80stastic

TOTP 21 MAR 1991

Posted on July 6, 2021 by 80stastic

Talent. It’s just a six letter word but it can mean so many things. What does it conjure up in your mind’s eye? There’s the obvious meaning of an individual imbued with a natural aptitude or skill (e.g. Gazza was a footballer of great talent). Or, if you’re a fan of the wonderful Monty Python film Life Of Brian, you may think of it as a unit of currency used by the ancient Romans and Greeks. Back in the 80s, if you were a young, amorous male, you might have used the expression ‘sharking for talent’ meaning that you were looking for potential sexual partners. Do the current generation still use that expression? For tonight’s TOTP host Anthea Turner, it means musical artistry. How do we know this? Because she introduces the show by saying “Tonight, the emphasis is on talent” which strikes me as a peculiar thing to say as it implies that, on other shows, there is no particular emphasis on talent or rather that the emphasis of the BBC’s prime time music show could well be on something other than talent. Like what Anthea? Crapness? Judging by some of the acts we’ve seen that could well have been the case.

Well, let’s see if the acts on tonight all pass the talent test. I’m the judge by the way so it will all be fair and above board. Ahem. We start with a returning Boy George who has not been the Top 40 side of the chart boundary for nigh on four years. I say Boy George but it’s actually his band Jesus Loves You. An interesting, intermediary project between his successful but very brief solo star period in the late 80s (“Everything I Own” and all that) and his rebirth as a high profile club DJ, this collective had already released three singles before they finally got themselves a hit. I had never heard of them though before “Bow Down Mister”. This gloriously uplifting pop song was inspired by the experiences George had encountered whilst travelling through India and embracing the Hindu religion and specifically the Hare Krishna movement. When I was a kid growing up in Worcester, I would regularly see a small, chanting procession of Hare Krishna devotees slinking down the high street on a Saturday afternoon. People would point and laugh at the ‘Harrys’ as they were known and in my own youthful ignorance (I was probably only about 10 or so) I probably dismissed them in a similar fashion. Fast forward a decade or so and their movement is enshrined in popular music history courtesy of Boy George.

Supposedly George was interested in becoming a practicing Hare Krishna but it never quite happened. The most recent issue of Classic Pop magazine includes an interview with George to celebrate his recent 60th birthday and in it he states that:

When I released “Bow Down Mister” in the 90s, I thought, ‘Aha, I’ve got the elixir of truth!’ Then a thunder crash came out of nowhere and put paid to that idea”.

So what was that thunder crash? Could it be this explanation from X Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene via @TOTPFacts:

X Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene (a Krishna convert) recalled him visiting her at Bhaktivedanta Manor, the temple where she was living. “George never became a practising Hare Krishna. He was interested but they told him he couldn’t also be a practising homosexual." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

"The International Society for Krishna Consciousness accepts gay people but they have to practise celibacy or get married to a woman and have Krishna-following children. I did see George afterwards and he was pretty upset…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

The Hare Krishna movement weren’t the only ones who had an issue with George as his US record label refused to release any material under the name Jesus Loves You. Presumably they were wary of a backlash from the Christian lobby and so instead they credited all their songs simply to Boy George. They also declined to release “Bow Down Mister” as a US single. Their loss. The UK release was on George’s own record label More Protein which he had founded to enable the release of “Everything Starts With an E” by E-Zee Possee (actually George, his old pal and one time Haysi Fantayzee member Jeremy Healy and rapper MC Kinky) when Virgin had refused to release it.

As for the tune itself, for me it was a brilliantly quirky and out there pop song and I loved the instrumentation in the middle eight bit complete with Asha Bhosle* vocals that elevated it into the Krishna chanting / gospel choir mash up coda. Inevitably there were comparisons with “My Sweet Lord” by that other musical George Mr Harrison but my reference point was probably “Ever So Lonely” by Monsoon from 1982.

The performance here is utterly joyful including the exuberant jumping up and down form George’s ‘devotees’ in the background one of whom looks a bit like Norman Pace of Hale & Pace. But if we’re talking doppelgängers, is that The Mission’s Wayne Hussey up there with George on guitar? I really hope so.

“Bow Down Mister” was a big favourite of an Our Price colleague at then time so I heard this a lot. It would peak at No 27 and a re-release fo “Generations of Love” as a follow up would give Jesus Loves You their second and final Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 35.

*Yes that Aha Bhosle who was name checked by Cornershop in the equally unlikely pop hit “Brimful Of Asha”.

From the kooky to the defiantly mainstream where we find Simple Minds treading very familiar ground with their “Let There Be Love” single. Since their double platinum No 1 album “Street Fighting Years” in 1989, they had spent the early stages of the new decade retreading their back catalogue with four volumes of a rolling Greatest Hits project entitled “Themes” covering the various eras of their career to that point.

By 1991 they had caught up with themselves so an album of new material was required which arrived in the form of ninth studio album “Real Life”. Lead single “Let There Be Love” did the job expected of it by becoming a Top 10 hit around Europe (No 6 in the UK and No 1 in Italy) whilst the album itself would be a No 2 chart smash. All well and good except that the new songs seemed so very safe and calculating to me. Yes, they were melodic but there wasn’t any new ground being broken. The band retained the Celtic feel of their unexpected No 1 single “Belfast Child” with the penny whistle melody line but if I had been a massive disciple of the band, I would have been disappointed I think. Even the video seems half hearted being basically the band doing a performance promo of the song with loads of dry ice billowing around them for effect. Talk about blowing smoke up your arse.

This single was the first without keyboardist and original band member Mick MacNeil who had left the group after the completion of their previous world tour in 1990. Was this a pivotal moment in the band’s career? Although drummer Mel Gaynor was still there, his 10 year tenure with the band would come to an end the following year leaving the group to basically become a duo comprising Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill. Still, for the moment, Simple Minds could still substantiate a claim to be a big name in the rock fraternity.

By the way, if you want a less bombastic take on the song, try Icehouse’s 1995 version from their covers album “The Berlin Tapes”…

From the well established in Simple Minds to a brand band next. Banderas evolved out of the break up of The Communards – Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley had both played with Jimmy Somerville’s hitmakers – and “This Is Your Life” (nothing to do with The Blow Monkeys track of the same title) was their debut single. Pretty good it was too. And so it should have been given that it featured Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on it as well as the aforementioned Somerville on backing vocals.

Around this time, a woman called Trina transferred across to the Our Price store I was working in and she loved Banderas. Consequently I got to hear quite a bit of their only album “Ripe” which was also sounded pretty good. Sadly for them, they were unable to repeat the success of “This Is Your Life” (follow up single “She Sells” peaked at that most unfortunate and unwanted chart position of No 41) and they were gone by the end of the year.

In my head I always equate them with Trina and chart contemporaries Soho, probably as they were both fronted by women with striking images, both only had one hit and both deserved a better fate.

P.S. A little shout out for whoever came up with the Eamon Andrews style red book graphic that introduced “This Is Your Life” which peaked at No 16. Genius!

Stop the clock! Ah, too late! It’s Quartz featuring Dina Carroll yet again and for the third time now on the show I think with …erm…“It’s Too Late”. It’s not even a new performance but just a re-showing of a previous appearance. What am I supposed to say about this that I haven’t already?!

Well I’m not going to say anything. Instead I offer you a different take on the Carole King classic courtesy of the rather lovely China Crisis who recorded it for a project called “80’s Re:Covered – Your Songs With The 80’s Sound”. Excellent! The album also features the likes of ABC taking on Radiohead and Wang Chung covering Blur. What’s not to like?

Incidentally, China Crisis have also recorded a song called “It’s Never Too Late” which was an extra track on the 12″ of their 1985 hit “Black Man Ray”. Make your minds up fellas!

Now, talking of cover versions…here’s Pet Shop Boys with two for the price of one! There’s an awful lot to unpack about “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)”. Firstly, why? Why did Neil and Chris do a mash up of a 1987 U2 song with that cheesy Boystown Gang disco hit. Yes, I know “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was originally a hit by Frankie Valli but there’s no doubt that it was the 1982 cover that inspired the duo on this. Supposedly it was a swipe at the overly inflated egos of rock stars such as Bono and Sting. Here’s Tennant on this very subject via @TOTPFacts:

Neil Tennant: "There's an assumption that if you're writing pop music it's not an important kind of music, whereas rock music is perceived as being an important kind of music… I don't really like the idea of people projecting themselves as important humanitarian figures" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Just in case Bono didn’t get the joke, they made “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” a double A-side with a track from their “Behaviour” album called “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?”. Eventually, U2 issued a statement saying “What have we done to deserve this?” which was a pretty clever and semi-diplomatic response I think.

That double A-side re-promoted the “Behaviour” album but also caused headaches for record shop staff (like me) when customers came in wanting to buy the album with that disco U2 song on it when it wasn’t on the actual album. “No, it’s the other A-side that’s on the album not Where the Streets Have No Name” would be the explanation from behind the counter. “What other A-side?” would come the reply as let’s be fair, radio weren’t playing “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?”. I don’t think the album was re-issued with it on at the time. Presumably it has subsequently been added as an extra track in a super deluxe reissue years later.

Neil and Chris were on slightly dodgy ground with all this rock star ego poking / cover version business. Back in 1987, as “It’s A Sin” became their first No 1, DJ Jonathan King accused them of pinching the melody from “Wild World” by Cat Stevens for their chart topper in his Sun newspaper column. He even released his own cover version of “Wild World” as a single constructed to sound very similar to “It’s a Sin” to prove his point. The duo sued King winning out-of-court damages which they donated to charity. OK, so I guess in a ‘who’s the dodgiest?’ contest between Pet Shop Boys and Jonathan King there’s only one winner and in fact charity was the real winner in this spat but even so, I think Bono’s response was a bit classier.

The double A-side “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” / “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” peaked at No 4 and must also be one of the longest ever song titles to trouble the chart compilers albeit that it was double -barrelled.

Some Breakers next and we start with “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Definition Of Sound. Now, I had no idea about the original of this single’s song title until just now but apparently it was half inched from a track by 60s hippy folk rocker Donovan. It’s actually rather nice…

Anyway, Definition Of Sound’s single was nothing like that not being a cover version and all. No, their’s was a kick ass dance tune which put me in mind of “Groove Is In The Heart” by Deee-Lite a bit. But who were these guys anyway? Well, they were rappers Kevin Clark and Don Weekes from London (I’d always assumed they were American) who used a track called “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” by The Hombres who were an American 60s garage rock band to construct their biggest hit. Not only did they steal the riff but also the spoken word intro that goes:

I preach my dear friend
You’re about to receive Long John Barleycorn
Nicotine and the temptation of Eve….

The first time I heard that intro I had to do a double take to check that I hadn’t heard the ‘n’ word in there. Fortunately it was the word ‘nicotine’. By bizarre coincidence, the aforementioned Jonathan King had a hit with “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” in 1970 and I promise I won’t mention his name again.

Back to Definition Of Sound though and it seems that they stole the song title from one source and then nicked the riff and some lyrics from another. It doesn’t sound like a good defence of their own creativity but in fact what they came up with was brilliant. The rapping is on point and the chorus is irresistibly catchy. It probably should have been a bigger hit than its No 17 peak. They followed this up with a very similar sounding single called “Moira Jane’s Café” which I don’t recall but which just scraped into the UK Top 40 but was a bigger deal over the pond where it became the first UK Rap record to become number 1 on the Billboard Dance Charts.

They released three albums in total before Clark went on to work in A&R and music publishing whilst Weekes released a solo album before leaving the music industry altogether.

What is this?! Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks? Together? As with Pet Shop Boys and their “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” mash up single, the question that comes to mind is why? I guess I’m asking this question retrospectively though as I had no clue who Shabba Ranks was back in 1991. Indeed it would be another two years before he became a household name with a re-release of his “Mr Loverman” single when you couldn’t mention him without exclaiming ‘Shabba!’. Even so, it does seem an unlikely alliance Green Gartside’s voice is so fey that a pairing with a dancehall rapper really didn’t seem logical. And it doesn’t really work does it? The fact that they chose a Beatles song to desecrate doesn’t help their case for me – “She’s A Woman” was the B-side to the Fab Four’s 1964 chart topper “I Feel Fine”. Quite how it got to No 20 is a mystery to me. And what is Green wearing in the video?! This would prove to be Scritti Politti’s last ever Top 40 hit and also heralded an eight year hiatus for Gartside.

Despite having formed in 1985, I don’t think I know any song by Jane’s Addiction other than “Been Caught Stealing”. Although very much one of the first funk metal acts to gain mainstream exposure it was their fellow LA contemporaries Red Hot Chili Peppers that I would come to appreciate more.

“Been Caught Stealing” was from their “Ritual De Lo Habitual” which went platinum in the US and Gold in the UK but I have to admit that I knew its sleeve art more than its contents. I’m not sure what the clip is that TOTP were showing but it’s not the infamous official video for the single which won Best Alternative Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards and was voted No. 47 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Videos. Maybe it was deemed too controversial for pre-watershed audiences? All that shoplifting plus there is some twerking and a false arse also features.

This was the band’s first ever UK Top 40 hit peaking at No 34 and they wouldn’t have another for 12 years.

Anthea is back on her musical talent theme in the intro to the next act who you would not have predicted being in the charts around now. Not that he didn’t have any talent – he had one of the most unique and distinctive voices ever. It was just that he hadn’t been anywhere near the Top 40 for five whole years. Suddenly though, Feargal Sharkey was back! After the heady, chart topping days of “A Good Heart” and all that, Feargal’s career took a stumble when second album ‘Wish” was a commercial failure and critically panned.

Fast forward three years and here he was bagging himself a No 12 hit though “I’ve Got News For You” wasn’t really what any of us could have expected. A warm, smooth, slowly building ballad in a blues style? This was no “Teenage Kicks”. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack a particularly tender and poignant scene in a rom-com film. The parent album “Songs From The Mardi Gras” sold if not spectacularly then solidly and included a version of the traditional Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair”. And who else that appeared earlier in the show used that song to score themselves a No 1? Yep, Simple Minds whose “Belfast Child” incorporated its melody. I don’t just throw this blog together you know!

It also included a track by Maria McKee who had famously written “A Good Heart” for Feargal. This wasn’t written to request though; “To Miss Someone” was from her self-titled solo debut which Sharkey just chose to cover. “I’ve Got News For You” was to be his swansong however. He quit recording and performing after this to become a big name within the music industry as CEO of British Music Rights and head of UK Music.

Oh and yes, back in 1991, he still had that floppy hair as well as a few facial whiskers.

There’s an article in the current edition of Classic Pop magazine about all the artists to have come out of Scandinavia. There’s more than you might imagine. There’s A-ha , Röyksopp and Lene Marlin from Norway whilst Denmark are represented by…erm..”Barbie Girl” hitmakers Aqua. But it’s Sweden who are the region’s big hitters. Yes, obviously we could all name Abba but there’s also The Cardigans, Ace Of Base, Europe, Avicii and of course Roxette. How do they compare to all those other names? Well, nobody will ever oust Abba from the forefront of the world’s consciousness but Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle were phenomenally successful with a run of four US No 1 singles including “Joyride”.

That said, I don’t think it ever got any bigger or better for Roxette after this point in time. The “Joyride” LP sold 11 million copies worldwide but not one of their subsequent album releases got anywhere near that figure as that old enemy of the pop star diminishing returns set in. They remained a big deal in Europe throughout the rest of the decade but their US success disappeared quickly when interest in them dwindled. Here in the UK, the duo retained a fairly loyal fanbase for most fo the decade (both albums after “Joyride” also went Top 3 ) but by 1999’s “Have A Nice Day”, we had also moved on as it peaked at No 28. Their next three albums missed the Top 100 (that’s not a typo that’s one hundred!) altogether.

So, to return to Anthea Turner’s talent watch, did Roxette have talent? Absolutely. Did they always have the public’s ear? No. Were they ever fashionable? Never.

After last Friday’s Comic Relief Day event, it was inevitable that the official song by Hale & Pace would go to No 1. “The Stonk” really was dreadful though. It starts off a bit like the theme to Only Fools And Horses and then turns into a horribly naff Status Quo by numbers boogiewoogie track. Just vile.

I saw Norman Pace in Costa Coffee in Hull once learning his lines for a production at one of the theatres here as he supped on a cappuccino. He looked considerably older than he does here probably because he was considerably older. Therein ends my Hale & Pace anecdote. Also, they kind of undermine Anthea’s musical talent promise don’t you think?

The play out video is “Hangar 18” by Megadeth. Now all this trash metal nonsense normally leaves me cold but this one does at least have some relevance to the present day. How so? Well, it’s all about the conspiracy theory that alien bodies were taken to a facility called Hangar 18 in Dayton, Ohio when a UFO supposedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The remains were later taken to Area 51 in Nevada or so the theory goes. Fast forward 74 years and the Pentagon’s UFO report that was published in June this year which basically no longer rules out the possibility of alien spacecraft as a possible explanation for unexplained sightings. There was not a full committal to the idea either though. In fact, the only confirmation from the report was that the acronym UFO should no longer be used and we should instead call them UAPs instead which stands for ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’. Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to fly (ahem).

“Hangar 18” peaked at No 26 and was taken from their Top 10 album “Rust In Peace”.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart run down below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Loves You	Bow Down Mister	No but my wife has it on a Culture Club / Boy George Best Of album
2	Simple Minds	Let There Be Love	No but again I have it on a Best Of I think
3	Banderas	This Is Your Life	No
4	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Nope
5	Pet Shop Boys	Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)	No the single but it will be on their Pop Art Best Of that I have
6	Definition Of Sound	Where Your Love Like Heaven	Not at the time but I think I may have downloaded it from iTunes years later
7	Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks	She’s A Woman	No – its was awful
8	Jane’s Addiction	Been Caught Stealing	I did not
9	Feargal Sharkey	I’ve Got News For You	Nice song but no
10	Roxette	Joyride	Nah
11	Hale & Pace	The Stonk	The Stink more like! No, not even for charity!
12	Megadeth	Hangar 18	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/m000x8pb/top-of-the-pops-21031991

TOTP 14 MAR 1991

Posted on July 1, 2021 by 80stastic

Right, we’re about 10 weeks into reviewing the year that was 1991 here at TOTP Rewind so how’s it going do we think? Personally, I think it’s been a bit all over the place. We’ve had a No 1 from Iron Maiden, some years old hits back in the charts from the likes of The Clash, Madonna and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, some truly vile Grease and Bee Gees themed mega-mixes, some TV show cartoon characters topping the charts in the form of The Simpsons, some non mainstream acts sneaking into the charts like Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Railway Children, established rock and pop royalty still surviving into the 90s like Queen and Sting, some monks chanting their way to No 1, some classy dance tunes from the likes of Massive Attack and The Source and most unbelievably of all, a second hit for Gazza. Phew! Totally bonkers! The Top 40 was off its head!

