggest hits of 1992 with her No 1 single “Sleeping Satellite” but, of course, that’s a double edged sword. Yeah, the initial success is great but how do you follow it up? If your next single doesn’t go to No 1 as well, it’s deemed to be a failure and you’re all washed up already. Even if you manage to repeat the trick and bag another chart topper, it only prolongs the eventual fall. Look at the case of Frankie Goes To Hollywood – three No 1 singles straight off the bat. A phenomenon. Then the fourth only goes to No 2 and the band are immediately written off as being down the dumper.

Given that piece of history, poor Tasmin was really up against it. Many may have thought that she didn’t give herself a decent chance by choosing a follow up single that dealt with the subject of child abuse and includes the radio unfriendly line ‘son of a bitch, you broke my heart’ in the lyrics. That view though assumes songwriting to be a commercial transaction – write an unchallenging, catchy tune, get a hit. Tasmin chose another path, the path of songwriting as an art. It was a brave choice and one that didn’t bring in the sales but which should have sustained her credibility as a serious recoding artist. I’m not sure it did.

The song in question was “In Your Care”, written from the point of view of a child experiencing abuse. It was angry in tone and delivery with Tasmin spitting out the ‘son of a bitch’ line. The first time you heard it, the moment was genuinely arresting. Another unusual decision was for a new artist to allow their second ever release to be a charity single but that’s just what Tasmin did with the profits from it going to Childline. You couldn’t argue that it’s subject matter wasn’t on point but was it too much for record buyers? After all, previous Childline singles had been much more jolly Beatles covers by the likes of Wet Wet Wet and Tom Jones. The latter had only just been in the charts the other week back then so maybe there was even a case of charity fatigue?

To try and signpost the gravity of the single, the TOTP producers have put a grainy, black and white picture effect at the beginning and end of the performance. I’m not sure it really makes its point. Still, nice to see a double bass on the show.

“In Your Care” peaked at No 16.

Has anyone, anywhere ever referred to Bryan Ferry as ‘The Guvnor’ before as host Tony Dortie does here in his intro? ‘The Guvnor’?! This is Bryan Ferry we’re talking about Tony! Not Viz comic mobster Big Vern, not self styled hard man footballer Paul Ince who actually went by the nickname of ‘The Guvnor’. It’s Bryan f*****g Ferry Dortie! He studied fine art at Newcastle University, he’s the archetypal lounge lizard, one of the most stylish rock stars of all time. You make him sound like Grouty from Porridge, the top dog feared by his fellow inmates who intimidates even the prison wardens. Dear God!

Anyway, rant over. Ferry is on the show to plug his new single, a cover of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “I Put A Spell On You”, the lead single from his latest album “Taxi”. This was Bryan’s first album since 1987’s “Bête Noire” though there had been a compilation album in between called “The Ultimate Collection” which had given him a hit single in the form of the rereleased “Let’s Stick Together”. As with much of his 70s solo output, “Taxi” was essentially a covers album (the very last track is a Ferry original) that actually did pretty well going to No 2 in the charts and achieving gold sales status. I remember being mildly surprised at its success as it seemed an anomaly in a musical landscape dominated by dance music but then, as we saw earlier, albums by dance acts never sold that well. As well this single, the album included tracks by the likes of Lou Reed, Carole King and a version of the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace”. I think I may have had a promo copy of the album though I’ve no idea where it is now.

The staging of the performance here is suitably pretentious for a Ferry production with dancers strutting about pointlessly while Bry tinkles the ivories on the piano. Is that Gail Ann Dorsey up there with him on bass? I think it is – well you can’t deny the class she brings to the proceedings I guess.

Although much of his back catalogue is outstanding, this does sound a bit dreary on reflection. It managed a chart high of No 18 but if you want a different (and in my opinion superior) take on the track, here’s the aforementioned Annie Lennox…

Those cheeky rascals 2 Unlimited are still ripping up the charts with their lowest common denominator dance anthem “No Limit”. It really was amazing how this lot managed to have so many hits (fourteen in the UK!) when their songs were so flimsy. There really is not a lot of flesh on the bones of “No Limit” but that didn’t seem to matter to the masses who sent it to No 1 for a whole five weeks!

They’ve got a couple of masked up dancers in for this performance and the one on the right looks oddly familiar. Oh, I’ve got it. The smaller monster in this clip from 70s sci-fi show Space 1999 – dead ringer…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Took My Love	Nope
2	Annie Lennox	Love Song For A Vampire / Little Bird	No but wife had the Diva album with Little Bird on it
3	Michael Jackson	Give In To Me	Nah
4	Dina Carroll	This Time	No
5	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	Didn’t do it for me – no
6	Tasmin Archer	In Your Care	Great song but it’s not in the singles box
7	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had that promo copy of the album. No idea where it is now
8	2 Unlimited	No Limit	Never!

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/m0018s7m/top-of-the-pops-25021993

TOTP 18 FEB 1993

Posted on June 27, 2022 by 80stastic

I write this as the 2022 Glastonbury festival has just taken place the previous weekend which garnered large viewing figures and reviews a plenty off the back of some massive performances by the likes of Billie Eilish (I didn’t get it) and Paul McCartney (marvellous stuff). It got me thinking about what the festival was like back in the day. Now, I have to fess up straight away that I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury – the myriad bands and music you could see and listen to was appealing but the thought of all that scuzziness was less so. So my recollections of it are all based on radio, TV and press coverage.

