80stastic

TOTP 18 APR 1991

Posted on July 22, 2021 by 80stastic

Those generous TOTP producers have seen fit to cram 14 (FOURTEEN!) songs into this particular show which means lots of typing and putting my grey cells through their paces for old muggins here. They’ve shoe horned 5 Breakers in this week which is the reason for the high song count and having timed it, they are squeezed into just 1 minute and 21 seconds of screen time. That’s 16 seconds per song. What was the point of that?! OK, there weren’t too many places that you could watch a music video back in 1991 so was it a case of something was better than nothing? I’m not sure. There was The Chart Show which was a staple of Saturday morning TV by this point having moved from Channel 4 to ITV in 1989 so maybe they were trying to compete with that? There was also MTV Europe though how may of us had access to that back in the day? Whatever the reason, I hope for my sake that this was a one off and the TOTP producers showed some self control in the future.

Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and for some weird reason concerning how the brain stores totally irrelevant and throw away bits of info for years, there are some parts of this show that I can really remember mainly surrounding Jakki’s to camera bits. More of that later though as we start the show with James and “Sit Down”. The boys are at No 2 by now and still have designs on that No 1 spot. *SPOILER ALERT* However, the fact that they spent three weeks there and were unable to dislodge Chesney Hawkes must have rankled with not only the band but also their army of fans. Possibly music lovers in general saw it as a monstrous injustice. Possibly.

Anyway, they’re in the studio this week and look happy enough with life especially guitarist Larry Gott who laughs and smiles his way through the performance. After leaving the band in 1995, Gott took up studying Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, specifically furniture design. Somebody I worked with at Our Price in Stockport was also on the course with him and said he didn’t talk much about James at all preferring to just be a student with the rest of the cohort. He graduated in 2000 and won awards for his ‘reaction recliner’ design including the Allemuir Award for Industry and the Blueprint Award for Creativity. Not to be outdone, my colleague at Our Price became a successful freelance graphic designer and photographer. “Outstanding” – as Kenny Thomas might have said.

So if it wasn’t James who would dethrone Chesney, who did do the deed? In an unlikely turn of events, the honour fell to Cher who, despite her last album “Heart Of Stone” being a Top 10 success in 1989, hadn’t had a UK No1 single for 26 years when she topped the charts with “I Got You Babe” as part of Sonny & Cher. The song that rectified this for her was a cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” which had originally been a minor hit for Betty Everett in 1968. Cher’s version was taken from the soundtrack to her latest film project called Mermaids. This family comedy-drama which also stars Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci is rarely shown on TV these days but, and I haven’t seen it since going to the cinema to catch it in 1991, is actually OK as I recall. A little too heavy on the quirkiness and I found Winona’s character a tad annoying but not bad.

The film’s soundtrack featuring original 60s tracks by the likes of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles sold reasonably well off the back fo the success of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” but I never realised until now that there was a second Cher track on the album called “Baby I’m Yours” (another cover) which had been released as its lead single but which did bugger all in the charts.

So why did the UK go mad for the second single? I really don’t know. Was the film a massive commercial success? According to IMDB, it was ranked the 20th top film in the UK for 1991 – not too shabby but hardly a phenomenon. “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” on the other hand was the third best selling single of the year in 1991 behind only 16 weeks at No 1 “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams and Xmas No 1 “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”These Are the Days of Our Lives” by Queen. Sadly, my purchase of it added to its popularity. Now just hold on before you all pile on. The whole thing was a mistake. Firstly, I bought it for my wife and not me. Secondly, she didn’t even want it either as I had purchased the wrong thing entirely in Cher. She had wanted a completely different single that features in next week’s TOTP. Quite how I managed to make such a mistake, I have no idea. The fact that back in 1989 I had bought another Cher single (“If I Could Turn Back Time”) had nothing to do with the whole sorry escapade at all and that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God!

Whoah! OMD? In the charts in 1991? Yes, it was true. One of the most surprising comebacks of the year (maybe even the decade) was the return of OMD but they weren’t the same beast we had last seen in the Top 40 way back in 1986 with “(Forever) Live And Die”. No, for one, founding member Paul Humphreys had done a runner and left the band! How so? Well, after reaching a commercial peak around the middle of the 80s with the huge US hit “If You Leave” from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, things had started to unravel. Their next album “The Pacific Age” had been recorded under duress and the results were patchy. The aforementioned “(Forever) Live And Die” had been a sizeable hit but it was the only one from the album which received mixed critical reviews.

Suffering from a creative drought, a Best Of album was released in 1988 which was a huge success going three time platinum but the band were clearly trading on former glories. By 1989, Humphreys (along with two other band members ) had had enough and left to form footnote-in-electronic-music-history band The Listening Pool whilst Andy McCluskey committed to carry on under the OMD name.

“Sailing on the Seven Seas” was the first post Humphreys single and a curious thing it was too. Listening to it now, it seems quite pedestrian though I don’t recall thinking that at the time. That almost shuffling glam rock back beat allied with McCluskey’s plaintive vocals and a decidedly weird Jean Michel Jarre style keyboard solo in the middle and yet the UK record buying public lapped it up. The single would rise all the way to No 3, OMD’s highest charting hit since “Souvenir” some 10 years earlier. I don’t think either McCluskey or record label Virgin really expected that sort of success if they were being honest.

Things would get even better though as “Sailing on the Seven Seas” paved the way for the successful launch of parent album “Sugar Tax” which would go platinum in the UK and spawn a further Top 10 single in “Pandora’s Box”. Remarkable stuff really. OMD were back and how!

Seriously?! Still with Black Box?! That ship hasn’t sailed, struck an iceberg and sunk yet?! This must surely be their last TOTP appearance (please!)? Anyway, they’re here once more with “Strike It Up” and…hang on…did Jakki Brambles say “Will you welcome Black Box featuring Steps”?! Steps?! As in Steps that did “Tragedy”? As in ‘H’ from Steps? Relax, it will be a few years before that lot appear in these TOTP repeats. No, this was Stepz (with a ‘z’ see?) who was the rapper dude on the track. And who was he? Well, as far as I can ascertain, he also went by the names Stepsi and Stepski but his real name was Lee Bennett Thompson and he also worked with Quartz who did that Carole King cover with Dina Carroll. Yeah, I don’t care either. Next!

After the Levis-inspired success of “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, it was inevitable that a follow up single was released by The Clash and what more obvious candidate could there be than “Rock the Casbah“. Similarly pulled from their “Combat Rock” album, it made complete sense even though it had already been a No 30 hit in the UK 9 years previously. I certainly remember it being in the charts back in 1982 but curiously have little memory of it being an even bigger it (No 14) in the charts in 1991.

The video prompted some controversy featuring as it does a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jew befriending each other on the road on the way to a Clash gig which, according to director Don Letts, was all “about breaking taboos”. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant whilst later on the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer. Although the track was initiated by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, that isn’t him in the video as he had been sacked for continuous drug abuse by then. That’s actually original drummer Terry Chimes on the drums that we see on screen.

Despite the recent Gulf War BBC black list, the track was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm and to Joe Strummer’s horror, the phrase “Rock the Casbah” was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the the conflict. Commercially, it was the biggest US hit that the band ever had and, alongside “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, is predominantly what The Clash are known for ever the pond in some quarters and let’s be fair, it is a f*****g tune!