And now a young man entered the fray who would add yet another unexpected element to the musical meting pot. Who saw Chesney Hawkes coming?! Well, if you had watched the film Buddy’s Song then maybe you did predict Ches-mania. This comedy-drama flick told the story of one Buddy Clark and his struggles to make it as a pop star whilst dealing with the issues of entering adulthood, separated parents and a burgeoning romance. Hawkes was, of course, the titular Buddy whilst The Who frontman Roger Daltrey played his Dad. I’m sure I’ve seen this but I don’t think it was at the cinema. Maybe it was shown on TV subsequently. It was pretty insubstantial as I recall but it was a perfect vehicle to launch Chesney’s real life pop star career. It was kind of like The Monkees all over again when the fictitious pop band from a TV show become actual pop stars or as Micky Dolenz famously said ‘like Leonard Nimoy becoming a real life Vulcan’. Cleverly, the film featured 11 songs performed by Chesney which were then released on a soundtrack album which could then be marketed basically as a Chesney Hawkes solo album. Added to all of this promotion, Hawkes even had a pop music back story as his Dad was Chip Hawkes from 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

Despite all this and Hawkes’ clean cut, pretty boy pop star looks, his rise to stardom still didn’t seem a given. Firstly, teenage girls already had a clutch of pop pin ups to scream at in the shape of New Kids On The Block. Secondly, there was his song. “The One And Only” had been written for him by faded 80s pop star Nik Kershaw whose last chart hit had been back in 1985 and was surely now unknown to 90s pop fans but it was, nevertheless, plucked from the album to be Hawkes’ debut single. Now here’s the thing for me about “The One And Only”; yes it sounded a bit dated (being written by a pop star from an earlier decade and all) and it had some cheesy, 6th form style lyrics but…but…it was and remains a bloody good pop song! No f**k you, it is! Whatever you may think about Kershaw, that’s what his strength was – writing decent pop genre songs. He knew how to do that. What he wasn’t so comfortable with was actually being the pop star which he always struggled with. This was an almost perfect arrangement for him. He gets all the royalties and kudos from a chart hit but he doesn’t have to front or promote it. Once more there was a tie in with The Monkees story as when music publisher Don Kirshner was asked to provide hit songs for the group and he presented them with the song “Sugar, Sugar”, they hated it and rejected it out of hand at a tense meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kirshner took his song and got some session musicians to record it and put it out under the name of The Archies who were a fictional band that featured in the animated TV series The Archie Show knowing that a bunch of cartoon characters couldn’t give him any grief. For Nik Kershaw see Don Kirshner (sort of). OK, the analogy doesn’t quite hold as a parallel to the Kershaw/Chesney story but you get my drift.

This TOTP performance helped propel Chesney to the top of the charts within a matter of weeks and for a while he was everywhere. I have my own (not especially interesting) Chesney Hawkes story but I’ll keep that back for another post as he will be at No 1 for FIVE weeks!

Next the sound of a band transitioning from being critically acclaimed and with a sizeable devoted fanbase to probably the biggest band in the world at the time; all courtesy of one unusual song. REM were certainly not a secret by the time 1991 rolled around. Their last album “Green” had sold a few million copies world wide and they had undertaken their biggest ever tour to support it. I was certainly aware of them having been introduced to their work by a pal at Polytechnic and had loved their “Stand” single. Yet, I wouldn’t have said they were up there with the ridiculously famous bands like, I don’t know, U2 or Queen or The Police.

“Losing My Religion” changed all that and brought them into the world of mainstream, global success. The lead single from their seventh studio album “Out Of Time” (yes seventh, they were hardly an overnight success), it wasn’t your typical rock/pop song featuring as it did a mandolin as the principal instrument and no recognisable chorus. Record company Warner Bros had some reservations about the band choosing it to promote the album but it would prove to be the biggest hit of their career. I say that but UK audiences didn’t quite embrace it in the same way as the rest of the world. A No 4 in the US and Top 10 just about everywhere else, it only made it to No 19 in the UK charts. However, sales of “Out Of Time” in this country were off the scale. It went to No 1, was the sixth best selling album of the year and would go five times platinum here. We sold that album in the Our Price store I worked in again and again and again. And they we sold it some more. By comparison, it sold five times more than previous album “Green”.

There’s loads of stuff online about the video for “Losing My Religion” in terms of the director, the concept behind it etc so you can look all that stuff up yourself if you like but here are the things that I have noticed about it:

Is the actor with the bald head and white beard who takes the wig off the angel character the same bloke who played Socrates (So-Crates) in Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure?
Supposedly Michael Stipe’s chaotic dancing style is based on a mash up of Sinead O’Connor’s moves in her “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and David Byrne’s “Once In A Lifetime” freaky cavorting. However, to me, it looks more like Roland Orzabal wigging out in the Tears For Fears video for “Mad World”.
Michael Stipe has hair!

Seeing as REM were making a bid for global domination, it fell to Oxford’s Ride to be this week’s non-mainstream artist on the show. Apparently this was their TOTP debut but I think we had seen some of their videos on before (probably in the Breakers section). “Unfamiliar” was actually just one of four songs on an EP called “Today Forever” Indeed all of their previous chart entries had actually been tracks from an over arching EP – I don’t know, those indie bands and their EPs!

Ride seemed to gain a lot of critical appreciation and indeed commercial success very quickly after their formation as the poster boys for the ‘shoe gazing’ movement. The following year would see them at the pinnacle of their powers as they would score a Top 10 single in “Leave Them All Behind” and a Top 5 album in “Going Blank Again”. My particular fave of theirs from that time was “Twisterella” so I hope we get to see that on a future TOTP repeat.

As brightly as they burned, their flame was also quickly extinguished and by 1995 they were in crisis following the recording of the “Tarantula” album and broke up quickly afterwards. However, they reformed in 2014 and have released two successful albums since then.

The “Today Forever EP” peaked at No 14.

After seeing their 70s canon bastardised into an horrific megamix by The UK Mixmasters a couple of weeks earlier, The Bee Gees themselves were back for real with some new material. Despite their incredible run of success in the 70s, the 80s had been a much quieter time for The Bee Gees apart from one notable exception. Their surprise No 1 single “You Win Again” in 1987 was their only Top 40 entry of the entire decade. In an attempt to reverse this trend, they pulled off a trick most commonly known as money for old rope. Yes, they just took one of their old songs, made a few tweaks and shoved that out into the marketplace. So not really new material at all then. The song that they refashioned was “Chain Reaction” which had been a No 1 for Diana Ross back in 1986 and it re-emerged in 1991 as “Secret Love”. It proved a simple act to deceive the UK record buying public as they sent it all the way to No 5. However, the album it was taken from called “High Civilization” severely underperformed.

They appeared to expend as little effort on the video as they had done on the song. This was stultifyingly dull following very much in the footsteps of the promo for “You Win Again”. They could have at least pulled out some Travolta -esque Saturday Night Fever moves.

What can only be described as a poignant video next. Due to his worsening condition caused by advanced AIDS, Freddie Mercury was in very poor health come 1991. He had wanted to keep working as long as possible which allowed for one final Queen album to be released before his death in “Innuendo”. “I’m Going Slightly Mad” was the second single to be released from it following the title track and was also the last promo in which he contributed significantly to the creative process. By this point, stories of his ill health were rife in the press and so as not to fuel the rumours, he wore heavy make up to his the blotches on his face and a big coat to disguise the heavy weight loss his condition had induced. An over the top wig was also in play to cover up his receding hairline. The fact that it was almost entirely shot in black and white may also have been designed to throw people off the scent. That and the penguins. Definitely designed to throw people off the scent was the gorilla suit which allegedly housed one Elton Hercules John.

After the full on bonkers “Innuendo”, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” did little to return the band to the Queen sound that had served them so well for the previous two decades. Very understated with some truly daft lyrics (“I think I’m a banana tree”), it never seemed to get going to me. Maybe that wasn’t the point though. Many an online theory suggests that the lyrics reflect the mental decline Mercury was experiencing as one of the effects of AIDS. It didn’t seem to strike an emphatic chord with the fans as after the album’s title track had gone straight in at No 1, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” peaked at No 22.

By late November, Freddie would be dead but his end would usher in a posthumous No 1 when a re-release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” backed with another “Innuendo” track “These Are the Days of Our Lives” claimed the Xmas No 1 spot.

After a brief cameo from Lenny Henry to plug Red Nose Day which was happening the following evening, we have another showing of the Massive Attack studio performance for “Unfinished Sympathy”. So what was the story behind that pithy song title? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

The title's a pun on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. 3D: "[It] came up as a joke, but it fitted the song & the arrangements so perfectly, we had to use it." Shara Nelson: "My working title was something like 'Really Hurt You Baby', but they wanted something more abstract" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Shara Nelson would go onto have a clutch of hit singles in the mid 90s as a solo artist and she gives a heart felt performance here but the TOTP cameraman seems more interested in the guy in the backing orchestra with the pronounced comb over giving 70s footballer Ralph Coates a run for his money. Who was Ralph Coates? This was Ralph Coates…

A hat trick of rock and pop legends on the same show is completed. Following Queen and The Bee Gees earlier is Rod Stewart whose “Rhythm Of My Heart” single was the first from his “Vagabond Heart” album. That album would perform very solidly commercially(exceeding expectations even) and gave Rod the Mod his highest charting long player since 1976’s “A Night On The Town”. The single also did well for him peaking at No 3 at a stroke becoming his biggest hit since 1986’s “Every Beat of My Heart”.

If “Rhythm Of My Heart” sounded just a teeny bit Scottish in flavour, then there was a good reason for that. The melody is an adaptation of centuries old Scottish folk song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Yes you do know it; it’s the one that goes:

O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye

Yes, that one. Rod’s pride in his Scottish ancestry is well known of course (although he was born in England and his Mother was English, his Dad was Scottish) so I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised about him mining it for a hit record.

On June the 7th of this year, as part of his world tour in support of the “Vagabond Heart” album, Stewart played Old Trafford football stadium and, as core stock CD buyer at the time (oh the responsibility), I had my eyes on the ball for this happening. Predicting a spike in interest, I ordered in a load of his 1989 Best Of album which sold like billy-o’ the day after the gig which happened to be a Saturday. Or was it my manager (a big Rod fan) who told me to order them in? In the face-off a lack of definitive evidence, I’m going to take the credit for this one.

Host Simon Mayo blows his own trumpet (he did that quite a bit I’ve noticed) when introducing Happy Mondays and their latest single by saying it was a chart beater on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show and that he was playing it everyday. “Ooh check me out with my hip tastes; I’m no brainless DJ like Steve Wright, I’m into the music” you can imagine is what he really means.

“Loose Fit” was the third and final single to be lifted from the “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches” album and I recall our store having loads of it in stock but although it sold steadily peaking at No 17, it didn’t reach the heights of the first two singles “Step On” and “Kinky Afro” which both made it to No 5. Like many I think, I always thought it was something to do with Madchester fashion and all those baggy flare jeans but it wasn’t. Here’s Shaun Ryder courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

“It’s about your approach to life, how you approach everything: from your work, or whatever you do to make money, to relationships. For me, particularly back then, it had to be a loose fit.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Oh OK but the lyrics did include this rhyming couplet…

Don’t need no skin tights in my wardrobe today
Fold them all up and put them all away

…so, as with the Rod Stewart Best Of story, I’m going to give myself the benefit fo the doubt on this one.

Watching this performance back, it’s hard to remember that Shaun used to look like this. Still, I guess we all look a bit different to how we did 30 years ago… apart from Sinitta of course who doesn’t look much different from her “So Macho” days.

It’s a second and final week at the top for The Clash and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. Given the renewed interest in the band, record label Epic went to work on raiding their back catalogue to try and spin to out some more hits. They released a Best Of album called simply “The Singles” despite their already being a superior collection called “The Story Of The Clash” from just three years earlier. The public weren’t taken in by that and it struggled to a high of No 68. They had better luck with a re-release of ‘Rock The Casbah” (like “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”, also from the “Combat Rock” LP) which went to No 15 in the singles chart. However, a second re-release of “London Calling” (it had already been re-released once in 1988) missed the Top 40 altogether and brought the whole early 90s revisiting The Clash project to a close.

The play out song is “Who? Where? Why?” by Jesus Jones. It’s not the official promo video though but rather a re-showing of their studio performance from the other week. If you google Jesus Jones, the first result that comes up is a link to their official website (good work from their website creator) and the link says ‘Jesus Jones. No, we didn’t split up’. Yes, in spite of everything, the music press backlash, the decline in their popularity, being dropped by EMI, the band remained together and are still touring and releasing new material to this day. Apart from a spell when original drummer Gen was replaced by Tony Arthy before rejoining the fold in 2014, thew original line up has remained intact. Quite the achievement.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	I did not
2	REM	Losing My Religion	Not the single but I must have it on something
3	Ride	Today Forever EP	Nah
4	The Bee Gees	Secret Love	Definitely not
5	Queen	I’m Going Slightly Mad	Negative
6	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I had the album Blue Lines
7	Rod Stewart	Rhythm Of My Heart	And no
8	Happy Mondays	Loose Fit	No but I had the Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches album
9	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the re-release but I have it on something surely?
10	Jesus Jones	Who? Where? Why?	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/m000x8p7/top-of-the-pops-14031991

TOTP 07 MAR 1991

Posted on June 28, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where I am reviewing a time so long ago that in this week back in 1991, Ryan Giggs made his firtst team debut for Manchester United. He was 17 at the time and when he finally hung up his boots, he was 40! And just to hammer home how old that makes those of us who remember it feel, even that retirement was 7 years ago! Anyway, probably best to dismiss those thoughts from our minds (and certainly the subject of Ryan Giggs given the current state of his private life and what he has been accused of). Instead, let us glory in the tunes of March 1991. Our host is Nicky Campbell (watch out for the snidey remarks) and we begin with….

….FFS! Yes, 1991 saw the return of the Comic Relief single after the fallow year of 1990. Now a deeply embedded part of UK culture, at this point in history there had only ever been three Comic Relief singles in existence before Hale & Pace were recruited to be the public face of this year’s campaign courtesy of their song “The Stonk”. I say Hale & Pace but the record is actually credited to ‘Hale & Pace and the Stonkers’. Why Hale & Pace? Well, hard as it may seem to believe, these two were once very much seen as amongst the biggest names in UK comedy. They had just come off the back of a third ITV series series of their own and their characters like ‘The Two Rons’ and ‘Billy & Johnny’ had bumped up their profile significantly. Did I watch their show? I think I probably did – there wasn’t that much choice back then with there being just the four channels and all – but I never found ‘The Two Rons’ very funny at all although ‘Billy & Johnny’ did raise a smile. They were probably more controversial and cutting edge than I remember (they did start their career with appearances in the very funny and very anarchic The Young Ones after all) with sketches that included full frontal nudity and of course the microwaved cat. Yet they were perceived by the Comic Relief charity as lovable and establishment enough to front up their 1991 song.

Ah yes, the actual ‘song’. I would go as far as to say that “The Stonk” is in with a good shout at being the worst ever Comic Relief single. Too harsh? Let’s examine the competition. The very first example of this genre was “Living Doll” by Cliff Richard and The Young Ones. Now the Cliff original is crap admittedly but Rick, Vivian, Neil and Mike were great enough comedy creations to make the joke work (even Cliff plays along well enough). Plus it was the first. We hadn’t seen this before and so it was a novelty in more than one sense. The second single was “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Mel & Kim (aka Mel Smith and Kim Wilde). It’s tragically awful and as Kim sings so corny but it has become accepted as part of the Christmas song canon so I suggest it just about gets away with it. Next was “Help” by Bananarama and Lananeeneenoonoo. Again, not especially funny but it is rescued for me by the lampooning of new ‘nana Jacquie O’Sullivan by the wonderful Kathy Burke. In the years after “The Stonk”, the charity turned to artists doing straight up versions of proper pop songs without the comic attachment such as Cher, Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry doing “Love Can Build a Bridge” and The Spice Girls allowing their fourth single “Mama” / “Who Do You Think You Are” to be adopted as the official song. Then there were the boy band doing cover versions years – Boyzone and “When the Going Gets Tough”, Westlife and “Uptown Girl” and One Direction and “One Way Or Another (Teenage Kicks)” – before Peter Kay took on the mantle for a few years.

So where does “The Stonk” come in this list? It’s got to be pretty near the bottom surely? I think it’s the way Hale & Pace perform it semi seriously that grates. That and the dancing. Oh God, the dancing. The song actually had some heavyweight musicians behind it including Queen’s Brian May (who produced it) and Roger Taylor plus Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, Nick Lowe and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi. I’m surprised not to see Status Quo’s name in there as well as their boogie woogie rock style seems to have been appropriated for “The Stonk”.

For all its many faults, “The Stonk” did the job it was meant to by going to No 1 and raising lots of money for charity. It was, and remains, awful though.

It’s that bloody Rocky V song again next. Is this the third time it’s been on the show? Seems a lot for a song that got no further in the charts than No 20. Nicky Campbell, having not really been able to go to town with the snide remarks seeing as the first song was for charity, makes up for lost time by stating “Rocky V is about to be released, the last among sequels, they promise, and we sincerely hope…” – boxing clever with his insults as ever.