Thinking back to the 80s, I don’t remember much being made of it at all in the media, probably because it wasn’t broadcast live until 1994 when Channel 4’s 4 Goes To Glastonbury programming made it available to the masses at home. If I think about say, 1983, when I was first becoming obsessed with pop music, I don’t recall it appearing on my radar at all. A quick search on Wikipedia tells me that the big acts that year were UB40, Marillion, King Sunny Ade and his African Bests and, rather implausibly New York singer-songwriter Melanie who once had a hit with a cover of “Ruby Tuesday”. Hmm. It didn’t cater for my admittedly chart-centric tastes at the time and that would continue for a couple of years although the line up would become progressively more of a broad church as the decade worn on. By the end of the 80s, I was just finishing being a Poly student and was aware that some of my peers were going to Glastonbury but a jaunt to Somerset was never high on my list of Summer priorities somehow.

By the mid 90s, I was working in record retail and therefore much more aware of Glastonbury as just about everyone I ever worked with seemed to have either been or was planning to go. The TV coverage was much bigger with the BBC taking over from Channel 4 and so we all got to see those iconic sets from the likes of Radiohead, The Prodigy and Massive Attack. But what of 1993? That is the year we are up to in these BBC4 TOTP repeats after all. Well, at least a couple of tonight’s acts appeared at the festival that year but the headliners included The Black Crowes, The Kinks (replacing Red Hot Chili Peppers), Suede and The Orb.

Before we get into the nitty gritty , I should note that we have skipped the 11 February edition of the show as it featured the now taboo Rolf Harris doing his version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”. Incidentally, Harris was also on the bill at Glastonbury that year.

Right, that’s enough preamble. Let’s blog! We start with a rather incongruous and improbable five second message from Sting and Take That from New York saying that their both on the show later. Erm…OK. Cheers for that guys. The first performing act tonight are Stereo MC’s with a single that seems destined to forever remain in the shadow of previous hits “Connected” and “Step It Up” despite being a hit of a comparable size. “Ground Level” was the third release from the band’s “Connected” album and although it’s a decent track, it lacks the immediacy and urgency of its two predecessors.

Such was the visual impact of the spectacle that is/was frontman Rob Birch, I’d almost completely forgotten that they had three female singers complementing him but they are very much to the fore in this performance. For all of them though, their time in the spotlight was coming to and end. There would be one more hit single pulled from “Connected” and then nothing for eight long years until follow up album “Deep Down & Dirty” appeared.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes, their only appearance thus far

1993 was a massive year for Whitney Houston as she released multiple singles from The Bodyguard soundtrack. Her cover of “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan was the second of those and would peak at No 4 both here and in the US. Although the chart topping reign of “I Will Always Love You” was brought to an end in the UK by *spoiler alert* 2 Unlimited, over the pond it remained No 1 even while “I’m Every Woman” ascended and then descended the charts.

Chaka Khan features in the video and even receives a shout out from Whitney on the record at the track’s coda. Chaka’s original was a hit twice; first in 1979 when it reached No 11 and a decade later when a remix of it peaked at No 8. Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon once admitted that he initially misheard the song’s lyric as ‘climb every woman’ – the dirty dog!

Played Glastonbury? No but the video features TLC who played this year’s festival

Not seen in our charts for nearly two years, 1993 brought us the return of Lenny Kravitz with his new album and title track single “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. Whilst his last hit was the almost sweet sounding “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”, this was a full on, all out rocking scorcher of a song fuelled by a heavy guitar riff and powered by the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. This really was the point when the Hendrix comparisons were out in force. I couldn’t tell if they were valid or not on account of not being a big Jimi fan. I don’t think I could hear him…

…an argument that’s kind of nonsense sure but it makes for a good scene in the movie. Anyway, all I knew was that Lenny looked every inch the rock god up there on stage and he was killing it. I’m not sure that I fully appreciated the track at the time but it’s a belter. It peaked at No 4 here instantly making it his biggest UK hit at the time but curiously it was released as an airplay only single in the US meaning it didn’t qualify for the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Apparently this was a common practice back then in America to increase album sales as buying the parent album was the only way to get that groovy tune you’d heard on the radio. What was it about though? Here’s Lenny himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Lenny Kravitz explains "Are You Gonna Go My Way?: "I thought the subject matter was really interesting, because it's coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ… So basically, 'Are you gonna go my way?' meaning 'my way of love.'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 17, 2022

I liked these two reply tweets to this explanation…

Ephesians – Chapter 5 – Verse 23
— 🎨 ∟ ∪ ∨ 🎶 (@fkaPLuv) June 17, 2022

By the way, I’m currently watching Lenny’s daughter Zoë starring in the TV series of High Fidelity which is based on the book by Nick Hornby and the film starring John Cusack and Zoë’s mother Lisa Bonet. It’s pretty good too. In it, Zoë’s character Rob is involved with a young, up and coming Scottish rock star who, in the story, has just bagged himself a slot at Glastonbury. I love it when a blog post comes together!

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes and again in 1999

My god! TOTP were really pushing this latest Sting tune! After last week’s studio appearance he’s back just seven days later with another full performance of “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” this time live from New York. Thankfully he’s lost the ridiculous Witchfinder General outfit from the previous week but maybe he should have kept it – at least it might have livened up this dreary run through. This was a classic example of why these live by satellite link ups were ultimately disappointing. Look at the setting for it. I don’t know exactly where he is but Sting is singing against a back drop of literally a brick wall. I’m guessing it might be a rehearsal room or sometimes it was an empty theatre venue neither of which worked for me.

