Author: 80stastic

TOTP 11 JAN 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

OK, so last week’s damp squib of a show was a bit of a false start to the new decade with loads of songs on we’d already seen and 1989’s Christmas No 1 still at the top of the tree. Let’s see if this week is any better and I can confirm already that there is a new No 1 but don’t get your hopes up….

This week’s presenter is Simon Mayo who appears to have gone for a “Faith” period George Michael look complete with leather jacket and shades. He does apologise for the wearing of sunglasses indoors at least – the ever unfunny Mike Read never saw the need to – stating that he looks like he’s gone five rounds with Mike Tyson without them and that he might show us later but there is no explanation as to what he had actually been up to….

…anyway, on with the tunes and …well this is odd. The opening act is also the same act that closed last week’s show. Has that ever happened before? The plot thickens as the act in question is FPI Project with their version of “Going Back To My Roots” and last week they performed without vocalist Sharon D Clarke for some reason but fast forward seven days and here she is miraculously. There must be a story behind this happening but I really can’t be arsed to look into it further.

This performance makes much more sense with Sharon taking centre stage as opposed to the two dancers who stood in for her last week. Unfortunately, the studio audience chant of “Woo! Yeah!” is still audible though. This was by no means the highlight of Sharon’s career by the way. Oh no. It turns out that she has had a very full and varied acting career on both TV and stage appearing in the likes of Dr Who, Holby City and Eastenders whilst also starring in the role of Killer Queen in the Queen jukebox musical We Will Rock You. However, the most pertinent thing she did in terms of this blog (which is about 90s music after all) was to be the vocalist for the huge 1991 dance floor hit “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion” by Nomad.

Back to Simon Mayo who regales us of a story from his youth about him and his 12″! Calm down, he was referring to the 12″ single of disco classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester which he claims he queued up to buy in 1978. Hang on how old was he in 1978?

*checks Wikipedia entry*

Wow! he was 20! He must have been older than he looked in 1989 as he was 31 when this show was broadcast. Fair play although I didn’t like him making a point that it was the 12″ that he bought thereby suggesting that this gave him some extra cool points. I suppose it may have been for DJ-ing purposes but even so.

The reason for all this preamble is that the song is back in the charts courtesy of Jimmy Somerville‘s cover of it. Having just had a hit with his debut solo single “Comment Te Dire Adieu” (albeit assisted by June Miles-Kingston), Jimmy wasn’t hanging around and catapulted himself back into the Top 40 at the first available opportunity with a well chosen cover. Jimmy’s unique, soaring falsetto voice was perfect for this disco stomper and it was no surprise to me that it became his biggest solo hit peaking at No 5. It was also of course a huge club hit not that I was out dancing to it as I was unemployed and skint at the time with no money for cutting some rug down at the local nightspots in my hometown of Worcester where I was now re-ensconced.

It was included on his debut solo album “Read My Lips” which furnished another (smaller) hit in the title track. By the end of 1990, Jimmy had a massive selling album with his first greatest hits to include all his work with Bronski Beat, The Communards and solo called “The Singles Collection 1984/1990”. We sold buckets of that in my first Xmas at Our Price.

Back to Mayo who has adopted a peculiar one sleeve rolled up / one sleeve rolled down look with his leather jacket. Why Simon? Why? Anyway, the act he is introducing in this weird sartorial style are D-Mob with their fourth consecutive Top 20 single. Fourth! D-Mob had four hit singles?! Yes, yes they did. D-eal with it. The last time we saw Danny D was with Cathy Dennis who was on vocals for “C’mon and Get My Love” but this time he’s teamed up with someone called Nuff Juice for the track “Put Your Hands Together”. I’m assuming Mr Nuff and Mr Juice were the two guys up front (pretty sure that Danny D is on keytar) and I know nothing else about them. However, the guy doing all the rapping sounds like Gary Byrd the US radio DJ who had a Top 10 hit in the UK in 1983 with “The Crown” to me. It’s not him though is it?

To my ears, “Put Your Hands Together” sounded like the previous two singles (granted “We Call It Acieed” was a horse of a different colour completely) and therefore had very little interest for me. It would prove to be their last Top 20 hit although they did return to the Top 40 four years later with another Cathy Dennis fronted tune in “Why”.