As with the film itself, does anybody really recall “Go For It” by Joey B Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare with any fondness? Has anyone even heard it played on the radio since it was in the charts 30 years ago? By contrast, how many times do you hear “Eye Of The Tiger” played on one of the nostalgia radio stations? The film is similarly held in low esteem. Surely the least liked entry in the entire franchise, the film tanked at the box office. Had it stuck to its original ending which saw Rocky die after having taken a beating from his ex- protégé Tommy Gunn in a car park street brawl, maybe it would have benefited from being the ultimate final act of the story. Supposedly the studio changed its mind though declaring, according to director John Avildsen in an Ultimate Classic Rock interview:

‘Oh, by the way, Rocky’s not going to die. Batman doesn’t die. Superman, James Bond – these people don’t die’.”

I’m not really sure those are valid comparisons and anyway *SPOILER* Iron Man dies at the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Although Rocky didn’t die, it was the end of the road for Joey B Ellis and Tynetta Hare who never had another UK chart hit.

It’s that cover of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” by Quartz featuring Dina Carroll next. Given an innocent verdict in Miranda Sawyer’s kangaroo court article about the “great dance swizze up” in Smash Hits at the time on account of the fact that Dina does actually sing on the record, I still couldn’t be doing with this. I loved the Carole King original but the lameness of this dance version is exemplified by the Spanish guitar break in the middle eight which is actually played on a synthesiser. So taken aback at the synthetic nature of this is Dina that she misses her cue to come back in thereby adding to the while fakery by making a sham of the performance as well as the song.

Quartz did released an album with “It’s Too Late” on. Having looked it up, I do remember the cover but I’m pretty sure it didn’t sell well and we never heard from Quartz again. Dina Carroll on the other hand….

“It’s Too Late” peaked at No 8.

It’s the video for Living Colour and their “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” single next and whoever was responsible for the text on the chart run down graphics clearly didn’t know the difference between it’s and its as they add an unwanted apostrophe into the song title. Standards and all that.

Wikipedia informs me that the band’s drummer is called Will Calhoun. Will Calhoun? Why is that name stirring embers in the ashes of my memory? Will Calhoun? Come on man, think! Yes! Of course. Will Calhoun was a recurring character in The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse. No, if you are anywhere near Amy age (53 as it happens) then you do remember The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse. Listen to this….

…see, told you. In the show, Will Calhoun was a cowardly old timer cowboy who told some tall tales of his supposed escapades to gullible 12 year old Ricky. None of this has anything at all to do with Living Colour but I’ve got to fill out this post somehow and I used up all my meagre Living Colour knowledge the first time they were on TOTP. OK, anything else I can dredge up? How about I give some credit to Nicky Campbell who has clearly done his research for his intro to this one. “They’re candid, they’re lurid, they’re vivid and livid…” he says which in itself doesn’t make much sense but it does name check the title of their first album “Vivid” which must have been deliberate surely other wise it’s just word salad.

“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” peaked at No 12.

Now here’s act we haven’t seen before on TOTP but you would be forgiven for thinking you had. Although I mistakenly thought that they were a part of the ‘Madchester’ scene when I first heard about them, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin were actually one of the trinity of acts that came out of Stourbridge, West Midlands alongside The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself and wouldn’t you just know it looking at their image. All that crimped hair, shorts and slogan emblazoned T-shirts, jumping around on stage like kids at a playground. This look wasn’t restricted to bands from Stourbridge either. You could also add EMF and Jesus Jones to the list as well. The T-shirts, much like with James and Insprial Carpets, were quite a thing with The Ned’s (as their fans referred to them). They reportedly produced 86 of their own band designs within a three year period. Pretty sure we stocked some of them in the basement of the Our Price Store I was working in.

It wasn’t all about image and clothes though; they did make some music as well. “Happiness” was their first Top 40 hit after two earlier singles “Kill Your Television” and “Until You Find Out” had just missed out on that accolade and, for me, its fuzzy pop sound certainly didn’t seem out of place in the company of The Wonder Stuff, Jesus Jones et al. Maybe not quite as slick though. A bit The Wedding Present -esque even. Parent album “God Fodder” was a big success rising as high as No 4 in the charts and even making some waves across the pond in the US. As of 2013, “God Fodder” has sold around 500,000 copies worldwide. Despite splitting in 1995, the original line up reformed in 2008 to play some live shows and they retain a loyal fan base around the world. That’s not the only thing they retained though. Lead singer Jonn Penney still has that lopsided hairstyle..

Hat doffed to Jonn Penney, who is still rocking the long-on-one-side haircut. That's commitment. Could still be crimped, though, Jonn. (Tuts) #TOTP pic.twitter.com/qgugQg8OVk
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

The TOTP producers are still persisting with this pointless Top 5 selling albums feature. For the record then, these were the biggest albums in February 1991:

1. Queen – “Innuendo”

2. Gloria Estefan – “Into The Light”

3. Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game”

4. Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

5. George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”

Blimey. You might get a non mainstream act like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin in the singles chart but the albums chart was another matter altogether! Apart from Chris Isaak maybe, the rest are all very established rock and pop royalty.

Back to the music and next we have Xpansions with their dance track “Move Your Body (Elevation)”. A couple of posts ago, I talked about how my mate Robin had found himself in the TOTP studio audience by mistake as he and his mate had believed Morrissey was going to be on the show. When Mozza wasn’t, they were trapped in a world of terrible pop stars and songs. Determined to avoid the camera at all costs, Robin thought he had saved himself from embarrassment…until this repeat was shown 30 years later and he spotted the back of his head in amongst the throng…and he was clapping along to Xpansions! I’ve watched this back a couple of times but can’t spot him (shame). If only it had been this show that he’d attended then he would have at least have seen Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who I know he liked and ..erm..oh yeah, Hale & Pace.

As for Xpansions, in that aforementioned Miranda Sawyer Smash Hits article, they get exposed as the charlatans they were as the vocalist we see on stage – Sally Ann Marsh – didn’t actually sing on the record. No, that was a 16 year old called Lizzie D who didn’t get any credit nor repayment for her vocals. A “swizze up” indeed!

Having achieved a huge triumph with “It Must Have Been Love” from the Pretty Woman soundtrack the previous Summer, Roxette‘s record company EMI had sensibly been hurriedly re-issuing tracks from their back catalogue that had flopped initially to consolidate on this. However, that practice could only sustain for so long before new material was needed from the duo. In that context, “Joyride” (the single and album) needed to succeed. Both did in spades.

There wasn’t much in the way of musical progression with this new material but why fix something that wasn’t broke? The song “Joyride” was pure, unabashed, unashamed out and out pop. Probably inevitably so; did Roxette know how to do anything else? The opening guitar chords must surely have been pinched by The Rembrandts for their theme from Friends hit “I’ll Be There For You” whilst Per Gessle himself seems to have been guilty of being very influenced by The Doors track “Hello I Love You” in the chorus. In his defence, he says he was inspired by a note his girlfriend (now wife) left on his piano, which read: “Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig” (“Hello, you fool, I love you”). In fact, Per was all over this one – it’s him doing the majority of the vocals whereas it had been Marie Fredriksson on their recent chart hits like “Listen To Your Heart” and the ubiquitous “It Must Have Been Love” and it was his decision to include the whistling bits. Supposedly, he got the idea after watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian and its song “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”.

The “Joyride” album would go 2× Platinum in the UK and sell 11 million copies worldwide spawning 5 hit singles along the way. “Joyride” the single would be a US No 1 (their fourth) and peak at No 4 in the UK. And yet for all this success, for some, “Joyride” was everything that was wrong with Roxette encapsulated in one song. Bland, formulaic, plastic were some of the accusations thrown at it and it was certainly sneered at by the majority of the staff in the Our Price I was working in. I’m sure Per and Marie couldn’t have cared less.

And finally The Simpsons have been toppled as we have a new No 1! Not only was “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” the only UK chart topper of The Clash‘s career, it was also their only ever entry into the Top 10. Unbelievable but true. Had I been more on the ball with writing this post, I could have made a rather obvious reference to Matt Hancock after Friday morning’s revelations in The Sun. As it’s 3 days on from that and the weaselly little twerp has already resigned, I can’t. Instead, I’ll have to call on @TOTPFacts for this Tories / The Clash mash up:

Mick Jones is the cousin of Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps. Shapps: "I'm always saying to Mick, 'I know it's incredibly embarrassing for you having a Tory minister as a cousin, I'm so sorry to have ruined your cred.'" #TOTP pic.twitter.com/K0ppKzwdOY
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

WTAF?! Again I say, unbelievable but true.

Presumably, The Clash were happy to receive the royalties from the song being a hit all over again but the shrieks from the show’s audience that you can hear as the video is shown (presumably there was some playback of the track in the studio) don’t seem to sit comfortably to me for a band who famously boycotted TOTP.

Like its 1982 original, this 1991 Levis advert inspired re-release was actually a double A side but you’d be forgiven for not knowing what the other track was. It’s “Rush” by Big Audio Dynamite II, Mick Jones’s post The Clash creation. By remarkable coincidence, the show’s opening number “The Stonk” was also a double A side but again, this is very little known. The flip to the Hale & Pace track was “The Smile Song’ by Victoria Wood but there’s hardly any reference made to it in chart archives.

The play out video is “Over Rising” by The Charlatans (the proper ones and not Xpansions!). This was actually an EP and didn’t feature on any of the band’s studio albums (although it is on their “Melting Pot” Best Of). Supposedly, the track “Happen To Die” was meant to be the lead song from the EP but The Gulf War effect meant it faced a potential radio ban and the decision was taken to promote “Over Rising”. It’s a nifty enough tune but not one of my favourites of theirs. It peaked at No 15.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Hale & Pace	The Stonk	The Stonk? Bloody big stink more like. Not even for charity. No!
2	Joey B Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare	Go For It	Not likely
3	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Nah
4	Living Colour	Love Rears Its Ugly Head	No but it was on that Q Magazine compilation album I bought
5	Ned’s Atomic Dustbin	Happiness	I did not
6	Xpansions	Move Your Body (Elevation)	Hell no
7	Roxette	Joyride	No, I observed the rules of the road and did not
8	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the single but I have it on something I’m sure
9	The Charlatans	Over Rising	No but I have that Melting Pot Best Of

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/m000x2h3/top-of-the-pops-07031991

TOTP 28 FEB 1991

Posted on June 25, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the end of February 1991 and the world breathes a collective sigh of relief as a ceasefire has been declared in the Gulf War. Two days before that though, another news story broke which I don’t recall seeing much coverage of and indeed, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have understood what it was about anyway. If I had any reaction to the fact that British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had unveiled WorldWideWeb, the world’s first web browser, it would probably have been this…

Little did we know that this announcement would come to change and shape the world as we know it. Is there a case for saying that the digital revolution has been every bit as pivotal as the industrial revolution? I think so. Certainly it would come to have industry shaking ramifications for the music business and record retail though I had neither the vision nor brain capacity to have realised this at the time. No, it was seemingly life back to normal (how little we appreciated that phrase back then) for me as I continued to work in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. I wonder what records I might have been selling at the time?

Well, we start this TOTP with what host Jakki Brambles describes as ….oh no hang on a minute… why is she wearing gloves? Poor Jakki did have some temperature issues whenever she presented the show. She always seemed to be wearing her Winter wardrobe whatever the time of year. Surely it was warm enough under those hot studio lights surrounded by gurning audience members? That whole two tone outfit makes her look ever so slightly clerical in tone. Not sure that was the look she was going for? Still, what did / do I know about fashion? Anyway, what I was going to say is that Jakki describes the opening number as a “groover” but for me it was anything but that. To my ears, this was just noise. Horrible, repetitive, nausea inducing noise at that. N-Joi were a dance outfit from Southend who would feature Samantha Marie Sprackling as a regular vocalist on their tracks. Who you ask? If I said aka Saffron would that help? Saffron would, of course, find fame as the lead singer of Republica later in the decade. Not sure she was on this track called “Adrenalin” though mainly because there aren’t any vocals to speak of. There’s a voice saying “We gonna get this place…” but that’s just a sample from a live Kiss album apparently.

This performance really highlights the problems that TOTP had with how to present dance tunes and acts from the late 80s onwards. They clearly couldn’t have just had the two guys in black on keyboards – that would have looked weird and dull at the same time. The solution? Throw some dancers into the mix. Well, they were more just wigging out than dancing I would say but they were a distraction, I give them that. The male dancer looks like Jim Carrey as Edward Nygma before he transforms into The Riddler in Batman Forever.

Gif image courtesy of Warner Bros

Look, I’m sure if you were a massive clubber in 1991, this tune was really important to you but this really wasn’t my bag at all. Sorry

“Adrenalin” peaked at No 23.

Nothing here for me either as we segue into Stevie B and “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)”. This is just terrible, stinking schmaltz. It features some of the most vapid, insipid and downright uninspired lyrics ever. Just look at this:

I got your letter from postman just the other day
So I decided to write you this song
And just to let you know Exactly the way I feel
To let you know my love for real

Because I love you, and I’ll do anything
I’ll give you my Heart, my everything
Because I love you, I’ll be right by your side
To be your light to be your guide

Just vile. And if that wasn’t enough, he does that thing that’s always guaranteed to set off alarm bells, he refers to himself in the 3rd person:

If you should feel that I don’t really care
And that you’re starting to lose your ground
Just let me reassure you that you can count on me
Stevie B will always be around

Gruesome stuff.

Thankfully “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” was Stevie B’s only UK chart hit peaking at No 6.

The first of two oldies next that are back in the charts on the back of TV adverts. “Alright Now” by Free had been used by Wrigley’s gum to soundtrack a campaign to promote its spearmint flavour which led to its re-release and an inevitable Best Of album (the one that Jakki refers to). A Best Of album? Hmm. How many Free songs can you think of that aren’t “Alright Now”? Without checking, I came up with “My Brother Jake” but their discography shows two others. There were 14 tracks on that Best Of though so the rest were….albums tracks? Singles that weren’t hits? You’d rightly feel unlucky if they came up as a ‘3 in 10’ artist on Popmaster to be fair! Thinking about Free has made me realise that there must be loads of artists that you just take accept as a given once you become aware of them without really knowing too much about them.

Me: Free? Oh yeah, I know them . Alright Now and all that.

Ken Bruce (for the want of a better inquisitor): OK, anything else you know about them?

Me: “My Brother Jake”

Ken: Yes. Anything else?

Me: erm…Paul Rodgers? Or was he in Bad Company?

Ken: Right on both accounts. Is that it?

Me: Does anybody know anything else about them?

*Blogger immediately losers any Free devotees that may have been reading this post*

OK, a stone cold 90s classic incoming….I had never heard the name Massive Attack before and I still hadn’t when their “Unfinished Sympathy” single was released. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

Massive Attack's label decided to release "Unfinished Sympathy" under the name Massive, because of the Gulf War. Circa Records' MD Ray Cooper: "With some records not being played on the radio because of their titles, we didn't want to be banned." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

Yes, the curious BBC Gulf War banned list was at it again despite the fact that a ceasefire had been called by the time of this broadcast. Two be fair to their label, the single was released on 11th Feb and had spent the first week of its life outside of the Top 40 so, to eliminate any unwanted obstacles in its way of being a hit, they temporarily renamed the band as Massive.

Routinely named in multiple music polls as one of the greatest records ever, it was also lauded at the time being named the Single of the Year in The Face and Melody Maker. It was hard to argue with that assessment. It just sounded so cool and timeless on its very first hearing. Those clipped trip hop beats with a full orchestra overlaying it allied to Shara Nelson’s ethereal vocals, it was such an accomplished work. They even managed to incorporate a sample from the Mahavishnu Orchestra in it (the ‘hey, hey hey, hey’ bit). Yes, the Mahavishnu Orchestra whom I had once dismissed as ‘weird shit’ to a colleague who was a fan and I still liked it. And yet, it only made No 13 in the charts! There were 12 songs that people wanted to buy more at its commercial peak? And I bet one of them was The pissing Simpsons! Seriously people?! Have a f*****g word with yourselves eh?

Bizarrely the same fate awaited parent album “Blue Lines” in that it, like “Unfinished Sympathy”, is consistently named towards the top of the 100 Greatest Albums of all time polls and has an iconic status and yet it only reached No 13 in the album chart. It has gone double platinum sales wise over time though.

And so to the second song back in the charts this week in 1991 due to its inclusion on a TV advert. The infiltration of the Top 40 by Levi’s Advertising campaigns had been happening for a good five years or so by this point but there seemed to be a definite change of direction as to the choice of song once we arrived in the 90s. Back in the 80s, Levis adverts had been soundtracked by a flurry of 60s soul standards by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge and Ben E. King with the odd 50s track (Eddie Cochrane, Muddy Waters) also making appearances. As we advanced into a new decade though, so too did the advertising guys at Levis as they turned their back on all that and sought out tunes from the 70s. In 1990, we’d had “Can´t Get Enough Of Your Love” by Bad Company (1974), “20th Century Boy” by T. Rex (1973) and “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band (1973). 1991 saw us move even further forwards with a song from the 80s.

“Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash had of course been a hit back in 1982 as a double A-side with “Straight To Hell” with both songs being taken from their “Combat Rock” album. I was aware of the song from its original release although I think I had preferred the album’s other single “Rock The Casbah”. That album had been a divisive one in a number of ways. Critical opinion splintered into on the one hand it being lauded for its new danceable sound (especially on those two singles) and, on the other, it being a commercial sell out that ushered in the end of the band. Secondly, the fabric of the whole band was starting to disintegrate as well. Drummer Topper Headon was asked to leave the band just before the album’s release because of his heroin addiction whilst Joe Strummer And Mick Jones’s feuding continued to escalate leading to Jones being sacked from the band in September of 1983.

Despite all of its woes though, “Combat Rock” is very much a date stamp of this era of The Clash. The video for “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” includes some iconic images of the band; Strummer’s Mohican haircut, riding around in an open topped Cadillac car but my favourite is the Shea Stadium footage where they opened for The Who and in particular the band’s walk to the stage with Strummer’s jacket draped around his shoulders and Mick Jones’s Che Guevara style beret.