I’ve told my Sting tale before haven’t I? The one about how a friend of my mate Robin, who was a guitar player who toured with some major artists, was at a dinner party at Sting’s house and in the middle of the dinner the host made all the guests stop eating and go and watch a documentary…about Sting.

“If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” peaked at No 14.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. One and only appearance in 1997

There’s three Breakers on this show starting with REM and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”. I think I’m right in saying that despite the popularity of parent album “Automatic For The People” (a No 1 and seven times platinum seller in the UK alone) and despite all three singles released from it to this point making the Top 20, TOTP never featured any of them for more than the few allotted seconds in the Breakers section. A travesty really.

One of the lighter tunes on the album, there’s quite a lot to unpack about this one. Firstly, what the hell is Michael Stipe singing about? Indeed, I could just rephrase that question as ‘What is Michael Stipe singing?’ as the lyrics in the chorus topped a 2010 poll as the most misheard lyric ever. The official words in the chorus are ‘Call me when you try to wake her’ although that doesn’t seem to scan right to me. It is commonly misheard as ‘Calling Jamaica’ or ‘Only Jah waker’ and even ‘Call me Tom Baker’! OK, that’s the line sorted but what is the song about exactly? Well, as you would expect there’s various theories to be found online ranging from a couple being in rehab to a homeless woman sleeping in a phone box to a gambling addiction and finally, inevitably about drugs. Even the band themselves aren’t sure with bass player Mike Mills on record as saying “Half the song is about somebody trying to get in touch with someone who can sleep on his floor. The other half – you’re on your own”.

The song’s opening and title borrows heavily from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” made famous by The Tokens in the 60s and Tight Fit in the 80s. Apparently REM paid for the rights to use the song and part of the deal was that they had to record their own version of it. They duly did and it appears as an extra track on the single.

According to Wikipedia, despite the song’s popularity, “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” is one of a very few songs the band has never played live. Is that right? It seems an odd decision. Is it a technical thing that it’s hard to reproduce out of the studio environment? Maybe Michael Stipe himself doesn’t know what the words are that he should be singing?

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No in 1999 and finally in 2003

There’s a few comparisons I think between REM and the next Breaker artist Metallica. Not sonically but in terms of career trajectory and intense scrutiny from fans about their songs and their meanings. Both bands had been around for years and been very successful but both, it seems to me, went to another level globally with the release of an album quite some time into their career. For REM it was seventh album “Out Of Time” (though a case could also be made for their sixth and major label debut “Green” I guess) and in the case of Metallica, their eponymously titled fifth also known as ‘the black album’. Again I’m sure hard rock fans could argue that earlier albums were also seminal but I’m talking purely sales and “Metallica” sold three times as many copies as any of its predecessors.

In terms of fathoming what their songs were about , as with “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” before it, Metallica’s “Sad But True” had lots of fans dissecting the lyrics. Many theories can be found online and many concern the same subjects as REM’s tune – addiction and drugs – but also the concept of religion and the duality of good and evil. It’s pretty heavy stuff but then three members of the band were going through divorces at the time of its writing and recording so…

Predictably, “Sad But True” did little for me. It’s those crunching guitars and the shouted vocals that always put me off. The single peaked at No 20 in the UK charts.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. Only appearance came in 2014

Did someone mention “Ruby Tuesday” earlier? Well, yes it was me (obviously). It turns out that Melanie would not be the only artist to take on The Rolling Stones classic. If you were to place a bet on somebody doing a cover around this time then Rod Stewart would surely have been the bookies favourite. In recent years he’s carved out a new career for himself of interpreting classic standards via his “Great American Songbook” series but even back in the day, Rod wasn’t averse to a cover version. Just look at some of the singles he’d released leading up to 1993:

“Downtown Train” by Tom Waits
“It Takes Two” by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston
“Broken Arrow” by Robbie Robertson
“You Are Everything” by The Stylistics
“Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits (again!)

Plus he’d done a version of “Your Song” for the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”. Then, in early 1993, came the “Lead Vocalist” album. This was an odd release which seemed to have been cobbled together by record company Warners just to cash in on the fact that Rod had just been given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent BRITS. The album was a mixture of five newly recorded covers and a random collection of material from Rod’s past including tracks from The Faces and his solo career. Those covers included the aforementioned “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks and of course “Ruby Tuesday”.

Let’s be fair, Rod’s version is horrible. Mechanical of sound and cynical of conception, it has none of the charm of The Rolling Stones original nor the emotion of Melanie’s cover.

Look I don’t mind the odd bit of Rod but there’s an awful lot of crud in his back catalogue as well and this one certainly deserves that description. He would return to covers later in the decade with his album “When We Were The New Boys” which included his take on “Cigarettes And Alcohol” by Oasis and “Rocks” by Primal Scream. Dear God!

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No, Rod’s only appearance came in 2002

We swing back over to New York now for a performance by Take That with what surely must be one of their least remembered songs. After the dynamic fun of “Could It Be Magic”, “Why Can’t I Wake Up With You” was a turgid, lifeless affair and I can’t understand why they would have gone with this as a choice of next single. Was this a one off release or was it from the album?

*checks Take That discography*

Huh. Well, it was on “Take That And Party” (surely one of the worst album titles ever by the way?) but it wasn’t the version released as a single. Here’s the album version which is a bit of a weepy ballad:

The single version was eventually included on the sophomore album “Everything Changes” and it’s had a dance back beat applied with an annoying, repetitive bleep noise in the mix. Apparently, the lyrics were changed as well but frankly who cares?! We’re they already trying to look for a mature audience less than a year after finally getting some proper chart action and were therefore pushing the whole Gary Barlow as talented singer-songwriter schtick? I thought this was completely yawn inducing. Bore off!