It’s The Mock Turtles again with “Can You Dig It?”! Excellent! The last time they featured in this blog I rambled on and on about how they had done an instore PA at the Our Price where I was working in Manchester and that I had got on the guest list for their gig that night at The Manchester Academy and about their connection to Jude Law. This week I have dredged up my signed copy of their “Two Sides” album from that PA. I didn’t queue up to have it signed I should add. Rather it was a left over copy after they had finished and I recall having a long discussion with the Assistant Manger about how it should be treated as a promo as it was part of a promotion event. I seemed to put a lot of stock in the fact that it was signed I think rather than if it had cost the shop any money to get it in which surely was the deciding factor when it came to its promo status. For the life of me I can’t recall if it was supplied by the record company FOC or if the shop was charged fo it but the AM won and I had to cough up the readies to buy it. It’s a pretty good album with some lovely pop tunes on it but it does have an awful cover, signatures or no.

“Can You Dig It?” was a hit all over again in 2003 when it was used in that Vodafone advert featuring David Beckham who was still in his Hoxton Fin hairstyle period back then…

…but for me, they will always be a part of my 1991.

“Can You Dig It?” peaked at No 18 on its initial release and at No 19 in 2003.

It’s those pesky, high speed Breakers next, four of which were never shown on the show in full. Five write ups for me then all for the sake of 1 min and 21 seconds worth of videos. Cheers TOTP producers! We start with “My Head’s In Mississippi” by ZZ Top which I have zero recollection of. It only got to No 37 in the charts so I could be forgiven I guess. It sounds a bit like the band doing their best Johnny Cash impression from the 16 seconds we got to hear of it on TOTP – I couldn’t be bothered to root out the track in full to be honest. It was taken from an album called “Recycler” which I don’t remember either though it did have the track “Doubleback” included on it from Back to the Future Part III apparently.

ZZ Top would return the following year with a cover of the Elvis track “Viva Las Vegas” to promote a Greatest Hits album which was much more fun.

Nope, don’t remember this either. “Seal Our Fate” by Gloria Estefan was the second of four singles taken from her “Into The Light” album all of which made the UK Top 40 but none of which made the Top 20. Make of that what you will. If we saw ZZ top channelling their inner Johnny Cash before, this was like Gloria being Britney Spears some 7 years before Britney was Britney. Apparently the video was well received by her fans as if Gloria could do its choreography routine then this was proof that she had made a full recovery from her injuries sustained in a coach crash in March of 1990.

Next on the Generation Game style conveyor belt of Breakers is Silver Bullet with “Undercover Anarchist” which was the follow up to “20 Seconds To Comply”. Again I don’t remember this one at all but then that’s hardly surprising as the TOTP graphics team seemed to have forgotten what the single was called whilst it was still in the charts as their caption reads “Under Anarchist”.

It doesn’t really matter as if I’d wanted to listen to a track with the word ‘anarchist’ in the title then I would have gone for this by one Hull’s finest…

There was a definite hint of 80s chart acts making a comeback in this particular TOTP. After OMD earlier in the show here were Transvision Vamp who had been AWOL for the whole of 1990 after their last chart appearance with “Born To Be Sold ” at the end of 1989. They hadn’t been idle though as they had been recording their third album, the ludicrously entitled “Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble” and inevitably they wanted to move away from the bubble gum glam pop that had brought them fame and fortune with tunes like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care”. However, record label MCA weren’t that keen on the idea of the band maturing and refused to release the album in the UK. Instead, it was given a limited world wide release with copies only available in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The idea was to see how it did in those territories before a UK released was sanctioned. This lead to many an import copy of the album finding its way into UK record stores. We certainly had one in the Our Price I was working in and we had a Wendy James devotee who would come in week after week to see if the UK release was out yet. I can’t recall if he was tempted by the £20 import CD that we had in stock but if he didn’t buy it then nobody would have.

The lead single from the album was “(I Just Wanna) B with U” and it was the first track that Wendy received an official co-writing credit for. Was it any good though? Well, I was underwhelmed and I’d liked a lot of the band’s previous singles. I wasn’t the only one unimpressed as it struggled to a high of No 30, the band’s last ever UK chart hit. Follow up single “If Looks Could Kill” missed the Top 40 by one place and that was that. By the time that MCA had authorised an UK release for the album, the band had split anyway. Even now, the album is not available on Spotify although its singles are on a Best Of album which can be streamed. Was it the new material that let them down or were the band just an anachronism in the new decade? Who knows but they did burn brightly during their time in the sun.

Talking of 80s pop stars making a 90s comeback, here’s Pete Wylie and he’s joined forces with fellow scousers The Farm to do a re-working of “Sinful”. Yes, despite being completely wonderful, this was the first time Pete had been in the Top 40 since “Sinful” had been a No 13 hit back in 1986. His lack of chart success really is a crime against music.

I’m not totally secure in my knowledge of the circumstances around this release. The Farm were at their commercial peak having secured two Top 10 singles in 1990 with “Groovy Train” and “Altogether Now” from their No 1 album “Spartacus” which was released in the spring of 1991. However, their commercial fall was imminent. They released a third single from the album the Monday after this TOTP aired but “Don’t Let Me Down” peaked at a disappointing No 36. This re-working of Sinful retitled “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” was a non-album single but presumably it was a live favourite as showcased by the video here.

Later in the year, Wylie would release the criminally ignored album “Infamy! Or How I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today” whilst The Farm would release an album called “Love See No Colour” in 1992 which would fail to chart making them, along with the aforementioned Transvision Vamp and purveyors of blue eyed soul Johnny Hates Jazz as acts that followed up a No 1 album with an LP that failed to chart.

A terrible accident would befall Pete later in the year when he suffered a near fatal fall when a railing gave way in Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool causing him to fracture his spine and his sternum. The legend goes that when the ambulance crew turned up and did their usual checks including to ask what the injured party’s name was, Pete replied ‘You should f*****g know who I am!”. I love Pete Wylie!

“Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” peaked at No 28.

Next a song that was… well…just bizarre and yet it just worked. Despite no longer being the chart topper he was in the 80s, Paul Young was doing a decent job of keeping his career going into the new decade with a couple of Top 40 hits in 1990 from his “Other Voices”. By the time 1991 came around though, he had also had a couple of flops. So what do you do when your career needs a lift? Release a Best Of album of course! “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” was a huge success going to No 1 and three time platinum in the UK off the back of an extensive TV ad campaign.

The album included three new tracks that were in fact cover versions that all ended up being released as singles. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was the first of those and was actually a duet with some geezer called Zucchero. I’d never heard of him before at the time but, as Jakki Brambles says in her intro, he was a very big deal indeed in his native Italy. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was actually his song and he had released it himself back in 1987. When Paul Young heard it whilst on holiday there, he approached the Z man about covering it but the reply came back ‘why don’t we do it as a duet?’. And so it came to pass that Paul Young would have his biggest hit since “Every Time You Go Away” back in 1985 stood next to a bloke who, according to the reaction on Twitter when this TOTP was re-shown the other week, looked very much like Keith Lemon. They have a point.

I think it’s the lyrics which make this record so curiously memorable. Certainly some of the lines have stayed with myself and my wife all these years. For example, ‘Look at me, I’m a flower’ and ‘You got to dig a little deeper lady’ stand out – maybe they didn’t translate too well from Italian to English. It’s the ‘even doing my own cooking’ line though that steals it. At the time, I wasn’t the most handy in the kitchen and so anything that I did produce would be met with a retort of ‘even doing my own cooking’ by my wife. I have got a lot better now! Zucchero’s inspiration for the line came from his own culinary trials…

Zucchero on "Sensa Una Donna": "At the time, I was almost divorced by my ex-wife and I was living in a small house by myself, trying to save my marriage. I was very sad and upset. I was in the kitchen and I had to cook by myself for the first time!" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

"So I started to cook some really terrible spaghetti, and I said, ‘I can’t live without you, because I can’t cook by myself!’ That’s why I say in the song: ‘I’m here cooking by myself.’ The song came out very quickly – music and lyrics in about half an hour." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

OK, just to clarify, I wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t have cooked some pasta nor was I in the process fo getting divorced!