The manager of the Our Price where I was working when “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” was back in the charts (a guy called Rick) was a massive Clash fan but I’m not sure how he felt about them *spoiler alert* being at No 1 off the back of an advert for jeans. I did ask a really dumb question of Justin our singles buyer about how well it was selling to which he replied “Well, it’s No 1 so its selling rather a lot” or words to that effect.

As for Levis, after using The Clash, they reverted back to the 60s for their choice of song for the next two campaigns in “Mad About The Boy” by Dinah Washington (1961) and “Ring Of Fire” by Johnny Cash (1963). By the mid point of the decade they would be using the likes of Freak Power, Stiltskin (yikes!) and Bablyon Zoo (double yikes!) but we’re miles away from the TOTP repeats for all those just yet.

This week’s Breakers start with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll and their danced up version of “It’s Too Late”. Despite this being the first time most of us had been made aware of Dina, she had in fact been recording and releasing material for years before this although none of it made much of an impression on the charts. Her collaboration with dance production duo Quartz was engineered by Dennis Ingoldsby of First Avenue Management company who spotted Dina not long after she singed to record label Jive and paired her with his act who has similarly been putting out singles for a couple of years to mainly deaf ears. And what is one of the written-in- stone commandments of the music industry that I have learned from years of writing this blog? Yes, if you need a hit, release a cover version! Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” was duly chosen. I knew about Carole King as my wife had played me her milestone ‘Tapestry” album (from which “It’s Too Late” came) when we were students together. This version by Quartz though sounded ghastly to me. Dina could certainly sing but I just couldn’t see the point of it. I hated the tapping a milk bottle effect that they used as a riff throughout it and the whole thing just seemed lazy and cynical. What did I know though as it was purchased in enough quantities to send it to the Top 10.

Off the back off its success, Dina was signed as a solo artist to A&M Records and would achieve substantial success through 1992/92 with a string of singles all taken from her debut album “So Close”. For a while she really looked like the real deal and that she would dominate the charts for some time to come. Her album eventually sold 1.5 million copies and was the highest selling debut album by a British female singer in UK chart history, a record it held until 2001 when it was overtaken by Dido’s “No Angel”. A gap of three years between “So Close” and follow up “Only Human” seemed to break the spell though. “Only Human” sold healthily but much less than its predecessor and she has not released a new studio album since.

The next two songs barely rated a flicker in the grey cells of my memory. After two Top 10 hits the previous year with vocalist Wondress Hutchinson, Mantronix were back again with a new single called “Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart”. Apparently this and the album it was from (“The Incredible Sound Machine”) was a move away from their usual sound towards this new fangled New Jack Swing which would become quite a thing in 1991. I wouldn’t have had a clue about any fo this at the time I’m pretty sure but it would soon be popularised by, heaven help us, Color Me Badd. I’m sure there will serious R’n’B fans out there that will be horrified at the thought of Color Me Badd being name checked as the main protagonists of New Jack Swing but that’s how I remember it.

“Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart” would prove to be Mantronix’s last UK chart hit before splitting with main man Kurtis Mantronik leaving the music business entirely for seven years. He got the itch to return in the late 90s producing some house and techno dance tracks.

Similarly under represented in my memory banks are The Almighty. I think I could have told you that they were a heavy rock band but that would have been the limit of my data. Wikipedia tells me that “Free ‘n’ Easy” was their first Top 40 hit (though not their first single release) and they were from Scotland. Seven chart hits followed though none of them got any higher than No 26. Maybe they were more of an album band as their long player “Powertrippin'” went Top 5 in 1993 whilst follow up “Crank” was also a Top 20 album.

“Free ‘n’ Easy” sounds a bit like Alice Cooper to me and this makes some sense as they supported him on a European tour in this year.

Back in the studio now and if it’s 1991, there’s a good chance it’s Jesus Jones. Here they are back again with their new single “Who? Where? Why?” which was the fourth single to be released from their No 1 album “Doubt”. Their record label Food was clearly going for optimum level saturation of their act at this point. Once “Who? Where? Why?” had been and gone they would re-release earlier single “Right Here, Right Now” but, just as with my Maths ‘O’ Level which I took twice and got a C grade both times, it would peak at No 31 just as it has the first time around. Added to this promotion schedule – as Jakki Brambles informs us in her intro – they had just completed a UK tour and were then off to Europe and the States to play some more gigs.

I have to say, I think this was possibly the weakest of the “Doubt” singles. It sounded too repetitive and like it was written in a rush. It just didn’t have that much substance to it for me despite its metaphysical sounding song title. It also includes that band name referencing sample at the start which probably seemed like a good idea at the time – some more self promotion, why not? – but which possibly became something with which the music press could beat them.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

I’m not sure the Jakki has done her research properly for the next act who are The Source featuring Candi Staton and who are on the show for the third time I think with their “You Got The Love” single. Her intro says that “Candi Staton’s recently taken time out from her Emmy award winning gospel singing to join forces with The Source..” Recently Jakki? “You Got The Love” was initially recorded and released in 1986! To put that into a modern day time frames, by your reckoning, the EU referendum (which had its 5 year anniversary recently) happened just the other week!

The journalist, broadcaster and author Miranda Sawyer started her career at Smash Hits magazine and did a tongue in cheek piece concerning the “great dance swizz up” about who really did sing on the current crop of dance hits including “You Got The Love”. Her ‘investigation’ included acts such as Xpansions, N-Joi (who opened this show), DJH featuring Stefy and the aforementioned Quartz featuring Dina Carrol. It also shone a light on The Source. Miranda’s conclusion was that, in the case of the latter, that this one was “complicated’ in that, clearly, the people you see on the video (the various singing heads for want of a better expression) are not the the creative force behind the record. However, neither were The Source according to Miranda who claimed that the only parts of that original record that were retained in the release we heard in 1991 were Candi’s vocals. The rest was supplied by a record called “Your Love” by Chicago house producer Jamie Principle. Whomever you choose to believe about “You Got The Love”, one thing is clear – Jakki Brambles was talking out of her arse.

Next up is the latest Madonna re-release to promote her “Immaculate Collection” Best Of compilation. “Crazy For You” was originally a No 2 hit in the Uk back In 1985 and was taken from the soundtrack to the film Vision Quest (I am still, 36 years later, yet to meet anyone who will own up to having seen this film). Now I will have reviewed “Crazy For You” in my 80s music blog so I don’t propose to regurgitate all of that again. However, suffice too say that although tis is supposed to be a Shep Pettibone renames, I can’t hear any difference between the 1991 incarnation and its original.

Jakki Brambles decides to break free from her paymasters for this one and denounces the re-release as ‘money for old rope’….except that she even screws that up as her withering comment at the vital moment comes out as “old money for rope”. Ah, unlucky Jakki. I take your point though.

The 1991 version of “Crazy For You” peaked at No 2 thereby equaling the chart performance of its 1985 original.

Ah shit. The No 1 is still The Simpsons and ‘Do The Bartman”. How do you explain this record? I don’t know but here’s somebody on Twitter who owns up to having played a part in its heinous success…

I had a t-shirt (I think it was the one below) and the Sing the Blues tape when they came out, but didn't watch it until it was on the BBC. I still have the tape. pic.twitter.com/OhL9ZZnbQx
— Frances the Firefly (@JMarriott8) June 18, 2021

Yeah, Nice one fella.

The play out video is that Rocky V nonsense “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.

Although the film’s soundtrack album includes 11 tracks, only 4 of them were actually used in the movie. “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” was one off those 4 and here’s the bit in the movie where it featured…

…not the most convincing piece of celluloid I’ve ever witnessed. The plot theme about how Rocky is neglecting his son to concentrate on the career of his protégée Tommy Gunn is about as subtle and deft as a Harry Maguire clearance. And all that chat from him about volcanoes and exploding all over Tommy’s opponent sounds quasi sexual. Ugh!

“Go For It (Heart and Fire)” peaked at No 20.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	N-Joi	Adrenalin	God no
2	Stevie B	Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	And indeed Hell no
3	Free	Alright Now	Nope
4	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I have the Blue Lines album
5	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the single but I’m sure I have it on something
6	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Definitely not
7	Mantronix	Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart	Yikes No!
8	The Almighty	Free ‘n’ Easy	No
9	Jesus Jones	Who? Where? Why?	Nah
10	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	Good dance track but no
11	Madonna	Crazy For You	No but I have The Immaculate Collection Best Of with it on
12	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Do the barf man more like – no
13	Go For It (Heart and Fire)	Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.	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/m000x2h1/top-of-the-pops-28021991

TOTP 21 FEB 1991

Posted on June 21, 2021 by 80stastic

As I write this, the England national football team have just turned in a turgid performance in the Euros against bitter rivals Scotland deflating pre -tournament talk of them finally ending the now 55 years of hurt since winning the World Cup in 1966 (and all that). It really was poor stuff from Gareth’s men and he will find the media turning on him very quickly if they don’t improve. Here’s a thought, if they don’t qualify and Gareth gets the blame, will the press have a ‘Southgate-gate’ on their hands? As for Scotland, they now have a chance of getting out for the group stages but will need to do something they haven’t done yet which is score a goal. They could do with Kenny Dalglish in his pomp in their side. Ah yes, King Kenny, Back in 1991, he shocked the football world by resigning as Liverpool manager the day after this TOTP was aired pretty much handing the title to Arsenal in the process. A tenuous link I know but while we’re here, let’s review the VAR and decide whether the charts of 30 years ago were any good or not.

Now, before we start, I should say that I was never a TOTP studio audience member but my mate Robin advised me this week that he was in attendance at this particular show – he worked for the BBC at the time – and described the whole experience as ‘f*****g tragic’. Him and a mate had gone along expecting to see Morrissey having read in the music press that he was due to appear and indeed Mozza was a new entry at No 26 that week so their hopes were high. However, having asked a cameraman which stage he would be on so that they could position themselves in anticipation, they received the reply “that miserable git isn’t on” and realised that they had made a terrible mistake and could not escape.

We’ve come to TOTP by mistake

They decided that their best plan of action, as the rest of the mainly teenage audience was herded around like cattle, was to hide from the cameras and stay well away from host Mark Goodier and his banana coloured flight jacket. Robin described the whole experience as ‘like being trapped in Willy Wonka’s factory clapping umpa lumpa everywhere’. Excellent!

So with no Mozza on the running order, who did Robin and his mate get to see instead. Well, we start with Chris Rea – or as Robin described him Chris diarRhea which is a beautiful put down which works on at least two levels possibly more. The man from Middlesbrough was on a roll at this point after 1989’s six times platinum selling album “Road To Hell” and he followed it up with another No 1 album in “Auberge”. The title track was released as the lead single and is pretty standard Rea fare finding a comfortable place to reside somewhere between the upbeat “Let’s Dance” and the more sombre “Road To Hell”. Chris himself never looked comfortable when on appearing on TOTP though. He looks as convincing a pop star as Gavin Williamson does as Secretary of State for Education. The cameraman (possibly the Mozza dissing one) doesn’t seem to know what to do with him and decides to focus on the rather unusual sight of a tuba being played on TOTP just when Chris starts some slide guitar action making it look like the sound is actually coming from the tuba. A case of umpa lumpa stick it up your tuba maybe?

“Auberge” the single peaked at No 16.

From Kenny Dalglish to another Kenny. In a recent post, I admitted to my totally irrational dislike at the time of the next artist and apologised to him. My aversion to Kenny Thomas though was nothing compared to Robin’s who described him as simply “Kenny F*****g Thomas”. Well, he was no Morrissey I suppose and with 30 years of hindsight, thank God he wasn’t. The world really doesn’t need two of him right now. As for Mr Thomas, despite having been a pop star for about two weeks at the time, he looks far more suited to the job than the more experienced show opener Chris Rea. Just give him a microphone, a backing singer, some bloke to play the bongos and a groove and let him at it. Actually, far from being ‘some bloke’, isn’t that M People’s Shovell on bongos duties? I think it is – the hair was making me doubt myself though.

“Outstanding” was actually a cover of an old single by The Gap Band and having checked, it seems that three of the four singles taken from Kenny’s debut album “Voices” were cover versions with “Best Of Me” being a Booker T. Jones song whilst “Tender Love” was the old Force MDs hit from 1986. It’s not occurred to me before but, given the above, Kenny Thomas was almost a 90s version of Paul Young in terms of being a soul singer who made it big with covers of fairly unknown songs from the past. I say a 90s version but Paul himself was still churning out cover versions into the new decade and indeed we’ll see him back in the charts in this year soon with another song that he didn’t write – albeit he does perform “Senza una donna (Without a Woman)” with its writer Zucchero.

I’ve no idea what Robin made of the next hit but I certainly don’t remember it. “Think About” by DJH featuring Stefy? I’ve got nothing. Let’s have a listen then…

…oh God it’s just some wanky Italian House track based very loosely around a sample from Aretha Franklin’s “Think”. Apart from gyrating around in not many clothes, Stefy’s input is limited at best with even the rap bits done by one of the two blokes on keyboards in the background. I mean, two bloke on keyboards to the rear of the stage was standard practice for Italian House outfits but they usually remained anonymous throughout, leaving the female singer to front the song. The woman from Black Box became a star on the back of miming vocals that weren’t hers – I think Stefy missed a trick here.

Watching this performance back, Robin must have wondered what sort of place he’d got himself into when Stefy appeared in that outfit.

“Think About” peaked at No 22.

The first video of the night is from Thunder who were onto their fifth consecutive Top 40 hit by this point. Like the previous four, “Love Walked In” was taken from their debut album “Backstreet Symphony” which proved to be reasonably enduring spending a combined total of 16 weeks on the album chart over five different periods between March 1990 and March 1991. Presumably every time a single was released from it, the album experienced another spike in sales. However, it never got any higher than its No 21 peak on its first week of release. The band’s singles chart stats followed a similar trend. Five hit singles but some pretty unremarkable peaks (see below):

32 – 25 – 36 – 34 – 21

Despite being the final single to be taken from “Backstreet Symphony”, “Love Walked In” was also the most successful which was a bit weird. Maybe it was something to do with being more of a ballad than all the other singles which were all fast paced rockers. I didn’t mind their sound – I had a soft spot for a bit of soft rock – but it was very similar to lots of other UK rock acts that were experiencing commercial success at the time. like The Quireboys and Little Angels. They would return with sophomore album “Laughing On Judgement Day” in 1992 that would be the apex of their success when it peaked at No 2.

Oh and when host Mark Goodier said they were a terrific live band? Guess how many live albums are listed in their discography? 32!

The Breakers are back this week and we start with a man who we hadn’t seen in the Top 40 in nigh on two and a half years. Julian Cope‘s solo career was…well….more interesting than commercially successful I think it’s fair to say. Apart from “Word Shut Your Mouth” back in 1986, all his other singles failed to make the Top 20. I’d always been intrigued by him though – his 1984 single “The Greatness And Perfection Of Love” remains one of the greatest non hit songs of the whole decade.

1991 saw him release *”Peggy Suicide” which was already his seventh solo album. Despite its heavy lyrical subject matter (the poll tax riots and anti police sentiments, organised religion, women’s rights, the occult, paganism, animal rights, and ecology), lead single “Beautiful Love” was a lovely, lilting piece of pop perfection. It really should have been a bigger hit than the No 32 peak it achieved. Subsequent singles released from the album failed to dent the Top 40 (including the brilliant “East Easy Rider” in which Julian does a passable Jim Morrison vocal) but undeterred, the following year would see two albums released under his name -studio album “Jehovahkill” and compilation album “Floored Genius: The Best Of Julian Cope And The Teardrop Explodes 1979–91” the latter of which I duly bought.

Cope has continued along his personal life journey of a rejection of the mainstream to pursue his interests in occultism and paganism. He is also a published author on the subject of British megalithic sites with specific reference to stone circles. His antiquarian researcher credentials stretched to him giving two talks at the British Museum about the norse divinity Odin although he did then rather undermine said credentials by wearing five-inch platform shoes and setting off the fire alarms with his hairspray forcing an evacuation of the building. A few years back, I read both volumes of his autobiography Head-On/Repossessed – it was a fascinating read about a true maverick and eccentric character.

* It took me ages to realise the title was a pun on Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. Doh!

Now, if like me, you remember Stevie B as a one hit wonder (if you remember him at all that is), then we are both wrong. Yes, he technically he only had the one hit in this country but he had this whole other career in his native US. Apparently he was a prime move in the ‘freestyle’ movement. This was a form of electro funk which (according to Wikipedia) was characterised by ‘a Latin American-based rhythm with a heavy syncopated drum sound’. Supposedly the first ever ‘freestyle’ hit was “Let The Music Play” by Shannon but I always thought that was a Hi-NRG track. Look, I’m not going to get bogged down in musical sub genres which I know little about – suffice to say Stevie B was a big deal and had already racked up a string of US dance chart hits before he crossed over into the mainstream with “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” which was an American Billboard Hot 100 chart topper. This was nothing like “Let The Music Play” though. No, this was a big soul ballad. What was the deal? Well, apparently this was the route a lot of the ‘freestyle’ acts took around this time to achieve crossover success with the likes of Exposé and Sweet Sensation doing there same. I had no idea about any of this at the time of course. It was just a soppy love song with a daft title to me.

“Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” didn’t quite replicate its US success in the UK but it did go Top 10 spending three consecutive weeks at No 6 which was quite apt seeing as it was the Devil’s work.

If you think of the Rocky franchise, what springs to mind musically? “Eye Of The Tiger”? Yes, definitely. “Gonna Fly Now” (otherwise known as “Theme from Rocky”) when he’s running up those steps? Absolutely. “Burning Heart” from Rocky IV? Well, yeah maybe, just about. How about “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare? Pretty sure that’s a jackpot winning answer on Pointless.

This was actually from Rocky V, a film I’m not sure I even knew existed until I saw it in a hotel room in New York in 1994. For me, it’s easily the worst film of the whole franchise with a ludicrous plot peppered with holes and no actual boxing match featuring Rocky. Instead we get a crazy street fight. Originally planned to be the last of the Rocky films, it was a poor way to bow out. Thankfully, the much superior Rocky Balboa came out 16 years later to right this wrong. In keeping with Rocky V‘s lack of quality, its soundtrack was also a poor effort. For a start Bill Conti hardly features on it at all and it is subject to the dominant market forces of the music world of the time. For example, MC Hammer has two tracks on it, Snap! are on there and then there was “Go For It (Heart and Fire)”. This was a cynically calculated rap number that recycles the “Eye Of The Tiger” riff and adds a hackneyed ‘Go For It’ chorus over the top of it. It sounds like a C + C Music Factory cast off. Somehow it got to No 20 in our charts. And I thought that the Bond themes had gone off the boil once the 80s ended!