By the way, their live by satellite performance here is as underwhelming as Sting’s with the lads performing against a backdrop of some draped material and a smoke machine. What was the point? Then again I wasn’t a teenage girl desperate for a look at my heroes. Maybe the idea of them being ‘live’ as it were was more appealing than the video?

Played Glastonbury? As if

Ah well now, this is timely. The hero of this year’s Glastonbury is on the show! The 90s however weren’t peak era Paul McCartney. He didn’t manage one Top 10 single and the three albums he released that decade are hardly amongst his most cherished by fans. “Off The Ground” was the first of those three and, as host Mark Franklin states, had given him a chart entry in “Hope Of Deliverance” but it was all very underwhelming. The follow up was “C’Mon People” which I don’t recall at all, possibly because it didn’t even make the Top 40 despite this TOTP performance. Was it meant to be some sort of anthem of unity? It’s all a bit drab sounding to me. Interesting how they’ve staged Macca’s performance here with members of the studio audience crowding around him and his piano. It’s a bit “All You Need Is Love” isn’t it?

Those audience members in shot seem unsure what to do with themselves. It’s a difficult tune to dance to though the guy in the sleeveless denim jacket gives it a go. He’s got his thumbs inside his waistline at one point. He needs to go some to beat these guys dancing with Mud though…

Seeing some of the reaction on social media to Macca’s Glastonbury set list made me wonder what would have happened if he’d included “C’Mon People” in it. A Twitter meltdown I’m guessing and possibly the breaking of the internet.

Played Glastonbury? Played it? He rocked it on Saturday night. Amazing. Oh and he also performed there in 2004

In 1993? No

Finally a new No 1 but careful what you wish for as Whitney is toppled by one of the most annoying chart toppers of the whole decade. Widely (and perhaps rightly) pilloried for its lack of lyrics (“No no, no nuh no no, no nuh no no, no no there’s no lyrics”) 2 Unlimited’s “No Limit” also had an inane hook that lent itself to many a moronic football chant. I think my favourite was for former Bolton Wanderers forward Mixu Paatelainen. You can work out how it went for yourselves easy enough.

Supposedly there was a controversy over this week’s chart as to who was actually No 1 – Take That or 2 Unlimited – so close were the sales but I don’t remember any such stories in the press and certainly nothing to rival the Deee-Lite vs Steve Miller Band battle of 1990.

Played Glastonbury? Ha! Ha! Never!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Ground Level	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	I’m Every Woman	I did not
3	Lenny Kravitz	Are You Gonna Go My Way	No but it’s a good tune
4	Sting	If I Ever Lose My Faith In You	Nope
5	REM	The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite	No but I had the album it was from Automatic For The People
6	Metallica	Sad But True	Happy to say no and that’s the truth
7	Rod Stewart	Ruby Tuesday	Never happening
8	Take That	Why Can’t I Wake Up With You?	Hell no!
9	Paul McCartney	C’Mon People	No
10	2 Unlimited	No Limit	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/m0018b84/top-of-the-pops-18021993

TOTP 04 FEB 1993

Posted on June 23, 2022 by 80stastic

We enter the month of February in our review of 1993 here at TOTP Rewind and the Top 40 has now jettisoned all those Xmas rush singles – with one notable exception – that were clogging up the chart. There are eleven new entries this week and seven climbers and yet, looking at the running order for this TOTP, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the charts were in a state of inertia as so many of these songs have already either been on the show recently or are re-releases of old hits.

Look at the show’s opener for example. “How Can I Love You More” had been a Top 40 hit for M People as recently as November 1991 when it peaked at No 29. So why had it been made available again? Well, although they’d had racked up four Top 40 singles from their debut album “Northern Soul”, none of them had got higher than No 29. The band had been out on tour to promote the album and “How Can I Love You More” had been a live favourite. So it came to pass that record label Deconstruction decided that should be the track to be given another tilt at the charts. DJ Sasha was approached to give the song a club sheen and bingo! The band’s first Top 10 hit.

So how different was the Sasha remix to the original cut? Well it wasn’t quite as stark as the difference between the original version of Cornershop’s “Brimful Of Asha” and the Norman Cook remix but you could certainly hear it. The 1991 release has an electronic backing that reminds me of “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League whereas the 1993 version sounds like it has a lot more going on in the mix with some shuffling rhythms that make it sound like it had a faster tempo. I think I actually prefer the remix to my surprise.

1993 would be the year that M People became a really big deal. Following “How Can I Love You More” into the Top 10 came “One Night On Heaven” (No 6), “Moving On Up” (No 2) and “Don’t Look Any Further” (No 9) whilst their “Elegant Slumming” album would rise to No 2.

Here’s another! This is a third time on the show for Duran Duran and their “Ordinary World” single. So well received was the song that it got nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. It would lose out to another song that, coincidentally, was on this very same show – “If I Ever Lose My Faith” by Sting. In his book Duran Duran: the unauthorised biography, Steve Malins tells the story that at this very TOTP, Duran’s guitarist Warren Cuccurullo (he replaced Andy Taylor) was chatting to Sting and the ex – The Police frontman admitted that he didn’t want to go on after Duran as “Ordinary World” was such a beautiful song. Given Sting’s ginormous ego, that was quite the compliment.