It’s the first of Jakki’s lines that have stuck with me now as she says at the song’s end “Senza Una Donna which means Without A Woman – bare faced liars the pair of them”. Well, I’d have to say that Paul looks pretty cool with a sharp haircut but Zucchero? I can’t unsee Keith Lemon now.

Another Jakki Brambles line that for some reason has stuck in my brain these last 30 years next as she introduces Chesney Hawkes who is at No 1 for the 4th week with “The One And Only”. After starting off her intro with “What else can we say about our next man…” and listing all his ‘achievements’ which include having “a bit of a famous Dad” – Whoah! Stop right there! A bit of a famous Dad?! Len “Chip” Hawkes was the bassist in The Tremeloes it’s true but was he really that famous? It’s also true that Decca famously chose The Tremeloes over The Beatles for a recording contract back in 1962 so the band do have a place in pop music history but Hawkes wasn’t anything to do with it as he didn’t join the band until 4 years later. And yes, he did co-write some of their Top 10 hits but would anyone have really recognised him walking down the street back in 1991? Was he doing lots of TV appearances as some sort of talking head aficionado on pop music Paul Gambaccini style? I don’t think so. I suppose Jakki did say “a bit of a famous Dad” as opposed to “celebrity royalty” but even so.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway, finally Brambles gets to her killer line as she says “All that remains for me to say is Chesney Hawkes…GET YOUR HAIRCUT!” She had a point. Chesney’s Barnet was a disgrace. He’d clearly grown it out since appearing in Buddy’s Song and it now resembled a bob. Thankfully, he no longer has said style now that he is nearly 50.

The play out video and the final of 14 songs on the show tonight is “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. When I was a small child, my Dad had the “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” single by Benny Hill. I thought it was funny at the time as I had an undeveloped sense of humour. My Dad thought it was funny because…I’m not sure why…I think it must have been the ridiculousness of the tale that Hill’s distinctive voice imparted. As I grew older (and so did my Dad), that record never got played again in our house because it was a novelty record and novelty records don’t age at all well. Suffice to say, “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was a timeless classic compared to “Deep, Deep Trouble” which has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of popular culture.

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

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	James	Sit Down	No but I have it on their Best Of album
2	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was an honest mistake!
3	OMD	Sailing On The Seven Seas	No but I have it on their Best Of album
4	Black Box	Strike It Up	Nope
5	The Clash	Rock The Casbah	No but I must have it on something
6	The Mock Turtles	Can You Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album (signed!)
7	ZZ Top	My Head’s In Mississippi	No
8	Gloria Estefan	Seal Our Fate	Negative
9	Silver Bullet	Undercover Anarchist	I did not
10	Tranvision Vamp	“(I Just Wanna) B with U”	No but I have it on their Best Of album
11	Pete Wylie / The Farm	Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)	I bought the original in 1986 but not this version
12	Paul Young / Zucchero	“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)”	No but I have it on Paul’s Best Of album
13	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Nah
14	The Simpsons	Deep, Deep Trouble	Hell 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/m000xp0k/top-of-the-pops-18041991

TOTP 11 APR 1991

Posted on July 16, 2021 by 80stastic

Right, I’m starting to get behind on writing up these TOTP reviews. I’m averaging over 3,000 words per post so with two shows being shown on BBC4 a week….I could have easily written multiple books over the number of years I’ve been doing this. With that in mind, I’m going to have to whizz though some of these acts with just a cursory nod to detail and research.

Tonight’s host is Anthea Turner (groan) and we start with The Wonder Stuff who have arrived at that crossroads that most indie type bands arrive at eventually. The one where they look at the sign that points to ‘Megastardom and riches but hand your soul in at the door’ one way and ‘stay credible, critically acclaimed and penniless’ the other. A fork in the road encountered by many before and since. Spandau Ballet started out as the pin up band for the New Romantics cult but made the decision to go mainstream and be one of the biggest bands in the world when they recorded the “True” album. One year on from this TOTP broadcast, The Shamen would go from an underground indie/dance hybrid to being all over our TV screens with a No 1 single and a gurning pop star rapper in Mr C. For now though, it was the turn of Miles Hunt and the gang and they chose fame and fortune with the release of “Size Of A Cow”. The lead single from new album “Never Loved Elvis”, this was a catchy, knock about, shout-a-long tune that was much more pop than anything they had ever done before. It’s almost like a prototype for Blur’s “Country House”. It was hard not to like it though. Hunt himself throws himself into the song with a tartan suit borrowed from Andrew Ridgely and his ruffled shirt. It’s almost like an audition to be the next Dr Who (had it still been on air back then ). The album would be a huge success going Top 3 whilst “Size Of A Cow” peaked at No 5. Around this time they played a gig at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium to 18,000 fans but had they lost any of their original fan base? If they hadn’t, their loyalty may have been tested to the limit when they teamed up with Vic Reeves for a cover of “Dizzy” later in the year.

Madonna‘s only single of 1991 was “Rescue Me”. Nothing to do with the 1965 Fontella Bass single of the same name, this was the second of two new tracks from her mega selling “Immaculate Collection” Best Of album. The first had been the controversial “Justify My Love” and initially there had been no plans to release “Rescue Me” as a follow up but after extensive airplay, Sire Records changed tack and gave it an official release. The video shown here was hastily cobbled together using footage from Madonna’s 1987 Who’s That Girl World Tour. I have to say it’s not one of my favourites of hers by some distance. I wasn’t that keen on all the spoken word verses although I suppose the chorus is catchy enough. Apparently, when it debuted at No 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March 1991, it was the highest new entry for a song since The Beatles’ “Let It Be” went straight in at No 6 in March 1970. That can’t be right can it? Whilst we’re talking about the song’s chart performance, it should also be noted that it peaked at No 3 in the UK (Madonna’s fourth of nine singles to peak at that position ) and was the 27th of her 70 UK hit singles! 70! That’s nearly one for very year she’s been alive isn’t it? Actually how old is Madonna now?

*checks Wikipedia*

She’s 62. Close enough.

A bit of a patronising intro from Anthea next as she says of Alison Limerick‘s “Where Love Lives”:

“Alison Limerick first released her debut single last year. It didn’t do so well but she’s released it again and now it’s a hit….”

It’s the tone in her voice, the small grimace on her face and the downwards motion hand gesture that seem a bit snide to me. If this was a text message it would have a sad face emoji at the end of it. Enough of Anthea though.

Alison is one of those names that have been around for ages like Ruby Turner or Beverley Knight but who surprisingly doesn’t have the number of hits that you would think they do. “Where Love Lives” is one of just six Top 40 UK hits. Actually its two of six as it was a hit again in 1996. As Anthea correctly pointed out, it was first released in 1990 when it peaked at No 87 but after extensive play in the clubs, it warranted a re-release – with the addition of the suffix (Come On In)’91 – and it was a No 27 hit. It reached its highest peak though when remixed in 1996 when it made No 9. Alison looks damn cool here as she gives a slick performance with her Grace Jones style crew cut and sharp dance moves. She has worked with acts as diverse as The Style Council, This Mortal Coil and The James Taylor Quartet and she continues to record and sing live to this day.