Right, that’s the Breakers done with. What’s next then? “Move Your Body (Elevation)” by Xpansions? Doesn’t ring any bells yet. Let’s have listen to it…

…oh yeah. I remember this. It was bloody awful. I’m pretty sure that this lot did nothing to improve the mood of my mate Robin. This was less a dance hit and more a work out routine. Who did the singer think she was? Mad Lizzie? It turns out she was actually called Sally Anne Marsh and had been in a girl group called Faith Hope & Charity with The Word presenter Dani Behr. She went on to work with Mike Stock from SAW and released a dance version of “Windmills Of Your Mind”. What that song from The Thomas Crown Affair by Noel Williams? Oh I quite like that but a dance version you say? I have to listen to this…

…oh what did I expect?! Seriously though. Why do I do shit like this to myself?! A total abomination.

“Move Your Body (Elevation)” peaked at No 7 whilst a new mix of it took it back into the charts in 1995 when it peaked at No 14.

Did somebody say MC Hammer before? Well, here is the main man back with a new single called “Here Comes The Hammer”. This was his fourth consecutive hit single (all taken from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album) and would peak at No 15 in the UK. Curiously, although it was released in the US and despite a trio of Top 10 hits over there prior to it, this stalled at No 54. Nevertheless, in spite of its poor chart placing, It was nominated for a 1991 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards. Spooky.

Talking of spooky things, the video for it was based a round a storyboard of Hammer and his dancers getting chased through a haunted house (a Hammer House of Horror if you will). It cost more than $1 million to produce and was one of the most expensive music videos ever made at the time. It was almost 15 minutes in length (MTV had a shortened 9 minute version) and was panned by the critics. It does sound like Hammer’s ego was maybe out of control at this point. “I want a horror video like “Thriller” and it has to be a long one. None of that 3 minute crap” you can imagine him saying.

Someone else who wasn’t impressed with “Here Comes The Hammer” was one Kevin Abdullah who sued Hammer claiming he had stolen the hooks from his own song “Oh Oh, You Got the Shing” for it. His story was that he had sent Hammer a demo tape of it which Hammer rejected. Hammer settled the lawsuit for $250,000. Hmm.

MC Hammer would release another single from “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”, a remix single, a new album (plus two singles from it) before 1991 was done. “Here Comes The Hammer” indeed.

That nice song by Oleta Adams is next but Robin wouldn’t have got to see her perform “Get Here” as this is just a reshowing of her studio performance from a couple of weeks ago. He was probably relieved – I don’t think this was his bag at all. As with MC Hammer before her, Oleta’s version of “Get Here” (it was originally written and recorded by Brenda Russell) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The song has been covered by loads of different artists apart from Oleta down the years including Will Downing, Sam Smith, Johnny Logan (ahem) and gloriously fictional singer Michelle Coffee from Phoenix Nights. Also there was a danced up version by Q featuring Tracy Ackerman in 1993. Right, remember what happened last time with Sally Anne Marsh. You don’t have to play it, you don’t have to play it…oh shit…

Ooh that was a bad one! Tracy Akerman’s Wikipedia page tells me that she is also a songwriter as well as a singer and has penned tracks for the likes of Cher, Tina Turner, Kylie, B*Witched, Darius of Popstars / Pop Idol fame…erm…Sonia….S Club Juniors…I’ll stop now.

To counteract Tracy’s nasty dance cover, here’s The Beautiful South’s song called ‘Get Here” which isn’t a cover but does make reference to Oleta’s song in lyrics like these:

You can get here by crossing sea or desert
I can barely make Blackpool Sands
Railroad, caravan, save it for the mad man
Lets see if love just stands

Excellent!

The Simpsons are still at No 1 with “Do The Bartman”. “You can see why it’s No 1” says Mark Goodier at the song’s end. Can we Goodier, can we?! Like Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Select Committees on the government’s response to the pandemic, I don’t think that remark stands up to any sort of scrutiny.

The play out video is “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” by Living Colour. I didn’t know anything much about this band at this time but I recall there being a lot of talk about how they had fused lots of different musical genres together to come up with their sound. They were broadly categorised as ‘funk metal’ alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dan Reed Network and were expected to go onto massive things but although their album “Times Up” achieved Gold status sales in the US, they seemed to fall away after that. The band have only released six studio albums over the course of their career which began in 1984 (albeit with a five year hiatus between 1995 and 2000) with the last one being released in 2017.

In the UK, we had our own example of a band fusing musical styles together around this time in And Why Not? who fused pop with reggae on hits like “Restless Days (She Screams Out Loud)” and “The Face” but they withered away pretty quickly as well.

“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” peaked at No 12.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chris Rea	Auberge	Nah
2	Kenny Thomas	Outstanding	It’s a no – sorry Kenny
3	DJH featuring Stefy	Think About	No
4	Thunder	Love Walked In	And out again…no
5	Julian Cope	Beautiful Love	Not the single but I have that Floored Genius Best Of with it on
6	Steve B	Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	I’d have returned this one to sender – no
7	Go For It (Heart and Fire	Joey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare	Absolutely not
8	Xpansions	Move Your Body (Elevation)	Hell no
9	MC Hammer	Here Comes The Hammer	and that’s my cue to exit – no
10	Oleta Adams	Get Here	Nice enough but I never considered buying it
11	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Away with you!
12	Living Colour	Love Rears Its ugly Head	No but it was on that first Q magazine compilation album that I bought

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/m000wvlz/top-of-the-pops-21021991

TOTP 14 FEB 1991

Posted on June 18, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where we by happy circumstance we find the there is a show scheduled to be broadcast on Valentine’s Day! Yes, the calendar and the stars aligned 30 years ago meaning that music could be the food of love so let’s see which beautiful ballads would have given all those lovers out there excess of it…

….hmm. Well, the title of the song is romantic I guess but “I Wanna Give You Devotion” by Nomad was hardly a traditional love song. In fact, it you check out the lyrics, there doesn’t seem to be anything about plighting one’s troth in them at all. In fact, it’s all rather dark as rapper MC Mikee Freedom (no double ‘e’ no points) bangs on about nightmares, the night creeping in and uses words such as ‘frightening’, ‘spooky’ and ‘terrorise’ to get his point across. And what was this point exactly? Well, but seems to be political as at one point he raps:

Poll tax came and up went the rise
Open your eyes and realise
I’m a truly disguise
Like hawk, the slayer, he came and courted
Maggie came, but now she’s slaughtered

I’m guessing not too many couples slow danced the night away to this one. To be fair, I’m sure it did pull in the punters onto the dance floor across the nation’s nightclubs but probably to wig out rather than canoodle.

“I Wanna Give You Devotion” peaked at No 2.

Talking of wigs… here comes Kylie Minogue with her video for “What Do I Have To Do?”, the one where she sports loads of different hairstyles which are, of course, mostly false hair pieces. It’s a pretty nifty little dance tune but again, hardly the stuff romantic nights in are made of. Whatever your opinion about Kylie, you can’t deny that she was prolific. This was her 12th single release in three years and she’d also released three albums in that time.

Going back to the video, @TOTPFacts dug out a nice behind the scenes piece about how it was filmed including a slow motion sequence which entailed the track being speeded up. I’ve watched the video back in full and I really don’t think the effect achieved was worth the effort. It was hardly up there with the reverse sequences in Danny Wilson’s “Second Summer Of Love” video when they had to mime to the vocals backwards. Also, anyone suggesting you can’t tell the difference between Kylie’s normal vocals and the speeded up ones is just cruel.

Here's a behind-the-scenes clip from the "What Do I Have To Do" video
Highlight: what it sounds like when they play the track speeded up, for the shooting of the slow motion sequence: https://t.co/x6x50Yxrvx #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 11, 2021

An actual song with the word ‘love’ in the title next but again it’s hardly a big, slushy Valentine’s Day number. As with Nomad earlier, “You Got The Love” was a huge dance anthem courtesy of The Source featuring Candi Staton. Though I just seemed to accept that of course she was the vocalist, in retrospect, was it quite an odd pairing? After all, Candi hadn’t had a Top 40 hit in the UK since 1982 when a version of “Suspicious Minds” made No 31 and anyway, she was surely best known for her 1976 disco classic “Young Hearts Run Free” and her cover of The Bee Gees “Nights On Broadway” the following year. Well, that’s all I knew about her anyway. Years after “You Got The Love”, I worked with a guy who swore by Candi Staton and was probably appalled by my rudimentary knowledge of her back catalogue. Looking at her discography, she has actually released 28 albums over the course of her recording career bu then she doesn’t do things by halves – she’s also been married six times.

The 1991 version of “You Got The Love” peaked at No 4.

Definitely not a Valentine’s Day tune was “In Yer Face” by 808 State. By this point, these Manc lads were getting the hang of this pop star business as “In Yer Face” was their third consecutive Top 10 hit in their own right after “Pacific State” and “Cubik” / “Olympic” and their fourth if you include “The Only Rhyme That Bites” with MC Tunes. Pretty impressive stuff from a bunch of lads whose origins lay in their shared love of a record store. To be fair, It’s a legendary record store. Eastern Bloc was where all the cool people bought their music. Situated on Oldham Street in Manchester’s historic Northern Quarter district, it was the purveyor of dance music of every hue – house, techno, drum and bass etc it was all here mostly on vinyl and a lot of it stock was imports. I think I went in once during my 10 years of living in Manchester (mainly just to say I’d been in there) and I certainly didn’t buy anything (not being, you know, cool and that). Apparently there used to be a rule that if a punter came in Eastern Bloc and didn’t know anybody behind the counter, then you wouldn’t get served! I know record shops in general could have that image of being staffed by sniffy musos behind the counter who would openly jeer at a punter’s purchase choices but that’s weapons grade pomposity!

Anyway, when owner Martin Price got together with regular customers Graham Massey and Gerald Simpson, the seeds of the group were sown and with a couple of additions to the membership in DJs Andrew Barker and Darren Partington and the departure of Simpson, the classic 808 State line up was established. “In Yer Face” was from the band’s third studio album “ex:el” (which was their biggest selling album peaking at No 4) and was about as far removed from a romantic ballad as it was possible to be. That grinding, almost sinister back beat combined with some out there samples trickery and the only vocal being a disembodied voice saying ‘In Your face’, it was quite unnerving to a pop kid like me.

Price left the band shortly after whilst Eastern Bloc relocated to Stevenson Square in Manchester City centre in 2011. Unsurprisingly, I have yet to visit it in its current location.

As host Gary Davies says, the highest climber this week is a song that was 21 years old back in 1991. So why was “Alright Now” by Free back in the Top 40 in 1991? Do you even have to ask? Inevitably, it was due to its inclusion in an advert of course, specifically this advert:

Well, it made a change from Levis I suppose. With “Alright Now” climbing the charts, Island records released a Best Of album tie-in entitled rather boringly “The Best Of Free: All Right Now” which sold surprisingly well going silver in the UK. I say surprisingly because Free only ever had five UK chart hits and two of those were “Alright Now”.

Obviously I was already acquainted with the track before its 1991 reissue as its one of those songs that has received constant radio play down the years and routinely features in those Greatest Rock Songs of all time polls. If anything, it has completely overshadowed the rest of their output and in a Songfacts interview, drummer Simon Kirke, confirmed this when he commented “It became a bit of an albatross around our necks, I have to say. Even though it elevated Free into the big leagues, it became a bit of an albatross because we couldn’t follow it.” Albatross or not, it has been covered by the likes of Rod Stewart, Mike Oldfield, Christina Aguilera, the Runaways and ..erm…Pepsi & Shirlie. No really. Look…

Oh and indeed, dear. By the way, it’s suitability as a Valentine’s Day song was very much in doubt due to the lyrics being about a man picking up a woman purely for sex and when the ‘L’ word gets mentioned, her reply is:

She said love, Lord above
Now you’re tryin’ to trick me in love

The 1991 re-release of “Alright Now” peaked at No 8 having made it all the way to No 2 in 1970.

Some nice Valentine’s themed segue work from Gary Davies next as he manages to get in a plug for World Gold Heart day raising money for the Variety Club before introducing “Every Beat Of The Heart” by The Railway Children. Finally, a love song on Valentine’s Day! Or is it? If you actually analyse the lyrics, it seems to be a break up song. Check out this opening verse:

That’s some angry sky behind me
But I don’t need you here to guide me
Identify too familiar ground
And I’ll keep away, I’ll keep away

It doesn’t get any better in the chorus when lead singer Gary Newby sings:

Every beat of the heart
Brings me closer to the start
Takes me further away from you
Brings me closer to the truth

Damn these song lyrics getting in the way of a neatly themed post!

So who were The Railway Children? Named after the film starring a young Jenny Agutter, they were actually signed initially to Factory and very much darlings of the mid 80s indie scene. However, there’s is a well told story of not wanting to be a cult band forever and seeking out bigger commercial success. A move to Virgin and touring spots supporting REM and Lloyd Cole exposed them to a larger audience and eventually they scored a bona fide No 24 chart hit with “Every Beat Of The Heart” from their third album “Native Place” when it was re-released after peaking at No 68 in 1990. It’s a great little pure pop song with an indie twang and they looked set for those bigger things they desired on the back of it. I remember there being a rush in demand for their album and not being able to get it into the store as Virgin temporarily withdrew it presumably while they decided how to promote it. I would see this record company practice a number of times over the years and it was intensely annoying for customers and record staff alike (see also Nirvana when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” broke and “Nevermind” was withdrawn).

And then….nothing. Subsequent single releases from the album failed to get anywhere near the Top 40 and they would become just what they didn’t want – a one hit wonder. Musical differences within the band then arose as they searched for a new direction and they split not long after although since 2016 the original line up has reunited to perform some festival gigs.

As with The Railway Children before him, Chris Isaak‘s new single was actually an old single having originally been released in 1987. “Blue Hotel” was taken from his eponymous second album and had tanked on its original outing peaking at No 100. However, it was crucially one of the tracks included on the rapidly compiled “Wicked Game” compilation album in early 1991 which was designed to be an introduction to Isaak’s canon of work for the newly initiated in the light of the success of the “Wicked Game” single. Hence, it was plucked from obscurity for another tilt at the Top 40 and hey presto! Another hit! It’s the very definition of moody and, to my ears, was a good choice as a more uptempo follow up to its predecessor. Again, as with The Railway Children, I recall there being a demand for his back catalogue but a lot of it was unavailable in this country but I think our shop got a few copies in on import.

Despite its yearning qualities, the lyrics (yet again) don’t imbue the song with a natural romantic quality. Instead they concern lonely highways and life not working out Chris’s way. In short, it’s mournful for a lost love rather than celebratory of a current one. I liked it though. It stuck out as an antidote to all those dance anthems and he looked as cool as f**k even in that vile suit.

“Blue Hotel” peaked at No 17 second time around.

It’s that spooky “Only You” song by Praise next. Combining electronic and world music (Wikipedia assures me the genre is called ethnic electronica), it featured the vocals of Miriam Stockley who has quite an address book full of contacts. She has provided backing vocals for tracks by the likes of Roger Daltrey, Thomas Dolby, Queen and multiple SAW artists. Oh and Nik Kershaw (ahem). As for its Valentine’s Day credentials, I think I would be a bit freaked out to say the least if I’d just entered into a romantic relationship with someone who wanted this to be our song. Plus there’s the subject of those pesky, lyrics again. Now I can’t work out what on earth Miriam is singing about but according to the internet, the opening lines are:

Whip, whip, whip
Whip, whip, whip
Whip, whip, whip
Whip like that
Whip, whip, whip
Whip
Whip like that
Whip like that
Whip like that
We suffer everyday, what is it for?

WTAF?! Surely not?

Despite Gary Davies’ assertion that it could be No 1 next week, “Only You” would speak at No 4.

Definitely not a love song is the new No 1 which is “Do The Bartman” by The Simpsons. I really can’t explain the success of this single. Yes, The Simpsons was pulling in the ratings in the US but in the UK it had only been on air a few months and even then only on Sky which the majority of the public didn’t have access to. And it isn’t even funny – surely humour is an essential ingredient of a novelty record? As I was one of those who knew little of the programme, I assumed that Bart must be the lead character but surely, in retrospect, we all agree that Homer is the true comedy heart of the show don’t we?

We arrive at the final track of the night and by my reckoning we haven’t had one single, genuine love song on a show being broadcast on Valentine’s Day. Weren’t there any suitable candidates that were going up the charts or new entries?

*checks chart rundown*

There was a new entry which actually had ‘love’ in the title! Oh hang on – it’s “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” By Living Colour. Yeah, I don’t think that title fits the bill somehow. But wait! There was a band with the word ‘Valentine” in their name! An open goal for the TOTP producers surely? Ah, it’s My Bloody Valentine. Not sure some guitar feedback from a bunch of shoe gazers who performed a half hour interlude of noise in their gigs is going to work either. How about “Get Here” by Oleta Adams then? Perfect and it’s going up the charts. What? It was on last week? Ok, I’ve got it. An unlikely saviour but it just might work. “Beautiful Love” by Julian Cope. That’ll do. He’s on next week you say? Oh forget it then!

So what do we sign off with? Well, it’s a good old rocker by Jimmy Barnes with INXS. Despite being one of the most popular and best-selling Australian music artists of all time, I have to admit to not knowing much about Barnes but I do know that this collaboration with INXS was a cover of a tune originally recorded by 60s Aussie band The Easybeats (of “Friday On My Mind” fame). “Good Times” was in the charts due to its inclusion on the soundtrack of The Lost Boys film which was shown on BBC on New Year’s Day this year hence the renewed interest in it. There was a trend for this sort of thing around this time. We’d already seen Berlin and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes back in the charts on the back of terrestrial TV film premieres. The Lost Boys is a great film though and one of those that I pretty much will always watch if I stumble over it while channel flicking.

