80stastic

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, Italia ’90 may have come to a painful end a couple of weeks prior but the England football team were still in the news as three days before this TOTP aired, Graham Taylor was appointed full time manager of the national team following the pre-planned resignation of Bobby Robson. It wasn’t a universally welcome appointment and within three years and after a dismal Euro ’92 performance and failure to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, Taylor also resigned. The now infamous Channel 4 fly on the wall documentary film surrounding the doomed ’94 qualifying campaign originally broadcast as Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job is now, sadly for Taylor, the best remembered part of his legacy including the immortal line “Do I Not Like That”.

What’s all this got to do with TOTP? Very little although Taylor does, of course, have some legendary ties to music. Firstly, there is his relationship with Elton John (more of whom later) as Watford FC manager to Elton’s club chairman. Secondly, Taylor once admitted that his favourite ever singer was Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, an odd choice for a man who was only a one year old child when the war ended but then he was very much seen as an old fashioned type of gentleman. Funny then that he always seemed to be swearing his head off in that documentary…

Finally, and most bizarrely, I found this musical connection on YouTube. Apologies in advance…

My own personal Graham Taylor moment of 1990 came when I walked past his office door when he was still manager of Aston Villa (prior to his taking the England job). I’d contacted the football club as I was unemployed and desperate for some sort of career direction at the time. I had a chat with their commercial manager about possible career opportunities within football and his office was a couple of doors down from Graham’s.

If you clicked on this post hoping for some 1990 music memories and are wondering why you have been reading about football for the past 450 odd words, stick with me. I’m going there right now. OK, tonight’s host is Mark Goodier who has come dressed as a zebra and the first act on are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. They are up to the No 2 position and are eyeing a possible No 1 – they couldn’t could they? Well, *spoiler alert* no they didn’t but fair play, it was a gallant effort. He even got on the front cover of Smash Hits!

Craig and co are in the actual studio for the first time and he gets to show off his guitar playing credentials (or at least mime them) and they seem pretty convincing. In that Smash Hits article, he showed off his collection of guitars including the one he has with him on stage here. It’s not his most precious axe in his collection though which is an original series Ibanez Iceman made famous by KISS guitarist Paul Stanley who had a signature Iceman.

For all his rock credentials though, Craig was unable to forge a lasting music career despite a Top 10 album and halfway decent follow up single in “Amanda”. And whatever you may say about his cover of “Mona”, you have to admit it’s quite the ear worm.

Next up, the reason that poor old Craig failed to get that No 1 spot as it was stolen from under his nose by Partners In Kryme and their awful single “Turtle Power”. This was of course to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise entry into the world of film. This tale of four turtles turned into crime fighting, pizza eating heroes after being exposed to radioactive sewer ooze had been around for a couple of years via the animated cartoon (retitled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for the more delicately natured UK audience). With turtle related merchandising also coming on line, the step into the big screen was inevitable. The film didn’t hit UK cinemas until late November but as it was already out in the US, the soundtrack was available well in advance. According to Wikipedia:

‘The collection is made up mostly of hip-hop and new jack swing styled tracks with several film score cues at the end.’

The film score bits were courtesy of John Du Prez who was the bald trumpet player in Modern Romance (no really) whilst the hip -hop was supplied by flavour of the month MC Hammer and some acts I’ve never heard of including Riff and the unedifyingly named Spunkadelic. And of course Partners In Kryme. This American duo from New York City seem to have existed solely to make music for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. According to their discography, they have only ever released three singles – “Turtle Power” and “Undercover” in 1990 and a track called “Rock The Halfshell” on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles YouTube channel in 2015. They never released a full length album and the only other recorded material I can find accredited to them is a version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” retitled “Love 2 Love U” which appeared on another soundtrack album, this time for the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool As Ice. This film was so bad that it was nominated for eleven Golden Raspberry awards and was disowned by director David Kellogg. Sadly for us all, the time of Vanilla Ice is nearly upon us.

For the moment though, we only have Partners In Kryme to negotiate. This always seemed like a novelty record to me; I felt much the same about “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jnr. The lyrics do make some very specific references to the film and its characters which suggests a close connection to its source material (unlike say “World In Motion” whose football links are pretty loose). However, if you go down that route, make sure you get it right. Exhibit A m’lud:

“Splinter’s the teacher so they are the students.
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team
with one other fellow, Raphael.
He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop”

Now I’m no turtles expert (pretty sure I’ve never seen any of the films or cartoon) but Wikipedia assures me that it’s Leonardo who is the leader of the group, not Raphael. Sometimes you do have to sweat the small stuff.

A recurring feature of these 1990 TOTP repeats is that they’re throwing up lots of hits that I have no recollection of at all. Here’s another one – the DJ Phil Chill remix of “I’m Still Waiting” by Diana Ross. As to why this was released or indeed why Motown thought we needed a nasty, dull, plodding dance remix of this song, I have zero clue. It really is one of the worst remixes I’ve heard for a long time.

Fast forward three years to 1993 and I am working as Assistant Manager for Our Price in the Altrincham branch in Cheshire. EMI have issued a Diana Ross Best of for the Xmas market called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which is selling pretty well (it went 4 x platinum in the UK). There is a problem though. All the other musical outlets in Altrincham are selling the CD format of the album at £9.99 whilst our price point is holding at £11.99. Myself and the store manager, fearing we would never sell our considerable stocks of the album, therefore hatched a plan that we should price match our competitors which was completely against company policy and an action that was not within our remit at all. The plan worked and the CD was flying off the shelves and into our ringing tills …until the Area Manager descended upon the store for his Xmas ‘mince pie’ visit when he would come and ‘help’ out the staff by serving some customers. We all hated the ‘mince pie’ visits as inevitably the Area Manager would be more of an hinderance than a help as he didn’t know where anything was. Worse than that though, he might discover our unofficial Diana Ross price slash. As he began to serve in the shop, myself and the store manager desperately joined him to try and spot any customers in the queue that had the Diana Ross CD in their hands so as to head them off at the pass as it were before the Area Manager got a chance to serve them and discover our little plot. We must have looked completely hyper and preoccupied as we whittled down the queue of customers, all the while jumping in front of him should anybody approach the counter to purchase Ms Ross. Our efforts were rewarded though and he left without sussing anything untoward was occurring.

For the record, the original and vastly superior version of “I’m Still Waiting” was a No 1 record in 1970 whilst Phil Chill’s unwanted 1990 remix stalled at No 21 and it certainly was not on that Diana Ross Best Of that caused me so much anxiety.

A second appearance now for a song that only made it to No 27! Seems like a lot of exposure for such underwhelming sales. I’m pretty sure that this is just the original performance of “She Comes In The Fall” by Inspiral Carpets that was originally broadcast a couple of weeks previous. My suspicions are confirmed by @TOTPFacts:

This Inspiral Carpets performance (a repeat) was recorded the night England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

There’s more to this story though:

Guitarist Graham Lambert: "We watched the game in the BBC bar. We saw Jimmy Hill after the game, and with him we re-enacted the penalty shoot-out in the Blue Peter garden." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

The Blue Peter garden! A fixture of the show since 1974, it was infamously trashed in 1983 supposedly by a gang that included teenage future footballers Dennis Wise and Les Ferdinand! I’ve never heard any stories about Jimmy and the Carpet boys damaging the garden thereby debunking the rock stars trashing hotel rooms template. I bet the band also tidied their hotel rooms before checking out on time whenever on tour. My friend Robin,who worked for the BBC for many years, told me recently that the Blue Peter garden is actually much smaller than it seems on screen which is very nearly a metaphor for the chart fortunes of “She Comes In The Fall”.

Host Mark Goodier goes into a weird segue next when he bangs on about how ‘trendy’ the show is! Remember when ‘trendy’ was a word we all used? Nowadays it’s all ‘on point’ or ‘cutting edge’ and the only reference to the word trend is when something trends on Twitter. Surely Goodier can’t be referring to himself in that two tone outfit of his? To be fair though, the girl in the James T-shirt would definitely have been ‘on point’ back then.

And he surely can’t mean the next act who is Paul Young. I’d almost forgotten this period of Paul’s career. He’d seemed consigned to history back in 1986 when his third album “Between Two Fires” and its attendant singles didn’t pull up the expected trees commercially. Somehow though, even in the dance obsessed charts of the early 90s, he pulled off a comeback of sorts. His “Other Voices” album spawned two hit singles in “Softly Whispering I Love You” and this one, a cover (well it is Paul Young!) of the old Chi-Lites number “Oh Girl”.

Paul does seem every inch the chart anomaly here, a position emphasised by his lime green shirt and jacket and his white trousers. At least he seems to have sorted his hair out a bit since his last appearance on the show when frankly his barnet was a right mess. As for the song, it’s all very pleasant and that but even Goodier seems to damn him with faint praise at the end when he sums it all up by pronouncing “It’s a good song well sung”

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

Some pop puppets next. No, not New Kids On The Block but F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go!”. What a curious hit this was. I’m not quite sure what demographic it was appealing to but enough punters bought it to send it rocketing all the way to No 5. The framing of the Parker character as a DJ is its selling point I think. Certainly the video would not have been half as effective without the MC Parker bits inserted strategically.

Ever wondered what F.A.B. stands for though? Here’s head of the Thunderbirds operation Geoff Tracy…

…so nothing essentially. Just a clipping of the word ‘fabulous’. Other theories abound of course including ‘For Always Brothers’ as in the Tracy brothers presumably and also ‘Fully Acknowledged Broadcast’. Given that it doesn’t actually stand for anything, it was sure used a lot in the series…

Cripes! It’s that Madonna song! Yes, it’s time for some “Hanky Panky” people! An ode to sadomasochistic tendencies or just a bit of a laugh? Well, what’s for certain is that it was the follow up to her No 1 “Vogue” and it nearly repeated the trick by peaking at No 2 in the UK (though it only made No 10 in the US). This performance of it is from Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and clearly gets in a bit of promotion for the Dick Tracy film in which she starred with the inclusion of a male dancer dressed as Dick towards the end of the routine.

Inevitably, the song attracted its fair share of controversy especially in Ireland where two women’s organisations accused Madonna of glorifying violence against women, specifically on the line “I’ll settle for the back of your hand”. Madonna played down the accusations stating that of course it wasn’t her saying that she liked to be spanked but rather her character in the movie Breathless Mahoney. And if you think that’s enough controversy for one year, think again. The next 1990 Madonna single is “Justify My Love” – hold onto your crotches!

Now here’s an interesting tune. DreamWarriors were a Canadian hip hop duo who briefly found success and fame with a couple of hit singles the first of which was “Wash Your Face In My Sink”. Can it really have been a complaint about someone using their sink and leaving a ring around the basin?! Online commentaries suggest it is about setting boundaries around behaviour in relationships although we must have all have shared houses/ flats with people who don’t seem to share the same standards of hygiene that we pride ourselves as having surely?

As I’ve made clear many times before, I’m not a massive hip-hop fan, but this little eccentricity always appealed to me. “Wash Your Face In My Sink” peaked at No 16.

It’s the final week of five at the top for Elton John and, to quote Captain Sensible, ain’t I glad?! I think I’m right in saying that not once in all that time did TOTP play the other song of the double A-side that was “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” so here it is…

…hmm…well, I prefer it to the gigantic turd that is “Sacrifice” but it’s hardly up there in Elton’s canon of work as anywhere near approaching his best. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get that much airplay (certainly not on the radio stations I was listening to) back then either with “Sacrifice” taking the lion’s share making it altogether quite the forgotten No 1 song – a ghost No 1 if you will, standing there in plain sight but never seen. Not a phenomenon with a large members list I would suspect – I can only think of Billy Bragg’s version of The Beatles ‘She’s Leaving Home’ which was the almost completely ignored other A-side to Wet Wet Wet’s Childline No 1 “With A little Help From My Friends”.

I was aware that Paula Abdul had a song called “Knocked Out” but I could not have told you what on earth it sounded like. I would also have said that it never made the Top 40. I was both right and wrong. It was released three times in the UK before becoming a hit. It was actually Paula’s debut single back in September 1988 but bombed completely at No 98. However, following the success of “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl”, it was reissued and peaked at No 41 in August 1989. It finally made the Top 40 on its third release albeit that it required a Shep Pettibone remix to do the trick. They say trouble comes in threes and this single certainly wasn’t worth all that trouble to be honest.

The Shep Pettibone remix of “Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
2	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This was a crime…against music. No
3	Diana Ross	I’m Still Waiting Phil Chill 1990 remix	And I’m still waiting for an explanation for this dire record’s existence
4	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
5	Paul Young	Oh Girl	Oh no
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
8	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
9	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
10	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	No

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmn/top-of-the-pops-19071990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Posted on January 29, 2021 by 80stastic

So Italia ’90 is finally over, English pride in their football team has been restored and Gazzamania is upon us. Thankfully we have a few weeks yet before Mr Gascoigne enters the world of pop music. In the meantime, we have seven ‘new’ tunes to feast on at the top table of TOTP. If music be the food of love, play on…

…and we start with with Scottish rockers Gun (terrible name*) and their single “Shame On You”. When the band appeared in the Breakers section of TOTP with their debut hit “Better Days” back in the Summer of ’89, another band featured in that section that same show were The Stone Roses. In an unlikely turn of events, the Roses are again on TOTP alongside Gun tonight. In the blog post of that ’89 programme, I revealed that I should have been absolutely ripe to be swept away by the baggy movement spearheaded by Ian Brown and co and yet somehow I managed to nail my colours to the Gun mast! Fast forward a year and let’s see how that choice worked out. The Stone Roses are the coolest band in Britain and their debut album can be heard coming out of the bedroom window of just about every music fan who knows their stuff. And Gun? Well, they followed up “Better Days” with three further single releases none of which made the Top 40. Still, as presenter Anthea Turner (dressed like a tube of Opal Fruits tonight) says, they have been on tour with none other than The Rolling Stones (more of whom later).

It seems though that Gun’s luck is beginning to turn as they are back in the charts with “Shame On You” (the fifth single from their debut album “Taking On The World”). And guess what? I was still sticking to my guns (ahem) and that original choice of band as I bought this single! Yes, after months of never having bought any of the singles featured on the show, two songs come along at once that I purchased with this one and Bob Geldof’s “The Great Song Of Indifference” from the other week. I bought it on cassette single (cassettes were still my format of choice back then) and it was backed with a live version of “Better Days” on the B-side as it were. I loved the driving back beat that builds gradually and that twangy guitar riff. Unfortunately for me and for the band, it would stall at No 33 (the exact same peak as “Better Days”). Sophomore album “Gallus” released two years later was a moderate success but it was only when they released a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up” in ’94 that they would finally achieve a Top 10 hit.

Gun split in ’97 but reformed in 2008 and are still a going concern today…and you can’t say that about The Stone Roses can you?

*Previous incarnations of the band went by the monikers of Blind Allez and Phobia – not sure they are any improvement on Gun to be fair!

Who’s next on? Oh, yes River City People – I’d almost (but not quite) forgotten this lot. Wasn’t there a bit of fuss about them being the next big thing at this time or am I making that up? Why is Anthea Turner so enthused about the band? Well, she used to work with lead singer Siobhan Maher as presenters on Children’s BBC’s summer holiday morning programme But First This! apparently ( I’ve no recall of it at all). Maher was also an actress and appeared in Brookside spin off Damon And Debbie which I do absolutely remember (especially its tragic ending – heartbreaking it was).

Anyway, in addition to presenting and acting ambitions, Maher was also a singer and formed River City People in ’86. After a couple of false starts, they hit it big with a cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin‘”. I’m guessing that after those initial mis-steps, their record label reverted to that tried and trusted career saving trick of a cover version. Cleverly they doubled it up with a River City People original in “Carry The Blame” as the other A -side though how much radio play it got, I’m not sure.

Siobhan certainly had a smooth voice and despite all the retro hippy trappings on display in this performance, it stands up pretty well I think.

The single rose to No 13 but despite its placing, it wasn’t the spring board for success that the band (and record label) must have hoped for. A re-release of debut single “(What’s Wrong With) Dreaming?” (they had a thing about dreams seemingly) only scraped into the charts at No 40 which was a shame as it sounds a bit like Lone Justice which is no bad thing in my book.