Cuccurullo is an interesting character. He toured and recorded with Frank Zappa before forming synth-pop, MTV favourites Missing Persons in the early 80s. He was recruited (eventually) by Duran Duran after previous incumbent Taylor approached his ex Missing Persons band members about working with him as he started on his solo career. Alerted to the possibility that Taylor would be leaving Duran, Cuccurollo contacted the Birmingham superstars about replacing their want away guitarist. By 1993 he was a permanent member of the band and, according to Malins, he had a voracious sexual appetite and would host ‘Privacy’ parties in his hotel room when the band were touring which basically sounded like orgies. Blimey! What would Princess Diana have said?!

“Ordinary World” peaked at No 6 in the UK and No 3 in the US.

And yet another song that we’ve already seen on the show before! And like Duran Duran it’s their third time on! I struggled to say anything about “Heaven Is” by Def Leppard the previous two times so God knows what I’m supposed to say about a third appearance! Well, again like the Duran boys, this showing did nothing to improve their ultimate chart placing as both acts were at their peaks in this week.

Anything else? Well, in the last post I mentioned how lead singer Joe Elliott hated the video for this single so I thought I’d see if I could spot why. I’m not sure I can as the video is by far the best thing about the single. Essentially it’s just a straight performance promo with some special effects thrown in for good measure but it’s done pretty well. It reminds me of the video for INXS’s “Need You Tonight”. I particularly liked the scene with the guitar strings morphing into one of those string art pictures. You know those ones where you can form a curve by layering loads of strings closely together at an angle? We did one in woodwork when I was at school. I made a plane I think. Erm…sorry…got a bit distracted there. Anyway, not quite sure why Joe Elliott hated it so much. Maybe he didn’t like the way his hair looked in it. To be fair, who would want their hair to look like Joe Elliott’s?

It’s a third song on the trot that’s been on the show recently and guess what? Just like Duran Duran and Def Leppard before them, it was at its peak chart position this week. This is just weird now. Unlike those two bands though, in the case of The Beloved, the No 8 peak of “Sweet Harmony” would prove to be their highest ever Top 40 placing.

Watching this performance I’m struck by two things about lead singer Jon Marsh. Firstly his singing is pretty awful here. In fact, in the verses he’s hardly singing at all, it’s more sort of speaking rhythmically. Secondly, I’d been trying to work out who he looks like and I think I’ve worked it out – ex footballer and now pundit Dean Ashton…

Finally a new song! Not only that but there’s a great little link between it and the artist immediately previous. Rapination were two Italian producers who also went by the name The Rapino Brothers. It’s not them that provide the connection to The Beloved though. No, that would be the vocalist for their “Love Me In The Right Way” single who was, of course, Kym Mazelle. Kym was one of the people name checked by The Beloved on their “Hello” hit of 1990 alongside the likes of Billy Corkhill and Vince Hilaire…

Excellent track that. Anyway, fast forward three years and Kym is working with these Italian dudes – I’m guessing that’s them on stage with her here on drums and (gulp) keytar. I have to say I don’t recall this track at all but it sounds very generic Italian House so not a lot there for me.

The single made it to No 22 (and yes, another hit at its chart peak this week) whilst The Rapino Brothers went on to work with Kylie Minogue and Primal Scream. By the way does the name Rapino instantly make anybody else think of this?

It’s time for some Breakers next starting with another rerelease! As with The Cult last week, we have another 80s band promoting a Greatest Hits collection with the re-issue of their most famous song. I refer to Ultravox although in truth, that Greatest Hits album was actually entitled “If I Was: The Very Best Of Midge Ure And Ultravox”. Released by Chrysalis, it did what it said on the tin. It was “Vienna” though that was chosen to plug the album and what else can I write about this track that hasn’t already been written? Infamously kept off the No 1 spot when originally released in 1981 by Joe Dolce’s execrable single “Shaddap You Face”, it has gone down as a synth pop classic, an epic of the genre.

Oh, here’s something I bet nobody has ever written about it before. When it was a hit in ‘81, I was a 12 year old schoolboy and a lad called Neil used to hit me hard on the arm singing “this means nothing to me” as he did. Four years later and he was still at it giving me a wrap on the knuckles while singing “Hit That Perfect Beat” by Bronski Beat. Maybe Neil had been influenced by Clockwork Orange in his hobby of putting violence to music?

Back to “Vienna” though and the year before this rerelease, the song had been re-recorded by original band member Billy Currie who had got together a new line up of Ultravox. Currie was the only original band member and the vocals were supplied by one Tony Fennell. Released as “Vienna ‘92”, it sank like a stone. I mean, it’s not terrible but it just seems so pointless. Fennell does a pretty good impression of Midge Ure whilst the synths are a bit more strident and there’s an obtrusive funky guitar in there but all I can think is ‘why?’

The 1993 rerelease made No 13 whilst the Very Best Of album went Top 10. By the way, in another link with Sting, four years on A&M repeated Chysallis’ trick of merging two Best Ofs into one when they released “The Very Best Of Sting And The Police”.

What fresh hell is this?! Tom Jones sings The Beatles?! As well as being Tom’s first hit of the 90s, his treatment of “All You Need Is Love” was a charity record, raising money for Childline, the foundation set up by Esther Rantzen. And now that joker card has been played, I can’t really criticise it can I? Well, yes I can. It really doesn’t suit Tom’s gruff Welsh vocal chords and the song choice was less than inspired. Nothing wrong with the sentiment of course which strikes the right note but wasn’t a previous Childline charity single also a Beatles cover?

*checks online*

Yes, the Wet Wet Wet single “With A Little Help From My Friends” was for Childline. It was a double A-side with Billy Bragg covering another Beatles track in “She’s Leaving Home”. Look, I hope Tom made lots of money for the charity (the single peaked at No 19) but this was/is horrible.