The Jimmy Barnes / INXS version of “Good Times” peaked at No 18.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	Nomad	I Wanna Give You Devotion	Nope
2	Kylie Minogue	What Do I Have To Do?	No
3	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	Good tune but no
4	808 State	In Yer Face	Not really my bag
5	Free	Alright Now	Nah
6	The Railway Children	Every Beat Of The Heart	No but I probably should have
7	Chris Isaak	Blue Hotel	No but my wife had the Wicked Game compilation album with it on
8	Praise	Only You	No thanks
9	Do The Bartman	The Simpsons	As if
10	Jimmy Barnes / INXS	Good Times	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/m000wvlx/top-of-the-pops-14021991

TOTP 07 FEB 1991

Posted on June 15, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s car crash of a show and Anthea Turner’s Klu Klux Klan / WTF?! moment, the BBC have got Bruno Brookes on hosting responsibilities this time around. Now Bruno wasn’t immune from the odd gaff himself but he plays it pretty safe for the whole 30 minutes (yes we are back to the full running time again). I wonder if the need for a no controversy show had been impressed upon him by the TOTP producers?

We start with Kim Appleby who is on the follow up trail as she seeks to consolidate on the rather unexpected success of her No 2 hit “Don’t Worry”. Unexpected? Is that fair? Well, when Kim launched her solo career she hadn’t been in the UK charts since the last Mel & Kim hit “That’s The Way It Is” back in early ’88 – an eternity in the world of pop music. Would she have retained her original fan base? In addition, she’d achieved success as part of a duo with her sister, a brand and image that, backed by the dominance of SAW, had won over audiences pretty easily. That combination was now gone after the tragic early death of Mel Appleby – would music fans accept a solo Kim? Indeed, did they want a solo Kim? “Don’t Worry” had succeeded on the strength of it being a quality pop tune delivered by an endearingly enthusiastic yet self doubting Kim. Now the heat was on to prove she could do it again.

The route she and her record label took to replicate that success was to replicate “Don’t Worry” – second single “G.L.A.D” is very similar with one difference – the addition of a rap courtesy of Aswad’s Brinsley Forde. That’s not him top there on stage with Kim though, that’s…actually who is that? Opinion on Twitter is divided. Red Dwarf actor Danny John-Jules maybe? Or Manchester author and poet Lemn Sissay perhaps? Neither seems likely. If I had to guess, I would say Austin Howard from Ellis, Beggs and Howard of “Big Bubbles, No Troubles” fame – at least there’s a music connection there and the timing would be about right.

I thought “G.L.A.D” was pleasant but not as good as its predecessor but its No 10 final chart position was very…erm…respectable. Subsequent single releases though suffered from that dirty trick of diminishing returns and Kim would never return to the Top 10. Perhaps the success of “Don’t Worry” was too much too soon. Would she have been better off with “G.L.A.D” and its attendant level of success as her debut single and “Don’t Worry” as the follow up? We’ll never know I guess. What we do know is what “G.L.A.D” stood for – Good Lovin And Devotion – innit?

Another new song as we see the return of a singer who became a massive star in the second half of the 80s but who had herself been on the brink of tragedy. On 20 March 1990, Gloria Estefan‘s tour bus was rear ended by an 18 wheeler truck causing Gloria to break a vertebra in her back and leaving her close to death. “Coming Out Of The Dark” was the first song she released to the public after the accident and was inspired by that event. As such, it’s hard to be critical of it – how can you deny someone writing a song about their own horrible experience? Not only was it presumably cathartic to Gloria but no doubt it has also been taken to the hearts of many a person struggling to overcome whatever curveballs life had thrown at them. And it sounds so uplifting with that gospel choir raising the spirits. And yet, I have to say that it does sound very similar to all her previous huge ballads doesn’t it? “Can’t Stay Away From You”, “Anything For You”, “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, “Here We Are”…they all conform to a formula. OK, “Coming Out Of The Dark” is differentiated a bit by that gospel element – I’ll give it that. The single was yet another No 1 for Gloria in the US but it struggled to a peak of No 25 over here but parent album “Into The Light” was a platinum seller in the UK.

Bruno Brookes does reference Gloria’s accident in his segue but straining under the responsibility of not saying anything controversial he goes too far the other way and says this:

“Of course Gloria’s back now to perfect health… which is nice”

Which is nice?! Bruno channeling his inner Fast Show there…

An interesting choice of words in Bruno’s next intro as he references one Nigel Wright and describes him as the man responsible for the likes of Bombalurina and Yell. ‘Responsible for’ implies an element of blame here it seems to me and for once Bruno is right – Bombalurina and Yell were certainly not acts to be celebrated. Brookes goes on to say that this Wright bloke is also responsible for the next act which is The UK Mixmasters and a track called “Night Fever Megamix”. I don’t need to explain this one do I? It pretty much did what it said on the tin. Yes, having just had a Grease mega mix in the Top 5, what was the obvious move to cash in on this trend? A Saturday Night Fever medley of course! Was this John Travolta month or something? The single contained five Bee Gees disco anthems all featured in the film plus “Disco Inferno” by The Trammps. The whole thing was a…ahem…tragedy, just a horrible Jive Bunny style desperate cash grab. The video follows that template as well just being a montage of some vintage Harold Lloyd style clips and very early cartoon animations. Hell, even the act’s name is a direct rip off – surely they could have put some more imagination into it than just calling themselves The UK Mixmasters?

If you wanted to hear the Bee Gees at their disco-tastic. best, then you would just buy the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack no? Even the usually gullible UK record buying public rumbled this one and it would go no further in the charts than No 23.

What have they done to the chart run down?! They’re only name checking this records in the Top 40 that are going up or are new entries?! Why?! How much time can that have saved them to ignore singles going down the charts? Surely not enough to squeeze in another whole song? The completists on Twitter were in uproar about this change and whilst I’m hardly apoplectic with rage myself, I do think they have a point unlike this change which does seem to be pointless. Anyway, on we go and one of the lucky artists to be going up the charts is Oleta Adams with “Get Here”. We had, of course, been introduced to Oleta via her work with Tears For Fears on their “The Seeds Of Love” album and more specifically the “Woman In Chains” single. Roland Orzabal kept up the connection by producing third album “Circle Of One” from which “Get Here” came. I’m not sure how I became aware of this but I soon found out that the song was actually originally written and performed by Brenda Russell of “Piano in the Dark” fame. I dug out Brenda’s version at work one day and guess what, Oleta’s version sounds almost exactly the same!

OK, Oleta’s version has a less laid back feel to it and she’s gone a bit Whitney Houston on the vocals to make it sound more dramatic but even so.

After discussing some of the improbable songs blacklisted by the BBC in the wake of the Gulf War crisis, it turns out that “Get Here” would also become associated with the conflict but in a positive way as it was adopted as an anthem for US troops missing their families. There’s even a lyric in it which says “You can reach me by caravan Cross the desert like an Arab man”. I have to say that it does seem ludicrous that the BBC deemed “Boom Bang-a-Bang” by Lulu as unpalatable and banned it but “Get Here”, with its Gulf war links, was not seen as a problem.

Anyway, I can’t deny that it’s a sincerely nice song and I liked it enough at the time. It went Top 5 in both the US and the UK while Oleta’s “Circle Of One” album would soar to No 1 over here. For a time she looked like being the next big soul/pop singer but subsequent releases would never get her here again.

It’s The Simpsons next with “Do The Bartman”. This is the second time it’s been on the show already and it hasn’t even got to No 1 yet and it’ll spend 3 weeks at the top of the charts so we haven’t finished with this nonsense by a long chalk.

The parent album “The Simpsons Sing The Blues” understandably didn’t get much airplay on the shop stereo of the Our Price store I was working in so I’ve never understood until now that it featured The Simpsons voice actors actually doing versions of proper blues songs originally recorded by blues legends like Albert King and Billie Holiday! The album went Top 10 in the UK and Top 3 in the US. It would soon became the fastest-selling album to emerge from a TV show since the Miami Vice soundtrack in 1985. If it wasn’t mutant ninja turtles clogging up the charts it was this lot! Doh!

Next a man who I developed an irrational hatred of back in 1991 for no discernible reason and of which I am now perplexed and indeed embarrassed by. Quite why the amiable Kenny Thomas and his inoffensive mainstream soul singles promoted such indignation and contempt within the 22 year old me, I do not know. Let me watch his performance of his single “Outstanding” back and see if it rekindles anything. See you in 3 minutes or so….

…no, no idea why I was so outraged at his commercial success. I mean, he has a decent enough voice and his lack of an image (plain dark suit over a black shirt) suggested that he wasn’t interested in being a pop star and was more about getting his music out there. Ah yes, the music. Well, “Outstanding” wasn’t actually his song although (as with The Simpsons earlier) I didn’t realise that until now. It was actually an old Gap Band song that had missed the charts back in ’82. Was it his sound that I objected so vehemently to? I can’t lie that I did find it fairly bland but it was hardly Jive Bunny grade crimes against music.

1991 would turn out to be Kenny’s annus mirabilis – “Outstanding” was a No 12 hit, his album “Voices” went Top 3 and follow up single “Thinking About Your Love” would make it to No 4. He continued to score smaller chart hits into the 90s but it had all pretty much run its course by the time Britpop came along. It turns out that Kenny is actually a completely stand up guy who has had to deal with his young daughter having a brain tumour (he has raised thousands of pounds for her ongoing treatment). He is currently the singer with 80s band Living In A Box replacing original vocalist Richard Derbyshire as the group continues to perform on the nostalgia circuit. In the unlikely event that Kenny is reading this, I apologise for my completely unwarranted dislike of you back in 1991…although I still think “Outstanding” is dull.

The TOTP producers are still committed to this best selling albums of the month feature so here’s the list for Jan 1991:

Madonna – The Immaculate Collection

2. Elton John – The Very Best Of Elton John

3. Enigma – MCMXC A.D.

4. Whitney Houston – I’m Your Baby Tonight

5. Phil Collins – Serious Hits Live

Alongside the changes to the singles chart run own, there is a small tweak to this section as well as curiously there is no voice over from the host. I don’t really see why this change was made apart from for the obvious benefit of shutting Bruno Brookes up for a couple of minutes.

Next up are New Kids On The Block who, contrary to my recall, were still having hits after 1990. I thought that the spell they had held over the world’s female teenagers had ended Cinderella-esque as soon as the clock struck 12 to usher in a new year but no. Here they were back in our charts with a single called “Games”. This was taken from their “No More Games: The Remix Album” which, fairly obviously, was a collection of remixes of their previous hits. It wasn’t just an exercise in squeezing as much out of the cash cow as possible though. The band were sensing that their popularity may be on the wane and saw this album as a chance to beef up their sound and update their image. To this end, they promoted it under the ‘NKOTB’ acronym, thereby dispensing with the word ‘kids’ from their name. Alongside the image change came the for new sound which was meant to demonstrate a harder edge to them and realign them with a more mature fanbase. “Games” was a rap heavy funk work out with the lyrics written to prove the the boys were the real deal…

‘Cause we’re five bad brothers from the bean town land
No sell out
So get the hell out
We do it our way
Who gives a damn about what critics say?

Well, quite. They go on to say that they’re kicking ass and calling non-believers out there suckers! Ooh! Get them! I think they believed that this made them sound hard like Public Enemy but they were more Vanilla Ice than LL Cool J. The single did OK peaking at No 14 over here but it was also their first to miss the Top 10 in the UK. By Xmas they would be releasing a proper Best Of album called “H.I.T.S.” that would stall at No 50 in the charts. Roll on the end of the year.

From rap (sort of) to crap. There really is very little to commend “Wiggle It” by 2 In A Room for. A terrible, repetitive record promoted by a video which is basically some gratuitous arse shots of various women ‘wiggling it’ on a beach. Its legacy, if you can describe the following as such, was that it was covered by Alvin and the Chipmunks for their album “The Chipmunks Rock The House” and that it has featured on various compilation albums including one entitled “Strip Jointz: Hot Songs For Sexy Dancers” and one called simply “Monster Booty”. Their Mums must have been very proud.

“Wiggle It” peaked at No 3.

The last week at the top for The KLF with “3 a.m. Eternal”. After the infamous Anthea incident of last week, the clip the TOTP producers have chosen to show is from an earlier appearance and not the KKK / KLF one. Should we read anything into that? Did the BBC receive complaints? Or were they just trying to convince us all that it had never really happened in the first place by expunging it from the show’s history?

Whatever the truth, the BBC were definitely going to tread carefully in future. When the band released a limited edition mail order only single in January ’92 containing a new version of the song featuring heavy metal hardcore punk band Extreme Noise Terror called the “Christmas Top of the Pops 1991” version as they had hoped to perform it on the festive year retrospective, the Beeb declined. Undeterred, the band would create huge controversy when they performed it at the BRIT Awards ceremony in February 1992. Yep, it’s this one with the machine guns…

Quite extraordinary and quite the WTF?! moment. Although the declaration at the end of the performance by the band’s promoter Scott Piering that “The KLF have now left the music business”, it was treated as a prank at the time but 4 months later Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty confirmed that they had indeed retired from the music business and that their back catalogue would be deleted with immediate effect. Nearly 30 years would pass before the band would make versions of their music available to streaming services. Talk about courage of your convictions.

The play out video is a huge dance tune, one so big in fact that it has been a chart hit (in different mixes and for various artists) four separate times over the years. The Source were a songwriting team comprising Anthony B. Stephens, Arnecia Michelle Harris and John Bellamy and they collaborated with soul / disco legend Candi Staton to produce “You Got The Love” which floundered to a high of No 95 on its original release way back in 1986. Five years later and with a legendary house DJ and producer Frankie Knuckles adding some magic into the mix, it catapulted up the charts before resting at No 4. Six years later it went one better when a New Voyager mix brought it to a new generation of clubbers but it didn’t stop there as it even pulled in the sales into the new millennium when a Shapeshifters mix returned it to the Top 10. Got all that? Good because the story didn’t even end there as in 2009 it was covered by Florence and the Machine who scored a Top 5 hit with it. Phew!

It’s this 1991 version though that remains definitive for me. I remember covering downstairs on the singles floor one lunchtime and couldn’t believe the amount of 12″s of it that we were selling. Was it even released in a 7″ format? I can’t recall now. I was definitely not a dance head but even I could appreciate that this was a tune and it routinely appears in those Best Dance Singles of all time polls. How could it not?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy it?
1	Kim Appleby	G.L.A.D.	I did not
2	Gloria Estefan	Coming Out Of the Dark	Nope
3	The UK Mixmasters	Night Fever Megamix	Certainly not
4	Oleta Adams	Get Here	Liked it but not enough to buy it
5	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Excuse me? NO!
6	Kenny Thomas	Outstanding	I thought it was anything but back then – sorry Kenny!
7	NKOTB	Games	I would have been ashamed
8	2 In A Room	Wiggle It	Hell no!
9	The KLF	3 am Eternal	Thought I might have but it seems I didn’t
10	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	See 9 above

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/m000wn3k/top-of-the-pops-07021991

TOTP 31 JAN 1991

Posted on June 10, 2021 by 80stastic

The BBC4 TOTP repeats are back in full swing now with a double header each Friday night. As such, we have already reached the end of January and it’s another short show tonight with only 8 acts on and 5 minutes lopped off the running time. I’m guessing this is due to the ongoing Gulf War conflict. As a welcome distraction from the world’s ills, my beloved Chelsea have reached the semi-finals of the League Cup (now lumbering along in the guise of its sponsor as the Rumbelows Cup). This was the first time we had reached this stage of a cup competition for 6 years and only the second time in 20 years. It felt like a big deal but it would end in defeat and disappointment and I would have to wait another 6 years before we finally won something.

Work-wise, I had just clocked up my third month at Our Price and was now a fully fledged permanent member of staff. My employment didn’t stop us from being skint all the time as my wife wasn’t working but we became experts at sniffing out freebie events. Book signings at Waterstones were a massive boon as they often included free wine and snacks as were art gallery exhibition openings. In addition to these, my Our Price store had a an arrangement with the Odeon cinema in town that we would provide them with two free CDs a week to play as background music before the films started in return for a weekly free pass that would admit two people. Whenever it was my turn for the pass, it was a huge boost to our social life! Wonder if the CDs of any of the acts on this show ended up at the Odeon Manchester?

We start with EMF who are following up their Top 3 hit “Unbelievable” with a track called “I Believe”. I couldn’t decide at the time whether this was a clever play on song titles or just dumb. I’m still not sure now. I have to say I found “I Believe” a big disappointment. It’s got roughly the same ingredients as “Unbelievable” and yet it doesn’t seem to have come out of the oven in quite the same way. Yes, it’s all very urgent sounding and exhibits a pulsating, driving rhythm but it just didn’t match up to its predecessor at all for me,. It didn’t have that huge hooky chorus and sounded like it was trying just a bit too hard. The single edit doesn’t have the 8 second intro that the album version has where keyboard player Derry Brownson threatens to trash a flat much to the consternation of his band members….

Visually, they have all the right looks of the time with that overgrown floppy fringe and garishly coloured baggy T-shirts over the top of Bermuda shorts being sported by a fair few of the band. Also the drummer has a KLF T-shirt on – I’m assuming that’s deliberate as they are on the show later. or maybe he couldn’t spell his own band’s name? For all my reservations, “I Believe” did its job by securing the boys another Top 10 hit when it peaked at No 6. For now, things were still right on track for EMF.

I should point out that tonight’s host is Anthea Turner and that this show will not turn out to be her finest hour. She starts uncontroversially but just the second act in and she’s making a show of herself by introducing Ralph Tresvant as “Ralph ‘Show Us Your Chest’ Tresvant”. Now it might not seem like a major incident but if you reverse the introduction and had say Bruno Brookes introducing Belinda Carlisle as “Belinda ‘Show Us Your Chest’ Carlisle” surely all Hell would have broken loose?