As Anthea announced, their debut album called “Say Something Good” was released later in ’90 and a second album followed in ’91 but the band split not long after that. Shame really.

OK, after some 60s folk pop, we get back to some dance music (well it is 1990) with “Naked In The Rain” by Blue Pearl and indeed this record does scream 1990 to me. I always though they were a one hit wonder but a glance at their discography tells me otherwise albeit that two of their four chart entries were with this track.

Fronted by the distinctively named Durga McBroom, this dance floor smash would make it all the way to No 4 in the UK charts. As with Siobhan Maher before her, Durga was also a multi-skiller being an actress as well. She appeared in the film Flashdance as a character called Heels and was also in music videos for the likes of Eurythmics, Janet Jackson and David Bowie no less. As Anthea mentioned in her intro (get her dropping her Knebworth references), Durga was very closely associated with Pink Floyd touring with them between 1987 to 1994. That might explain why they covered Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for their debut album “Naked” as Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce the 16 year old Kate’s initial demo tape.

When asked in a Smash Hits interview what “Naked In The Rain” was about, Durga replied :

“It’s not a literal naked that I’m talking of. It’s not about running to Trafalgar Square and ripping all your clothes off and jumping into the fountain. It’s more an emotional naked; stripping oneself of frustrations and the things that hold us back from being really calm and really cool.”

Hmm. Not sure anybody explained that to the video director…

Not Glenn Medeiros again?! This is the third time “She Ain’t Worth It” with Bobby Brown has been on. This track was meant to represent a change of image and sound for the boy from Hawaii and looking at the titles of his albums, he did seem to suffer an identity crisis during his career. Starting with his debut album (the one with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” on it) which was rather uninspiringly entitled “Glenn Medeiros” he then released an album called “Not Me” before a third album came out in 1990 (that included “She Ain’t Worth It”) which was called “Glenn Medeiros” again! So that’s:

Glenn Medeiros
Not Me
Glenn Medeiros

Wow! I bet his therapy bills were big!

Although, “She Ain’t Worth It” was a US No 1, Glenn only managed one more chart hit over there (another duet, this time with Ray Parker Jnr of all people) and his chart career did not sustain beyond that.

A band who have flown in all the way from LA to be on the show next (according to Anthea) but I’m not sure it was worth the bother to be fair. Thunder had entered the chart with their version of the old Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin'” at No 38 but following this TOTP performance it only went up two places to a peak of No 36 before crashing out of the Top 40 altogether. This was however their third chart hit of the year and indeed the third of five singles to be released from their “Backstreet Symphony” album in total. The album was produced by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor who also produced “Shame On You” by the show’s opening act tonight Gun. Andy had clearly moved well beyond his new romantic pop star beginnings by this point and had fully thrown in his lot with his true love, heavy rock.

Unlike producer mates Gun who were looking to re-start their chart lives after a drop in commercial fortunes when they covered Cameo’s “Word Up”, I’m not quite sure why Thunder (or possibly their record label) felt the need to release a cover version over their own material at this very early point in their career but there you go. It didn’t seem to add anything much to the original to me.

Tune! A great song up next from The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. Looking a bit like a hybrid of Primal Scream and Happy Mondays, it was easy to labour under the misconception that this lot were part of the ‘Madchester’ movement (pretty sure I did). The Soup Dragons were in fact from Scotland (Bellshill* near Motherwell specifically). A few months later when I was a wet behind the ears sales assistant at Our Price in Manchester, a distributor rep called in to the store with some product on his van he was trying to sell in. I can’t recall which distributor he worked for but it was one of the small ones so a lot of his stuff was quite niche. One of the artists he had on the van were BMX Bandits whom he triumphantly announced went onto be chart stars The Soup Dragons hoping this would influence the store manager to take a punt on their stock. I believed that story for ages but it wasn’t strictly true. BMX Bandits existed alongside The Soup Dragons although they did often share band members including lead singer Sean Dickson.

The group’s origins weren’t the only thing I wasn’t aware of at the time – I also was oblivious to the fact that “I’m Free” was a Rolling Stones song. It’s not a strict cover of it though. The lyrics were changed slightly, necessitated by the fact that they didn’t have them (this was pre the internet remember) so Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.

Can I say that I loved the groove on this record or will I sound like a middle aged man (which is what I am)? OK, sod it – I loved the groove on this record and the toasting from Junior Reid made the song their own (as Louis Walsh would say). By the way, Reid doesn’t rap ‘Free from the Loch Ness Monster, free from the deep’ but ‘Free like a butterfly, free like a bee’ just in case you had been wondering all these years.

The song is featured brilliantly in the Simon Pegg comedy The World’s End where main character Gary King is still living in 1990 in his head.

“I’m Free” would be the band’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 5.

*The little town of Bellshill was also home to Teenage Fanclub, Mogwai and erm…Sheena Easton. Quite a roll call.

If The Soup Dragons weren’t part of ‘Madchester’ then the next act certainly were. The time of The Stone Roses was now. Everyone was talking about them and ‘Madchester’ and the legendary Manc nightclub The Hacienda. I recall reading earlier in the year in the Daily Mirror (my parents’ choice of newspaper) about coach trips being organised throughout the country to take hordes of ravers up to Manchester to visit The Hacienda like it was some sort of spiritual pilgrimage.

“One Love” was a non -album single that should have been released to coincide with the band’s infamous Spike Island gig (that my elder brother went to) but it took so long to mix, its release was delayed. Having naively chosen Gun over the Roses the year before, I was ready to be bowled over this time and to get fully on board with the whole sound. “One Love”, yeah, too right! This is going to be mega I thought. And then I heard the song. I was completely underwhelmed. It seemed very laboured and didn’t really go anywhere and the chorus was lame. Even Ian Brown agreed with me on that in time…

Ian Brown on "One Love": "We tried in vain to cover all bases – we wanted to appeal to everyone in clubs and indie kids and whoever, but it was a poor chorus." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

There was no way I was wasting my money on this and so for the second time, I chose Gun over The Stone Roses when I bought their current single instead. The band’s fan base was big enough by this point to take the single to No 4 in the charts but it was a false dawn. It would be the last original material released by the band until “Love Spreads” some four and a half years later!

Ah bollocks! Elton John is still at No 1 with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Three months on from this, Elton would release a career retrospective double album called “The Very Best Of Elton John” spanning 1970’s “Your Song” through to “Sacrifice” (though not curiously “Healing Hands”). The album was hugely successful going to No 1 and nine times platinum in the UK alone. It was also the very first item I ever sold to a customer when I joined Our Price in October of 1990 – and I needed some help from the Assistant Manager to do so!

The play out video is “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by Technotronic. This lot of Belgian Eurodancers were becoming chart regulars by this point as this was their fourth consecutive Top 40 hit and the second to feature Ya Kid K. As with all their other stuff, I couldn’t stand it. To rub my face further in their shit, the next single they released called “Megamix” was just as it said on the tin – a mash up of all four of those previous singles! And guess what? The British public lapped it up all over again sending it to No 8. “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by contrast only made it to No 16. I guess the four in one option seemed better value.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Gun	Shame On You	I did! No shame on me though – great song!
2	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
3	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
4	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
5	Thunder	Gimme Some Lovin’	Nah
6	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
7	The Stone Roses	One Love	No love from me for this one
8	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
9	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm6/top-of-the-pops-12071990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Posted on January 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It is Thursday the 5th of July 1990 and it is less than 24 hours since the England international football team bowed out of Italia ’90 in the cruelest of circumstances. Just four days earlier, a 3-2 quarter final win over unexpectedly tricky opponents in Cameroon had unleashed emotions and hopes not witnessed since 1966 (and all that). But football is a cruel business – just this week my beloved Chelsea have sacked our greatest ever player – and by the time of the usual TOTP broadcast on the following Thursday, England were out, denied at the last by a penalty shoot-out defeat to West Germany. It hurt, so close but yet so far. Buoyed by the feel good factor that the team’s progress (if nor performances ) had instilled, we allowed ourselves to believe we were back and there would be many more tilts at the big prize to come. Little could we have imagined that it would be another 28 years and 7 tournaments before we would get to the World Cup semi final again.

Two days after this TOTP, England would lose again in the pointless third place play off match to hosts Italy whilst the final itself a day later was one of the worst games of football I have ever had to endure. After Gazza’s tears in the semi-final, we had Maradona’s as his Argentina team, who barely deserved to be there, lost a bad tempered match 1-0. The England team were hailed as heroes on their return (despite Gazza’s ‘hilarious’ fake breasts outfit) and a country’s appetite for football was rekindled after the dark days of the mid to late 80s.

Just in case you haven’t seen this enough times in the intervening 30 years…and who the hell is ‘Christopher’ Waddle?

Enough of the football though, this is supposed to be a music blog isn’t it? Yes, you’re right – it is. Let’s get to it then and tonight’s host is the ever snarky Nicky Campbell and the first act on tonight are Inspiral Carpets with “She Comes In The Fall”. This was their follow up to breakthrough hit “This Is How It Feels” and for me, it wasn’t anywhere near as captivating as its predecessor. I mean, compared to some of the utter dross inhabiting the Top 40 at the time it was like musical ambrosia but it seemed a bit…I don’t know….conventional? No, not conventional… erm…unexceptional? I think maybe they peaked too early with “This Is How It Feels” for me. “She Comes In The Fall” has all the right ingredients – Clint Boon’s swirling organ sound, driving back beat and Tom Hingley’s no frills vocal stylings but it just didn’t grab me in the same way.

Talking of Clint Boon, I saw him live a couple of years ago when I caught the Happy Mondays play at Hull. It was an open air gig and the support were Peter Hook and The Light so a very Manc based line up. Boon, with his DJ hat on, provided the tunes in between acts and it seemed like money for old rope to me as he rolled out the most obvious of Manchester tunes. It was almost like a musical version buzz word bingo. Still, the crowd seemed to lap it up. Having said that, they were mainly middle aged men reliving their hedonistic youth by being of their tits on coke so they weren’t the most demanding of audiences.

“She Comes In The Fall” peaked at No 27.

What? Another Janet Jackson single? As with a lot of Ms Jackson’s output, it’s also another single I don’t recall at all. “Alright” was one of seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and although the video shown here won a Soul Train Music Award for Best Music Video, I don’t remember that either. It starts off looking like Bugsy Malone before the inevitable big production dance routines kick in. The plot, for what its worth, resolves with it all having been a dream which is fitting as “Alright” is one big snooze*. It peaked at No 20 over here and No 4 in the US.

*Yes, I know the video was the inspiration behind Bill Bailey’s “Rapper’s Delight” routine on Strictly last year. I wasn’t arsed about that either.

Seven of the eleven songs on tonight’s show have already been seen before and here’s a run of three on the trot beginning with Poison and “Unskinny Bop”. Supposedly the title doesn’t refer to anything at all and was just a guide vocal that fitted phonetically into the song’s structure but having read the lyrics back, it’s pretty clear that it was all about having ‘A bit of How’s Your Father’. Check out these lyrics:

Like gasoline you wanna pump me, And leave me when you get your fill yeah

Still need convincing? How about these then:

You’re sayin’ my love won’t do ya
But that ain’t love written on your face
Well, honey I can see right through ya
Yeah, who ridin’ who at the end of the race?

I don’t think you need to be a cunning linguist to understand what was being sung about.

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

As he introduces the next act who are Double Trouble with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, Nicky Campbell appears spooked by the studio audience member stood next to him. To be fair to him, her look does require a double take. She looks like she’s turned up for the Halloween show about four months too early. Dressed head to toe in black and white with a massive floppy hat and two tone hair, she’s not your regular TOTP attendee. Judging by her outfit, I din’t think Double Trouble would have been her musical act of choice. In all honesty, they’re not mine either. Their shiny R’n’B cover version of the old Rose Royce classic is functional at best.

After name checking Madonna and Jimmy Nails’s versions of the song in last week’s post, it got me thinking about just how many times it had been covered. It’s loads. The recently spied Yazz did a version for her 1997 album “The Natural Life” then there’s Seal who recorded it for his second album of Soul covers (“Soul 2”) in 2011. Of course , there are also the usual easy listening treatments of it by the likes of Michael Ball and Bill Tarmey (aka Jack Duckworth) but I think the one that really caught my eye was by “Pompeii” hit makers Bastille. Let’s have a listen then…

Hmm…I’ll stick with Jimmy Nail thanks. Double Trouble’s 1990 version peaked at No 21.

A third outing for Nicky Lockett now otherwise known as MC Tunes and his mates 808 State with “The Only Rhyme That Bites”. Fair play to the TOTP producer Paul Ciani I guess for really promoting an out and out rap sound so heavily. However, we only get 1 min and 20 seconds of the track which was again due to Mr Ciani who, in an attempt to shoehorn in more songs into the show’s half hour slot, restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes and videos to two minutes. Not sure what MC Tunes, who looked like he could handle himself, would have made of his massively edited screen time.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” would get no higher than its No 10 peak here.

I’m guessing that Paul Ciani was also responsible for this new segment of the show – the Best selling albums of the month. Why the new format? TOTP had always been based around the template of the Top 40 singles chart. This new feature seemed incongruous to say the least. And where was the sales info coming from? Gallup presumably. I have to admit to not recalling this bit of the show’s history so I have no idea how long it lasted. No doubt future TOTP repeats will have the answer. For the record, the Top 5 albums for June 1990 were:

1. Luciano Pavarotti – The Essential Pavarotti

2. Soull II Soul – Volume II 1990: A New Decade

3. Jason Donovan – Between The Lines

4. Talk Talk – The Very Best Of Talk Talk

5. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

Back to that Top 40 singles chart though and we find an unusual new entry at No 12 in F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go”. Yes, after MC Tunes we got MC Parker, that bloke that drove Lady Penelope around in Gerry Anderson’s wonderful puppet adventures series Thunderbirds. I loved the Gerry Anderson creations when I was a small boy (Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons was my favourite) and, in retrospect, I’m not sure that he gets the credit that he deserved for what he achieved. I’m also not sure that this mash up of theme tunes from his shows given a then contemporary house dance sheen was a suitable tribute either.

The single was part of a bigger project that culminated in the “Power Themes 90” album that contained 12 tracks based around British TV show theme tunes – six were Anderson vehicles with the others made up from the likes of The Prisoner, The Saint and The Avengers. I remember the album from my first few weeks in employment at Our Price later in the year but apart from the Thunderbirds single I’m not sure I heard any of the rest of the tracks. I wonder what the Captain Scarlet one was like….

…well, that was horrible! Bloody Hell! OK, back to MC Parker and according to my Supermarionation book (yes I am that sad), Parker’s character was initially conceived as a simple dramatic support to Lady Penelope but his comedy value meant that he was often the star of the show. His incorrect use of the letter ‘h’ which would preface all vowels became his trademark. As such, I guess it made sense to promote the “Thunderbirds Are Go” single around him.

Two years after this single, The Thunderbirds TV series was rebroadcast on BBC and picked up a whole new generation of fans leading to a relaunch of a range of Thunderbirds branded toys, the biggest seller of which was the model for Tracy Island. So hard to get was the item that Blue Peter famously showed desperate parents how to make their own version out of cereal packets, pipe cleaners and washing up liquid bottles etc as demonstrated by one time TOTP presenter Anthea Turner:

In hindsight, was “Thunderbirds Are Go” a novelty record? I’m saying yes but then, we’d already had a dance record featuring samples of dialogue from Thunderbirds two years earlier when “Beat Dis” by Bomb The Bass was a huge hit and I don’t recall anyone saying that was a novelty record. Fine margins and all that.

“From plastic puppets to Australian soap operas” says Campbell as he gleefully puts the boot into the next act who are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. Craig won’t care though as he is up to No 4 in the charts and if anyone is getting a kick in the knackers it’s his ex Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan whose chart career is showing definite signs of starting to peter out. When asked about how he felt about having a bigger hit than Donovan in Smash Hits magazine, McLachlan replied:

“Ah look we’re over the moon. It’s fantastic…The music’s pretty Australian and we didn’t know how it would go down over there in a fairly techno chart. Our music is back to cranking the amp up and sweating a lot…“

Cranking and sweating? He sounds like my 11 year old when he’s playing Fortnite. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, being ‘sweaty’ in Fortnite means you’re a top player and ‘cranking’ refers to ‘cranking 90s’ which is a technique of building that is considered the fastest way to get high ground on a player. I feel so old.