Yet another dance tune next from the mysterious Mantronix with “Got To Have Your Love”. Now, I knew the name of these electro-funk hip-hopsters back then but as for what they sounded like….I’d have a better shot of explaining the latest government lockdown restrictions. Having listened back to this though it sounded very familiar. Well it was a No 4 hit so maybe it had lodged itself into my brain via general airplay back in the day and remained dormant and unaccessed for decades. And then I saw this tweet and realised the awful truth…

…yes I knew this song because of Popstars rejects Liberty X! To be fair to them, their No 1 single “Just A little” was a very decent R&B/pop crossover track whilst previous band member Kevin Simm bagged himself the gig as Wet Wet Wet’s lead singer after Marti Pellow absconded but still.

The Mantronix version of “Got To Have Your Love” peaked at No 4.

What…on…earth? Fish dressed in some sort of Uncle Sam outfit?! There are so many questions here but I’m not sure I actually sure that I want the answers. OK, first off, Fish had solo hits? Well he did, three of them in fact with “Big Wedge” being the second and biggest of them peaking at No 25. I swear I’ve never been aware of this song in my life before. Taken from the album “Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors” (no, not a pretentious title but a science fiction metaphor for disinformation apparently), “Big Wedge” is a shot across the bows of American capitalism and materialism hence Fish’s outfit which mirrors the image on the cover of the single.

As for the song’s sound, Fish seems to have cultivated a very 80s AOR sound here with its added brass bits courtesy of UK horn section The Kick Horns. Close your eyes (and who wouldn’t to avoid the sight of Fish here) and it could almost be Mike and the Mechanics up there.

FIsh has also had an occasional sideline career as an actor appearing in shows such as The Bill, Rebus and Taggart but my favourite Fish role is as Derek Trout (see what they did there?) in The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rock Star. Fast forward to the 4 minute mark in the clip below for his portrayal of an off his rocker record producer…

Some indie goth rock to counteract all those dance tunes now from perennial doomsters The Mission with “Butterfly On A Wheel”. The Times editorial reference that Simon Mayo makes in his introduction was actually a comment made by one William Rees-Mogg (father of haunted pencil Jacob) in 1967 in reaction to the severity of sentences given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drug offences. That little footnote in the history of rock is far more interesting than the actual music on display here. For me, “Butterfly On A Wheel” is a drawn out, dullard of a song and about as interesting as listening to the aforementioned Jacob Rees- Mogg carping on endlessly about Brexit. However, the band’s fan base was big enough to send it all the way to No 12.

Deacon Blue are up next with “Queen of the New Year”. The fifth and final single from their “When The World Knows Your Name” album, this track was always going to be released strategically to coincide with the start of the new year (and indeed decade) but it’s a decent romp of a tune all the same. It fair rattles along before culminating in a break neck speed climax. Not sure about Ricky Ross’s Frank Spencer-ish headgear here though. Maybe he was having a bad hair day, quite possible judging by the tufts of a mullet visible at the back of his head. By contrast, Ricky’s wife and co vocalist Lorraine McIntosh looks amazing in her hat. Absolutely beautiful. Erm…moving on…

…to the new No 1 “Hangin’ Tough” by New Kids On The Block – well I did tell you not to get your hopes up! The NKOTB phenomenon always seemed a strange happening to me. Quite why did it happen in the UK? I guess I can understand them being massive in the US being American and all but over here? Was there a gap in the teen market with the decline of Bros and Brother Beyond? Maybe. They weren’t even that good looking were they?

Thankfully the whole thing was very short lived and had pretty much blown itself out come the end of the year. By the time that grunge became a thing in 1991, the world had turned their back on the New Kids and they split within a couple of years before reforming in 2008. What is their legacy if indeed they have one? Paving the way for the likes of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC to make in roads into our charts come the mid point of the decade? The Wahlberg acting dynasty? I’m clutching at straws now.

At the show’s end, Simon Mayo finally removes his shades and reveals….a pair of closed eyes. Talk about an anti climax! No black eyes, no bruising…a case of someone trying to whip up some shameful self promotion about nothing I think.

