Bassheads

TOTP 28 MAY 1992

Posted on February 25, 2022 by 80stastic

When dance music transitioned from the clubs to the mainstream / Top 40 in a major way towards the end of the 80s, it presented TOTP with a major challenge in terms of how to feature these acts that weren’t your traditional pop stars. Mostly they weren’t up to the challenge. Then came the ‘year zero’ revamp under the stewardship of Stanley Appel. Would the new format be better suited to these problematic hits? Well, after a fair few attempts during the first eight months of the new era, the true test had arrived. The first three acts in the studio tonight are all peddling dance tunes. Given the responsibility of landing this tricky manoeuvre safely are presenters Mark Franklin and Femi Oke.

It’s straight in at the deep end with the opening act Future Sound Of London and their track “Papua New Guinea”. It turns out that there wasn’t just one person called Cobain who was making a name for himself in the early 90s musical landscape. Gary Cobain (doesn’t quite have the same ring as Kurt does it?) and Brian Dougans met as students in Manchester in their 80s with the latter pointing heavily towards what might be to come when he wrote and produced the ground breaking “Stakker Humanoid” single which was described by The Guardian as “the first truly credible UK acid techno record to break into the mainstream”. With Cobain contributing to the resulting album project, it led to the duo releasing material under various aliases until following “Stakker Humanoid” into the charts as Future Sound Of London (often abbreviated OMD like to FSOL).

Despite the fawning in the music press inkies, there was nothing for me in “Papa New Guinea”. The just didn’t get it. Apparently ot samples both Aussie art rockers Dead Can Dance and industrial electronic knob twiddlers Meat Beat Manifesto so the source material didn’t speak to me either. I did work with someone who was into Meat Beat Manifesto but she was never going to convince me of their charms.

So how did TOTP deal with the vexatious issue of showcasing an unfamiliar dance act? With a load of strobe lights and that grainy coloured overlay effect again of course. As a staging technique I thought it was weak I have to say. Oh and that blue with the stupid hat- what was that all about. @TOTPFacts sums my feelings up perfectly:

Future Sound Of London's fashion guru. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/6qAfF1rryp
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 18, 2022

So, Future Sound Of London didn’t work for me on any level. “Papua New Guinea”? Give me “Aikea-Guinea” by Cocteau Twins any day. By the way, I can’t find a clip of the TOTP performance so the official promo video will have to do.

Next to “Friday I’m In Love” by The Cure which according to a Rolling Stone magazine article is a song that has caused Robert Smith many “Wild Mood Swings” it comes to his relationship with it. At times he has hated it for the level of fame and attention it attracted even disowning it and those who like it denouncing them as not being fans of The Cure. Conversely, he has also listed it as being one of his three favourite singles by the band ever.

It’s a well worn concept; the idea that the commercial success that the artist has craved is ultimately unsatisfying when it arrives and that what really matters is their ‘art’. There must be loads of examples of this throughout rock history. Off the top of my head, The Monkees famously rejected being chart puppets to fulfil their desire to make their own music on their own terms. When it comes to disowning your biggest hits, I saw Supergrass live around the early 2000s and they didn’t play “Alright” which seemed a bit childish. Oh and REM and “Shiny Happy People” for sure.

In the light of everything above, I was surprised to learn that “Friday I’m In Love” isn’t actually the band’s highest charting single. It peaked at No 6 but three years earlier “Lullaby” had made it to No 5.

We’re back on a dance tip now with the curious case of “Raving I’m Raving”. The Wedding Present spent 1992 entering the higher end of the Top 40 before crashing out immediately due to the limited amount of copies of each single that were pressed as part of their “Hit Parade” project. Shut Up And Dance had a similar chart arc but for a very different reason.

Formed in 1988, this electronic dance duo had released a series of idiosyncratically titled singles such as “Dance Before The Police Come” and “Autobiography Of A Crackhead” before hitting on the idea of basing their next release on Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis”. Keeping the melody but replacing some of the original’s lyrics with the word raving (“put on my raving shoes” and of course the single’s title), it created a huge amount of interest and initial sales were enough to send it straight into the charts at No 2. Genius! Or was it?

Sadly for Shut Up And Dance founders PJ and Smiley (who heard Duncan when reading that last word?) they had failed to get copyright clearance from Cohn who soon got his lawyers on the case. Despite offers to give any royalties to charity, Cohn wasn’t having any of it and insisted that no further pressings of the single were made meaning that it was essentially deleted as soon as it came out. With no more copies available, the single dropped like a stone even to No 15 and then out of the chart altogether. The whole thing was over in three short but eventful weeks.