Back to Craig though and although his music career fell away after the success of “Mona”, he remained inextricably (and some might say bizarrely) linked to Jason Donovan as they both played the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show and also Caractacus Pott in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I saw Donovan in the latter show – his performance was limited to say the least).

What was it with the 1990 and soul dance re-workings of classic old tunes? After Double Trouble’s version of the Rose Royce song “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” earlier in this very show, we get some act called Massivo featuring Tracy and their interpretation of the Minnie Riperton hit “Loving You”. The other week we had Maureen doing Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You” and earlier in the year we had The Chimes giving an R ‘n’ B rendition of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – now this. I’m not sure I recall this at all. Who was Tracy? Well she was nothing to do with the Tracys from Thunderbirds nor was she Tracy Tracy from The Primitives (despite her peroxide blonde hair). Who was she then?

Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Tracy Ackerman previously appeared on #TOTP as long ago as 1981, when she fronted This Year’s Blonde's mash-up of Blondie hits, “Platinum Pop”. (That only peaked at 46, though.) https://t.co/razsNRMGrq
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

OK – still none the wiser to be honest. What? There’s more?

Tracy Ackerman went on to write or co-write tracks for the likes of Hear'Say, Geri Halliwell, B*Witched, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue and Will Young. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

So a bit like Betty Boo in that respect then. Watching this back, Tracy doesn’t quite nail the famous descending F sharp note for me – bit screechy (like I could do it).

Massivo peaked at No 25 but the seemingly endless conveyor belt of this type of thing (what was this genre called?) carried on into the 90s with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll (yes that one) giving us a danced up version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991 and The Fugees adding some beats to Roberta Flacks’ “Killing Me Softly” in 1996.

Stop! Hammer time! Shouldn’t that be MC Hammer time though? It’s the third ‘MC’ of the show and I’m sure at some point MC Hammer did actually drop the MC bit from his stage name (was it when he released “Too Legit* To Quit” in 1991?). Anyway, for now he’s got the MC prefix and he’s tearing up the charts with “U Can’t Touch This”. The single was taken from his Diamond (not platinum but diamond) selling US album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. I’m glad I took notice of the title at the time as a few months later when I went for an interview for a sales assistant position with Our Price, one of the questions on the music quiz applicants had to take was ‘What is the name of MC Hammer’s current album?’. Boom! Back of the net!

Given that his commercial peak lasted only from 1990-92, Hammer’s name does still seem to resonate all these years later. Was it all about the trousers or did he actually have some good tunes in there as well? One thing is for sure, he never got so big that if you google the word hammer the first results that come up are not this:

* ‘Legit’ is another word that my 11 year old uses on a regular basis. I’m not sure what he would make of Hammer’s oversized pants though. On that theme, I once showed a younger colleague at work a video of the Bay City Rollers and she could not get her head round their tartan ~~trousers~~ troosers.

England’s World Cup may be over but Elton John‘s reign at the top of the charts carries on. What was it about this song that the nation couldn’t get enough of? Truly baffling. Well, here’s the aforementioned MC Tunes giving his verdict from a Smash Hits article on “Sacrifice”:

“I’ve always admired Elton John. He’s not my kind of groove if you get what I mean but I’ve always admired him because he’s a good writer. ‘Candle In The Wind’ is a fabulous song and the lyrics in his new one are really good so I’m into the Elton record, yer.“

Oh, it was the lyrics then. Let’s have a look at them again. This is the chorus:

And it’s no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It’s two hearts living
In two separate worlds
But it’s no sacrifice
No sacrifice
It’s no sacrifice at all

Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be a lot going on there except the repeated use of the word ‘sacrifice’. I’m not having it Mr Tunes – don’t tell him I said that though.

The play out video is “She Ain’t Worth It” by Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown. After his music career ended, Medeiros took up teaching and is now the president of St. Louis School, an all boys Catholic school in Honolulu. Sounds impressive doesn’t it…until you realise that he has a son called Chord and a daughter called Lyric. No, really.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
2	Janet Jackson	Alright	All wrong – no
3	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
8	Massivo featuring Tracy	Loving You	Nah
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm4/top-of-the-pops-05071990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 28 JUN 1990

Posted on January 23, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s Summer 1990 and World Cup fever is on the rise. The England national team have just secured a place in the quarter finals of the competition two days prior to this TOTP broadcast when David Platt produced a swivelling volley moments before the end of extra time against Belgium to win the game 1-0 for England. Platty’s memorable intervention saved the nation from a penalty shoot out, something we had no experience of back then but which, by the end of the tournament, we would know the heartache and darkness of only too well.

But for now, the nation rejoiced and, labouring under the misapprehension that we had a bye into the semi finals as we faced Cameroon next, were starting to believe something truly special might be afoot. So were there any ‘special’ tunes in the chart to match the nation’s mood? Let’s see…

…well we start with “Oops Up” by Snap! and a bizarre performance that includes a rubber duck (supplied by presenter Gary Davies from the side of the stage via a throw of admirable accuracy) that appears to get squeaked throughout the song. I hadn’t noticed that sound effect on the original recording but, having checked, it is there.

If the rubber duck was meant to soften the image and reputation of rapper Turbo B, it had a lot of work to do. Around this time, he was involved in a very unsavoury incident at a benefit show. The group had been asked by a promoter to do a PA at a nightclub for a benefit event but what Turbo hadn’t realised was that it was for an AIDS charity and the event took place in a gay nightclub. When the lights went up, Turbo found himself in a room full of drag queens and freaked out. Demanding to see the club owner, he allegedly proclaimed “If you ever book me in a place like this again, I’ll kill you”. The owner replied, with hands on his hips, “This is a gay club seven nights a week” at which point Turbo got him by his throat and began throttling him and then all hell broke loose. In a Smash Hits interview when quizzed about the incident, Turbo B’s version was a bit different:

“…if a man gets his ass grabbed by another man he tends to be upset. I tried to talk to this guy and tell him this is not supposed to be like this. His justification of my ass getting grabbed was that it was cool. It wasn’t, so he got choked.”

Despite his protestations that he wasn’t anti-gay later in the interview, it seems pretty clear that Turbo B was not exactly well informed nor accepting of anything that wasn’t strictly heterosexual. As a result of the incident, an organisation called Zap Snap! formed who would protest at Snap! gigs and this would inform singer Penny Ford’s decision to leave the group. In a songfacts website interview she stated:

“And that was another reason why I decided to leave Snap! Because my sister was a serious, staunch gay advocate, and it was like a blow to my family to have me out there being represented with a gay basher. So that’s what started Turbo’s decline“.

Sadly, I think we will be seeing more of Turbo B and his prejudiced views before 1990 is through.

Onto much safer and non-threatening ground next (or is it?*) as we get Jason Donovan and his latest single “Another Night”. From late ’88 to the end of ’89, Jase’s run of hit singles looked like this in terms of their chart peaks:

5 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2

However, as the new decade dawned, the spell appeared to be broken. His first single release of 1990 (“Hang On to Your Love”) peaked at No 8 whilst “Another Night” would really set alarm bells ringing when it failed to even make the Top 10 (topping out at No 18)! When asked about the charts and his position within them in Smash Hits at this time, Donovan had this to say:

“Do I worry about where my records get to in the charts? Oh yeah, of course I do. It wasn’t so great that “Hang On to Your Love” didn’t do as great as some of my other singles have done but looking back on it, I think I would have to put the blame on the strength of that particular song….I think it was a bit of a grower and not nearly as catchy as say “When You Come Back to Me”.

So how did you explain the chart performance of “Another Night” then Jason? It didn’t shift the required amount of units because it was a basically proper dog shit? It is actually dreadful. It sounds like a failed Song For Europe entrant, not good enough even for the Eurovision Song Contest.

*Donovan of course had his own homophobic incident in 1992 when he sued The Face magazine for publishing allegations that he was homosexual. The lawsuit led to a backlash in which he was accused of being homophobic. In his 2007 autobiography, Jason stated that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life.

Pretty sure we are on safe ground finally with Maureen and her version of “Thinking Of You”. I’m very doubtful that there are any scandals surrounding Ms Walsh. As Gary Davies mentioned, she was the vocalist on Bomb The Bass’ “Say A Little Prayer” back in ’88 and…what? She lied to Tim Simenon about what she did for a living when she met him in a nightclub by telling him she was a singer when she wasn’t? So there is a skeleton in her cupboard (albeit a small one). So what was her job at the time? Well, it was either (depending on the date of that nightclub meeting) working in Miss Selfridge or working in an admin position in the police force. Lying whist she was employed by the rozzers? Shameful.

Back to the music though and that guy who comes on and raps in the middle? What was with the cane?

Three Breakers next and we start with Double Trouble and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Were these the guys who had a hit with “Street Tuff” along with that Rebel MC bloke? A quick search of Wikipedia says they are and that their cover of the Rose Royce classic was actually on their album “As One” which features ‘Street Tuff”. Coincidentally, they also did a remix of tonight’s opening song “Oops Up” by Snap!.

I don’t recall them doing this track though and on hearing it back, I’m not sure why they bothered. Jimmy Nail’s version back in ’85 was far more interesting and I’m not joking.

Hell, I’d even choose Madonna’s version over Double Trouble’s and her take on it was rubbish.

“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (the Double Trouble version) peaked at No 21.

Right, what’s this? Bobby Brown and Glenn Medeiros? WTF?! Really?! How? Why? So many questions. This seems an even more unwanted pairing than last week’s Sonia and Big Fun coupling. So, apparently this collaboration came about through Medeiros’s friend Rick James who …wait a minute! Rick James?! Funk legend Rick James?! He was a friend of wimpy Glenn Medeiros of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” fame?! That requires more explanation than the Bobby Brown connection even. Anyway, it was Rick who put Glenn in touch with Bobby Brown who was looking for someone to produce while he had some free time on his hands and so they worked on a song called “Love Me Little Lady” *pause while blogger vomits* which went on Glenn’s latest album. After Brown called him up to say how much he liked said album, Medeiros asked him to put a rap on the track “She Ain’t Worth It”. And the rest is…

“She Ain’t Worth It” was a No 1 record in the US and a no 12 hit in the UK. This was Glenn’s attempt to beef up his image (he even got a new haircut!) and sound but it’s like something New Kids On The Block would have rejected as trying too hard. In short, it wasn’t worth it Glenn.

Oh OK. I hadn’t realised that Del Amitri had another Top 40 hit in 1990 after “Nothing Ever Happens” at the start of the year but here they are on TOTP again. I knew that they had re-released “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” as a follow up to “Nothing …” but it had failed to be a hit for a second time despite some heavy radio play. I mistakenly believed that the same fate befell “Move Away Jimmy Blue” but it crawled to a high of No 36. Not as intriguing as “Nothing …” nor as immediate as “Kiss This Thing…”, it’s still a pretty good tune I think although not one of my favourites of theirs.

Now then, here was a chart anomaly and a half! A Irish jig complete with accordian, fiddle and a double bass? What the Hell was this?! It was, quite simply, magnificent in my book. The perfect antidote to all this homogenised house music, when asked about the sound of “The Great Song Of Indifference” in a Smash Hits interview, Bob Geldof admitted that it wasn’t a modern sound:

“Nope, it’s not a current record but then I’m hardly a major force in modern music. I’m frankly tired of hip hop and house and that. I know nothing about it except that I hear it a lot but it just sounds old hat”

Well said Sir Bob! This was only the second chart hit of Geldof’s solo career and it remains his last. His first had been the rather worthy sounding “This Is The World Calling” back in ’86 but “The Great Song Of Indifference” was a different beast altogether. Made with his band The Vegetarians Of Love (which was also the name of the accompanying album), its subject matter of world apathy in the face of humanitarian disasters and horror was in stark contrast to its knock about, almost joyful sound. Witness:

I don’t care if the Third World fries
It’s hotter there I’m not surprised
Baby I can watch whole nations die
And I don’t care at all

Supposedly Bob had wanted to infuse it with a cajun feel and had spent some time in Louisiana soaking up the cajun vibe before recording the album. The Irish dancing element of the performance here from the wee guy in the shirt and dickie bow at the front pre-dates Riverdance by four years! Marvellous stuff all round.

A couple of personal tie -ins to Bob and this record before I move on. At some point either myself or my wife must have bought this single as we used to dance around our one room flat to it when we first married. We used to really fling ourselves around. We were skint at the time and this would be what passed for a Friday night’s entertainment. Skint or not, they were happy, simpler times. Right at the end of the record there’s a bit when the musicians fall about laughing before Geldof’s distinctive tones clearly cut in with “Let’s listen…”. One of the guys laughing really sounds like Nick Heyward but I’m guessing it’s not.

And that second Geldof story? I once had a friend who did some freelance PR work and one of the people she worked for was the sadly departed Peaches Geldof. My friend found it all a bit demanding and was ready to jack it in. The final straw that broke the camel’s back? It was when Bob got involved and began calling her to to sort stuff out for Peaches. Not known for his tact and diplomacy, Bob’s phone calls prompted her to throw her work phone into the Thames whilst mid conversation with Geldof!

“The Great Song Of Indifference” peaked at No 15.

Damn. I thought for a moment when Gary Davies said “Still with the charts here’s Bruce…” in his intro to the next artist his next word would be Springsteen. Unfortunately for me, it was Dickinson. Yes, the Iron Maiden front man’s video for “All The Young Dudes” gets another airing for some reason. What? He went up 9 places to No 23 that week? I don’t care! His version of the Mott The Hoople* classic was awful! To be fair to Bruce Dickinson, he does seem to be a man of many talents. He’s a fully trained pilot and worked for a commercial airline for a while. He’s also a published author, he’s been a champion fencer (once rated the 7th best fencer in England), he’s presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010 and he’s even created a successful beer called ‘Trooper’ with Robinsons brewery in Stockport. If only he’d left the singing alone.

*When I first started working in Our Price there was guy who used to come in who was obsessed with Mott The Hoople. He would come in regularly to check what albums we had of the band in stock (not many!) and would hang around for ages hoping to strike up a conversation with an unsuspecting member of staff about his faves. Takes all sorts I suppose.

Nest it’s a re-run of Maxi Priest‘s performance of “Close To You” from the other week next although Gary Davies tries to make out that Maxi is actually in the studio again.

Maxi never really did it for me and I got nothing else to say about this one. Do me a solid @TOTPFacts and help me out will you?

Maxi Priest was named after Max Bygraves. "He's my mum's favourite singer." He changed his surname from Elliott to Priest after discovering Rastafarianism. "It comes from the Priest Levi, a figurehead of the 12 tribes of Israel."#TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 15, 2021

Sorted!

Still at No 1 we find Elton John with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Infamously, both songs on this double A-side had been flops when initially released individually at the end of ’89 but parent album “Sleeping With The Past” also had a truncated route to the top of the charts. Although it debuted at No 6 when released in Sep ’89, it departed the Top 10 the following week and fell out of the Top 40 completely after a month. Inevitably, once the success of the re-activated single kicked in, so the album was also revitalised. After knocking around the lower reaches of the Top 100, it climbed from No 54 to No 2 in one week! After three consecutive weeks in that position it embarked on a five week run at No 1 eventually going three time platinum in the UK alone. Yet for all that, it’s hardly regarded as one of his best albums I would speculate. Apart from “Sacrifice” and “Healing Hands”, are any of the other tracks on the album well known? Follow up single “Club at the End of the Street” didn’t even get into the Top 40. Elton in the Summer of 1990 was a very curious phenomenon indeed.

The play out video is “Unskinny Bop” by Poison. Having checked out their discography, I was amazed to discover that Poison had eight UK Top 40 hits. I could have named …let me think…four absolute tops. “Unskinny Bop” would have been one of the four. The timeline of their hits would have been beyond me though, not helped by a re-release of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with nearly 18 months in between releases. I could not have told you when “Unskinny Bop” had been a hit for example but I can tell you that it did very little for me. It was a bit like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (i.e not that good). And what the Hell was an “Unskinny Bop” anyway? Is ‘unskinny’ even a legitimate word? Supposedly it was just a guide lyric according to guitarist C.C. DeVille, a phonetic place holder until the proper lyrics had been written but it stuck (see also the lyrics to “The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw).