It’s another showing of the Gary Clail On-U Sound System performance of “Human Nature” from the other week next although I think Anthea stuffs up the intro by saying Gary Clail and the New Sound System. I’ve played it back three times now and I’m pretty sure that’s what she says. I know I sound pedantic but her job on TOTP was literally to say the names of artists and their songs. You can’t get that shit wrong, you really can’t. As for Gary, although “Human Nature” was the only hit he had that enabled a TOTP appearance, he had his eyes on the prize as way back as 1985 when he featured on an On-U Sound System track called “Half Cut For Confidence” The backing musicians on it were industrial hip-hop legends TackHead but they were credited as TOTP an acronym for The Occult Technology of Power but surely it was also a deliberate pun on the BBC music show? “Human Nature” peaked at No 10.

Not sure I remember this one. Monie Love and Adeva together? Nope it doesn’t (and yes I’m going there) ring any bells. When I saw the title of their single, I assumed it was a cover of the Anita Ward disco classic “Ring My Bell” that went to No 1 in 1979 but no, it isn’t. This was the sixth and final single to be taken from Monie Love’s “Down To Earth” album so we had heard quite a lot from her over the last year or so. The same could not be said of Adeva who had not been near the charts for nearly two years when her debut album provided her with four Top 40 hits including three that peaked at No 17. Would it be mean to suggest it was Adeva whose career needed a shot in the arm off the coat tails of Monie Love? Probably yes but it is true that “Ring My Bell” would be her last ever Top 20 hit.

The video rather predictably goes with a boxing match concept thereby including both the ringing of a bell theme and setting up a confrontation as in Monie Love vs Adeva. There’s no actual punches thrown though as all the action is done from the safety of their respective corners. This wasn’t really my cup of tea at all and I’d rather it had been a cover of Anita Ward.

Now here’s a line that you would never have expected to hear and which actually doesn’t make any sort of sense but then it is from the mouth of Anthea Turner so….

“We’ve got a real treat for you now. A stage full of expensive suits. In those suits are Mike + The Mechanics…”

A bit to unpack here. What is the big deal about some middle aged men (i.e. Mike + The Mechanics) wearing expensive suits? Were we meant to be jealous? If so, how is that a treat for us? Or were we meant to admire how good they looked in them? With the greatest respect to Paul Carrack, Mike Rutherford and Paul Young (not that one) et al, I don’t think the suits made that much difference in the looks department. “Word of Mouth” would peak at 13 whilst its parent album of the same name went silver certifying 60,000 sales.

It’s the top selling albums of the month feature next and for March 1991 they were:

1.Eurythmics – “Greatest Hits”

2. Chris Rea – “Auberge”

3. The Farm – “Spartacus”

4. REM – “Out Of Time”

5. Debbie Harry / Blondie – “The Complete Picture”

Well, that seems a bit better than recent months. Yes, two are Best Of compilations but what Best Ofs! The Eurythmics one was their first ever and I for one was certainly looking forward to it coming out. It would go on to be the second best selling album of the year after it was pipped at the post by Simply Red’s “Stars”. Although it wouldn’t stand the test of time, at least “Spartacus” was by a new, up and coming band after months of the Top 5 being populated by the likes of Elton John, Madonna and Pavarotti. Talking of time, REM’s “Out Of Time” was really starting to establish them as a world conquering band. It was only really Chris Rea that was letting the Top 5 down.

Another glimpse of patronising Anthea next as she seeks to make us all dismiss the fact that Dannii Minogue is not just Kylie’s sister by pointing out that Dannii Minogue is actually Kylie’s sister. After highlighting her genealogy, Anthea says “she’s a great little actress, she’s got a charming personality…”. No doubt Anthea thought she was being complimentary but it just doesn’t come across like that. The use of the word little seems unnecessary and the charming personality vibe indicates that there is a silent ‘though’ implied. “Love And Kisses” was her debut hit but I don’t think time has been kind to it. There’s not much of a tune in there and it seems to hinge on an energetic dance routine rather than any musical virtues.

Chesney Hawkes is still No 1 and we get the video this week although there seems to be some confusion over this as I have found two different promos for “The One And Only”. The one that TOTP shows is a straight forward performance of the song in a gig setting intercut with some scenes of Chezza arriving at the venue, being mobbed by fans and signing some autographs.

However, there is also another video that seems to have an A-ha “Take On Me” inspired plot to it. In this one, two female friends go to the cinema to watch Buddy’s Song (the film that launched Chesney and that features “The One And Only”) and Chesney steps out of the film and into the cinema auditorium to beckon one of the girls to come to a storage room with him. It’s not really a winning chat up line. There then follows some intertextuality themed escapades as Chesney gets pulled in and out of the film pursued by his father played by Roger Daltrey in hot pursuit. Eventually Chesney and cinema girl both end up in the film together before a climatic snog. Now apparently, ‘cinema girl’ is played by Saffron from Republica and if this is true, then this is the second time in a matter of weeks that I have been unaware of her presence on the show. We saw her recently as the vocalist for N-Joi on their “Anthem” single. I don’t know, a character from soap opera Families turning up in The Mock Turtles and now someone being in a Chesney Hawkes video whilst also fronting a dance act. These were strange times indeed.

Did someone mention The Shamen before? Well, here are the very fellows with “Hyperreal”. Taken from their “En-Tact” album, it achieved what previous singles “Pro-Gen” and “Make It Mine” hadn’t by becoming the band’s very first Top 40 hit. I have to say that I didn’t think it was as good as either of those but it was still pretty decent tune anyway. Tragically, this would be the last single release before band member Will Sinnott drowned whilst swimming off the coast of Canary Island La Gomera. Electing to carry on, Colin Angus pressed forward with the release of “Move Any Mountain” (which was basically a remix of “Pro-Gen” under a new title) and it would cement the band’s reputation as chart stars when it peaked at No 4 in the Summer.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wonder Stuff	Size Of A Cow	I didn’t
2	Madonna	Rescue Me	No but I did have The Immaculate Collection with it on
3	Alison Limerick	Where Love Lives	Nope
4	Gary Clail / On-U Sound System	Human Nature	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Monie Love / Adeva	Ring My Bell	Nah
6	Mike + The Mechanics	Word Of Mouth	And the word was no
7	Dannii Minogue	Love And Kisses	Definitely not
8	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	It’s a no
9	The Shamen	Hyperreal	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.

TOTP 04 APR 1991

Posted on July 15, 2021 by 80stastic

In the last TOTP Rewind post, I was talking about sibling rivalries mainly as a device to shoehorn in a segue to Dannii Minogue who had appeared on the pop scene of 1991. I’m going to stick with that theme for this next show review and indeed extend it to cover the whole social unit of ‘families’. Now of course, there are lots and lots of examples of groups including brothers and sisters in their ranks and indeed, in some extreme cases, of the whole band consisting purely of same family members. There’s The Corrs, The Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge, The Jackson 5, Kings Of Leon, Hanson etc. My challenge, should I wish to accept it (and I do), is to interweave the concept of family into every act on this particular TOTP. Is it possible? I’m going to give it a go. Wish me luck….