Anyway, Ralph does indeed grant Anthea’s request and gets his pecs out in the video for “Sensitivity” (oh the irony of that song title) but nothing can distract from how completely dull the song is. Ralph’s only other UK chart hit of the decade would be as an afterthought on the Janet Jackson / Luther Vandross single “The Best Things In Life Are Free” on which he has a credit for being in the studio at the same time but you have to read the small print very carefully to find it.

Yet another dance smash next as Nomad become a part of our lives with their single “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion“. There was a rumour going around our store that our previous store manger Greg had been something to do with getting this track released but I don’t know if there was any truth in that at all and I certainly never asked him about it. There had also been a story circualting in the staff kitchen that he’d been instrumental in Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart” becoming a hit. Thirty years on and I’m not convinced about either story. There’s very little connection between the records other than that they were both huge dance anthems – they weren’t even on the same label.

Anyway, despite it being well out of my comfort zone, I actually didn’t mind this one too much. Nomad were Damon Rochefort (Nomad is Damon spelled backwards), Steve McCutcheon and Sharon D. Clarke and the ever reliable @TOTPFacts found out loads of trivia about all three. Here’s a few tidbits:

Nomad's singer is Sharon Dee Clarke, whom Doctor Who fans will recognise from her role as Grace, Graham's late wife. We've seen her on #TOTP before – she was also the vocalist on FPI Project's "Going Back To My Roots".
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 4, 2021

then there’s this…

Nomad's Steve Mac (Steve McCutcheon – absent here) went on to have three top 40 hits as part of dance group Undercover (the biggest being their version of "Baker Street", a no 2 in 1992). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 4, 2021

and finally…

Nomad's Damon Rochefort (with the keyboard) later went to attend a script-writing course led by Birds Of A Feather creators Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. They "took him under their wing", and he ended up writing for the series. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 4, 2021

Excellent! Content sorted! Makes my life so much easier! “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion” is actually credited to Nomad featuring MC Mikee Freedom but all @TOTPFacts had on him was that he’s from Bristol and his real name is Michael Field. Boo!

Anyone remember Praise and their spooky single “Only You”? If you do, it’s probably due to this advert…

Yes, this unlikely, ethereal song was originally used in a car advert for the Fiat Tempra but got its own release a few weeks later. Would it be cynical of me to suggest that the record company wanted to cash in on the Enigma phenomenon? In truth though, wasn’t it just Clannad set to a plodding dance back beat? There’s even a bit of pan pipes in there but let’s not go down that route. Oh, and a Marvin Gaye sample possibly?

I didn’t really get this one at all and it did very little for me. Apparently the single edit was remixed by producers Andreas Georgiou (cousin of George Michael) and Peter Lorrimer….surely not the Leeds United legend and possessor of the hardest shot in football at one time? Praise indeed.

“Only You” (also nothing to do with Yazoo) peaked at No 4.

For me, Kylie Minogue was on a complete roll at this point in her career. She’d shed the ‘Charlene from Neighbours makes a catchy pop tune’ comments some time ago and had moved into wanting to be seen as an artist in her own right. Yes, she was still working with SAW but there was definitely more depth to both her music and image.

“What Do I Have To Do” was the third single to be lifted from her “Rhythm Of Love” album (although it was originally scheduled to be the second) and it did a good job of consolidating this new direction. Very much in the same vein as its predecessors “Better the Devil You Know” and “Step Back In Time”, it sounded like an accomplished dance /pop track full off enough hooks to pull you in. However, it was also her first single release not to make the UK Top 5. Would that have been of concern to her at the time? Probably not and the chart placings of her subsequent singles throughout the 90s were certainly nothing to be sniffed at but…there was a general decline over the course of the decade (she would only have 3 more Top 10 hits before the new millennium). The success of her No 1 single “Spinning Around” in 2000 was definitely seen as unexpected and ushered in the most unlikely of comebacks.

Apparently her sister Danni is in the video for this one (though I haven’t spotted her). Within a short few weeks, she would be a chart star herself when her debut single “Love and Kisses” broke into the Top 10. You have been warned.

OK – it’s that Soho performance next – the one that always comes to mind when I think of Soho and their gloriously funky song “Hippychick” – yep it’s the one with those massive kipper ties! Apparently the slogan emblazoned on them is CENSORED after the run in they had with the TOTP producers who threatened to cut them from the show the last time they were on if they wore their dresses with CND logos on them. It doesn’t quite work as a stunt though because the producers did relent and let them wear their dresses meaning they weren’t, in fact, censored after all. Still, let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good gimmick. It is a great performance though with the Cuff twins full of energy and artistic endeavour. There was one member of the band who wasn’t on top of their game though – the bass player lollops around the stage looking like he couldn’t even spell rhythm let alone possess any.

This was as good as it got for Soho. “Hippychick” was their one and only chart hit although they continued to release albums until their split in 1999. They did also though provide a song for the soundtrack of the original Scream film in 1996. I remember sitting in the cinema as the credits rolled totally taken by surprise that an Icicle Works song would feature in a huge Hollywood film – so much so that I didn’t pay any attention as to who was actually covering “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)” – for all you pedants out there, note the slight title change for the US market – and now finally I have the answer.

“Hippychick” peaked at No 8.

It’s time for the new No 1 and this felt like a big deal – a genuinely edgy and subversive act topping the charts. The time of the anti-popstar was upon us and their name was The KLF. The second of their Stadium House trilogy of singles, “3am Eternal” would prove to be their only UK No 1 (if you don’t count “Doctorin’ the Tardis” under their Timelords pseudonym).

For the whole of 1991 they ruled the music world with another three Top 5 hits making them one of the biggest selling singles artists of the year. They burned so brightly but then suddenly it was all over though unlike most huge acts that suddenly fall from grace as tastes move on, The KLF were sole architects of their own demise. I say demise but it was a retirement really albeit announced in the most controversial of circumstances at the 1992 BRITS show. They were at their most caustic operating outside of the record industry but once they had pierced it to expose its shallowness, they found themselves increasingly uncomfortable being inside of it and lauded by the very people they seemed to denigrate. For the moment though, they are playing out their strategy on a grand scale and they weren’t finished yet…

…somebody who should have been finished though (certainly their career anyway) was Anthea Turner. “Congratulations to KLF who are at No 1 ands looking like the Klu Klux Klan” she trills at the end of the band’s performance. What the Holy f**k did she just say?!! The Klu Klux Klan?! Anthea – TOTP was a mainstream pop show broadcast before the watershed and aimed at a predominantly youthful audience. What were you thinking referencing the white supremacy terrorist hate group?!! None of this makes any sense, not least the fact that nobody on screen did look they had a KKK costume on did they? I always thought it was a white robe with a pointed, wizard like hood obscuring the face. All I can see were some people in red robes without any terrifying hoods with eye holes cut out. Also, the majority of the people on stage were black – so unlikely members of a white supremacy group. And yet, Anthea was not alone in her thinking. Vocalist PP Arnold was of a similar opinion. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

PP Arnold: "I didn't wanna wear those suits – to me they were a little bit too Kurt Klux Klan… that's why you only see me at the beginning of the video and somewhere at the end." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 4, 2021

I’m really confused now. The whole thing’s a minefield. I’m surprised that BBC4 didn’t cut that bit out of its repeat broadcast to be honest. Adding to the confusion comes the play out video which is Vanilla Ice with “Play That Funky Music”. A cover of the 1976 Wild Cherry hit, that song was inspired by the band being heckled at a live gig at a disco club by a black audience member to “Play some funky music, white boy.” Ok, I’m leaving this subject well alone now.

Vanilla Ice’s version made no 10 in our charts thus proving categorically that he was not a one hit wonder. He might as well have been though. Who thinks of any song other than “Ice Ice Baby” when his name is mentioned?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy it?
1	EMF	I Believe	No but I have it as an extra track on one of their later singles
2	Ralph Tresvant	Sensitivity	Nope
3	Nomad	(I Wanna Give You) Devotion	Nah
4	Praise	Only You	No
5	Kylie Minogue	What Do I Have To Do?	It’s another no
6	Soho	Hippychick	Thought maybe I had but it seems I didn’t
7	The KLF	3am Eternal	See 7 above
8	Vanilla Ice	Play That Funky Music	Actually, please don’t – 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/m000wn3f/top-of-the-pops-31011991

TOTP 24 JAN 1991

Posted on June 8, 2021 by 80stastic

A truncated edition of the show this week – the BBC seemed to have lopped 5 minutes off it which means no play out video after the No 1 single and no Breakers. I’m guessing this is to do with additional news coverage of the continuing Gulf War. It is, however, back in its usual Thursday time slot. The host tonight is Simon Mayo who I am beginning to find increasingly smug and annoying – whether I felt like this at the time or not, I don’t know.

There’s a definite theme of recycling in this TOTP as we start with a song that was originally a Top 10 hit for Patrice Rushen back in 1982. “Forget Me Nots” was given the UK electro dance treatment 9 years later by Tongue ‘N’ Cheek to very little effect and with very little just cause to my ears. This seemed to be a desperate attempt to grind out another Top 40 hit after their last single “Nobody” had failed to consolidate on their breakthrough hit “Tomorrow”. It doesn’t seem to add that much to the original but would be part of a brief movement of old songs given the dance treatment around this time (see also Quartz doing Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”). Although it secured them a No 26 hit, it would be the last time Tongue ‘N’ Cheek appeared in the Top 40 and they would split soon after. However, “Forget Me Nots” would go onto have a life way beyond its dalliance with Tongue ‘N’ Cheek. It was sampled by George Michael for his 1996 No 1 single “Fastlove” and also by Will Smith the following year for his chart topper “Men In Black”.

After the recycling of “Forget Me Nots” a few times over comes Robert Palmer doubling down on his green credentials by regenerating not one but two Marvin Gaye numbers into a whole new song of its own. “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You” would be Palmer’s last ever Top 10 hit in the UK and whilst his back catalogue includes some wonderful songs , I’m not sure if that ever translated into the chart success they deserved. Looking at his discography, he had 12 Top 40 Uk hits (if you include his work with The Power Station) of which 5 were Top 10. It’s not a bad haul but when you consider his music career spanned nearly 40 years and took in 14 studio albums until his death in 2003, it maybe doesn’t seem that much either. Throw in the possibility that, for many people, he’s just the “Addicted To Love” guy and it seems an outright injustice.

There always seemed to be more attention on his sartorial style than his music it seemed to me. For example, in 1989 he received two Brit Awards nominations but won neither yet he did top a Rolling Stone magazine poll for the best-dressed rock star of 1990. This is reinforced by Simon Mayo’s description of him in his intro as ‘Mr Suit’ and ‘Mr Smooth’ and even ‘a singing version of Robert Kilroy -Silk'(remember him?!). “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You” peaked at No 9 and I’m guessing this Robert’s final TOTP appearance. Thanks for the memories Bob.

Next a song that must have been the bane of many a young woman’s life back in 1991. How many of the nation’s female population had to endure having ‘wiggle it, just a little bit’ shouted at them as they went about their business by lairy neanderthal men around this time? I know of at least one who had this happen to them. 2 In A Room were the architects of this nonsense and “Wiggle It” would become a No 3 hit in the UK. Only in Australia did it chart so high on the national chart. Hmm.

Inevitably, the video features lots of bikini clad ladies…erm…wiggling it on the beach whilst a male counterpart (who looks very much like Jerry Seinfeld) gets the exact opposite treatment of being fully covered up by being buried in the sand. Once again, hmm. I genuinely thought until this moment that the lyrics were ‘wiggle it just a little bit, I wanna see you wiggle it just a little bit ACID GROOVE!’ but it turns out that they’re singing ‘as it grooves’ and not ‘acid groove’. I’m not sure which makes more sense to be honest but then how do you make any sense of this piece of garbage?

It may be a new decade but we haven’t left novelty records back in the 80s. After the ghastly Bombalurina last year comes The Simpsons with “Do The Bartman”. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know much about The Simpsons back in 1991. For a start it had only been on UK television for less than 6 months by this point and even then it was only on Sky which hardly any of us had. We certainly didn’t in our little rented flat. It would take another 6 years before the show became available on terrestrial TV. It seems unimaginable now, so much a part of our cultural lives have Homer, Bart, Maggie and the rest become but this was genuinely the case back then.

My first introduction to them being this record didn’t bode well. It didn’t even seem that funny to me but then I had never seen the show nor know its characters. And why were they all yellow? A bigger question was how on earth did it get to No1 in the UK? It wasn’t just a matter of taste – genuinely, how did a novelty record from an American TV show that most of the population almost certainly didn’t have access to top the charts? There was no internet or streaming services back then either remember. Most novelty records that have been successful have not been imports – “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)”, Orville The Duck, Grange Hill (a UK TV show of course)….I’m sure there must be loads of others. “Do The Bartman” seemed to be a different beast. It was taken from an album called “The Simpsons Sing The Blues” which would spawn another Top 10 hit in “Deep Deep Trouble” later in the year. Oh deep, deep joy.

I’ve still got very little to say about Off-Shore and “I Can’t Take The Power” not least because I hardly remember it. I did post the theory last time it was on about whether it was meant to be some sort of repost to Snap!’s ‘The Power” and that’s given a bit more credence by this tweet from @TOTPfacts:

You've probably noticed that the vocal "the power!" rather resembles the one in Snap!'s "The Power", sampled from "Love's Gonna Get You" by Jocelyn Brown: https://t.co/kQhz8kUAV1… #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 28, 2021

And then this one aswell:

It's believed that's been cut together with an "I can't take" from "Weekend" by Class Action (1983), to make the new phrase. https://t.co/ZcbtsT7JLg #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 28, 2021

Listening to this back, it really is very repetitive. It’s just that cut and paste sample over and over again to an Italian House piano riff backing. It’s like they hardly put any effort into it at all and it doesn’t lend to self to a studio performance. No wonder TOTP had to intercut it with bits of the official promo video to make it even slightly watchable. Off-Shore – they couldn’t take the power but they did take the piss.

Simon Mayo seems to slip in an unofficial plug for a non BBC product at the song’s end when he says you can find the lyrics to the Off-Shore song in No 1 magazine. That wasn’t in the rules surely? He then follows it up with some cryptic clue about a vocal performance from a Radio 1 DJ on the next song which is “Can I Kick It?” by A Tribe Called Quest. According to Mayo, it’s Pete Tong who says A Tribe Called Quest towards the end of the song. Is that right?

*checks internet*

Huh – seems it is according to Wikipedia anyway:

In the official Boilerhouse mix of the song, the name of the band “A Tribe Called Quest”, is spoken by the British radio DJ Pete Tong

If you want a story about spoken word samples on “Can I Kick It?” though, this takes some beating:

The voice saying "Er, you can?" & "Then do so, at once" appears to be Jon Pertwee. But the source is unclear – the leading theory is SuperTed, but we don't believe something just cause it's on Wikipedia. A record seems more likely. If anyone has hard evidence, let me know #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 28, 2021

Apparently it’s from the kids cartoon SuperTed in which Jon Pertwee voiced a character called Spotty although the twitteratti can’t agree for sure. Also, the comment about not believing Wikipedia puts some doubt on the Pete Tong claim for me. Anyway, all of this shouldn’t distract from how good the track is. Another example of recycling with its heavy use of Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” it also, inevitably due to its title, led to it being used in many a footballing montage and indeed advertising campaign beginning with this one from Nike in 1992:

The success of “Can I Kick It?” led to a previous single from their album being re-released in “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” which was pretty cool too but it failed to get anywhere near the Top 40 peaking at No 86. A Tribe Called Quest would not have another UK Top 40 single for five long years.

I’m not sure what was more shocking about Rick Astley‘s 1991 comeback – his new sound exemplified by the gospel tinged ballad “Cry For Help” or his long hair! I mean, just look at it! Where had that boy next door, preppy look gone?! Apparently he hadn’t had a haircut for over a year by this point – always ahead of the game Rick, modelling lockdown hair 30 years before it was a thing.

What about his song though? Sure it was different but was it any good? Well, I thought so and so did my wife who bought it. It was also a wise move in my book – if you’re the biggest pop star in the country and you just walk away from it for a whole two years without so much as a by your leave, then when you come back, you better have come up with something new in the intervening time. For my money, he would have looked ridiculous making a comeback with “Never Gonna Give You Up Part II”. “Cry For Help” was written by Astley with Rob Fisher (one half of both Naked Eyes and Climie Fisher) whilst all but three of the parent album album’s tracks were either written or co-written by him. That album was called “Free” and seeing as he had totally ditched his association with Stock, Aitken and Waterman for the project, you don’t need many guesses to work out what the title was referring to. The single and album would go Top 10 but it was a short lived revival. Subsequent singles failed to chart and although the album reached gold status, it was a far cry (for help) from his multi platinum SAW heydays.

I think I’ve worked out what has been annoying me retrospectively about Simon Mayo – it’s his continuous banging on about how any breaking chart hit had been the Breakfast Show ‘Record of the Week’. He makes that claim for Rick Astley in this show but has also done it loads of times previously. ‘Ooh look at me – I’m in it for the music really and not the fame and profile’ seems to be his message. Yeah, whatever mate.

Right, as its a shortened show, the final song of the evening is the No 1 and it’s not only new to the top spot but it’s gone straight in on its first week of sales. This had happened just a handful of times in the 80s and it still was hardly a regular occurrence by the early 90s. By the end of the decade however it would be a weekly occurrence due to heavy record company discounting. “Innuendo” was the title track of Queen‘s final album to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime and it was pretty much…bonkers. I mean seriously, it sounded all over the place to me. Can you imagine the conversations in the jam session which led to its creation?

“I’ve got a great idea for a Boléro themed opening”

“Oh well, if we’re going down that route, I vote for a flamenco guitar breakdown but it has to be performed by Steve Howe from Yes”

“Look, you can have what you want in it but it must be 6 and a half minutes long”

Just your typical song composition really! Did I like it? Not much. Its complex structure brought inevitable comparisons with “Bohemian Rhapsody” but I’ve never been a fan of that either. Before the end of the year, Freddie would be gone and “Bohemian Rhapsody” would be at No 1 all over again. Oh and if I thought “Innuendo” was bonkers, then the point was really hammered home with the title of their next single -“I’m Going Slightly Mad”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Tongue ‘N’ Cheek	Forget Me Nots	Nope
2	Robert Palmer	Mercy Mercy Me / I Want You	No but it’s on My Best of CD of his
3	2 In A Room	Wiggle It	A massive no
4	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Give over
5	Off-Shore	I Can’t Take The Power	Nope
6	A Tribe Called Quest	Can I Kick It?	Though I maybe did but apparently not
7	Rick Astley	Cry For Help	No but my wife did
8	Queen	Innuendo	Nah

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.