The play out song is “Could Have Told You So” by Halo James. Hands up if you remember Halo James…

*blogger raises his hand*

…yeah I do actually. As I recall they had long been tipped to be the next big thing pop wise but they actually turned out to be a one hit wonder. I say ‘they’ as Halo James were a band and not a solo artist despite the attention that the lead singer Christian James received. Despite debut single “Wanted” having failed to make the charts, “Could Have Told You So” turned out to be prophetic when it came to predicting that it would be a hit as it soared to No 6 in the UK charts. I’m pretty sure that the band secured a front cover of Record Mirror magazine at the time with the publication simply repeating the single’s title as their headline so obvious did their success seem.

To me they seemed no better than the likes of Breathe in their sophisti- pop ambitions even though that particular genre had crashed and burned long before. “Could Have Told You So” was paint by numbers chart guaranteed. A movie star looking front man, catchy hook and slick production were ingredients that the UK record buying public felt powerless to resist. I mean, they had a pleasant enough sound but it was totally and utterly insubstantial. Such a brew couldn’t sustain and it didn’t and Halo James were over almost before they had begun, another in the long list of pop casualties.

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

Order of appearanceArtistSongDid I Buy it?
1The FPI ProjectGoing Back To My RootsNope
2Jimmy SomervilleYou Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)No but I had that Singles Collection 1984/1990 Best Of album with it on
3D-Mob featuring Nuff JuicePut Your Hands TogetherNo
4MantronixGot To Have Your LoveDefinitely not
5FishBig WedgeI’d rather have a wedgie inflicted upon me
6The MissionButterfly On A WheelNah
7Deacon BlueQueen Of The New YearNot the single but I had their album it was taken from
8New Kids On The BlockHangin’ ToughNo but I think my younger sister may have been into them and bought it
9Halo JamesCould Have Told You SoCould have told you No more like

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/m000nfp1/top-of-the-pops-11011990

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 04 JAN 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

YES! A brand new decade! Out with the old stuff and in with the groovy new tunes! 1990 is here at last in the world of TOTP Rewind and what fresh out of the box new acts, songs and musical directions await us? Well, it all looks very much the same as the show starts – same theme tune, same opening graphics and a very familiar presenter in Gary Davies. In an attempt to add some sparkle to the proceedings, Davies informs us that tonight’s show marks TOTP’s 26th birthday and also informs us that the show is live and that it will be “fast” and “frantic”. Ooh (Gary Davies)! The girl to Gary’s left in his intro has gone full on Lisa Stansfield in her choice of hat to top of her outfit that includes a Madonna style crucifix. All still a bit 80s sartorially then.

So who gets the honour of being the show’s first act on of the new decade? Oh, well…it’s The Quireboys. Hmm. Look, I didn’t mind their flavour of retro blues rock but maybe ‘retro’ wasn’t what was required when it came to the first act of a new decade. There was a lot of traffic on Twitter about this when BBC4 aired the repeat last week with many people comparing The Quireboys unfavourably to the opening act on the first TOTP of the 80s who were Madness apparently. The Nutty Boys were seen as much more deserving of the accolade. A bit unfair on The Quireboys maybe but I guess I can see where the Twitterati were coming from.

As for the song itself, “Hey You” would prove to be their biggest ever hit reaching No 14 paving the way for the parent album (“A Bit of What You Fancy”) to go all the way to No 2 in the charts. I didn’t buy the single but it did appear on a compilation called “Q The Album” (as in the magazine) that I purchased that had a very eclectic and not altogether coherent track listing. I think it was the first release in a long list that the publication lent its association to. To be fair most of the tracks were pretty decent but I couldn’t quite see the connection between, for example, Jesus Jones, Cowboy Junkies and erm..Elton John!

Well, say what you liked about The Quireboys but at least they had a ‘new’ tune we hadn’t seen on the show before unlike the majority of the acts on tonight with them. Yes, despite my trumpeting of a new start with a new year, a new decade and indeed a new blog, the majority of the songs on this show I have reviewed before in my old 80s blog. Bah! Here’s one of the blighters now – Madonna with “Dear Jessie”…

The fourth and final single to be released from her “Like A Prayer” album (in the UK at least – it wasn’t issued as a single in the US), it always seemed very out of synch with the rest of the album. All strings and whimsical lyrics, its nursery rhyme quality was nothing like “Express Yourself” or indeed the album title track. It would prove to be a passing affectation as her Madgesty came storming back later in the year with one of her best known and funkiest grooves ever in “Vogue”.