…we begin with Inspiral Carpets and their new single “Caravan”. Not the easiest of starts given that I don’t think any of the band were related to each other. I have to say I don’t really remember this stage of the band’s career at all. This track was from their sophomore album “The Beast Inside” which was released nearly a year to the day after their debut studio album “Life” and which went Top 5 so I must have sold some copies of it in the Our Price I was working in but it seems to have passed me by. I remember the next album “Revenge Of The Goldfish” and its singles “Dragging Me Down”, “Bitches Brew” etc and also their 1994 LP “Devil Hopping” which included “Saturn 5” and “I Want You” but “The Beast Inside”? Barely a flicker. Critical reception of the album was mixed from what I can tell but “Caravan” sounds pretty melodic to me whilst retaining the band’s trademark sound. Its No 30 chart peak seems a bit meagre and unjust.

Right, I can’t fail at the first hurdle on this ‘families’ theme so there is of course that well known link to Noel Gallagher’s employment with them as a roadie before he formed Oasis with his brother Liam but that’s more about Oasis than Inspiral Carpets. Look, I’ll have to play my joker card early and fall back on the ever reliable @TOTPFacts for this little gem about singer Tom Hingley’s Dad:

Inspiral Carpets frontman Tom Hingley's dad, Ronald Hingley, was a Lecturer in Russian at Oxford University. If you own an Anton Chekhov book, there's a good chance he translated it. He also wrote biographies of the likes of Boris Pasternak and Stalin. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/QfHLJcxwuK
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

Family value: 5/10

A less than convincing start but the next one is an open goal. “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. A single by an actual family! Yes, it’s a cartoon family and not a real one but you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This, of course, was the follow up to the No 1 single “Do The Bartman” and was equally as annoying. It seems to be a tale of how Bart messed up mowing the lawn thereby missing a family day out and finally resulting in him throwing a party while his parents were out. Ah, we’ve all done it (I haven’t actually). There are references to Mom and Dad and Bart being their S-O-N. Like I said, an open goal for the families theme which I will gladly put in the back of the net.

Thankfully, this was the second and final single by The Simpsons that would make the charts (it peaked at No 7) so after finally ridding ourselves of Jive Bunny last week, it’s a double whammy as Bart, Homer and the rest depart forever this week. By the way, It’s not that I don’t like The Simpsons (as in the TV show), it’s just that I really couldn’t be doing with / see the point of their musical offerings.

Family value: 7/10

The first of three dance acts on the show tonight are next and it’s N-Joi with “Anthem”. This was their second visit to TOTP in a matter of months after their “Adrenalin EP” had charted at No 23 but “Anthem” was the track that they would become most famous for. Not only did it break the Top 10 over here but it was also a No 2 record in the US Dance chart. As I’ve said many time I’m not and never was much of a dance head but this sounded like a retread of “You Got The Love” by The Source featuring Candi Staton to me. No doubt someone could explain that it doesn’t even have the same bpm or something.

As host Gary Davies says, the singer on the track is called Saffron but I never until this moment twigged that it was the same Saffron who would gain fame as the lead vocalist for Republica of “Ready To Go” fame later in the decade. She seems to do more dancing than singing in this performance though and when I say dancing I mean doing a pretty rigorous work out routine full of high kicks and twirling. Did she do any of that while fronting Republica? I can’t remember so I’d better check…

*checks YouTube*

Not really. There was a lot of jumping about but it was all bit free form. Her N-Joi dance moves seemed a bit more rehearsed.

In 1995, DJ Sister Bliss of Faithless selected “Anthem” as one of favourite tracks describing it thus:

“And what an anthem it is! …That whole EP is fantastic, it’s the sound of the time but it doesn’t date. It’s a reliable classic. It’s always the last tune of the night – people must be bored with me playing it. it reminds me of driving around the M25 looking for the rave and ending up in a field with 10,000 smelly people.”

10,000 smelly people? Bliss indeed!

What? How am I going to squeeze a ‘families’ theme into this one? Erm…would you accept Sister Bliss?

Family value: 2/10

Despite being only 15 months into the new decade, we had already seen a slew of hits from the 80s reappearing in the Top 40. Some had been due to terrestrial TV premieres of blockbuster films like Top Gun and Dirty Dancing leading to the likes of Berlin and Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes having their soundtrack hits reactivated. Then there were the Best Of collections by artists being promoted by the re-release of their 80s hits. Talk Talk and Madonna were prime examples of this and also falling into this category were The Waterboys. In 1991, their collection “The Best Of The Waterboys 81–90” was released and was preceded by the re-issuing of their most famous song “The Whole Of The Moon”. I must admit to being surprised by this – not only by its existence but also by its commercial success. The album soared to No 2 in the charts yet the band had only had two Top 40 hits by this point neither of which had made the Top 20. Usually Best Of albums would be compiled to showcase a run of hit singles that an artist had racked up but this wasn’t the case with The Waterboys. Their albums though were well received and their most recent (1990’s “Room To Roam”) had peaked at No 5. They were also a very big live draw and had toured extensively over the years so they would heave reached a lot of people that way.

The band were in a state of flux come 1991 with disagreements over the band’s musical direction causing some members to leave. They would also leave their record label Ensign (an imprint of parent label Chrysalis) for whom all their back catalogue had been recorded. Ah, that’s why the Best Of album came out. A deliberate cash-in by the label to maximise the profitability of the band’s music that they owned. Anyway, “The Whole Of The Moon” smashed its previous 1985 chart high of No 26 when it went Top 3 at a stroke easily becoming their biggest ever hit. Now I’d loved this song back in ’85 and indeed my wife had the album it was from (“This Is The Sea”) but I couldn’t quite understand why it was so popular six years on. Maybe it was music fans trying to reclaim the charts from all those ghastly dance tunes that had taken up residency there?

As for the ‘families’ theme, well The Waterboys have had over 85 members through their ranks over the years including the likes of Karl Wallinger (World Party), Ian McNabb (Icicle Works) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) which is more than the legendary The Fall, so I think they could seriously claim to have the biggest rock family tree of all time.

Family value: 8/10

Next up, a band who I have rather a lot to say about and the first thing is that I love(d) The Mock Turtles. I had no idea who they were until they released “Can You Dig It?” but they had actually been around since 1985. It wasn’t until 1990 though what they really started to get some traction when debut album “Turtle Soup” was released on the Manchester label Imaginary Records which was also home to acts such as Cud and The Chameleons. The album included early singles “And Then She Smiles” and “Lay Me Down” the latter of which prompted interest from the majors including Virgin and they were duly signed to subsidiary label Siren Records. Siren chose “Can You Dig It?” which was originally the b-side to “Lay Me Down” as the next single to launch them on the label and, having added a pop sheen to it with some additional guitar work, it was an immediate hit. Its infectious groove and spiralling guitar riff proved irresistible and the added wah wah guitar in the middle eight worked a treat. It managed to traverse the thin line between attracting daytime air play whilst also trading off the Manchester effect which was still just about going into 1991. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

An album was hastily recorded for Siren called “Two Sides” which included “Can You Dig It?” and a re-recorded version of “And Then She Smiles” from “Turtle Soup” but no other tracks made the switch to the new label. There’s some great pop tunes on “Two Sides” (I know because I bought it) yet it didn’t seem to do anything commercially. “And Then She Smiles” was re-released as a follow up single but just failed to make the Top 40 whilst third single “Strings And Flowers” disappeared without trace. It’s almost become a forgotten album, overshadowed by its indie predecessor. It’s not even on Spotify although “Turtle Soup” is, an expanded version of which was released by Cherry Red Records recently. Not even an in store appearance by the band at the Our Price I was working at could boost the sales of “Two Sides”. Ah yes, that in store PA. This was the first one we’d had at the shop since I’d been working there and it seemed like a big deal. As it was taking place in their hometown, a large crowd had gathered for the event. The band were smuggled in around the back and then positioned behind the counter for a signing session. We had the single blaring out on the shop PA constantly and the drama was heightened when my colleague Craig decided to switch the store lights on and off frantically to announce their appearance. There were even some whooping in the crowd. Business seemed to be brisk and the band duly signed whatever was put in front of them and it all seemed to be going quite well.