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Snap!	Ooops Up	Nope
2	Jason Donovan	Another Night	Another shite more like – no
3	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
6	Del Amitri	Move Away Jimmy Blue	No but it’s on my Best Of CD of theirs
7	Bob Geldof	The Great Song Of Indifference	Yes – present and correct in the singles box!
8	Bruce Dickinson	All The Young Dudes	As if
9	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6j0/top-of-the-pops-28061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 22 JUN 1990

Posted on January 20, 2021 by 80stastic

If a week can be a long time in politics then that is also true of football (and quite possibly music). When last week’s TOTP was aired, the England national team had made a sluggish start to Italia ’90 and were being widely criticised in the media. Fast forward eight days and they have turned things around and qualified for the knockout stages after defeating the might of Egypt in the last group game. Hang on, eight days you say? Yes, this particular TOTP went out on the Friday rather than in its regular Thursday night slot so as to clear the schedules for that England v Egypt game the day before. Suddenly hopes were revived and the nation looked forward (albeit with some trepidation) to the next game versus Belgium.

Those eight days have also proved to be a long time in the pop music world as tonight’s show has nine (!) ‘new’ songs on it and only four that we have seen before in no small part due to the return of the Breakers section. Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles whose previous recent appearances on the show have been dominated by her wearing of big Winter coats even under TV studio lights. With it being the height of Summer though she peeled all her layers off and gone for a white t-shirt and ripped jeans look topped off with an embroidered baseball cap. The T-shirt proclaims the legend that is The Royal Findhorn Yacht Club (I have no idea) and Jakki seems to be in a rush to get off (possibly to do some tacking on a schooner or something – as I said I have no idea) judging by the speed with which she is talking.

We start tonight with Brummie rockers Magnum who were last seen in the Top 40 back in ’88 with a trio of medium-sized hits from their “Wings Of Heaven” album which was the peak of their commercial success. I have no recollection of them still having chart hits into the 90s but here they are with a little ditty called “Rockin’ Chair”. Taken from an album called “Goodnight L.A.”, it sounds pretty unexceptional, rock fodder to me but supposedly the album was meant to be an attempt to break the band in the US and was seen by critics as taking the band in an ‘Americanised’ and more commercial direction. If anything, to my ears, it sounds less commercial than their previous hits like “Start Talking Love” and “Days Of No Trust”. Anyway, what do I know? So did Magnum manage to break America? No, no they didn’t and you know why they didn’t? The album was never released in the United States! Right, scratch that comment about what do I know because I may not be a record company executive but I do know that if you want to break America, it’s a good idea to release your album there so that people can, you know, actually buy it!

The album did OK in the UK (where it was released) peaking at No 9 and presumably it did well in Germany judging by Jakki’s comments about the band entertaining 50,000 East Berliners recently.

“Rockin’ Chair” peaked at No 27 but their last single previous to that was a No 33 hit called “It Must Have Been Love” talking of which…

…here come Roxette enjoying the biggest hit of their career with “It Must Have Been Love”. Often dismissed as insubstantial and not deserving of any credibility claims, it’s fair to say that the duo rarely get referenced as being the musical influence of…well…anybody really. Having said that, they racked up a smorgasbord of hit singles throughout their career which, incidentally, spanned 33 (!) years. I always got the impression that they were not that bothered by the criticism that dogged them, steeled by the knowledge that they were good at what they did – writing, recording and performing well crafted pop tunes. Indeed, so comfortable were they with their image that they even called one of their compilation albums “Don’t Bore Us – Get To The Chorus!”. If that doesn’t display a healthy degree of self knowledge then I don’t know what does!

“It Must Have Been Love” peaked at No 3 in the UK and was a Top 10 hit in just about every country around the world going to No 1 in the US, Australia, Denmark and Spain to name but a few.

Well here’s a treat – two acts for the price of one! Never has the acronym BOGOF been more apt though as said acts are Sonia and Big Fun! What?! Why?! What possible justification could there be for this unholy pairing?! What? It was for charity? Which charity? Childline? Oh..well…I can’t really…oh OK, it seems there was some credible justification but it doesn’t mean I have to like the song does it? And I don’t. It’s not even a cover of the James Taylor classic “You’ve Got a Friend” but another Stock, Aitken and Waterman composition.

Watching this performance back, it looks just wrong for them all to be sat down for the duration of the song Westlife-esque when we were used to seeing Big Fun jumping around the TOTP stage wiggling their arses for all their worth and little Sonia doing her rolling shoulders nerdy dance moves. It’s not that easy to transform yourself from pop puppets to serious artists surely? Just by the addition of some stools? *Insert your own jokes*

In a Smash Hits interview around this time to promote the single, when Big Fun’s Jason John was asked if they dreaded ‘the dumper’ and what would they do if they fell into it, he replied:

“I don’t think about the dumper because we’re really only just beginning our careers…”

Hmm. After “You’ve Got a Friend” peaked at No 14, Big Fun never had another Top 40 single. After disbanding, one of them became a painter and decorator whilst Jason ‘we’ve only just begun’ John decamped to the US to run a nightclub in New York.

It’s those famous musical offspring Wilson Phillips next who are bounding up the charts with their single “Hold On”. The group En Vogue also had a hit with a song called “Hold On” in this year – they were on the show only the other week – and it got me thinking whether “Hold On” was a popular song title of choice for recording artists. I found a website that listed 45 cover versions and distinct songs that happen to share the title “Hold On”. They included artists as diverse as Tom Waits through to Donny Osmond via Santana and KT Tunstall. And whose song called “Hold On” was the most commercially successful? Why, Wilson Phillips of course (En Vogue came in second).

Some Breakers now starting with Red Hot Chili Peppers and “Taste The Pain”. Despite being around since 1984, I have to admit that they hadn’t been on my radar at all in that time and I can’t say I remember this track either. I wouldn’t really become aware of them until the following year and the release of their “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album and attendant singles “Give It Away” and the anthemic “Under The Bridge” which I bought. “Taste The Pain” was from their previous studio album “Mother’s Milk” and became the band’s first UK hit single peaking at No 29. I hadn’t realised before but they actually had a track on the multi platinum Pretty Woman soundtrack album called “Show Me Your Soul”. Given the film and soundtrack’s popularity and seeing what it was doing for the career of Roxette whom we saw earlier, I can’t help wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off releasing that as a single?

I can’t move on though without a mention for Celtic ‘bagrock’ outfit Red Hot Chilli Pipers whose lineup features three highland bagpipers and traditional marching snare backed by a more traditional rock band. Their live show even features highland dancing! I’ve yet to catch them live myself yet but a friend who has say they are quite the experience.

Bruce Dickinson covering “All The Young Dudes”? Even if this was for charity* as per Sonia and Big Fun (which it wasn’t) it would still be inexcusable. This David Bowie penned tune that was turned into a massive hit by Mott The Hoople really didn’t need the Dickinson treatment. I couldn’t see that it added anything to the original being a pretty straight cover. I suppose it was a canny marketing move by Bruce’s label to release a well known song to help promote his “Tattooed Millionaire” album but still.

*Two years later, Dickinson did record a song for charity when he combined with Rowan Atkinson in his Mr. Bean alter ego to record Alice Cooper’s “(I Want To Be) Elected” for Comic Relief which went to No 9 which was 14 places higher than “All The Young Dudes”.

And talking of Alice Cooper, completing a trio of rock-related Breakers, are Dogs D’Amour who once toured with Alice around the start of the new millennium. Back in 1990 though, they were in the Top 40 again for the second and final time. Having finally breached the chart ramparts in ’89 with ‘Satellite Kid”, “Victims Of Success” was the lead single from their album “Straight??!!” and I have to say the title didn’t ring any bells with me. Having given it a listen, it sounds like a rather unremarkable blues rock song full of guitar twangs and hackneyed lyrics like these:

“Yesterdays punks on the cover of the rolling stone
Yesterdays punks could buy a Beverly Hills home”

I’m kind of surprised it managed to sneak into the charts to be honest. Maybe they were riding on the coattails of the success their good buddies The Quireboys were enjoying around this time?

“Straight??!!” would be the last studio album to feature the band’s ‘classic’ line up (it says on Wikipedia) before they split. Top Dog Tyla (real name Timothy Taylor) would resurrect the brand in various different formats and line ups over the years as well as collaborating on a project entitled Hot Knives with long-time friend *checks notes* ah yes, Spike… from The Quireboys.

“Victims Of Success” peaked at No 36.

A return to the show for the break out star of ’88 next as we witness the return of Yazz with her new single “Treat Me Good”. Just two short years since her massive No 1 single “The Only Way Is Up”, Yazz was at a crossroads. Her debut album “Wanted” had gone double platinum but the singles released from it had all peaked at a lower chart position than the one before. Her next move was career crucial. “Treat Me Good” was to be the lead single from an album initially entitled “Revolution Of Love” (presumably the album due out “at the end of the Summer” as advised by Jakki Brambles) but it never appeared and was canned when Yazz left her record label Big Life. Were they disappointed by the commercial performance of “Treat Me Good”? Despite a 10 place move up the charts after this TOTP outing, the single would get no further than that No 20 peak and would be in and out of the Top 100 in five weeks. To be fair, it didn’t really sound to me like it had that ‘Wow!’ factor that “The Only Way Is Up” had and was a pretty sub-standard R’n’B pop number.

Re-emerging with Polydor Records, Yazz once again found herself in the position where a proposed second album was shelved when “One True Woman” failed to appear in May ’92. After one final return to the Top 40 in ’93 with Aswad with a cover version of Ace’s “How Long”, her sophomore album finally emerged more than five years after her debut. It bombed completely. Yazz continued to release singles and one further album into the 90s but she then found herself at another crossroads (this time of a more personal nature) when her marriage to her husband (who was also her manager and publisher and father of baby Rio mentioned by Jakki Brambles in her intro) broke down. After finding Christianity, Yazz now spreads the gospel message in prisons and released a record called “This Is Love” which was inspired by her experiences.

And yes Jakki, she did look incredible just eight weeks after giving birth.

After the decade that was the 80s had seen fit to allow Aussie soap Neighbours to spawn bona fide chart stars in Kylie, Jason Donovan and (for the love of God!) Stefan Dennis, you would have thought that the 90s would have brought a stop to that but no! There was still another of the cast that felt that the world of pop had space for one more…all hail Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2. As referenced by Jakki Brambles in her intro, Craig had played the role of Henry Ramsey (the brother of Kylie’s character Charlene) in Neighbours for nearly three years but by the time of his foray into music and subsequent hit with “Mona” he had swapped allegiances and transferred to the other Aussie soap Home And Away. I have very distinct memories of Henry Ramsey whilst I was still a student at Sunderland Poly – nasty mullet and dungarees worn without a T -shirt which the women that I was friendly with at the time were quite taken with – but I had no idea that he had pop star pretensions.

Now admittedly it was a very low bar but I didn’t mind “Mona” (compared to Stefan Dennis, he was the height of credibility) and it was a tune that was written by blues rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley which had been performed previously by the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Troggs and Bruce Springsteen so Stock, Aitken and Waterman this was not. I’m pretty sure I didn’t realise the song’s origins at the time but fourteen years after it was a hit in the UK, I saw a band perform their own version of this in whilst on holiday in San Francisco. I can’t remember the name of the band but the venue was called the Biscuits And Blues Bar and I remember thinking there’s no way this can be a Craig McLachlan original if this authentic blues band are performing it!

After peaking at No 2 in the UK, it seem that Craig might have a shot at usurping his one time co-star Jason Donovan in UK pop fans’ affections given that old Jase seemed to be on a downward commercial trend but after one more single (the No 16 hit “Amanda”) he was pretty much gone. He did follow Donovan’s trick of releasing a song from a stage musical three years later when “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease in which he was starring with Debbie Gibson made No 13 in the UK Top 40 (Donovan had scored a No 1 with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) but he would never again return to our charts.

Inevitably, and very much seen as the classical antidote to New Order’s “World In Motion”, here is the BBC’s Italia ’90 theme tune “Nessun Dorma” by Luciano Pavarotti. Now inextricably linked in the psyche of every English football fan with the events of June /July 1990 and the fortunes of the national team, how many of us had ever heard of it (or indeed Pavarotti) before?

The BBC really pulled it out of the bag when it came to soundtracking their coverage of this World Cup. Does anybody recall the ITV opening titles and music? I didn’t and had to look it up. Here’s their opening titles….

…just dreadful. Apparently it was entitled “Tutti Al Mondo”, was written by Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke and …oh nobody cares do they? ITV’s theme tune was crushed by the BBC and Pavarotti’s weight as easily as Gazza’s tears started to flow after that booking in the semi final. A few words about the opening title graphics before we move on which were awful as well. The crass image of the statue of David nonchalantly nodding some footballs around and the official mascot stick figure player called Ciao added in to ensure the full tacky horror couldn’t be missed. Comparing the two is a bit like on The Apprentice when the two teams do the advert task and one team has understood the brief completely and delivered something concise and on message and the other team has just came up with a slogan that they thought was a clever word play and completely missed the point of what they were trying to sell. Somebody in the ITV creative team should have got fired.

“Nessun Dorma” was a No 2 hit on the UK Top 40 and after the Three Tenors concert in Rome the night before the final was played featuring José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and of course Pavarotti spawned the classic live album, the world went classical music mad. That album became the best-selling classical album of all time and even changed the way the music industry marketed its classical catalogue with a whole new category called ‘strategic classical’ set up to try and reach new audiences via huge marketing campaigns.

My own personal memory of the whole Nessun Dorma / Three Tenors phenomenon was that my future father -in -law was so enthused by the concert that he taped it off the TV (remember when we used to do that?) to keep for posterity but my future mother-in- law taped over it with an episode of Eastenders by mistake. Once the incident had been discovered I was dispatched into Hull town centre to ask around the music shops to see if anyone knew when the official video would be coming out. There was no release date forthcoming so we had to pretend that the precious VHS tape couldn’t be found whenever my father-in-law asked about watching the concert over again for many months until the official release could be bought for him.

MC Tunes in the area! The Moss Side rapper is back on the show with his hit single “The Only Rhyme That Bites” although this week we get the video. @TOTPFacts has unearthed this about the promo:

The video for "The Only Rhyme That Bites" was shot in the then-disused Daily Express building on Ancoats Lane in Manchester. It was directed by Ken Horn (Trevor's brother), also a director on Emmerdale at the time. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 15, 2021

Hmm. Well, it just looks to me like a load of guys skateboarding and not especially impressively. I suppose we all have to start somewhere and Ken Horn did go onto produce a number of successful TV shows including the Jimmy McGovern drama The Street and the fifth series of the superb Line Of Duty. Back in 1990 though, it looked like brother Trevor had the monopoly on the family talent.

By the way, if you’re wondering whatever happened to MC Tunes and wanted to know more about what sort of person he was/is, don’t go looking to Wikipedia for the answer. Under the category Personal Life, it just says:

Tunes still lives in Manchester.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” peaked at No 10.

And so it came to pass that Elton John‘s first ever solo No 1 would be with the brain stupefying “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. After his ridiculously flamboyant outfits of yesteryear (Donald Duck anyone?), Elton has completely toned it down and gone for an all black ensemble topped off with a BOY cap. Were they popular at the time? I’m pretty sure Chris Lowe of the Pet Shops Boys used to wear one back in the day but were they still a thing in 1990?

The single was taken from the album “Sleeping With The Past” which in a Smash Hits feature where pop stars named their favourite ever albums, that man from Big Fun Jason John (whom we heard from earlier) was at it again giving us the benefit of his wisdom. Here he is:

“Sonia actually gave me this LP as a present a few weeks ago…It must be one of the best albums he’s ever done…Personally I’ve become a big Elton fan after listening to this album. It’s been a big inspiration to me.”

Hmm. Not “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” then? “Too Low For Zero” maybe? “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player”? No? OK, Jase, you know best.