At last another brand new song and it comes courtesy of Extreme with their latest single “Tragic Comic”. I know that this came from the band’s triple album “III Sides To Every Story” but I couldn’t tell you how it goes. Let’s have a listen…

…hmm. Vaguely familiar but it’s like a piss weak version of their previous hit “Hole Hearted” in that its got that acoustic sound but the tune isn’t really up to it. It would prove to be the band’s final UK Top 40 entry when it peaked at No 15.

Now I remember the name of this next act but I couldn’t have told you how their tune went. It turns out that Gloworm actually tried to create a new genre of dance music combining house with gospel. The first result of this hybrid experiment was “I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)” but to me it sounds like one of the first crossover house tunes – “Love Can’t Turn Around” by Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk. Maybe that would have been a compliment to Gloworm but I always hated that song.

The performance here with all jungle staging and costumes gives the whole thing a look of the stage version of The Lion King. Surely some sort of nightclub setting would have been better for such a tune?

“I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)” peaked at No 20.

And so to the already much mentioned in this post artist Sting who brings us probably one of his better known solo songs “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”. This was the lead single from his “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album that would become, I think, his best selling solo LP. You see, despite all his success with The Police and his undoubted star profile, Sting’s solo stats aren’t the best. Up to this point in his career, his highest charting single was “Russians” which made No 12 in 1985. In fact, he’d had more singles fail to make the Top 40 than ones that did. His last album “The Soul Cages” had only given him one hit and the album before that (“…Nothing Like The Sun”) had generated none at all although one its singles (“Englishman In New York”) belatedly provided one when remixed by Ben Liebrand at the start of the decade. Given all of this, I wonder what was expected of his latest single?

I’ll tell you what wasn’t expected – that Sting would turn up at the TOTP studio dressed like Vincent Price in Witchfinder General. What was he thinking?! Actually all of his band have got hats on. The guitarist has one that has a heavy Windy Miller from Camberwick Green vibe. Then there’s the set. Is it meant to like like the inside of a church to make a link with the word ‘faith’ in the song’s title? Maybe so what with all those candles and flaming torches but Sting’s outfit makes the whole thing seem quite menacing and, dare I say it, even satanic. Most odd.

What about the song you ask? Oh, well I always thought it was OK if a little slow and pedestrian like. Get this though. It starts with a flattened fifth chord. So? Well a flattened fifth is a tri-tone and was banned by the church as being the devil’s music! A-ha! I was right in my use of the word ‘satanic’! The single was a medium sized hit peaking at a respectable No 14 making it, at the time, Sting’s second biggest hit ever.

And still Whitney Houston is No 1 with “I Will Always Love You”! Fear not though as this is the last TOTP repeat that we will see with it still on top of the charts. However that doesn’t mean it’s the last we’ll see of Whitney herself in this year as on that very next episode she’s back with the follow up, her cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”. In fact, in 1993 Whitney had five hit singles (if you include “I Will Always Love You”). Never mind being ‘every woman’, she was more ‘ever present woman’.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	How Can I Love You More	No but I think my wife may have had the album
2	Duran Duran	Ordinary World	Good song but not a purchase it seems
3	Def Leppard	Heaven Is	…not having to listen to this. No
4	The Beloved	Sweet Harmony	No
5	Rapination featuring Kym Mazelle	Love Me In The Right Way	Nope
6	Ultravox	Vienna	No but I have it on an Ultravox Best Of (not the one mentioned in the post)
7	Tom Jones	All You Need Is Love	Not even for charity!
8	Extreme	Tragic Comic	Nah
9	Gloworm	I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)	Nope
10	Sting	If I Ever Lose My Faith In You	It’s another no
11	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did not

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/m0018b82/top-of-the-pops-04021993

TOTP 28 JAN 1993

Posted on June 17, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re already just about through the first month of 1993 at TOTP Rewind and what we’ve seen on the show has done little to assuage my fears about how bad this year’s charts were going to be. It’s been a load of cover versions and old singles rereleased so far and the No 1 hasn’t yet changed since Xmas. There’s been the odd moment of interest like Apache Indian and the return of Duran Duran with decent new material but generally it’s been a bit of a slog already. Come on TOTP producers, give me something stimulating this week please!

It’s not a good start at all. 2 Unlimited amassed fourteen UK chart hits but how many of them could you name other than “No Limit”? OK if you’re an avid watcher of the BBC4 TOTP repeats you might be able to come up with some other titles but I’ve written about this lot every time they’ve featured on the show in the past eighteen months and I’m struggling. They’d had four consecutive big hits from their “Get Ready!” album up to this point but this was the track that defined them and why? Because it was insanely catchy. Like proper designed to make you demented catchy. And how did they do that? They just repeated the most basic two letter word in the English language over and over. It was as simple (or moronic some might say) as that. Well, they did throw in the line ‘techno, techno, techno, techno’ to spice it up a bit as well to be fair to them.

The simplicity of the track didn’t avert us from buying it in buckets all around Europe where it was No 1 just about everywhere. It was especially big over here topping the charts for five weeks and being the UK’s fourth best selling single of the year. I think I’ll leave it there for now. Another five weeks worth of appearances on the show means having to dredge up a lot of words about this one and unlike 2 Unlimited, I have my limits.