And then Jude Law turned up. Yes, the BAFTA award winning actor Jude Law. “Why?” you might well ask. Well, this was before Jude had made any films so he wasn’t that well known except to those of us who religiously tuned in to Granada soap Families in which he was starring at the time. Families was basically Aussie soap Sons And Daughters translated for a UK audience but with a twist -the plot was set in Cheshire, England and Sydney, Australia with he connection being a guy called Mark Thompson who leaves his family in the UK to be with his true love Diana Stevens in Australia. Then there’s the quite dark twist that unbeknownst to Mike, Diana had given birth to his son Andrew who ended up travelling to England where he met Mike’s daughter Amanda by his English wife and they fall in love not realising that they were half-brother and sister!

Me and my wife used to watch Families all the time when it was repeated late night on Granada. We were skint most of the time so we weren’t out partying that much and it kind of became a habit. So we’re happily watching the ongoing shenanigans which included Jude Law on screen as Mike Thompson’s son Nathan (he would have been around 18 I think) and Nathan’s brother called Mark who was played by a guy called Martin Glyn Murray. Still with me? Good. Fast forward to this episode of TOTP and we’re watching The Mock Turtles perform and we both look at each other and say “Isn’t the guitarist that bloke from Families?” We peered again and concluded it really did look like him but why would that actor bloke be in a pop band as well? So when Jude Law turned up at The Mock Turtles PA, it must have dawned on me that it was indeed ‘that bloke from Families‘ (that’s how we found things out back in the early 90s kids – no internet back then!). So Jude approaches the counter and asks me if he can nip behind it to go and see his mate to which I replied “Sorry mate, no chance”. Jude protested so I had to ask the manager if he could allow it which he did as I recall. Somewhere along the line he also managed to get a free pass for the shop staff to attend the gig that the band were playing that night at the Manchester Academy (maybe letting Jude Law behind the counter was his leverage). Excellent!

So, me and my wife popped down to The Academy that night and ended up standing close to Jude Law (though I was bored of him by now) but also Peter Hook and Caroline Aherne. They weren’t the only names there that night. Steve Coogan was also there. Oh yes, if the families theme wasn’t fulfilled by a soap opera actually called Families then there was also the fact that the lead singer of The Mock Turtles was the brother of comedian and TV star Steve Coogan. Whilst researching this post I came across a full recording of the gig posted on YouTube by Martin Coogan and at the end there are some scenes of the after show party where Steve Coogan makes an appearance. At this point he had long curly hair and somebody says to him “It’s him off Sit Down innit?” meaning Tim Booth from James. He doesn’t look too impressed. Mind you the same guy says to Jude Law (who’s managed to get himself back stage at The Academy with more ease than he did behind the counter at Our Price) “Ooh it’s him off Blue Peter“. Ha!

Well, I think that’s enough Mock Turtles stories for one day but there on again in a couple of shows time….

Family value: 10/10

Next is a song that I had completely forgotten about. Actually, it’s not that there’s nothing in the memory banks for it and more that my brain has shifted, re-edited and morphed it into another song entirely. There’s a good reason for this as well and that is that “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” by C+C Music Factory is almost identical to their previous hit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. No wonder I can’t recall it – it’s been completely subsumed by their debut hit. In my head their singles timeline went straight from “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” to “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” but here is the evidence to the contrary.

The video looks like the set of Aliens 3 to me and what is that freaky looking thing writhing around on the floor in a gas mask at the start of it? Here’s @TOTPFacts with some info which goes a long way to explaining the whole visual imagery going on in this promo:

This C+C Music Factory video was directed by Marcus Nispel, whose credits also include the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2009 version of Friday The 13th. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

That explains that then. I’m struggling to fit a families theme into this one but….the history of C+C Music Factory is littered with lawsuits and fallings out including Martha Wash suing for a settlement on her vocals being uncredited on the chorus of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. There is also the case of rapper Freedom Williams (who is credited on “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)”) who, having left the group in the mid 90s, started performing shows under the C+C Music Factory name causing founding member Robert Clivillés to denounce it as “the biggest insult in the world”. So basically they were like a typical family with loads of members feuding and holding grudges against each other!

Family value: 4/10

Host Gary Davies goes all embarrassing uncle at a wedding in the intro to the next one as he says “Some more music now for you to boogie to…” WTF?! Boogie to?! At a time when the show was struggling to accommodate and reflect the domination of the charts by dance music and indeed were struggling to remain relevant to the musical landscape, comments like that really didn’t help. And who were the boogie-meisters in question? Well it was Black Box of course with the fifth single to be released from their “Dreamland” album which came out nearly a year prior to this.

I can’t find the video for “Strike It Up” online anywhere (copyright issues again) but it features Katrin Quinol up there again miming to the vocals who were actually supplied by Martha Wash. Yes, her again! And guess what, Martha had to sue the asses off Black Box as she had with C + C Music Factory to get her due credits. She might as well have given up on singing and taken up a career as a lawyer by this point!

“Strike It Up” peaked at No 16 but Black Box would not be seen inside the UK Top 20 ever again. Hurray! As for the ‘families’ concept…erm…well…I’ll have to resort to the family feuding theme again with Martha Wash as the common link between rock family trees.

Family value: 3/10

This must be the last ever TOTP appearance for Feargal Sharkey I think. “I’ve Got News For You” was certainly his last ever Top 40 hit anyway. Gary Davies says his vocal in this performance is live which is pretty impressive. Whether you like it or loathe it, you just cannot deny that Feargal’s voice is unique. He was only 32 when he made his last album (“Songs From The Mardi Gras” from which “I’ve Got News For You” was taken). Surely he had a bit more to give musically?

After a successful career in the business side of the music industry, Feargal spends a lot of his time fishing these days and campaigning about pollution in chalk based rivers. None of this has anything to do with my families theme though so I will have to delve into Feargal’s back catalogue and reference “My Perfect Cousin” from his time with The Undertones and his very first solo single “Listen To Your Father”. Job done!

Family value: 6/10

It’s the second of five weeks at the top for Chesney Hawkes and “The One And Only”. Chesney, of course, is often referred to as a classic, nay optimum one hit wonder – one huge No 1 hit then nothing, zero, nada. Except it isn’t actually true*. There was one other Top 40 hit for young Chesney which was called “I’m a Man Not a Boy” which was the follow up to “The One And Only” and was also taken from the Buddy’s Song soundtrack. It got nowhere near to repeating the success of its predecessor when it peaked at No 27 yet it remains a bona fide chart hit and therefore legitimately negates the one hit wonder claim. I wonder if it was a huge wake up call for Chesney that this pop star lark might be a short lived thing when “I’m a Man Not a Boy” hit its chart peak? Apparently he reached the point where his phone calls were not being taken by his record label and his career was kaput within two years after the failure of second album “Get The Picture” in 1993. In truth, Chesney mania was all over well before the end of 1991 though. At least he scores high on the families theme-o-meter as his brother Jodie was the drummer in his band whilst his Dad Chip was in 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

*see also Doctor and the Medics, Men At Work etc

Family value: 8/10

The play out video is “Word Of Mouth” by Mike + The Mechanics who are the second act on tonight’s show after C + C Music Factory to have a plus sign in their name rather than the word ‘and’. This always seemed like a bit of an anomaly to me and not very 1991 at all. It almost has an echo of being a 70s glam rock stomper with all those singalong ‘na na na nas’ and hand claps. Also, I thought we’d seen the last of Mike Rutherford’s spin off project as it had been over two years since “The Living Years” had been a big hit when its subject matter of a son confronting his unresolved conflict with his father amidst his grief at the latter’s death tugged at the heart strings of the population. Oh, there’s my ‘families’ theme ticked off! Suddenly though they were back with a No 13 hit and the album of the same name performed reasonably well going silver and peaking at No 11. It did not produce any further hit singles though.