At the song’s end, there’s a weird interaction between Jakki Brambles and Elton where she strides across the stage, offers her had to Elton to shake and then kisses his! There then follows an excruciating exchange where Jakki asks Elton how he is and which charities the royalties from the single are supporting. Elton is almost monosyllabic in his replies. Now if you really want to see a proper Elton John interview, may I recommend this…

So put off her stride is Jakki that she forgets to introduce the play out song which is one of the biggest and most talked about hits of the year – it’s MC Hammer with “U Can’t Touch This”. This tune was absolutely massive back in the day but more seemed to be made in the press about Hammer’s baggy loon pants (that tapered to the ankle) in the video.

Famously based on “Super Freak” by Rick James, “U Can’t Touch This” made Hammer a huge star briefly. Parent album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” stayed at No 1 in the US album charts for 21 weeks and was the best selling album of 1990 there. Multiple awards followed and his extensive tours raked in the money. It’s 1990 and the living is good for MC Hammer. It wouldn’t last though but that’s all for another post.

“U Can’t Touch This” peaked at No 3 in the UK Top 40.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Magnum	Rockin’ Chair	Nah
2	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	Negative
3	Sonia and Big Fun	You’ve Got A Friend	But it’s not me!
4	Wilson Phillips	Hold On	No
5	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Taste The Pain	Nope
6	Bruce Dickinson	All The Young Dudes	As if
7	Dogs D’Amour	Victims Of Success	It’s a no from me
8	Yazz	Treat Me Good	It was really weak sounding to me – no
9	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
10	Luciano Pavarotti	Nessun Dorma	For all the memories it always invokes, I didn’t but it
11	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
12	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Certainly not!
13	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6hy/top-of-the-pops-22061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 14 JUN 1990

Posted on January 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We are less than one week (and only one game in the case of England) into the Italia ’90 World Cup and already the nation is gloomy about the team’s chances of progressing. A scratchy 1-1 draw with the Republic of Ireland in the first group match wasn’t the start that we’d hoped for and the game itself was a bit of a stinker. Cue Gary Lineker…

Ahem. Another draw (this time 0-0) with Holland followed two days after this TOTP was broadcast meaning qualification into the knockout stages hung in the balance. The drama, the tension. How about some music to calm our nerves….

Well, for a start off, presenter Bruno Brookes’ jacket of many colours would have been flashing me up and setting me on edge. Look at it! If Shakin’ Stevens and Adam Ant’s wardrobes had ever got together and sired a sprog, this would be it. Just revolting. There should have been a law to prevent such a jacket being worn on national TV. Talking of the law, here’s Guru Josh with his second consecutive hit “Whose Law (Is It Anyway?). Having conquered the charts earlier in the year with “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)”, here he is again with a single whose title sounds like it was inspired by a certain long running, satirical Channel 4 improvisational comedy series. However, I’m guessing was probably about the Entertainment (increased Penalties) Act, that the government introduced this year allowing fines of up to £20,000 for hosting illegal raves or parties. As you can probably guess by his appearance and performance here, Guru (Mr. Josh?) was very anti this legislation and its curtailing of rave culture.

As for the track itself, it’s pretty similar to “Infinity” to my ears with that distinctive saxophone sound to the fore again although the vocals (if you can call them that) are very grating and distracting. The engineer on this track was someone called Chinito Bandito whose sounds like a character from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races.

After this single only made it to No 26 in the charts, Guru Josh decamped to Ibiza to concentrate on art and running a promotions company. He returned to the Top 40 one more time with a re-release of “Infinity” in 2008 but tragically committed suicide in December 2015.

Right. Who’s this? Maureen? Nothing to do with telephone directory services but in fact the woman who sang on Bomb The Bass’s cover of “Save A Little Prayer” back in ’88. She’s back on the show with another cover version but this time of the 1984 No 11 hit “Thinking Of You” from Sister Sledge. There seemed to be a rush of hit singles around the early ’90s that was based around the practice of taking an original well known song and covering it in a different musical style, usually of a dance orientated nature. Hell, there’s another one along straight after this! Here Maureen (full name Maureen Walsh but probably Mo to her friends don’t you think?) gives a Soul II Soul style treatment of this Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards penned disco classic. I’m not sure it was worth the effort to be fair.

The look of the performance here is very odd. Maureen at 5′ 10″ cuts an imposing figure on a small stage whilst the two guys backing her on keyboards look so out of place that they remind me of Raw Sex from French and Saunders. That’s before we even talk about the guy who comes on in the middle to do the seemingly obligatory but wholly incongruous rap.

“Thinking Of You” was as good as it got for Maureen when it peaked spookily at exactly the same chart position as the Sister Sledge original at No 11. She did release an album called “Take It From Me” in ’91 but you’d be hard pushed to find it anywhere today.

Another old tune given a musical refurbishment now as Snap! bring us their second hit of the year in “Ooops Up”. Not exactly a cover per se but it was certainly inspired by The Gap Band’s dance floor classic “Oops Upside Your Head” whilst also managing to shoe horn references to the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet”. Now I never knew this before but the full title of that Gap Band hit is actually “I Don’t Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops!)”. Hmm, bit of a mouthful – I can see why it is better known by its truncated moniker. Penny Ford, who does the vocals on this track, was actually a back up singer for The Gap Band earlier in her career although she wasn’t responsible for choosing it to for the Snap! track.

The original Gap Band lyrics ‘Everybody say oops up side your head, say oops upside your head’ were added to by the addition of the line ‘somebody say opala.’ So, ever wondered what an opala is? Well, obviously it’s the German for ‘Oops’ what with Snap! being the brain child of German producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and nothing to do with Opal Fruits sweets (and yes I mean Opal Fruits and not the wanky Starburst re-brand). When I was at Poly, I knew a girl who thought the lyrics to “Oops Upside Your Head” were ‘Oops swap sides again, I said oops swap sides again’ because of the dance that went with it. The one where you have two lines sat on the dance floor who lean backwards, forwards and sideways together? You know the one. She had a point.

This next song sounds like it should be a cover version but it isn’t. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Maxi Priest had done a version of The Carpenters classic “Close To You” seeing as he’d already done reggae-fied covers of “Some Guys Have All The Luck” made famous by Robert Palmer and “Wild World” by Cat Stevens but it’s actually a Maxi original. I say reggae but Wikipedia tells me that Maxi’s music was actually reggae fusion as it has an R&B influence mixed in there as well. Whatever.

“Close To You” was (almost unbelievably) a Stateside No 1 which I never knew until now making Maxi (known as ‘The happiest man in pop’ according to Smash Hits magazine) only the second ever UK reggae act to achieve that feat after UB40 with “Red Red Wine” in 1988. The Brummie lads repeated the trick in 1993 with their cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love”. Maybe British reggae was quite the thing in the US at the time then.

For the completists out there, yes there was a cover of The Carpenters “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (to give it its full title) recorded by soul singer Gwen Guthrie in 1986 which made No 25 in the UK charts. So definitely not by Maxi Priest.

Some ropey old shite next as we get the “Freestyle Mega Mix” by Bobby Brown. This was a medley of Brown’s previous hits “Every Little Step”, “On Our Own”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “My Prerogative” which was released as a single to promote his remix album “Dance!…Ya Know it!” although it wasn’t included on the album itself.

Presumably the whole project was an attempt by his record company MCA to keep Brown’s profile high while he was in between albums (his follow up to 1988’s multi-platinum “Don’t Be Cruel” didn’t appear until 1992) and it reeks of cynicism. Somehow this steaming turd got all the way to No 14 in the UK Top 40.

Another run out for the video for “The Only One I Know” by The Charlatans next. Taken from the album “Some Friendly”, I didn’t realise until now (not having bought it) that it actually didn’t appear on the vinyl version of the album initially as the band wanted to take only one single from each album with follow up “Then” being the designated single.

20 years on from its release, “The Only One I Know” appeared in a Cadbury’s chocolate advert which would have been unthinkable back in the day. At least it wasn’t used to advertise Revels the orange flavour of which was the inspiration for the lyrics to their song “Polar Bear” which was also on “Some Friendly” and was gave the title of Charlatans fanzine Looking For The Orange One.

“The Only One I Know” peaked at No 9.

Pretty sure this is the third time Betty Boo‘s “Doin’ The Do” has been on the show but that this is the first time she has made a studio appearance after the promo video was broadcast twice previously. Now apparently, Betty used to work in Dorothy Perkins on a Saturday before she was a pop star and guess what? Maureen who we saw on the show earlier used to work in Miss Selfridge. This made me wonder if any other pop stars had worked in clothes shops before finding fame. Didn’t Kaiser Chiefs front man Ricky Wilson used to work in Next? I’m sure he admitted this in an interview once and managed to avoid using the till for a whole year as he hadn’t been trained on it. His time there paid off though as he won the Shockwaves NME Award For Best Dressed Person in 2006.

Not sure if Betty won any awards for her dress sense but she’s rocking that space cadet look in this performance. She should have gone for a purple wig though in the style of the female Moonbase personnel in the old Gerry Anderson space series UFO. She would really go for the space theme in a big way though with the video to her next single ‘Where Are You Baby?”

“Doin’ The Do” peaked at No 7.

Oh Lord! As if we haven’t seen enough of this lot already in 1990, New Kids On The Block are back with a new single and another album! “Step By Step” was the title of both lead single and parent album and is their biggest selling record going to No 1 in the US for three weeks and being certified platinum. I obviously wasn’t the target audience but even allowing for my unreceptive ears, this was utter, utter drivel. Bland by numbers dance pop of the most anonymous kind, what did people see in it? I’m missing the point though by looking for any musical merit. The fact was that the group’s popularity was at such a high by this point that they could have released some rectal discharge in a branded NKOTB plastic bag and it would have sold. The Step One, Step Two etc parts where the individual members get a solo bit are especially repugnant though. Worse than all of the above though is that this is only the fifth of eight chart hits that they racked up in 1990 alone! Gulp.

The World Cup is in full flow (even if the England team weren’t by this stage of the tournament) so predictably New Order are still No 1 with “World In Motion”. I say New Order but I think it was officially credited as ‘England New Order’. Unlike the Euro ’96 “Three Lions” anthem which was created by actual football fans in David Baddiel and Frank Skinner that was reflected in the lyrics, New Order weren’t massive football fans and the lyrics to “World In Motion” are suitably vague as to not specifically centre them in the sphere of football. Apparently the FA wanted to avoid anything that could be construed as a football hooligan chant. Yes, Keith Allen was a footy nut but despite his influence, I think there is a huge difference in the tone of “World In Motion” compared to “Three Lions”. New Order were not in a good place as a band (they would split three years later) and so maybe the whole football song experiment was seen as some sort of light relief and a bit of a laugh. Their expectations were low and mirrored the nation’s lack of hope for a successful campaign by the football team. Both perspectives were to be triumphantly turned on their heads by performances both in the charts and on the pitch.

Conversely, by the time Euro ’96 rolled around, football had gone through a transformation and was popular again and not just with the working classes. Under Terry Venables and with home advantage, England were expected to go all the way whilst the “Three Lions” song featuring two well known comedians who had already tied their football colours to the post with the Fantasy Football League TV show, was seen as a potential huge hit right from the off. Ultimately the record would indeed be a smash hit going to No 1 on two separate occasions during its ’96 run alone whilst the football team would fall tantalisingly short again.

The play out video is “Girl To Girl” by 49ers. I barely remembered their biggest hit from earlier in the year “Touch Me”, so this one had no chance, especially with it peaking at a lowly No 31. I don’t think I missed out on much in retrospect.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Guru Josh	Whose Law (Is It Anyway?)	Nah
2	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
3	Snap!	Ooops Up	No
4	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
5	Bobby Brown	Freestyle Mega Mix	Big no
6	The Charlatans	The Only One I Know	No but it’s on their Best Of Melting Pot CD that I have
7	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
8	New Kids On The Block	Step By Step	What do you think?
9	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
10	49ers	Girl To Girl	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzml/top-of-the-pops-14061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 07 JUN 1990

Posted on January 14, 2021 by 80stastic

Hello and welcome back to TOTP Rewind. BBC4 took a break from their TOTP repeat broadcasts over Xmas and the New Year but are back on schedule now. We re-start back in June 1990 and I’ve just had my 22nd birthday! 22! It’s literally a lifetime ago – how did I get to be so old? I suppose the intervening 30 years had something to do with it! To recap, I’ve just moved up to Hull from Worcester having finally secured some work after five months on the dole and am living with my girlfriend and her parents. My job is at Kingston Communications* doing some very basic VDU input on a temporary contract. As I remember, it was putting in employee time sheets into a database and there was a massive back log of them so quite a few weeks work.

*One of the many things that makes Hull unique is the fact that it is the only place in the UK not served by BT but by its own telecoms services run by KCOM (formerly Kingston Communications).

The day after this TOTP was broadcast, the 1990 World Cup kicked off with England expectations pretty low after a disastrous Euro ’88 showing. Italia ’90 would turn out to be a watershed moment for our national game. Enough of all that though, what about the music? Well, there are seven ‘new’ songs on the show that we haven’t seen before and the presenter is the ever so clean looking Mark Goodier who promises us a “special surprise” at the top of the show. Ooh! Wonder what that could be?

Before any of that though we’re kicking off with Pop Will Eat Itself and only their second ever Top 40 hit “Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina”. I’d first come across this lot when they released a cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F1-11” in 1987 but I hadn’t quite grasped at the time that they were part of the same ‘grebo’ movement that would launch the likes of The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Gaye Bykers On Acid. Indeed The Poppies*, The Stuffies* and The Neds* were all from the same place; Stourbridge in the West Midlands which was my original neck of the woods so I really should have had a better handle on all these bands.

*No amount of dropping their shortened names can cover that up (Credibility ed).

By 1990, they had carved out a career of sample-laden, indie dance rock tunes with singles like “Def. Con. One” and “Can U Dig It”. With one eye on the imminent Italia ’90 World Cup, the single “Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina” was promoted as the ‘unofficial World Cup Theme’ and includes sampled crowd chants and I’m pretty sure snatches of match commentary by the likes of Barry Davies and John Motson. And Cicciolina? This referred to…oh tell you what…here’s @TOTPFacts with that particular back story:

Cicciolina was the stagename of Ilona Staller, a Hungarian-born porn star who was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, representing the district of Rome until 1991. Notoriously, she offered to have sex with Saddam Hussein in the interests of peace. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 8, 2021

Well, if Boris Johnson felt comfortable saying Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize when Foreign Secretary back in 2018, then I hope somebody nominated Cicciolina back in the day for her unorthodox peace process plan.

Apparently the marketing campaign for the “Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina” single included an absurd notion to petition for Cicciolina to be the person who presented the World Cup to the winning team at the conclusion of Italia ’90. I’m guessing the single’s title was inspired by New Order’s 1987 single “Touched By The Hand Of God” – the Mancs are also of course indelibly linked with Italia ’90 due to “World In Motion” which we will be seeing later. I was chatting with my friend Robin at the weekend and he disputed my claim that “World In Motion” is the best football song ever declaring that, indeed, he preferred “Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina”. Never one to follow popular opinion Robin but I do think he means it! Robin’s favourite footy song peaked at No 28.

Historically when TOTP presenters make chart predictions they usually over estimate the potential of a single, rashly forecasting a No 1 record. In the case of Elton John and “Sacrifice” this evening’s host Mark Goodier does the opposite and under estimates its chart peak by saying it “could well end up being a Top 5 record that”. It of course went all the way to No 1 and not just any No 1 but Elton’s first as a solo artist. I say “Sacrifice” but it was actually “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” as it was a double A -side release. Both songs had been previously issued as singles in their own right at the tale end of 1989 with neither breaching the Top 40 but after Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright inexplicably started playing “Sacrifice” on his show in the Summer of 1990, it was re-released after audience reaction. How apt that a man infamously not that bothered about music would have a key role in getting such a bloated, lifeless dirge of a song to the top of the charts. In its defence, as Goodier says, it did raise money for charity (the AIDS Foundation I think) but it seems a travesty that “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” was the single to finally secure him a No 1 in his own right. So many more songs in his back catalogue deserving of that particular accolade. Of the two, I slightly preferred “Healing Hands” but I’m splitting arse hairs to be honest.