If 2 Unlimited had very few lyrics then this next tune had hardly any at all as we get that face morphing video from U.S.U.R.A. again to soundtrack the 40 – 11 chart rundown. “Open Your Mind” was the name of the track and judging by some of the online comments I’ve found after this TOTP repeat went out, there’s still a lot of retro love out there for this rave tune. It reminds me of that Lil Louis track “French Kiss” but without the creepy sex noises. Who were they though? Well, they were an electronic dance group from Italy (obviously) who released a number of singles throughout the 90s but “Open Your Mind” was their standout hit. Indeed it was a hit all over again in 1997 when an updated remix came out.

And that name? Apparently it was inspired by that of one of the group’s mothers who was called Ursula. So why did they decide to make it look like an acronym? Just B.I.Z.A.R.R.E.

It’s a hat trick of dance hits to start the show as West End featuring Sybil are back in the studio with “The Love I Lost” and the differences between them all just serve to highlight what a multi-faceted beast ‘dance music’ is/was. This slick reworking of the old Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes classic was completely removed from the relentless, in your face beats of 2 Unlimited and the repetitive techno house rhythms U.S.U.R.A. but then I guess a slice of Philly soul disco (albeit remade for the 90s) was never going to sound like either of them. Somehow though there was room for all of them in the Top 10 at the same time – the world of dance was a broad church in 1993. I was working in Rochdale at the time this was a hit and from my very limited knowledge of nightclubs in the town (I went to one once), I can imagine that it would have gone down pretty well with the local punters.

The original was a UK No 21 hit in 1974 whilst the 1993 version went all the way to No 3.

The failure in their very early career of Take That to set the charts alight – none of their first three singles got higher than No 38 – is probably not that well remembered now. Similarly lost in the annals of pop history is that their chart rivals East 17 also went through an existential crisis early doors. Having announced themselves to UK pop fans with a Top 10 debut single “House Of Love”, they made the obvious next move of rush releasing a follow up in the form of the similar sounding “Gold”. Obvious isn’t always sensible though and the single struggled to a peak of No 28. Alarm bells rang at record label London Records and apparently there were rumours of the band being dropped unless another major hit single could be pulled out of the fire sharpish. Main songwriter Tony Mortimer would prove with “Deep” that he was more than up to the task.

Whereas the band’s first two hits had been high tempo, high energy stompers with juddering dance beats, “Deep” was nothing of the sort. It had a smooth, mellow funk groove that oozed out of your radio’s speaker. It was almost inconceivable that this was the same band that had been responsible for those first two hits. Apparently it was released on the sly as a promo to clubs initially under the pseudonym Levi and Friends. The reaction from clubbers was enough to warrant a full and official East 17 release. Its Top 5 chart placing was convinced London to let the band stay another day and their future was assured.

OK, that’s the song’s back story taken care of but we need to address this performance. First of all there’s the set. Here’s the band’s Terry Coldwell courtesy of @TOTPFacts on that subject:

Terry Coldwell: "No one told us what the set was gonna be or anything like that… We'd got this cool track and they'd placed us at the bottom of a swimming pool. It was so random." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 10, 2022

I have to take issue with Terry’s choice of the word ‘random’ here. It wasn’t actually random at all. Your song was called “Deep” so the TOTP producers put you in a set made up to look like a swimming pool. And what do swimming pools have Terry? Yep, a deep end. Now, a lame joke it may have been but random? No. Quite why there is a shark tied to the side of said swimming pool wall though remains a mystery. Then there’s the lady on the steps drinking a cocktail. Why is she there? To mine the operatic female vocal effect that appears halfway through the song? Maybe except she doesn’t really do that does she? Oh, is she meant to look like a mermaid? Again, bit of a mixed metaphor there then. Finally, why is John Hendy mooching around in the background with a bass guitar instead of joining in with the rest of the band on their really quite impressive dance moves? Maybe he had a poorly knee. Bless.

The album chart feature is back and this week is showcasing Dina Carroll’s “So Close” long player. The choice of track from it that Dina performs is curious though. On the face of it, “Don’t Be A Stranger” looks like a perfect choice seeing as it was the biggest selling single to be taken from the album. It’s just that it wasn’t released as a single until October. There would be two other singles taken from the album before then. Indeed, the first of those, “This Time”, would come out just a couple of weeks after this TOTP performance so why didn’t she perform that track? Unless…”Don’t Be A Stranger” was meant to be the next single but they kept it back on purpose for the Xmas market? Whatever the truth of the matter, “Don’t Be A Stranger” was a decent ballad and Dina performed it well. It would rise to No 3 in the singles chart when it was finally released nine months later

It’s the Breakers next which include two songs we’ve already seen on the show before starting with “Heaven Is” by Def Leppard. The fourth single from their “Adrenalize” album, it had apparently been around for years before it was finally recorded. Parts of it had been taken from “Hysteria” single “Armageddon It” according to band member Phil Collen. I don’t think that’s much of an endorsement to be honest Phil. A recycled version of a song whose lyrics include the line “Yeah, but are you gettin’ it? (Armageddon it!)”? Why not just get Beavis and Butthead to write your lyrics and be done with it? Utter nonsense. It peaked at No 13 (somehow) oh and singer Joe Elliott hated the video.

What’s this? The Cult’s 1985 hit “She Sells Sanctuary” back in the charts in 1993? What was going on?! Well, it’s a simple enough explanation. To fill a three year gap between studio albums, a Greatest Hits album entitled “Pure Cult: For Rockets, Ravers, Lovers And Sinners” was released and the band’s best known song was rereleased to promote it. Except it actually went by the title of “She Sells Sanctuary MCMXCIII” I believe and it’s…f******g horrible! What have they done to this stellar track?! I’ll tell you what – added some ridiculous bongos to it! Why? Just WHY?