There are all sorts of rock family tree connections with this lot. There’s Genesis of course but also Sad Café (via vocalist Paul Young) and all sorts of acts associated to Paul Carrack including Squeeze, Ace, Roxy Music, The Pretenders and The Smiths. Not quite up there with The Waterboys but certainly worthy of a decent family value score.

Family value: 7/10

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

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	Caravan	Nope
2	The Simpsons	Deep Deep Trouble	Of course not
3	N-Joi	Anthem	Nah
4	The Waterboys	The Whole Of The Moon	No but my wife and the album
5	The Mock Turtles	Can U Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album
6	C + C Music Factory	Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)	No
7	Black Box	Strike It Up	Hell no
8	Feargal Sharkey	I’ve Got News For You	It’s another no
9	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Negative
10	Mike + The Mechanics	Word Of Mouth	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/m000xh7f/top-of-the-pops-04041991

TOTP 28 MAR 1991

Posted on July 8, 2021 by 80stastic

Sibling rivalry. Healthy competition or the bringer of long lasting family fractures? I have siblings and, as a football obsessed youngster, grew up knowing that my elder brother was so much better at the game than me. I could barely get into my school team whilst he had scouts from professional clubs sniffing around. It was….character building. There are of course many examples of sporting siblings but how many of them attain an equitable level of success and fame. My theory would be that one is always more successful / well known than the other. Off the top of my head…

Serena Williams vs Venus Williams? Definitely Serena
Andy vs Jamie Murray? Andy surely
Anton vs Rio Ferdinand? Easily Rio
Gary vs Phil Neville? Hmm, I’d have to go Gary

OK, I’m sure you could all come up with anomalies to debunk my theory but I’m sticking with it. More than that, I’m going to try and extend it to musical siblings. Who have we got? Ray and Dave Davies from The Kinks, The Gibb brothers of the Bee Gees, Noel and Liam Gallagher, the three Wilson brothers in The Beach Boys, Hanson(!)… I’m beginning to see a problem with this in that these siblings were in bands together so it’s harder to make a definitive judgement. OK, some of them pursued their own solo careers so you could assess those I suppose but I’m not sure that’s a fair yardstick and yes, you could make a case for Brian Wilson over Dennis and Carl but then what about the twins Charlie and Craig Reid of The Proclaimers? They were tied to each other biologically and musically. So we’re am I going with all of this? In a very clunky and laborious way to the the first act on tonight’s TOTP who is Dannii Minogue – Kylie’s sister. And those last two words go straight back to my original point. Was Dannii always destined to be in the shadow of Kylie? Or as author Kathy Lette put it that there was always a perception that Dannii was the B-side to Kylie’s A?

It wasn’t how it started though. Dannii, despite being 4 years younger than her sister, was the most well known of the two in the beginnings of their careers as she appeared on Australian TV variety show Young Talent Time and indeed it was Dannii that got Kylie invited on the show to perform with her. After that, their careers seemed to run in tandem. Kylie became known to us in the UK as Charlene from Neighbours whilst Dannii took the role of Emma Jackson in Home And Away. Crucially though, Kylie had met Stock, Aitken and Waterman and beat her sister to chart stardom with her No 1 single “I Should Be So Lucky”. Was that the moment that their paths separated and Kylie was fused onto the nation’s consciousness ahead of Dannii?

By the time that Ms Minogue junior was releasing her “Love And Kisses” single, Kylie had already racked up 3 hit albums and 12 Top 10 singles including 4 No 1s in the UK. Dannii had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t helped by the fact that “Love And Kisses” wasn’t released in the UK until a whole year after its Australian release. When it finally did arrive, it performed pretty well rising to No 8 over here despite it being a fairly insubstantial, Janet Jackson style bit of pop fluff. Its parent album of the same name (it had been changed from its original “Dannii” title in Australia) also clocked up enough sales to achieve gold status and provided Dannii with a further four Top 40 singles. 1991 was Danni’s highpoint of the 90s though. The rest of the decade saw mainly dwindling sales (with the odd exception) and by around 1995/6, she was peddling her calendar that included naked shots of her. We definitely sold a few of those in the Our Price store I was working in (ahem). However, 2003’s “Neon Nights” dance album was well received and went Top 10 and she followed that up by appearing as an X Factor judge on our TVs every Saturday night from 2007 to 2010.

Did someone mention The Bee Gees before? Here are the Brothers Gibb with their “Secret Love” video. I’ve been sat here at my computer for a good five minutes now and I can’t think of anything else to say about this record other than it really wasn’t one of their finest moments. How about I just pad it out with some sales stats? Yeah? OK, well even their US record label had lost faith in them by this point and subsequently didn’t do that much promotion for the parent album ‘High Civilisation” in the States. Consequently, it didn’t chart at all over there though it did struggle to a high of No 24 in the UK. It was more popular in the rest of Europe specifically in Germany (No 2) and Switzerland (No 6). No further singles from the album were big hits anywhere on the planet. We wouldn’t see The Bee Gees in the charts for another two years.

Right, who’s this fella? He looks like a scaffolder or something rather than a pop star. What’s that Bruno Brookes? He used to be a scaffolder actually? Oh right. Presumably that’s why you’re dong this link from the studio gantry and with the camera pointing up at you to give the impression of height – not something you were ever very good at eh? This fella was, of course, Gary Clail (and his On-U Sound System) with “Human Nature”. I was never quite sure what the On-U Sound System bit was all about but it was a nod to the On-U Sound Records label which specialised in dub music. Clail himself had been releasing record since 1985 (presumably when he wasn’t atop a scaffold somewhere) and also worked with legendary hip hop artists Tackhead but I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him before 1991.

“Human Nature” though was a great track and deservedly went Top 10. Despite his dub roots, the sound on this seemed like The Shamen meets The KLF to me but then I knew very little about dub music so I was probably way off. It was the lyrics though that I noticed most – their themes of intolerance and social divisions and the inability of mankind to empathise sound as relevant today as back then which doesn’t say much for the progress of society in the last 30 years. I say it was the lyrics I noticed most but you couldn’t fail to catch an eyeful of Lana Pellay (aka Lanah P aka Alan Pillay). Wow! Now Ru Paul’s Drag Race might well be seen as mainstream these days but back then, drag queens weren’t on your TV that often. I don’t think even Lily Savage had cut through to the masses by this point so Lana’s performance seemed to imbue the whole act with an element of outrageousness it seemed to me. It may have even outraged some viewers I guess. However, Bruno Brookes seemed more taken with Clail himself as he referred to him as ‘Mr Cheeky Face’ at the end of the track. Well, I suppose he did have a glint in his eye that reminds me a bit of Robbie Williams . No? Maybe? Gary would have one further Top 40 hit in 1991 but has continued to release material as recently as 2014.