My aforementioned friend Robin and I once had a disagreement over a drink in a London pub about Elton’s back catalogue – he dismissed it all (and I mean every song) as awful. When I countered that you couldn’t say all his songs were shit he replied “Of course I can. Music taste is subjective – I thought you knew that”. I had no comeback. Smart arse.

Talking of double A-sides here comes a dance act I have no memory of at all. D-Shake were from Holland apparently and its their track “Yaaah” that gets a spin on the show tonight but it was the flip “Techno Trance (Paradise Is Now)” that all the DJs in the know were playing in the clubs apparently including the likes of Carl Cox. I’ve listened to both (although they actually seem to be different versions of the same track) and can confirm they are both horrible.

The guy behind D-Shake was a guy called Aad de Mooy who sounds like he plays up front for Huddersfield (or maybe Brighton) and according to the Discogs website has 31 different aliases including Cat Scanner, Jackhead and my particular favourite Dr Nunu. By the way, check out Goodier’s arse clenchingly awful intro to this one:

“What’s the secret of a good dance song – it’s definitely a good groove…”

A good groove?! He’s only one step away from saying (in true embarrassing Dad style) “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it”. Oh Christ! That’s what I sound like when I talk about music to my 11 year old isn’t it?! “Yaaah” / “Techno Trance (Paradise Is Now)” peaked at No 20.

In all of these TOTP reviews I have done stretching way back to 1983, it feels like very few bands have been on as much as The Mission. I mean maybe some of the really big hitters like Erasure, Depeche Mode etc but of those who have not had massive hits I can think of only maybe Siouxsie And The Banshees. And despite all of those appearances, not once did The Mission ever have a Top 10 hit. “Into The Blue” was their eighth consecutive Top 40 hit and was the last single to be taken from their “Carved In Sand” album. Goodier is at it again with a really patronising intro when he says “Coming up a band who really can play their instruments” Eh? Why did he feel the need to day that. Was there some conspiracy theory going around that they were just Milli Vanilli-esque record company stooges who didn’t actually play on their records? He goes onto call the single a “big chart smash”. Was it Mark? This is its chart record:

35 – 32 – 65

Hmm. Hardly a biggie. Three weeks on the chart in total with a high of No 32 then gone! I have to admit this one doesn’t do much for me. I don’t mind their sound but it does all start to sound the same after a while. Damn! I’m sounding like an embarrassing Dad again! By the way, Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams used to be in The Sisters Of Mercy but left to form The Mission. So what I hear you cry. Well, here’s @TOTPFacts again to fill in the gaps:

Joining Pop Will Eat Itself in the #TOTP studio here on vocals… The Sisters Of Mercy’s Patricia Morrison.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 8, 2021

The first of just three songs on the show that we have seen before next as we’re back with the dance tunes when we get another eyeful / earful of Don Pablo’s Animals and their version of “Venus”. As with D-Shake earlier, these lot were a European collective of producers but where D-Shake were from Holland, DPA* were Italian and German consisting of Paolo Bisiach, Christian Hornbostel and Mauro Ferrucci. And just like D-Shake founder Aad de Mooy, all three sound like they could have Premier League connections. I’m going for:

Paolo Bisiach – a Liverpool centre back in the mid 90s
Christian Hornbostel – a Southampton manager
Mauro Ferrucci – a Chelsea left back in the early 2000s

You can tell I’ve run out of things to say about Don Pablo’s Animals can’t you?

*Did anyone call them that? Bit like did anybody really call Tears For Fears ‘TFF’ apart from Peter Powell of course!

Goodier mispronounces the name of the next act who are Wilson Phillips or ‘Wilston Phillips’ as our host calls them (thanks to my wife for spotting that little gaff). Ah yes, Wilson Phillips whom you cannot mention without referencing their rock heritage. So much was made of the fact that Chynna Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas, while Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson are the daughters of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Marilyn Rovell of The Honeys. They must have got so fed up of answering questions about their famous parents when doing promotional interviews for the record. Whatever promotion they did though must have worked as their debut single “Hold On” went to No 1 in the US and No 6 over here.

The other big talking point about the trio was their vocal harmonies which are all over “Hold On” which is one of the perkiest pop songs you might ever hear despite its lyrics being inspired by Chynna Phillips’s experiences with substance abuse and the AA. I used to work with someone who said this was one of his favourite songs ever although I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t winding me up.

Despite initially breaking up in 1992, the trio have reunited a few times over the years including for this scene at the climax of the film Bridesmaids which is one of those movies I always end up watching if I stumble over it while channel flipping.

If it’s 1990 then it must be Madchester and here’s someone else who was seen as being part of that movement and for once, he was actually from Manchester! MC Tunes was from the infamous Moss Side area of that great city which (certainly when I lived there and not that far from Moss Side itself) had a reputation for high crime rates, regular stabbings, drugs and gangsters. The image of his glaring face and intimidating stare on the cover of his album “The North At Its Heights” would absolutely have you believe that Tunes could handle himself in Moss Side. Indeed, Mark Goodier seems so unnerved by his presence in the TOTP studio that he stumbles over his intro seeming to change his description of Tunes from a ‘man’ to a ‘lad’ halfway through.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” was his debut single and biggest hit of his career and was made in conjunction with fellow Mancs 808 State. Cleverly based around a sample from the main title theme to the Western The Big Country which pulled you in from the start, it would go Top 10 in the UK. However, after his initial success, his solo career fell away a bit and by 1995 he had left his MC Tunes alter ego behind and formed the achingly trendy Dust Junkys who just about everybody I ever worked with in multiple Our Price shops in the Greater Manchester area seemed to love …except me. I always quite liked “The Only Rhyme That Bites” though. So apparently did Goodier who pulls out a “Wicked, wicked” line to describe it at the end of the performance. Dearie me.

Just when you thought he couldn’t plumb the depths of naffness any deeper, Goodier uses the phrase “1990 stylee” to introduce “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” by Was (Not Was). How did this man ever achieve such longevity as a broadcaster?!

David and Don Was (not their real names) have done some truly remarkable work I think but this cover of The Temptations’ 1972 hit left me cold. Songs like “Out Come The Freaks”, “I Feel Better Than James Brown” and “How The Heart Behaves” sound brilliant but this? Nah, not for me. I’d even take “Walk The Dinosaur” over this! They retuned to the charts in 1992 in a big way with the No 4 hit “Shake Your Head” featuring the vocals of Ozzy Osbourne and Hollywood movie star Kim Basinger and a Best Of album called “Hello Dad…I’m In Jail” which I bought but again they recorded another uninspiring cover version (INXS’s “Listen Like Thieves”) to promote it. Just stick to your own songs guys!

At least Goodier agrees with me (and therefore disagrees with my friend Robin) that “World In Motion” by New Order is the best football song ever as we get to the new No 1 and its time for that surprise! It’s only a live interview with the England 1990 World Cup squad! Would this have been seen as event TV back in the day? Maybe I guess. What follows though is the lamest of banter (courtesy of Gazza and a fake sleeping Chris Waddle) whilst Goodier attempts to prove to the watching millions that he’s actually a football fan as well. About as convincing as David ‘Is it Aston Villa or West Ham’ Cameron mate.

As for the song, apparently the FA hadn’t been that keen on the involvement of New Order and the band never got any World Cup tickets or freebies. National treasure and star striker Gary Lineker wasn’t keen either describing football songs as “a bit twee” but John Barnes was all for it and of course he would go onto seal his small but perfectly formed place in pop history with that rap. Supposedly the few players that did turn up to the recording session disappeared halfway through to open a Topman store in Middlesbrough! Talking of which, mention must go to the ultimate top man of football songs Keith Allen who helped write the lyrics and of course appears in the video. He would return to that rather niche genre again in 1998 being involved with both “Vindaloo” by Fat Les and “England’s Irie” by Black Grape. I read his autobiography a few years ago which was a fascinating read. He supports Fulham in case you were wondering.

We close with one of the most well known power ballads of all time. “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette is of course forever associated with the film Pretty Woman in which it featured but it’s also taken on a life of its own soundtracking many a relationship break up and still gets regular radio airplay to this day.

The band were big news in the US after clocking up two Billboard No 1s in 1989 and so were approached to record a song for the film’s soundtrack album. Rather than recording something brand new, they just reworked an existing song called “It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted)” which had been a big hit in their native Sweden but had not been released globally so remained unknown to most of the planet’s pop fans. Not for long though as both the soundtrack album and “It Must Have Been Love” took off in a massive way with the latter supplying the duo with their third US No 1. It was also a No 3 in the UK and remains their biggest hit here. I’m guessing that it must also be their most well known song. They would return the following year with the album and single “Joyride” – yet another US No 1 single.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Pop Will Eat Itself	Touched by The Hand of Cicciolina	I didn’t – sorry Robin
2	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Certainly not!
3	D-Shake	Yaaah	Naaah
4	The Mission	Into The Blue	Nope
5	Don Pablo’s Animals	Venus	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
6	Wilson Phillips	Hold On	No
7	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	I didn’t
8	Was (Not Was)	Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone	No but it’s on my Best Of album of their which I bought
9	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
10	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	Negative

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzmj/top-of-the-pops-07061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 31 MAY 1990

Posted on December 28, 2020 by 80stastic

As we get to the last day of May in 1990 in TOTP Rewind world, I’m just going to have a quick check-in with myself about what I was up to personally before getting into the music. After five whole months of unemployment since I left my temporary Xmas job, I think it was at this point that finally something happened to rouse me from my stupor. I got a call out of the blue about a job! On my last visit up to Hull to visit my girlfriend I had registered my details with an employment agency not expecting anything to come of it. My ‘details’ (such as they were) weren’t up to much. I had very little employment history and very few abilities (the term ‘skills set’ had yet to be invented). And yet, I was deemed viable by the agency to go and work at Kingston Communications in Hull on a temporary contract helping on some project to convert a whole load of info currently residing on paper into a computer format – yes, VDU input in other words. I got the call mid morning and was on the train up North by lunchtime such was my desire to make a change to my husk of a life. This was fantastic – not only would I be earning money but I would be living at my girlfriend’s parents’ home so would get to see her all the time as well. I arrived early evening in Hull and was to start my temporary job the next day. I wonder what tunes were doing the chart rounds to send me on my way…

…hmm. Well, it’s not a great start. Despite it being well over six months since Black Box took the UK charts by storm with No 1 and best selling single of 1989 “Ride On Time”, it seemed that they still had some pull on the nation’s tastes as they are back in the Top 40 with a third consecutive hit single from their “Dreamland” album. This one was called “Everybody, Everybody” and on the contrary to it being so good they named it twice, I found this a rather drab affair.

Proving themselves to be shameless in the pulling a fast one stakes, they are still persisting with having French model Katrin Quinol front the act despite the fact that this was the third single to feature someone else entirely doing the singing. I’m pretty sure that particular cat had been out of the bag for some time as well but it didn’t seem to matter a jot to Black Box. This single (as had the previous single “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”) featured the vocals talents of ex-Weather Girl Martha Wash without proper credit (Loleatta Holloway was the singer wronged for “Ride On Time”). Weren’t we bothered about this sort of thing back then? There was outrage when it turned out that The Monkees hadn’t played on their early 60s hits and similar furore was unleashed when it became known that the Bay City Rollers were found to be less than completely present on their recordings. And what about the Milli Vanilli miming scandal? All hell broke loose when that story found its way into the press. The great Black Box hoax though – not so much, at least not enough to make any difference to their continuing success.

“Everybody, Everybody” would peak at No 16 but we haven’t seen the last of Black Box in 1990 yet I fear.

As the Italia ’90 World Cup is only a few days away from starting, presenter Simon Mayo has jumped on the football bandwagon and is doing tonight’s show in a whirl of ever changing football shirts to highlight the different countries involved. Why does he call them ‘outfits’ to begin with though. ‘Kit’ is the word you’re looking for Simon. I’m pretty sure Mayo is a Spurs fan – I’ll leave that there without further comment. He then makes a pathetically lame line about Ireland manager Jack Charlton’s favourite band being Talk Talk to shoe horn in a link to the next song. Woeful Mayo. Woeful.

Nothing woeful about “It’s My Life” though. Re-released and now a deserved bona fide chart hit, we established in the last post that this 1984 track was promoting the band’s “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” album, although they wanted nothing to do with the whole campaign.

In truth, they had long since moved on from the sound of “It’s My Life” when they released 1988″s “Spirt Of Eden” which has been described by the music press as ‘ambient’, ‘minimalist’ and as veering towards ‘free-form jazz’ (!!). Crucially, it was defined by their record company EMI as not being ‘commercially satisfactory’ and was the precursor to a legal dispute that would see Talk Talk depart EMI to sign with Polydor. Only one final album called “Laughing Stock” was released on their new label which was regarded as even more musically extreme than “Spirt Of Eden” and the band spilt after that. I’ve never delved into “Spirt Of Eden” nor “Laughing Stock”. Some of the reviews that basically describe them as taking music into another dimension feel like they should be worthy of investigation but I have to admit that the free-form jazz description has put me off big time. Furthermore, I’ve been stung before on a similar theme when I watched the Scott Walker: 30th Century Man documentary. Now I love Scott’s voice and his 60s catalogue of work but boy did he lose the plot big time in later life. Here he is deciding that a dead pig would be the best form of percussion instrument for the ‘song’ he was working on:

In fairness, to Scott, as mad as it looks, it’s a better use of a dead pig than David Cameron came up with in his infamous extra curricular activities.

Back to Talk Talk, and it struck me that the band’s two biggest hits have a very definite existential fixation – “It’s My Life” and “Life’s What You Make It”. As statements about why we are all here and what to do with our time on the planet, I guess they are better song titles than ’42’. There was a cover version of “It’s My Life” in 2003 by US Ska Punk band No Doubt to (coincidentally) promote their own Best Of album but it always sounded like a poor man’s version of the original to me.

Sadly, Mark Hollis dies in February 2019 aged just 64.

Well I didn’t expect to see Sam Brown on TOTP again but a move of just one place up the charts from No 24 to No 23 for her single “Kissing Gate” this week was enough to get her on the show again. I say again but I think it’s just a re-showing of her initial appearance.

It struck me given the time of year (Xmas 2020 if you are reading this way down the line) that Sam Brown’s musical trajectory is a little like that of the late, great Kirsty Maccoll. Both had recording artists as fathers (Joe Brown and Ewan Maccoll), both had great voices, both probably didn’t get the recognition they deserved (certainly at the time) and both had their singing careers cut short – Kirtsy was tragically killed in a powerboat incident in Mexico in December 2000 whilst Sam lost her singing voice in 2007 explaining in a 2013 interview that “I can’t get vocal cord closure and achieve the proper pitch simultaneously. It feels like there are some muscles that aren’t working.”

I wondered if their similarities extended to them ever working together but the closest connection I could find was them being on the same bill together at a Children In Need charity gig in November 1991.

Make the most of this Erasure single “Star”as it’s the last time we’ll be seeing Andy and Vince on TOTP for a whole year. This was the fourth and last single to be released from the duo’s “Wild!” album and its final chart resting place of No 11 shows how strong a fan base they had at that time. No 11 for a fourth single from an album that’s already been out for seven months? Those are pretty respectable numbers.

For me this was the poppiest of all four of those singles and was a throw back to that sound that broke them with “Sometimes” back in ’86. The lyric ‘From Moscow to Mars’ would supply the title of their 13 disc 2016 box set retrospective whilst the song also contains references to ‘pretty in pink’ and ‘satellite of love’.

Erasure would return in 1991 with their third consecutive No 1 album “Chorus”.

OK 1990 – you’ve got me again. Who on earth was Jane Child? Not only do I not remember Jane nor her single “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love” but I’m struggling to see why she made the charts in 1990 at all. She sounds sooo 80s! It’s as if the chart compilers found this track left alone in a locked cupboard marked 1986 and had no idea what to do with it. “Just smuggle it into this week’s charts; nobody will notice” you can imagine them saying to each other. Just to hammer home the point, Jane’s wearing a Sigue Sigue Sputnik ‘Rambo Child’ T-shirt in the video whilst her hairstyle wouldn’t have been out of place on the noggin of one of the members of the aforementioned “Love Missile F1-11” hit makers.