Alright, I’m calming down. Back in 1985, this was the tune that got us all onto the dance floor in The Barn, my nightclub of choice in Worcester during my youth. I testified on the raised dance floor many a time to this track. And then…The Barn got taken over by new management and changed its name to the wankiest ever – Images On Glass – and changed its DJ who would not play anything even slightly goth or indie and The Cult were taken off the playlist. Instead we had to put up with the likes of Luther Vandross and Alexander O’Neal and the hippest tune they would play would be “Sanctify Yourself” by Simple Minds. It was a grim time.

Meanwhile in 1993, the remix of “She Sells Sanctuary” matched the chart peak of the original release when it made it to No 15. The “Pure Cult” Greatest Hits album – perhaps surprisingly – went to No 1.

It’s a third rock band on the spin as we get the latest single by Bon Jovi. The second single from their “Keep The Faith” album, “Bed Of Roses” would peak at a rather disappointing No 13. Now I’ve admitted in the past to my Bon Jovi weaknesses but this one always seemed like a bit of a duffer to me. A bit laborious, a bit obvious and not their finest hour at all to my ears but there seems to be a lot of online love out there for the track. For me though it was possibly the weakest of the singles from the album trailing far behind “In These Arms”, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” and the epic “Dry County”.

Apparently Jon Bon Jovi refused to shoot the mountain top scenes in the video having already been filmed at the top of a canyon for the “Blaze Of Glory” single from Young Guns II. He sent his band mates Richie Sambora and David Bryan instead. Rumour has it that, in reply to his instruction, they both said “I’ll Be There For You”. I’ll get me coat.

The re-emergence of Duran Duran is still in full effect. The “Ordinary World” single is rocketing up the charts and therefore qualifies as a Breaker this week. The video plays on the wedding theme of the album’s cover (despite officially having an eponymous title, it is also known as ‘the wedding album’) depicting a bride on her wedding day with the band as guests.

There’s a couple of things that always struck me about the video. Firstly, what was the deal with the elongated bow/sash thing that makes the bride’s wedding dress look like it has wings. Nick Rhodes has a fiddle with the accessory later on in the video when he’s setting up a photo shoot (of course he would play the photographer!). Secondly, the guy she’s marrying is punching so far above his weight he’s in danger of being knocked out in the first round. Despite those reservations and Simon Le Bon’s dodgy barnet, the whole thing just about hangs together OK.

I’m putting this out there right from the get go – I don’t like Lulu. I don’t like her voice, I always hated her most famous song “Shout” and I get the impression she’s not very nice. I know she’s carved out a career of huge longevity for herself and is one of just two performers (the other being Cliff Richard) to have performed on TOTP in every decade that the show was broadcast but I just don’t warm to her. There’s an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks (I think) where Dale Winton voiced his hatred of Lulu by saying he’d happily dance on her grave! You don’t get more savage takedowns than that.

Anyway, in 1993, she tried to resurrect her pop career. She’d only managed one hit in the 80s (a rerelease of “Shout”) so she returned with some material that had clearly been written to be contemporary and update her sound. “Independence” was the song that she chose to relaunch herself with and it was a slick, soul/dance number that drew inevitable comparisons with Lisa Stansfield. It all seemed very cynical to me. A carefully designed strategy to make Lulu still sound relevant. It did nothing for me.

The single made No 11 which I’m guessing would have been seen as a decent return for all that plotting but the album of the same name bombed and furnished her with only one further minor chart hit, a duet with Bobby Womack. Undaunted, Lulu regrouped and reappeared later in the year on a No 1 hit no less when she guested on Take That’s cover of Dan Hartman’s “Relight My Fire” prompting much gossip about which of the lads she was shagging. Now that really was something for the tabloids to ‘shout’ about.

Whitney Houston is still No 1. Apparently the original choice for the big song from The Bodyguard film was Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” but it had already been used heavily in the previous year’s Fried Green Tomatoes so that idea was ditched.

The main driver behind the decision to go with “I Will Always Love You” was Kevin Costner who made the case that the plot of the film hinged on Whitney’s character singing an a cappella version of it. In fact, Costner’s influence was also felt over Houston being cast in the role. So sure was he of her suitability was he that he convinced the studio to delay recording for a year until she was available. This was on the back of his Dances With Wolves film winning an Oscar in 1991 so his stock was very high. Not even that run in with her Madgesty on In Bed With Madonna could dent his halo.

Right at the end of the show there’s what can only be described as a Sting in the tail. Actually, it was more of a Sting trailer as host Tony Dortie bigs up the ex frontman of The Police being on the show next week. To do this there’s a compilation of three of his previous hits (“All This Time”, “The Soul Cages” and “An Englishman In New York”) to work the watching TV audience up into a frenzy. This was all very strange. Had this ever been done for anyone else? Was Sting still such a big name at this time? These were Kevin Costner levels of influence!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	No Limit	God no!
2	U.S.U.R.A.	Open Your Mind	Not for me thanks
3	West End featuring Sybil	The Love I Lost	I did not
4	East 17	Deep	No but my wife had the Walthamstow album
5	Dina Carroll	Don’t Be A Stranger	No
6	Def Leppard	Heaven Is	…not having to listen to this. No!
7	The Cult	She Sells Sanctuary	Not this horrible remix but I must have the original on something
8	Bon Jovi	Bed Of Roses	No but I had a promo copy of the album
9	Duran Duran	Ordinary World	Good song but not a purchase it seems
10	Lulu	Independence	Away with you!
11	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	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/m00183dv/top-of-the-pops-28011993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

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