Oh please. Not again. Not another Eurodance mega mix single! After Technotronic and Black Box pulled off the same cheap stunt of releasing a single made up of all their other previous hits mixed together because…well just because they could, here were Snap! getting in on the act. Theirs was called “Mega Mix” – as opposed to Black Box’s “The Total Mix” and Technotronic’s “Megamix” – they were so imaginative with their titles weren’t they? “Mega Mix” peaked No 10 which seems remarkable given all the tracks on it had all been Top 10 hits themselves in the last 12 months (including a No 1). How did people keep falling for this shit? Was it a club DJ thing? Thankfully, we won’t see Snap! for another 12 months or so but when they do return it will be as serious as cancer.

Finally, finally James are in the TOTP studio. After having three (albeit smallish)Top 40 hits in 1990 without being invited onto the show, the producers could ignore them no longer when the re-release of “Sit Down” went straight in at No 7. Originally released on Rough Trade in 1989 when it peaked at No 77, the band were convinced by new label Fontana to re-record it with Pixies producer Gil Norton and, propelled by a major marketing campaign (which even included appearing on Wogan before the single was released), it became a huge hit spending three weeks at No 2 behind Chesney Hawkes (sorry Chesney lad but there’s no defending that).

In a way, the song is the total antithesis of Gary Clail’s “Human Nature”, reassuring us that we are not all alone in the world with our worries and anxieties and to reach out (sorry, hate that phrase) to our fellow human beings and sit down next to each other to succour some comfort. When played live in Paris before it was released, the Mancunian element of the audience spontaneously sat down on the floor eventually triggering the whole 1000 strong crowd to do the same. This communal sitting down was repeated at a show at the G-Mex, Manchester in December 1990 thereby setting a trend tho be repeated at every show for the last 30 odd years. And yes, I’ve seen James live and sat down with them. “Sit Down” success would pave the way for the band to become a huge mainstream success. The time of James had arrived.

It’s Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks up next with their horrendous treatment of The Beatles song “She’s A Woman”. Having watched it back, quite what is it that Shabba Ranks adds to the record? There’s a mini rap breakdown towards the middle of it when he blathers on about ‘crazy music lovers’ or something but it only lasts a few seconds. Other than that he seems to be making some indecipherable noises in the background throughout -presumably he was extorting us to ‘wind it up’ or some other such nonsense.

I’ve always sided with Mark Lamarr when it comes to Shabba Ranks. Apart from his repulsive views, I’ve always viewed him as ridiculous for his tendency to shout out ‘Shabba’ in what felt like all his records which was beautifully lampooned in Phoenix Nights…

…Ray Von there who, like James before him, was also asking for people to “Sit Down”. “She’s A Woman” peaked at No 20.

Now then, Bruno Brookes in a half way decent segue shock now as he finds a way to bridge the gap between Shabba Ranks and the next act Definition Of Sound. “Shabba Ranks who once said of himself I’m not a star, I’m a galaxy. There you are that’s the definition of self confidence…” I don’t need to join the dots for what comes next do I?

Definition Of Sound were Kevin Clark and Don Weekes although they went by the monikers of Kevwon and The Don. That’s Kevwon not Rayvon. As well as the single “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, they also had an album out called “Love And Life: A Journey With The Chameleons” which was a bit confusing as there was also the Manchester band called The Chameleons. Anyway, I looked up the album on Amazon and saw some customer reviews of it. One was positively brimming with enthusiasm for it:

“There is not one bad track on this excellent album. It sounds as fresh today as it did back in the early nineties and is a real feel good collection of songs”

There was also this courtesy of marinegirl who simply said:

“Dreadful”

Well, you can’t please everyone.

I’m guessing that the lucky number seven the chorus is linked in with the title of the track given its significance and the regular occurrence of it in the New Testament. There’s also some nicely squeezed in reference to drug taking in the lyrics:

“Oi, I change my angle and my point
(Oooh) In fact it’s time to roll up a joint.. venture”

There also seems to be a lot of talk about women and the pursuit of them and yet Kevwon told Smash Hits magazine that he was “as sexy as a wet stamp”. Well, if you’re a philatelist …wet stamps…just saying.

The start of the 90s had seen The Rolling Stones on the road with their Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour but recordings wise, they would not release an album of new material until 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge”. To fill the gap between that and 1989’s “Steel Wheels”, a live album of the tour was released. Entitled “Flashpoint”, it featured 15 live tracks and two new studio recordings one of which was the single “Highwire”. Supposedly written about the international arms trade and the events that led to the first US war with Iraq, I have no recollection of this at all but I don’t mind it actually but then I’m hardly a Stones aficionado. The song’s first line (“We sell them missiles, we sell them tanks, we give them credit, you can call up the bank”) was considered far too politically sensitive by the BBC and duly the video shown on TOTP begins with the second verse. However, it wasn’t on their list of banned songs presumably because it was released after the conflict had ended. “Highwire” peaked at No 29.

He’s done it! Chesney Hawkes is No 1! Yes, Chesney mania is in full swing as people can’t seem to get enough of his “The One And Only” single. He’s back in the studio tonight with his band although, they’re not quite the same people that adorned all the covers of the pop press. By the end of its five week run at the top, the band line up had changed to include that guy who looked a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips on bass and the black guy on keyboards who gets very over excited during this performance had been replaced by a white dude. Also, the drummer has been changed so that it’s Chesney’s brother Jodie up there on the sticks.

Ah yes, Chesney’s drummer. I promised you a boring Chesney story last time and here it is. I was once in the same room as Chesney’s drummer! It was for an album playback event at a bar in Manchester (I think it was for Ricky Ross) and the record company rep had got a load of us from the Our Price store I was working in on the guest list. It was a free bar and a very messy do. I didn’t speak to Chesney’s brother though I did manage to grab a few words with Ricky. That’s it. Thats’ my Chesney story… …ooh, and I’ve found another example to support my musical sibling rivalry theory that I posited at the start of the post. Whatever you might think about Chesney (and James fans clearly hate him) he was, is and will always remain more famous than his brother.

See, this post should really be over now what with that final bit of sibling theme tying it altogether nicely but sadly, there is still one ‘song’ left. The play out video is “Over To You John” by Jive Bunny. FOR F***’S SAKE! The end of March 1991 and these pillocks are still in the charts. Thankfully it is the last time we shall ever see them. Yes, it is finally all over.

“Over To You John” reminds me of the 1983 single by Pink Floyd called “Not Now John”. Thankfully, there isn’t a Jive Bunny style Pink Floyd mega mix. Or is there…..yikes!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dannii Minogue	Love And Kisses	Not likely
2	The Bee Gees	Secret Love	If I’d wanted Chain Reaction (which I didn’t), I’d have bought back in 1986
3	Gary Clail and O-Nu Sound System	Human Nature	No but I easily could have
4	Snap!	Mega Mix	Hell no
5	James	Sit Down	Not the single but I have their first Best Of album with it on
6	Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks	She’s A Woman	Horrendous stuff – no
7	Definition Of Sound	Wear Your Love Like Heaven	No but I think I downloaded it off iTunes years later
8	The Rolling Stones	Highwire	Nah
9	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Nope
10	Jive Bunny	Over To You John	Now please f**k off John and never come back

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 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

Writer(s): Nelly Antoinette Byl, Alex Francfort

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

Writer(s): Nelly Antoinette Byl, Alex Francfort

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….album 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 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 signed 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 1992/93 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 of 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 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 this is supposed to be a Shep Pettibone remix, 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, I really don’t.

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.

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 Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 18 APR 1991

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TOTP 11 APR 1991

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TOTP 04 APR 1991

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TOTP 28 MAR 1991

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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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