Due to my lack of Jane Child knowledge, I’ve had to rely on Wikipedia to fill in the gaps for me. It turns out she is Canadian, that control of her musical style was very important to her (leading to the press labelling her ‘the female Prince’) and that she refused to appear on TOTP considering the show a “sell out”! That decision backfired on Jane however. After her promo video was shown instead, the single only moved from No 25 to No 22 where it would peak. Jane never had another UK chart hit again.

Time to ‘Get Wicked!’ next with Chad Jackson and his one and only hit “Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)”. The first time I heard this it sounded instantly familiar and I assumed it must be a reworking of some old standard but no – it was just packed full of samples instead. The ‘deedle eedle eedle eee eee eee’ bit (as Smash Hits described it) sampled 60s soul sister Marva Whitney’s recording “Unwind Yourself”. No I didn’t know it either but here it is in all its glory…

There were loads of other samples on the record from the likes of Kool And The Gang, The O’Jays and even Soul II Soul. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind some of the sampled vocal parts that the guy doing the Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” impression signposts in the performance:

The voice saying "Hear the drummer get wicked" is Public Enemy's Chuck D, from "Welcome To The Terrordome" by Public Enemy, while the "Peace, unity, love and havin' fun" is sampled from "Unity" by Afrika Bambaataa and James Brown. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 18, 2020

The writing on Bob’s sign looks very reminiscent of De La Soul’s “3 Feet High And Rising” album typography but then as Simon Mayo says, Chad Jackson had worked with the American hip hop trio (on “Three Is The Magic Number” to be specific) previously. Oh yes, Chad himself – who was he exactly. As Mayo* stated, he was a Manchester DJ (real name Mark Chadwick) who had won the annual Disco Mix Club (DMC) DJ World Championships competition in 1987. According to Smash Hits, he’d also previously worked with Public Enemy (presumably hence the Chuck D sample). Like chart peer Stevie V (of “Dirty Cash” fame), he now teaches music technology. His single would peak at No 3.

*Interesting how Mayo introduces the track as ‘Hear The Drummer’ and not “Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)”. I bet he thought he was above saying ‘Get Wicked’ and considered it naff.

From getting wicked to “Doin’ The Do” now as we get Betty Boo‘s video again.

Just like Chad Jackson before her, Betty had worked with Public Enemy before becoming a chart star when she was in an all female hip-hop outfit called the She-Rockers. After a chance meeting at McDonalds in Shepherd’s Bush with Professor Griff, Betty and her mates ended up having their debut single produced by the Prof and touring with Public Enemy!

Can you imagine that? You just nip into McDonalds for an egg McMuffin and end up touring with the biggest rap act on the planet?! I realise there must be plenty of ‘sliding door’ moments in pop history but as chance encounters go, that’s right up there. Off the top of my head I can think of Paul Heaton meeting Jacqui Abbott at a house party and her going on to replace Briana Corrigan in the Beautiful South and then reuniting with Paul years later as a recording double act. I suppose the ultimate chance rock meeting occurred on July 6, 1957 at a church fete at St. Peter’s Church in Liverpool when Paul McCartney met John Lennon for the first time. However, the technology to record the event hadn’t been invented and, in Betty’s moment in history, she reckons that afterwards she bumped into LL Cool J in the kebab house so for the purposes of this blog, Betty steals it!

Such was the impact of her sound and image that when the Spice Girls were being put together in the mid 90s, the casting advert for the group stated that it was looking for ‘five Betty Boos’. Despite all of this though, if you put ‘Betty Boo’ into Google it will always default to ‘Betty Boop’ so she’ll never be more famous than a 1930’s cartoon character.

“Doin’ The Do” peaked at No 7.

One of the song’s of the Summer next as we get to the climax of Simon Mayo’s football shirt campaign with the first view of the official England 1990 World Cup song. Surely there is no debate that this is the best football song ever is there? I mean, I know “Three Lions” holds a place in the nation’s hearts and you can chant it at actual games but in terms of musicality, nothing beats “World In Motion” by New Order does it? To put how good it was into context, here’s the previous England World Cup campaign song from 1986…

Or how about the one before that from 1982…

and now compare them to “World In Motion”…

It’s a completely different…erm…ball game. The reaction to it initially I seem to recall was pretty much WTF?! People couldn’t get their heads around it. A legitimate band with some heavy gravitas being associated with a football song – why had they done it? It’ll ruin their career. And then when people heard it their reaction changed to something like ‘But this is a pretty good tune – this can’t be the official England song can it?’

Famously, only six squad members turned up to the recording of the song but fortunately one was John Barnes whose once heard never to be forgotten rap in the middle of it is something he continues to dine out on to this very day. Never mind being asked about playing for Liverpool or that goal against Brazil, it’s always a case of ‘Do the rap Barnesy!’. Supposedly Gazza was given a go at doing the rap but it was a complete disaster probably because he was absolutely plastered on champagne at the recording session.

I always felt that the video lets the song down a bit. Not the bits with Keith Allen or New Order in them but the montage of football action clips. They look like they are all taken from an England v Brazil friendly from March earlier in the year and there all fairly nondescript – you don’t even get to see the game’s only goal scored by Gary Lineker, just the fairly muted celebrations afterwards and Brazil are playing in blue instead of their iconic yellow shirts. There is quite a lot of footage of Chris Waddle’s magnificent mullet though.

There’s loads more to say about this song but fortunately there’s plenty more tome to do so as it will be No 1 in next week’s show.

Meanwhile, this week’s No 1 is still Adamski featuring Seal with “Killer”. After four weeks at the top and six TOTP appearances, I’ve very little left to say about this. OK, what about what happened next? Well, we all know that Seal went onto have a lengthy and successful solo career that continues to this day but what about Adamski? Well, he did go on to have another Top 10 single in “Space Jungle” and a Top 10 album with the rather unwieldy title of “Doctor Adamski’s Musical Pharmacy” but despite continuing to release new music into the new millennium and beyond, he has never returned to the UK charts.

Along with “World In Motion” though, “Killer” remains synonymous with the Summer of 1990 for me.

After The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets had all been in the Top 40 recently, The Charlatans also scored a chart hit with “The Only One I Know” at this time. Although widely associated with the Madchester movement, the origins of the band actually lay in the West Midlands where they were formed by bassist Martin Blunt. So how did the Manchester link happen? It was after the band recruited new singer Tim Burgess who was from Northwich in Cheshire and then relocated to Burgess’s hometown. Burgess had been born in Salford but lived in Northwich from an early age. I went to Northwich once to see my hometown football team Worcester City play Northwich Victoria in the FA Trophy quarter final. We lost 2-1. It was a very long journey home during which I learned the Mary Hopkin song “Those Were The Days” whose lyrics we reconfigured to be about drinking pints. I had no idea what I was singing about being 13 at the time but just as that memory has stuck with me, so did the Madchester tag to The Charlatans and it didn’t do them any harm it has to be said. “The Only One I Know”, with its swirling Hammond organ sound and Burgess’s 60s zeitgeist nailing vocals, went Top 10 while parent album “Some Friendly” was a No 1 record. Despite struggling to reach such heights with their immediate follow up material, the band really hit their stride in the mid to late 90s (my favourite era of theirs) with two consecutive No 1 albums and some stonking singles like “Can’t Get Out of Bed”, “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, “One to Another” and “North Country Boy”.

However, I wasn’t sure about “The Only One I Know” to begin with – I think I was still struggling to come to terms with a fast changing pop world and they seemed like one new act too many for me at the time. I think it’s great now of course.

During the shit show that has been 2020, Tim Burgess has emerged as one of the year’s heroes with his Tim’s Twitter Listening Party project helping to keep us all entertained and sane. He better get some recognition in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2021 – that’s all I’m saying.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Black Box	Everybody Everybody	Nah
2	Talk Talk	It’s My Life	No but I have it on a compilation CD of theirs (not Natural History though)
3	Sam Brown	Kissing Gate	It’s a no
4	Erasure	Star	No but I’m guessing it’s on their Pop! The First 20 HIts CD that I have
5	Jane Child	Don’t Wanna Fall In Love	And I didn’t with this
6	Chad Jackson	Hear TheDrummer (Get Wicked)	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
7	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	See 6 above
8	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
9	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
10	The Charlatans	The Only One I Know	No but it’s on their Best Of Melting Pot CD that I have

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qcx4/top-of-the-pops-31051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 24 MAY 1990

Posted on December 24, 2020 by 80stastic

The 24th of May 1990 was not a slow news day as England football manager Bobby Robson chose this day to inform the media that he would not be renewing his contract after the Summer’s World Cup competition in Italy. Sir Bobby had a job lined up with Dutch club PSV Eindhoven which led to accusations from the tabloid press of him being unpatriotic. Hmm. It seems we haven’t progressed much in 30 years.

That year’s World Cup would become inextricably linked with the music world thanks to New Order’s “World In Motion” song but that’s for the next repeat’s post. For now though, we start with The B-52s and their follow up to their No 2 hit single “Love Shack” called “Roam”. I’d loathed “Love Shack” so probably wasn’t expecting that much from “Roam” but it it turned out to be vastly superior to its predecessor to my ears.

There seems to be a lot of discussion online about the true meaning of the song’s lyrics. On there surface an innocent message about freedom, travelling and seeing the world, the online conspiracy theorists would have you believe that it’s all just one big double entendre and is actually about the sexual act with lines like ‘Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness, Around the world the trip begins with a kiss’ clearly being about cunnilingus! What?! Mind. Blown.

Moving on swiftly, for me the performance here and indeed the sound of the song is all about Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson and their rousing vocals which are just perfectly weighted for the song. So dominant are they visually that Fred Schneider, who had been so high profile in their performances of “Love Shack”, is relegated to shaking his tambourine almost absentmindedly throughout. I wonder if he was OK with that? Reminds me of a story I once heard about the single “Nobody’s Fool” by Haircut 100. When percussionist Mark Fox first heard it, he complained that there weren’t enough parts in it for him and he wasn’t going to just stand their on TOTP with a bloody tambourine thank you very much!

There’s a parody of “Roam” called “Comb” which was a skit on Australian comedy sketch show Fast Forward about Pierson’ and Wilson’s hairstyles. There’s also a COVID-19 parody that I found on YouTube featuring lines like “No more hip to hip, keep your social distances” but now doesn’t seem the time to be dwelling on that.

“Roam” peaked at No 17 in the UK but went all the way to No 3 in the US.

The first video of the night comes from Mantronix featuring Wondress with “Take Your Time”. I have zero left to say about this one so I’ve had to plunge into the internet to come up with something. What I found chilled me to the bone. This single was taken from an album called “This Should Move Ya” the title of which alone should have been enough to set my warning bells ringing but nothing could have prepared me for what I found out about that album. It includes a version of “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” by Ian Dury And The Blockheads! Obviously then I had to give it a listen and I’m not yet sure I have recovered. If you are brave, or possibly a masochist, listen to this….

Just horrible. Anybody involved in this heinous crime should hang their heads in shame.

“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.

En Vogue are up next and actually in the studio for their very first visit to TOTP as presenter Anthea Turner advises. She also tells us that they have style and you have to admit she’s not wrong. They give a mesmerising performance including that a cappella intro which is actually a song within a song as it is a treatment of “Who’s Lovin’ You” by The Miracles.

I was amazed to see a filmography section in the band’s Wikipedia entry but they have actually appeared in three films – Aces: Iron Eagle III, their own Christmas movie and this fleeting cameo in Batman Forever whichI had no idea was them until now…

Four Breakers this week and Anthea Turner perversely announces them in the reverse order to the one that they actually appear. The first one then is actually Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson with “Joy And Heartbreak”. I had no recall of this at all before hearing it on this repeat at which point it did sound familiar but that’s probably because it is based on the melody of Erik Satie’s “Les Trois Gymnopedie”. No really. Listen to just a few seconds of Satie below…

and then play the start of the Movement 98 track….

…see? That classical music trick would be repeated later in the year when The Farm scored a huge hit with “All Together Now” which was based on Pachelbel’s Canon but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Back to Movement 98 though and Wikipedia informs me that this was a Paul Oakenfold project with input from Rob Davis, the earrings and dresses wearing guitarist from Mud who would go onto write such huge hits as “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” for Spiller and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” for Kylie. As for vocalist Carroll Thompson, she has quite the musical pedigree. An award winning reggae singer, she was also a member of Floy Joy briefly and also sang on Aztec Camera’s “One And One” track from their “Love” album. She has also worked as a session singer with the likes of …deep breath…Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams, Boy George, Maxi Priest, Sting, Billy Ocean, Chaka Khan, Aswad and M People. Phew!

As well as Satie’s influence, “Joy And Heartbreak” also reminds me of something else which I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it Shanice’s “I Love Your Smile”? A Janet Jackson track maybe? It’ll come back to me …probably in the middle of the night.

“Joy And Heartbreak” peaked at No 27.

Right then, the era of Betty Boo is upon us. Having introduced herself to UK pop fans the previous year as the vocalist on Beatmasters’ single “Hey DJ / I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing”, she was signed to Rhythm King Records on the strength of demos that she presented to them for “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?” with the former becoming her debut solo single. Mixing her hip hop roots with some irresistibly catchy pop hooks, the track was an immediate hit taking Betty (real name Alison Clarkson) to No 7 in the charts. She was a bona fide pop star in her own right.

The video worked well in promoting her cartoony rebellious image as she revisits her old school in a leather jacket and hot pants to take issue with the teachers who said she would amount to nothing. In a 2019 Classic Pop Magazine interview, Clarkson related the origin of the song:

“When I left my A-Levels I did have my tail between my legs,” she reflects, “in that [after the She Rockers split] I did go back to the head of sixth form and say, please may I come back and do my A-Levels again, and she said no. I was so annoyed with them. So I thought it’d be great if I just channelled that. I was sticking two fingers up, basically.”

For a while back there in 1990, Betty Boo was hot news. Her debut album “Boomania” went to No 4 in the charts and contained four hit singles. However, inevitably the hits dried up after taking two years to come up with a second album and she retired from the music world after losing her Mum to cancer. As with the aforementioned Rob Davis though, she would carve out a career as a successful songwriter penning hits for Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue and the No 1 single “Pure And Simple” for Hear’Say.

In a recent TOTP repeat we saw British rock act Thunder on the show and this week we get another of the acts of that early 90s UK rock scene in Little Angels. Having been in existence since 1984 after forming in Scarborough, the band had released four singles up to this point that had all failed to make the Top 40 but they rectified that with the release of “Radical Your Lover” which was their first chart hit peaking at No 34. If you check out the details of the release, it’s actually credited to Little Angels and The Big Bad Horns with the latter being a trio who provided the brass parts to complement their out and out rock sound.

Listening back to this now, it seems almost interchangeable with that of Thunder but then I’m not a die hard fan. Having said that, I did own a copy of their No 1 1992 album “Jam” at one point which was a freebie from Our Price – record companies would often supply the chain and its shops with a promo copy of their artists’ albums ahead of official release date to play in store to ‘create a buzz’ about it. Not sure what happened to my copy though. I also once saw them do a PA at Manchester’s HMV store to promote that “Jam” album. They performed a short set and they sounded pretty good to be fair.

More interesting than any of the above though is the fact that the band’s guitarist was called Bruce Dickinson. Yes! Exactly the same as Iron Maiden’s lead singer! What are the chances?!

Talk Talk in the charts in 1990 with a re-release of a single that flopped when originally issued in 1984? What gives? Well, “It’s My Life” had been reissued by EMI to promote the band’s first ever Best Of Collection called “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” which the band themselves had disproved of. It performed surprisingly well commercially given that the band only ever achieved three Top 40 singles despite much critical acclaim. So well that EMI released a remix album the following year called “History Revisited: The Remixes” which angered the band so much that they sued EMI claiming that material had been falsely attributed to them. Talk Talk won the case with EMI agreeing to withdraw and destroy all remaining copies of the album. I would have been working in Our Price at that point but I must admit I can’t remember having to take that album off sale.

It seems that the band were never on that good terms with their record company. As far back as the single’s original release six years previous, EMI had interfered with the band’s creativity when, disliking Tim Pope’s original video showing Mark Hollis with lips sealed and covered by animated lines (a statement against lip synching), they insisted on another video which was basically the band performing against a back drop of said original promo. The band’s exaggerated movements suggest that they weren’t totally on board with EMI’s idea!