The animated video doesn’t help to tone down the cute-o-meter but if you do keep watching until the end and the (love) parade of characters including teddy bears, clowns and erm…roller skating bananas (WTF!) you get a glimpse of what looks very suspiciously like Gabriel the Toad from Bagpuss.

“Dear Jessie” peaked at No 5.

Another act that’s been reviewed before I think next in Silver Bullet. Adding to the never ending list of rappers with ordinary real names, comes one Richard Brown aka Silver Bullet who with his DJ (Mo) forged this rap track “20 Seconds To Comply” around the infamous Robocop sample. Supposedly their record company EMI wanted to make them into a “rap version of Bros” – the phrase ‘the mind boggles’ hardly does justice to the ludicrousness of such an idea.

I hardly remember Silver Bullet at all (always confusing them with So Solid Crew and their similarly entitled hit “21 Seconds To Go”) but online opinion suggests that they were responsible for something called ‘Britcore’ which was a faster, harder version of hip-hop and for influencing the likes of Prodigy and initiating the rise of jungle music in the 90s. Meanwhile Bros’s legacy was some distinctly average pop tunes and that documentary. Hmm.

Oh man! It’s another song I’ve already reviewed and another dance tune to boot! Latino Rave weren’t even a proper act at all but just a promo tool to flog the newly conceived “Deep Heat” dance compilation album issued by Telstar that would flood the market in the late 80s and early 90s. The clue was in the single’s title “Deep Heat ’89” just to make it absolutely clear what was going on here. Mixing together recent dance hits from the likes of Technotronic, Starlight and A Guy Called Gerald, it did what it was supposed to do I guess by climbing all the way to No 12 in the charts and establishing the “Deep Heat” brand in the process. All very cynical and manipulative in my book but then I wasn’t a clubhead so maybe I wasn’t the target audience.

Another song we’ve seen before and that was reviewed in my 80s blog now courtesy of Sonia who implores us to “Listen To Your Heart”. The Scouse Kylie has been shorn of her usual back up dancers for this performance and is up there selling the song all on her own – bless. It’s OK though as she’s beefed up her look by clearly having a look in Ms Minogue’s wardrobe and has half inched one of her trademark hats. She should have just asked that Lisa Stansfield wannabe lass from the top of the show if she could have borrowed hers.

Later in the year, an entirely different song but with exactly the same title would become a No 6 hit via Swedish soft rock peddlers Roxette thereby eclipsing Sonia’s effort by a whole four chart places. Arr ay!

And another! Yes, we’ve seen / heard this tune on the show before as well! This version of “The Magic Number” by De La Soul doesn’t seem to be the radio edit though – not entirely sure why TOTP chose to go with this remix.

I’ve always been very partial to this version though….

This was the last single to be released from the seminal album “3 Feet High And Rising” and would be the last we would see of the trio for over a year before they would return with the rather unwieldly entitled single “A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays”.

A new song! Hallelujah! It is yet another Italian house tune though…49ers were co called, according to Gary Davies, because vocalist Dawn Mitchell (didn’t she used to be in Eastenders?) was the 49th vocalist to audition for them. Really? Surely the band’s name must have had something to do with American football team the San Francisco 49ers?! Surely?! Even if we believe Davies’s story, that must mean that there were 48 singers worse than Dawn Mitchell?! I’m not even sure she was the singer on the track as the original vocalist was someone called Ann-Marie Smith but Dawn Mitchell was brought in to ‘front the band’. Ah that old chestnut! Like the woman who fronted Black Box then. Talking of whom, “Touch Me” very much has the feel of “Ride On Time” to me with its statutory component parts of pounding beats and uplifting piano. No wonder it made No 3 in the charts.

49ers followed this up with a single called “Don’t You Love Me” which I don’t recall at all while DJ and producer Gianfranco Bortolotti would go onto have multiple hits with house act Capella in the mid 90s.