TOTP 19 JAN 1991

Posted on June 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Less than three weeks into 1991 and the hopes for a good year to one and all are already in tatters as the Gulf War has escalated with the commencement of Operation Desert Storm two days prior to this TOTP being broadcast. I knew it was serious as the night before, the League Cup quarter final highlights were bumped from the TV schedules to make way for the extra news coverage of the unfolding events. Nothing got in the way of the football. I got the same feeling in 2020 when the pandemic struck – if the football is gone then we are in trouble. Indeed, TOTP itself was shunted to the Saturday night from its regular Thursday slot to allow for extended BBC news coverage.

I remember turning up for work on the Thursday morning and making an enormous faux pas. I was on the counter (as usual) and decided to put some Warren Zevon on the shop stereo as I fancied hearing “Werewolves Of London”. As if that song with its ‘Little old lady got mutilated late last night’ lyric wasn’t unsuitable enough, it all went horribly wrong when we got to track 4 of the album which was “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner”. If you don’t know this song (and I didn’t at the time), here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The fictional character Roland is a Norwegian who becomes embroiled in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War and Congo Crisis of the 1960s—the lyrics mention a “Congo war” and the years 1966 and 1967, which correspond to the mercenary-led Kisangani Mutinies after the Congo Crisis. He earns a reputation as the greatest Thompson gunner, a reputation that attracts the attention of the CIA. Roland is betrayed and murdered by a fellow mercenary, Van Owen, who blows off his head. Roland becomes the phantom “headless Thompson gunner” and eventually has his revenge, when he catches Van Owen in a Mombasa bar and guns him down. Afterward, he continues “wandering through the night”. Other violent conflicts of the succeeding decade are said to be haunted by Roland, including Ireland, Lebanon, Palestine, and Berkeley, California…

Oh.

Thankfully a colleague did know what the song was about and whipped it off the CD player sharpish and averted any customer complaints about insensitivity. Phew! Incredibly, “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” was not on the blacklist of songs that were banned by the BBC that were deemed inappropriate whilst the conflict raged. Want to know some that were? Here’s just a few choice examples from a list of over 60…

“(I Just) Died in Your Arms” – Cutting Crew : OK, it has the word ‘died’ in it but even so…
“I Don’t Want to Be a Hero” – Johnny Hates Jazz : One of the least offensive groups in history surely?!
“I’ll Fly for You” – Spandau Ballet : What?!
“A Little Peace” – Nicole : A Eurovision winning cry for world peace sung by a 17 year old?
“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going” – Billy Ocean : Just a little tenuous don’t you think?
“Boom Bang-a-Bang” – Lulu : Oh f**k off! Another Eurovision winner whose ‘offensive’ lyrics include “my heart goes boom bang-a-bang boom bang-a-bang when you are near”!

They were all banned but not “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” and not the show’s opening song which is “Hippychick” by Soho. This is a great one hit wonder but its lyrical subject matter was hardly non political. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Tim London: "'Hippychick' was written from the perspective of a young woman arrested by her boyfriend (who is a policeman) on a demonstration. She is basically telling him it's over, because, as a cop, he supports an establishment she wants to get rid of." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 28, 2021

Not only that but the band were threatened by TOTP producers with not being allowed to perform unless they lost the anti war sticker on founding member Tim London’s guitar and the CND emblazoned dresses worn by identical twin singers Jacqui and Pauline Cuff. Somehow, they convinced the producers to let the offending articles stay and “Hippychick” would go on to be a Top 10 hit. It hadn’t started out life quite as successfully though. It had missed the Top 40 altogether when first released in 1990 but it had crucially been a dance floor success in the US where it had sold the best part of a million outselling Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” which was No 1 (the US charts were collated based on radio-play and not just sales). It was this that convinced their label Savage Records to give it another shot over here.

Of course you can’t talk about “Hippychick” without mentioning that Smiths sample in the intro. The start of “How Soon Is Now” must be one of the most distinctive openings to a song ever and yet it it seemed to fit perfectly into this quirky, shuffling dance track. Genius! Johnny Marr supposedly received 25% of the track’s royalties as payment for the use of the sample.

I really liked this one an had already been introduced to it by its inclusion of the near legendary “Happy Daze” compilation album that got hammered in our store over Xmas. Sadly for the band, they were unable to recreate the success of “Hippychick” despite having sone great tunes on their album “Goddess” (including follow up single “Love Generation” which sounded like the B52s crossed with Lone Justice).

So we’ve established that neither Soho’s anti war messaging nor Warren Zevon’s “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” warranted being banned by the BBC in the light of the Gulf War and now we have a video from Belinda Carlisle that clearly depicts a soldier leaving his partner to go off to fight in a war! The lyrics even include the lines ‘I can hear the whistle, military train’! The BBC censors clearly hadn’t learned their lesson from the ‘chicks’ll cream’ “Grease Megamix” debacle the other week.

“Summer Rain” was the sixth and final single to be lifted from Belinda’s “Runaway Horses” album. The chart performance of said singles were the most inconsistent and frankly bizarre since those taken from Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango In the Night ” album. Look at this:

“Leave A Light On” – No 4
“La Luna” – No 38
“Runaway Horses” – No 40
“Vision Of You” – No 41
“(We Want) The Same Thing” – No 6
“Summer Rain” – No 23

Just weird. Looking at her discography overall, I hadn’t quite realised before that although Belinda would carry on having hit albums and singles here in the UK for the duration of the 90s, “Summer Rain” (and the “Runaway Horses” album) which was pretty much where her success ended in her native US. Check this out:

US Top 40 singles 1991 – 1999: 0
UK Top 40 singles 1991 – 1999: 11
US Top 40 albums 1991 – 1999: 0
UK Top 40 albums 1991 – 1999: 3

Not sure why that would have been. I would have thought her brand of radio friendly soft rock would have been perfect for the genre formatted US airwaves. She would return in the Autumn of 1991 with the “Live Your Life Be Free” album and single and is in October of this year bringing her The Decades Tour to the UK to celebrate 35 years as a solo artist.

Someone who’s an “All True Man” next (whatever that is). Alexander O’Neal seemed to have been trading off his past glories for the past few years before finally returning with some brand new material in 1991. Some of his releases since his massive selling “Hearsay” album of 1987 included the singles “Fake ’88”, “Hearsay ’89” and a medley of his old hits called “Hit Mix (Official Bootleg Mega-Mix)”. His only album releases had been a Xmas album and “Hearsay – All Mixed Up” which was, unsurprisingly, a remix album of “Hearsay” tracks. I guess it would have been his record label squeezing every last drop out of his recent back catalogue rather than Alexander himself but even so. He finally got around to recording some songs for his new album (also called “All True Man”) and released the title track as the lead single. It was written by the go to R’n’B songwriters/ producers of the day in Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and sure enough they supplied O’Neal with what would be his last ever Top 20 hit.

I have to say that Alexander O’Neal’s music has never really done anything for me. I could just about stand “Criticize” but the rest of it? Nah, I’m good thanks and “All True Man” wasn’t going to sway me otherwise. He clearly had a sizeable fab base in this country though as the album peaked at No 2 in the charts and achieved gold status sales although those paled in comparison to “Hearsay”. I did like the way he always dressed in a suit and tie for TOTP though. Standards and all that.

Now here’s a clam from host Nicky Campbell. That Dirty Dancing is the most popular film soundtrack of all time – is that right? Would it have been right in 1991? And what does he meant by popular anyway? The best selling is surely a more quantifiable criteria? In his intro he dismisses the advances of South Pacific, The Sound Of Music and Saturday Night Fever before introducing the re-released “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. According to Wikipedia, the best selling soundtrack album of all time is The Bodyguard but that didn’t come out until 1992 so that can be dismissed in terms of Campbell’s claim. The second biggest selling on Wikipedia’s list though is Saturday Night Fever with Dirty Dancing third. Given that Saturday Night Fever had 10 whole years in existence and therefore years worth of sales before Dirty Dancing was even released, I’m backing it to have been in the lead sales wise back in 1991. It’s all academic anyway as presumably Campbell just needed a link into the song and could have made up anything as long as it segued neatly into the video clip.

“(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” was back in the charts having been re-released to cash in on a second wave of the film’s popularity after it had received its terrestrial TV premier over Xmas 1990. That sort of occurrence couldn’t happen today because of streaming services. Want to hear that song from the film you’ve just watched over and over again? I’m sure it’ll be on Spotify. Back in 1991 though, once releases were out of the charts, they were deleted very quickly and you could only buy an old single from second hand shops or if it was on the Old Gold series via Pickwick Records and the like. This could also be true of albums that weren’t seen as being classics or perennial best sellers. Nowadays just about everything has received the deluxe box set re-issue treatment. Want a double CD expanded edition of ex-Dollar singer Thereza Bazar’s only solo album with 19 bonus tracks even though nobody bought it first time around? Sure – no problem. Your’s for just £11! The mind boggles.

“(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” peaked at No 8 second time around.

OK, 1991 just got a bit more interesting. The time of The KLF is upon us. Although they’d already become chart stars the previous year with “What Time Is Love?”, for me, “3 a.m. Eternal” was when I really started to think that something of great importance was happening. It just sounded sound otherworldly – who the Hell were the Ancients of Mu Mu and what did they want? In reality it was, of course, just Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond playing with the music industry again as they had done before with The Timelords and “Doctorin’ the Tardis” but what a game they played. In the light of “3 a.m. Eternal”, demand for their album “The White Room” rocketed and it hit No 3 in the album chart (well according to Wikipedia – I could have sworn it was a No 1 but maybe that was just in the in-house Our Price chart).

A year later they would perform a version of the track with punk band Extreme Noise Terror at The BRIT awards – yes that one with the machine guns – before announcing their retirement from the music industry but that’s for another post.

Oh and what did it mean, “3 a.m. Eternal”? According to the songfacts.com website, it referred to chucking out time at the Spectrum Acid House club in London.

It will be No 1 soon enough…

Now that the post Xmas slump is over and the record company release schedules have awoken from their slumbers, the Breakers are back starting with The High and “Box Set Go”. I seem to recall a lot of buzz around this lot at the time (well they were in the Breakers section, home of the ‘happening’ records in the charts!). I’m sure their album “Somewhere Soon”, with its distinctive diamond symbol against a mostly black cover, was a Recommended Release at Our Price. The other thing I remember about them was that they had an ex-Stone Roses member in their ranks – one Andy Couzens. For all that though, The High sounded more like The La’s or even The Byrds to me.

Infamously signed to London Records after only one gig, the album was critically well received but could only make it to a..ahem…high of No 59. They’d already had three Top 40 near misses before “Box Set Go” was remixed by the legendary producer Martin Hannet and re-released to give them their only chart hit when it peaked at No 28. Hannet had worked with Couzens before during his Roses days. I worked with another ex-Stone Roses member, the original bass player called Pete later on in my Our Price career and he once told me that Hannet had spent ages trying to get a particular sound on one of their early tracks and when it was finished, Pete said “but I can’t hear it in the mix Martin”. Hannett’s reply was “Ah yes Pete but you know that it’s there”. Marvellous.

Now here’s a great track. A Tribe Called Quest had been around since 1985 but their debut album “People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm” wasn’t released until 1990 from which “Can I Kick It?” was the third single released. Heavily sampling Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” amongst other tracks, it sounded fresh and innovative to me although you could argue that it wasn’t a million miles away from De La Soul’s D.A.I.S.Y. Age sound (indeed, De LA Soul feature in the video). The previous year we had suffered a terrible, terrible cover version of “Walk On The Wild Side” courtesy of Jamie J. Morgan but this was a different flavour altogether.

At the time of its release, I had been given the weighty role of being the Best Sellers CD buyer in the Our Price store I was in, responsible for making sure all those classic albums were always in stock. However, we’d just had a new manager installed after previous manager Greg had left and he wanted to shake things up a bit. To that end, he asked me to order in some extra copies of the “People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm” album for the Best Sellers section on the back of the single’s success as it wasn’t in the chart and therefore would only be stocked in limited numbers. Wikipedia tells me that the album peaked at No 54 so that punt probably didn’t pay off.

Bizarrely, we would get another “Walk On The Wild Side” influenced single later on in the year via Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch which was the follow up to their “Good Vibrations” single but it only made it to No 42 in the charts whereas “Can I Kick It?” would get all the way to No 15 in the UK.

What do you do if you run out of toilet tissue? There’s “Always The Sun” quips Nicky Campbell about the final Breaker from The Stranglers. Ooh, bit of politics as Ben Elton used to day on Friday Night Live (or was it Saturday Night Live?). I wonder if Campbell got into hot water with the BBC bosses for that? So what was this 1986 hit doing back in the charts? It was to promote a Best Of album of course (“Greatest Hits 1977–1990”) which sold surprisingly well going platinum and reaching No 4 in the charts. I think it got a TV Ad campaign behind it which caught a lot of retailers out (I remember our shop selling out of it one Saturday afternoon).

Supposedly the 1990 version is a remix but it sounds pretty similar to me apart from some extra guitar noodling. Hugh Cornwell (who had left the band by this point) had originally though that “Always The Sun” could have been another “Golden Brown” in terms of sales but it peaked at No 30. According to his his book The Stranglers Song By Song he’d been amazed by its poor chart position stating “We’d given CBS something great to work with and I could see in this guy’s face that he knew he hadn’t delivered”. Maybe CBS felt bad about that and tried to repay the debt five years on with that promotional campaign for “Greatest Hits 1977–1990”? Maybe not.

The1991 version peaked one place higher than its 1986 counterpart at No 29.

Sting again next and after last week’s play out video position in the show’s running order, he’s been promoted to a place in the main body of the programme as befitting his rock star status (ahem). Not that it did him much good as “All This Time” would actually go down form its peak here of No 22 the following week.

I’m sure I’ve told this story before but it’s worth another outing. My friend Robin has a friend who is a professional musician and he has toured with some major names including Sting and erm…Westlife. Anyway, he found himself at a dinner party at Sting’s gaff through this work connection and in the middle of the meal, all the guests were asked to relocate to another room and where a TV was. Sting then proceeded to get them to all watch a documentary…about Sting! I did say last week that he could be a right knacker.

Something out of the ordinary now. No, not the fact that this is the third different studio appearance for Seal and his “Crazy” single (although that does seem like unusual overkill). Rather, it’s that the Top 10 countdown stops at No 3? Why? So that Nicky Campbell can introduce Seal at No 2. Why not just have Seal on before the countdown. Unless there was some sort of race to be that week’s No 1 that had gripped the nation Oasis v Blur style, I can’t understand why they would do that.

Anyway, the heightened exposure didn’t work for Seal as his hopes of climbing to the top of the charts were torpedoed by *SPOILER* the returning Queen and their chaotically mad “Innuendo” single which went straight in at No 1 the following week. He can’t have been too disappointed though as his debut album would similarly go to No 1 when released in May achieving double platinum sales (including one bought by me).

So it’s definitely not Seal at No 1 meaning it must be Enigma and “Sadness (Part I)”. It’s taken 6 weeks for the record to make it to the top (including 4 in the Top 10) yet it would only get 1 week at the pinnacle. It would stay in the Top 40 for another 5 weeks though demonstrating the longevity of its appeal. Curiously though, it would only be the 37th best selling single of the year. That 6 week long run up to becoming No 1 would become an almost extinct practice by the end of the decade as discounted pricing by the record companies in a single’s first week of release to drive sales would mean records going in at No 1 immediately before falling away dramatically. I have to say I wasn’t a fan of discounting new releases. It created a false sales history and, if you worked in a record shop like I did, it was a bloody nightmare to ensure you never sold out of anything.

I started this post talking about my potential incident of insensitivity when I played “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” on the shop stereo the day after the commencement of Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. By way of contrast, here’s a man full of “Sensitivity” – it’s Ralph Tresvant! This guy was the latest former member of Jackson 5 rip off merchants New Edition to try and further his musical career following the success of Bobby Brown and Ronnie DeVoe, Michael Bivins and Ricky Bell (Bell Biv DeVoe collectively).

As with Alexander O’Neal earlier on, this track was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and can’t you just tell by the song’s intro. Those tumbling, percussive drum beats are the exact same ones they used when producing “Human” for The Human League back in 1986. Waste not want not I guess. The rest of it is pretty unremarkable 90s R’n’B to my ears but then I’m no expert.

“Sensitivity” was the lead single from Ralph’s eponymous debut album which featured his old pal Bobby Brown on one track. It also includes a track called “She’s My Love Thang” – of course it does. “Sensitivity” peaked at No 18 in the UK but was a Top 5 hit in the US and also an R’n’B No 1 single over there.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Soho	Hippychick	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Belinda Carlisle	Summer Rain	Nope
3	Alexander O’Neal	All True Man	I didn’t buy this – tru dat
4	Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes	(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life	Nah
5	The KLF	3am Eternal	Don’t think I did
6	The High	Box Set Go	Box Set No
7	A Tribe Called Quest	Can I Kick It?	Though I might have but it’s not in the singles box
8	The Stranglers	Always The Sun ‘91	No but I bought that Greatest Hits 1977-1990 CD
9	Sting	All This Time	I did not
10	Seal	Crazy	No but I bought the album
11	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
12	Ralph Tresvant	Sensitivity	Definitely not

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000wfdn/top-of-the-pops-19011991

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.

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 21 MAR 1991

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TOTP 14 MAR 1991

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TOTP 07 MAR 1991

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TOTP 28 FEB 1991

TOTP 21 FEB 1991

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TOTP 14 FEB 1991

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TOTP 07 FEB 1991

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TOTP 31 JAN 1991

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TOTP 24 JAN 1991

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TOTP 19 JAN 1991

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