As for me, back in 1984, I’d liked “It’s My Life” on its original release and also subsequent singles “Such A Shame” and “Dum Dum Girl”. I’m pretty sure I had plans to purchase the parent album also called “It’s My Life” but somehow that purchase never materialised. The 1990 re-release peaked at No 13.

Two songs we’ve already seen on the show before are up next starting with “Won’t Talk About It” by Beats International. Featuring Lindy Layton on vocals, I’m pretty sure this would have been the band’s last ever TOTP appearance as they never made the Top 40 again after this single.

Although Lindy attended stage school in the 1980s and appeared as an actor in TV shows such as Casualty and Press Gang alongside numerous adverts, she did not, contrary to rumours, appear in Grange Hill. Apparently the press reported at the time that she had been in the long running school drama but they had confused her with the actress Lindy Brill who played Cathy Hargreaves. Maybe the reason for the confusion was that Brill did seem to have some musical chops. Witness her here in a story line about her school band who were rehearsing for a scout hall dance gig in the school’s music room at lunchtime….

The scout hall dance gig was small fry though compared to actually being on TOTP itself, a feat which Brill achieved as part of the St Winifred’s School Choir backing singers on Brian and Michael’s No 1 hit “Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs” some 12 years before Lindy Layton fronted Beats International on the show. Lindy Brill – only the woman Lindy Layton could have been.

“Won’t Talk About It” peaked at No 9.

Oh come on now! Seriously?! Michael Bolton on again?! How many times is this? Three? Four? It’s just the same old clip of that original performance of “How Can We Be Lovers” recycled again and again to boot. OK – let’s look on the bright side. Despite a haul of 17 chart hits in the UK, we won’t see Bolton on the show again for at least another year as his next three single releases didn’t make the Top 40 and he would only make the Top 10 twice more; once with a cover of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” in 1991 and secondly with the creepily titled 1995 No 6 hit “Can I Touch You…There?”. Bolton also had a hit with a song called “Said I Loved You But I Lied” – I’m starting to think Michael might not be all that nice a guy.

A song next which seemed to be the go to track if you wanted to cover it for a hit. Like most people, I knew “Venus” from the Bananarama version of it in 1986 rather than the Shocking Blue 1969 original. However, it’s also been covered by the likes of Tom Jones through to Weird Al Yankovic via Sacha Distel. Weird is certainly the word. In 1990, it was revitalised once more by Italian / German dance project Don Pablo’s Animals who took it all the way to No 4 in our charts. It’s a horrible instrumental version though with that omnipresent ‘whoo, yeah’ sample all over it. Just nasty.

And that name? What was that all about? Here’s @TOTPFacts with a decent guess:

Why the name "Don Pablo's Animals"? Here's my (unconfirmed) theory: it's a reference to "Don" Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron, who notoriously built a zoo on his estate, stocking it with antelope, elephants, giraffes and hippos. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 18, 2020

Oh OK. So Don Pablo was basically a prototype Joe Exotic of Tiger King notoriety. Joe, of course, liked a sing-song (before was sentenced to 22 years in prison for hiring someone to murder his nemesis Carole Baskin) . Here he is with “I Saw A Tiger”…

Wikipedia advises me that it wasn’t really him doing the singing though. Say it ain’t so Joe.

Back to Don Pablo’s Animals, I think my wife had this on a “Smash Hits Rave” compilation album which, after a quick google search, shows me that it also included Betty Boo’s “Doin’ The Do” from earlier in the show. I have never played said album in my life.

In a very static Top 5, Adamski (featuring Seal) comes out on top for a third straight week with “Killer”. It’s the video this week rather than a studio performance. It’s pretty basic looking stuff by today’s standards with Seal’s body less, spinning head enhanced by some flashing graphics. Adamski himself also features as some sort of Dr Frankenstein figure with Seal portrayed as his creation.

The song has been covered numerous times most famously by George Michael and by Seal himself but there are other versions too. Witness Sugababes who recorded it as a B-side to their 2003 single “Shape”:

Four years before that, there was this vile version from German trance act ATB in 1999 which I must have voided from my memory banks and for good reason:

The play out video is “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Was (Not Was). I would have had no clue as to when this was a bit. I’d have maybe gone for later in the decade to be honest but this cover of The Temptations classic by David and Don Was (not their real names) was the lead single from their fourth studio album “Are You Okay?”. It didn’t do much for me I have to say but I did like the other two singles lifted from the album which were “How the Heart Behaves” and “I Feel Better Than James Brown” neither of which made the Top 40.

In a neat bit of symmetry, Don Was produced four tracks on The B-52s album “Cosmic Thing” from which opening song on tonight’s show “Roam” was taken (although not that track itself but he did produce “Love Shack”).

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The B-52s	Roam	I didn’t
2	Mantronix featuring Wondress	Take Your Time	I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no
3	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
4	Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson	Joy And Heartbreak	Nope
5	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on that Smash Hits Rave album
6	Little Angels	Radical Your Lover	No
7	Talk Talk	It’s My Life	No but I have it on a compilation CD of theirs (not Natural History though)
8	Beats International	Won’t Talk About It	No but my wife has their album with a version of it on
9	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
10	Don Pablo’s Animals	Venus	See 5 above
11	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
12	Was (Not Was)	Papa Was A Rolling Stone	No but I have it on their Best Of compilation Hello Dad…I’m In Jail

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qcx2/top-of-the-pops-24051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 18 MAY 1990

Posted on December 17, 2020 by 80stastic

Hang on? TOTP on a Friday? What gives? Yes, this particular episode of the show aired on a Friday due to having been bumped off its regular and time enshrined Thursday night slot because of the FA Cup final replay being shown on that day. Having not been a final replay in the competition for seven years, 1990 saw it return after a draw on the Saturday before between Man Utd and Crystal Palace. The whole of that year’s FA Cup had been one to cherish – not for my beloved Chelsea who had gone out in the 4th round to Third Division Bristol City (bah!) – but Semi Final day had seen both games televised live on the BBC one after the other on a glorious Sunday afternoon for football fans who gorged on 13 goals between the the two games. The Final saw the goal fest continue in a thrilling 3-3 contest…

…the thrills couldn’t last though and the replay was a dour affair with Man Utd triumphing 1-0 in a game which saw Crystal Palace in one of the worst kits to ever feature in an FA Cup final.

I watched all of these games in the sitting room of my parents’ house as I was unemployed (still), depressed and skint. My brother on the other hand, an ardent Man Utd fan, had attended all the games (including both at Wembley) as this was his peak period for going to see the red scum (sorry bruv!). Fortunately, it wouldn’t be long before my luck would change and I would find employment in Hull where my girlfriend lived and would spend the Summer there before getting married and I was never to live in the family home again.

So what were the tunes that would see me into this happier period of my life? Well, they seemed to be supplied by acts that had made their name in the previous decade who were letting us know they were still around by returning to the Top 40 in 1990. Let’s see who we’re talking about…

...Hothouse Flowers had not been visitors to the UK Top 40 since their only previous trip in 1988 with their No 11 hit “Don’t Go”. I’d really liked that song and my wife had even gone as far as to buy their album “People” which was also packed full of good songs. However, I must admit that I wasn’t sure there was still a market for their brand of soul infused rock when the new decade rolled around. I was wrong though as they made it back into the charts with “Give It Up”, the lead single from their second album “Home”. The new track didn’t really show much musical progression but it was still a decent tune I thought even if the piano riff in the chorus seems to have been nicked off “Love Is In The Air” by John Paul Young. Furthermore, lead singer Liam Ó Maonlaí displayed that he still had the ability to sing songs that sounded like they had too many lyrics in them to work properly but somehow did. In the two years since I’d seen them live at Sunderland Poly, the band’s guitarist Fiachna Ó Braonáin had grown sprouted some dreadlocks by the look of him which was a bold move that I’m not completely sure worked.

“Give It Up” peaked at No 30 and they followed it up with a cover of Johnny Nash’s ” I Can See Clearly Now’ which did better by going to No 23 but a third single from the album “Movies” didn’t chart at all despite it being the best of the three in my opinion. Hothouse Flowers spilt in 1994 only to reunite in 1998 and sporadically release material and do gigs to this day.

Another 80s band resurfacing at the start of the 90s were The Pasadenas. I have no recall of this single – “Love Thing” – at all. I knew they’d had a big hit in 1992 with a cover of “I’m Doin’ Fine Now” by New York City but I was clueless to the fact that there was also an intervening hit between that and their 1988 heyday when they raced up the charts with the likes of “Tribute (Right On)” and “Riding on a Train”.

I think the reason I can’t recall this song is that the band forgot to include a tune in the damn thing! This is just a backing track to their admittedly very co-ordinated dance moves which seem to take more prominence than the actual music. There’s a definite James Brown sample at the beginning which, given my detest of The Godfather Of Soul, lost me within the first 10 seconds. Not my bag at all.

One final thing, why were this lot obsessed with letter writing when it came to naming their albums? Their debut was called “To Whom It May Concern” whilst their second was called “Yours Sincerely”. What would their next one have been called? “Dear Sir or Madam”?

Ah – a brand new act now albeit one performing a song straight out of the 80s. The Chimes were actually from Edinburgh although I’d assumed at the time that they were American and they found fleeting fame with their cover of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. I seem to recall their version received a lot of plaudits from the music press but in my mind it was more a rejection of Bono and U2 than applause for them – almost as if they were saying this is how the song should really sound now that it’s been done properly. My memory may be playing tricks on me though.

It was certainly a very classy sounding treatment of the song that had originally been a No 6 hit back in 1987 for Bono and the lads. I hadn’t realised until now that the singer was Pauline Henry who went on to have a number of solo hits later in the decade including another cover version – this time of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love”. The bass player went and ruined any critical praise and credibility that his former band ever achieved though by going on to produce the first two albums by The Lighthouse Family.

The Chimes’ version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” matched the chart fortunes of U2’s original by also peaking at No 6.

Back with the 80s bands now as Eurythmics remind us that they had more than one song with the word ‘angel’ in the title. Yes, no doubt often overshadowed by their only No 1 “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)”, the duo also recorded this track called simply “Angel”. As host Nicky Campbell advises, this was the forth single to be lifted from their “We Too Are One” album and, although none of us knew at the time, it would be Annie and Dave’s last release of ‘new’ material for nine years. I thought this was exceptional at the time and even went as far as to buy it on cassette single. The chorus was just so uplifting even if the subject matter of death (inspired by the death of Annie’s aunt) was hardly joyful.

I also found the video very affecting though the version shown here on TOTP is the one edited for US audiences as MTV refused to play the original promo with its scenes of a seance proving to be a step too near to the dark side for American audiences. To be fair though, I once had a mate who went out with a girl who went to a seance and came out of it believing she was Marie Antoinette reincarnated. Don’t mess with the spirits was the message I took from that incident.

Back to Annie and Dave though and after releasing eight studio albums in eight years and endless touring, it was time for a hiatus. Apparently there were tensions between the two by this point but despite all of that, they still had the abilty to create their magic. In his autobiography Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, Dave Stewart recalls one such moment even as they were about to go their separate ways…

“When The Day Goes Down”, another of the album’s tracks, slowly became one of my favourites to play with just me on acoustic guitar and Annie singing. We played it on Wogan…while being interviewed by writer / comedian Ben Elton. It was nearing the end of the show when Annie and I just started performing it, right there on the sofa. Ben was visibly moved to tears and the whole audience was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In the control room the producers knew we were out of time and were getting calls to go to end credits – this was live TV- but the director and cameramen were so into the performance that after they pulled all the way out for the ending, the cameras started to move back in. We continued to play and sing two or three more songs just for the studio audience and the whole place went crazy afterward. There’s something very magical when the two of us play together...”

This is the clip Stewart was referring to:

Eurythmics would not release any new material for nigh on the rest of the decade before returning in late 1999 with the album “Peace”. There was a Greatest Hits package released in 1991 which looked likely to be the biggest selling album of the year for ages until Simply Red beat it at the last moment with “Stars”. Yet another reason to despise Mick Hucknall.

And yet another 80s act back in the 1990 Top 40. To be fair to Sam Brown, she’d only just achieved pop stardom some 12 months before so she was hardly an established 80s act although technically my opening statement is true. Having found fame with the smash hit single and album “Stop!”, Sam moved into the new decade with the task of having to follow up that success. It’s probably not well remembered that she did manage to do that albeit with much smaller commercial returns. “Kissing Gate” was the second single from that follow up album (“April Moon”) and was certainly melodic even if it didn’t have the drama of “Stop!”. It sounded like quite an old -fashioned type of song (for want of a better phrase) to me, especially set against a backdrop of a Top 40 bursting with dance anthems.

I’d actually preferred the first single from the “April Moon” album though which was called “With A Little Love” and which I’m sure I’d had in my hand as a potential purchase at one point but which never made it to the till.

“Kissing Gate” peaked at No 23 and was Sam’s last ever Top 40 single.

Now this next guy definitely qualifies as an established 80s act making a return to the charts in the 90s. Having referred to John Paul Young earlier in the post, we now come to Paul Young who had last been seen in the vicinity of the Top 40 back in 1986 when his single “Wonderland” made it to No 24. Subsequent singles had failed to chart and he hadn’t released a note of music for three years by the time he popped up again with “Softly Whispering I Love You”. This was a cover version (of course it was, this is Paul Young we’re talking about!) but I didn’t know the original which was by The Congregation in 1971. Despite having purchased his previous two albums, this one didn’t appeal to me that much. It sounded a bit lame and insubstantial if I’m honest. Its lack of appeal wasn’t aided by this performance. What the hell had Paul done to his hair?! It’s the 90s Paul, not the mid 70s! Also, the affectation of the guitar prop didn’t work for me at all. Totally unconvincing. I don’t think I’d ever seen him perform with one before so why now? There’s no way that what he’s miming is how you play the middle eight guitar solo.

Still, as a means of getting him back into the charts, “Softly Whispering I Love You” did the trick. He even managed another Top 40 hit later in the year with yet another cover – this time of “Oh Girl” by The Chi-Lites. Both were taken from his “Other Voices” album which despite selling steadily, was nowhere near the units shifted in his 80s heyday.

As with Eurythmics, Paul would release a Greatest Hits compilation in 1991 (“From Time to Time – The Singles Collection”) which would return him to the very top of the album charts and he would also bag an unlikely Top 5 single with Italian singer-songwriter Zucchero but that’s for another year and another post.

“Killer” by Adamski (featuring Seal lest we forget) is still No 1. In the last post, all I talked about was Seal so to redress the balance, let’s have some Adamski chat. Erm…well… his real name is Adam Tinley (supposedly his stage name was inspired by controversial ufologist George Adamski) although he now records under the alter ego of Sonny Eriksson which I’m guessing is a play on the Sony Ericsson Walkman brand name. He’s also released records under the pseudonym of Fleas On Skis and has producer credits for Adam Sky. Blimey! This guy gives Norman Cook a run for his money when it comes to aliases!

The play out video is “Policy Of Truth” by Depeche Mode. This was the third of four singles to be released from their “Violator” album and is the one I least remember. Not sure why that should be as it’s a perfectly good track. Maybe it didn’t get that much airplay? Or maybe I wasn’t listening to the right radio stations back then? It is unique though in the band’s singles discography as it is the only Depeche Mode single to chart higher on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (No 15) than on the UK Singles Chart (No16).

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Hothouse Flowers	Give It Up	I did not
2	The Pasadenas	Love Thing	A definite no
3	The Chimes	I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For	Whatever it was, it wasn’t this though. No
4	Eurythmics	Angel	YES! Finally a single I bought!
5	Sam Brown	Kissing Gate	That euphoria didn’t last long. It’s back to a no
6	Paul Young	Softly Whispering I Love You	Not the single but I did buy that Greatest Hits album with it on
7	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
8	Depeche Mode	Policy Of Truth	To be honest, no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000q5l9/top-of-the-pops-18051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

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TOTP 05 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 28 JUN 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 22 JUN 1990

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TOTP 14 JUN 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 07 JUN 1990

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TOTP 31 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 24 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 18 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?