Yay! Another ‘new’ song! Oh, it’s by New Kids On The Block though. Yes, the NKOTB (or T’KNOB as I like to call them) phenomenon was just getting into full flow by this point. To follow up their No 1 success with “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”, they re-released “Hangin’ Tough” which had flopped outside the Top 40 in September of ’89 but which would become their second consecutive No 1 single in the UK this time around whilst also being the first ‘new’ No 1 of 1990.

After the American sports connection of previous act 49ers, we now get another one immediately as “Hangin’ Tough” was written to be a sports anthem, specifically a theme tune for basketball team Boston Celtics. Oh right – hangin’ as in hanging on the basketball hoop after a slam dunk? Is that what they meant all along? Anyway, it was meant to be their version of “We Will Rock You” by Queen but isn’t “We Are The Champions” Queen’s sports anthem? Whatever, as well as possibly their most well known song for its dumb ass “oh oh oh oh oh” chant- a- long refrain, “Hangin’ Tough” also sucked big time (seeing as we seem to have dived head first into American culture). Just awful.

OK, back to the previously seen hits and it’s yet another dance track, this time by Rob ‘n’ Raz featuring Leila K with “Got To Get”. Leila was a bit like a Swedish Betty Boo it strikes me watching this back – “Got To Get” isn’t a million miles away from the likes of “Doin’ The Do” is it?

Hang on, Swedish you say? Yes, all three of them hailed from Sweden which presumably is the prompt for Gary Davies to advise us to “Watch out for some good music coming out of Sweden this year” at the song’s end. Who could he have meant? Swedish music acts? Well obviously there’s Abba but he can’t have meant them. Who else? Ace Of Base wouldn’t appear for another three years and in any case , nobody would have described them as good surely? Far too early in the decade for The Cardigans. Hmm…Army Of Lovers of “Crucified” fame? Maybe. Oh, I’ve got it. The aforementioned Roxette – it must be them. Hardly a Swedish invasion was it? To be fair to Davies, as the decade progressed, the Swedes did make an impression on the UK charts with the likes of The Wannadies, Whale and erm…Rednex all having hits on our shores whilst The Hives continued that run into the new millennium. Maybe Gary was on to something after all.

“Got To Get” peaked at No 8.

So to the No 1 which, as it’s only a week or so since Xmas, is still the festive chart topper which in 1989 was Band Aid II with “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. I’ve said everything I want to say about this in my 80s blog but serendipitously there is a timely tie in as one of the guest vocalist on the track was of course Sir Cliff Richard and it just so happens that as I write this post, I note that today (14th October) is his 80th birthday. I’ll type that again… His. 80th. Birthday! Unbelievable. So he was how old when he did Band Aid then?

* performs some basic mental arithmetic*

My God he was 49! That’s younger than I am now. I am as old as f**k!

The play out track is yet another dance track in “Going Back To My Roots” by F.P.I. Project feat. Sharon Dee Clarke. This was of course an Italian house version of the Odyssey 1981 hit and as with De La Soul earlier, this appears to not be the radio edit as it is an instrumental version. Just weird. Why bother having the act perform in the studio if it’s basically just two dancers up front going through some very perfunctory dance moves. Where was vocalist Sharon Dee Clarke? As result all we get basically 1 minute and 40 seconds of the TOTP studio audience constantly labouring through the ‘Woo! Yeah!’ chant that was de rigueur for any commercial house tune at this time. Ever wonder where that all originated from? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer…

I’m assuming that the three waist coated geezers in the background trying to gee up the crowd are Marco Fratty, Corrado Presti, and Roberto Intrallazz, whose surname initials spell out the act’s name (F.P.I. Project- geddit?). Yes, Gary Davies that’s F.P.I. Project and not “Rich In Paradise” which was the name of one of the songs that are sampled in the track, specifically by Honesty 69. I take it all back. Davies wasn’t onto something – he didn’t have a clue what he was on about.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart rundown:

Order of appearanceArtistSongDid I Buy it?
1The QuireboysHey YouNo but as I say, it was on that Q Album compilation that I bought
2MadonnaDear JessieNo but my wife had the album
3Silver Bullet20 Seconds To ComplyNo
4Latino RaveDeep Heat ‘89I’d have rather covered my genitals in Deep Heat muscle rub than bought this
5SoniaListen To Your HeartAs if
6De La SoulThe Magic NumberNo but my wife had their album
749ersTouch MeNah
8New Kids On The BlockHangin’ ToughNo but I think my younger sister may have been into them and bough it
9Ron ‘n’ Raz featuring Leila KGot To GetI really didn’t feel the need to get this at all
10Band Aid IIDo They Know It’s ChristmasI bought the ’84 version but not even charity could make me part with my cash for this one
11The FPI ProjectGoing Back To My RootsNope

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/m000n7g4/top-of-the-pops-04011990

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?

http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2019/12/december-27-1989-january-9-1990.html

TOTP 1990 – the prologue

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s 1990 at last – the beginning of a new decade and unlike the beginning of the current new decade (which less face it couldn’t have gone much worse), the world isn’t looking in too bad a shape. The divisive Berlin Wall has tumbled, the Cold War was coming to an end and in a few short weeks Nelson Mandela would be released from incarceration after 27 years. It’s not all good news though as on New Year’s Day the character of Mr Bean makes his TV debut.

Musically, the charts were still being infiltrated by various strands of European house music from acts such as Technotronic (Belgium), Snap (Germany) and Twenty 4 Seven (Holland). These new kids on the block were joined by erm…New Kids On The Block who racked up seven Top 10 singles including a No 1 plus a No 1 album. Sheesh! There was also room for some golden oldies with Phil Collins having the best selling album of the year closely followed by Madonna and Elton John who both had greatest hits albums out. The list of No 1 singles for the year mercifully had some half decent stuff in it for once (The Beautiful South, Sinéad O’Connor, Beats International) plus of course the best football song ever (ever!) from New Order. Sadly it also included some enormous turds from Bombalurina. Partners In Kryme and Vanilla Ice and that’s not even mentioning the Xmas turkey that was the festive chart topper from Cliff Richard. A mixed bag indeed then.

And me? Alas- oh shit I sound like Boris Johnson – erm…sadly, I was unemployed (again) as 1990 broke having finished my temporary stint as sales assistant / stand in Santa in Debenhams over Xmas. I was back in my parents house with no money, no job and separated geographically from my girlfriend once more. It wasn’t a great start to the year nor decade to be fair. My period of unemployment would last five months until I was reunited not only with the world of work but also my girlfriend as I secured a temporary position at Kingston Communications back in Hull. By the time that had finished as the Summer turned to Autumn, we had decided to get married and relocate to Manchester where neither of us had ever lived before nor had a permanent job. A bold move I guess but we were young and fearless and all those other things that middle aged has robbed me of so…. off we went to Manc land where I had got myself a temporary job over Xmas at Our Price Music. They would be my employer for the rest of the decade….

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 see what the BBC made of 1990.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000n18n/top-of-the-pops-the-story-of-1990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC.

TOTP Rewind – the 90s: the prologue

Posted on by 80stastic

The BBC4 TOTP 80s repeats have been and gone – good riddance some of you may say (not me though of course). I recall at the time when 1989 morphed into 1990 and a brand new decade dawned for us all, there seemed to be a sense of ‘thank God that’s all over – now put all the 80s shit into that locked room and throw away the key! The 90s are going to be so much better!’ Well, were they?

Amazingly, it has been 20 years since the 90s themselves ended so they are probably due some sort of retrospective revisit. Helpfully, BBC4 are about to restart their TOTP repeats schedule shortly so guess what? I’m also going to carry on reviewing them. Yes, I’ve decided to carry on blogging albeit with a new vehicle for the new decade in the form of separate blog site just for the 90s. At this stage I’m thinking that I’ll stick to the same formula and format of my 80s TOTP blog with some personal stuff thrown in alongside commenting on the actual acts.

During the years I covered in the previous blog (’83-’89), I transformed from a knows nowt 14 year old into a knows very little 21 year old adult. The 90s would see me get married and spend pretty much the whole decade working in record shops. Happily, my career choice ties in nicely with the subject matter of this blog.

So then, 1990, lets be havin’ you….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n18n

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of TOTP 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.