This TOTP performance was ultimately pointless in terms of increasing sales of the single as there were no more copies left to sell. That and the fact that Cohn wouldn’t even let them perform the track on TV hence we get a completely different song without the original melody or reworked Cohn lyrics. It’s just a different song altogether. Madness! For me, it wasn’t that the whole legal issue made the project a non starter – I didn’t get why it was seen as such a great idea in the first place. It almost seemed like a novelty song to my ears.

As for how TOTP dealt with the band’s appearance on the show, the smoke machines were put in full whack, there’s a lot of arm waving from both the studio audience and the artist (whose vocalist is doing his best Seal impression) and a computer graphic effect whereby the female singer has her head size reduced in ever decreasing frames. It’s all a bit rubbish really….like the song itself. Interestingly, they do try and address the fact that the ring featured isn’t the one that people went out and bought by having presenter Femi Oke describe it as the “TOTP remix”. That wasn’t fooling anybody though.

Yay! It’s Kriss Kross with “Jump” next! The heavy emphasis on the guys ;plus video extras) you know…jumping…with the associated jerky camera angle puts me in mind of “Jump Around” by House Of Pain but performed by Musical Youth perhaps.

What is it that they are actually rapping about? Apart from jumping obviously. Well the lyrics include lines like ‘bull crap is what I’m dumpin’ (ooer!) and ‘I love when a girl is like jockin’ which seems to mean a number of things from obsessing over someone with intense affection to copying the likeness of. I’m guessing it’s the latter here with Mack Daddy or indeed Daddy Mack liking it when girls copy their rapping… or dance moves…or even wearing their jeans back to front of course.

“Jump” peaked at No 2.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find…yes, another dance act. This time it’s Bassheads back again to follow up their Top 5 hit “Is There Anybody Out There?”. This time they’ve gone “Back To The Old School” but shouldn’t that be “Back To The Old Skool”? I found some reviews of the track online that describe it as having ‘massive old skool (yes spelt like that) break house beats’and being a ‘proper killer tune’. Like Ted on The Fast Show, I wouldn’t know anything about that sir – this sort of stuff really want my favourite subject at skool.

As for the staging of the performance, there’s loads more dry ice, a close up of a DJ type fella shouting “How’s everybody feelin’ out there?“ and at one the band are clearly asked to move about in slow motion so some visual effects can be added to make it look like they are leaving some kind of vapour trail behind each movement. It may have looked impressive in 1992 I guess but it looks plain dreadful today.

“Back To The Old School” peaked at No 12.

https://youtu.be/DJjubfaayA8

If I knew anything about the UK soul/ R’n’B scene of the early 90s then I would know all about this next artist. However, I didn’t and don’t and so have relied upon Wikipedia for this one. Don–E was actually Donald McLean (nothing to do with the “American Pie” hitmaker obvs) and he was quite the all rounder writing, producing and playing on his debut album “Unbreakable” from which this single “Love Makes The World Go Round” was taken.

One of the reasons I don’t know anything about this guy is because I don’t remember him at all. Nothing. Zip. Listening to him now, he’s got a definite Stevie Wonder flavour to him and puts me in mind a bit of Omar of “There’s Nothing Like This” fame. Ah now then. I’ve just got to the hit in his bio on Wikipedia that says he duetted with Omar on a track on his 2005 album “Try This”. I swear down I hadn’t read that before my earlier Omar reference.

That 2005 release was his first album for 10 years as his solo career had stalled after his initial success with “Love Makes The World Go Round” and he’d focussed instead on writing for and producing other artists. He seems to combine those duties and releasing his own material these days.

Three Breakers this week none of which would be seen in the show again. What a nonsense this feature has become. We start with Cud. I know at least one person who swears by these Leeds indie rockers but I only really know this single (“Rich And Strange”) I must admit. I did like it though. Just that right balance of leftfield yet tuneful with a driving guitar riff that reminds me of The Pixies.

It was taken from their third album “Asquarius” which was actually their first album for major label A&M having released their previous material on indie Imaginary Records. Wikipedia tells me that they referred to their sound as something called ‘Lion Pop’ which is a new genre on me. It seems to have been some sort of precursor to Britpop as far as I can make out though I don’t recall Cud being mentioned in that now much maligned bracket probably because they split in 1995. They reformed in 2006 and apparently Embrace (whom I love) keyboard player Mickey Dale is an occasional member of their line up. The things you learn from Wikipedia.

“Rich And Strange” peaked at No 24.

Mr. Big had more than one hit over here? I would have bet money on “To Be With You” being their only chart entry but here they are with something called “Just Take My Heart”. Obviously it’s terrible. In fact, is there a case to be made that at this very point in rock history that Mr. Big were the worst band in the world? Judging by this and their previous hit, they were certainly the most boring. Just look at some of the lyrics to this one:

‘I can’t imagine living my life after you’ve gone; wondering why so many questions have no answers’

My God! A love lorn teenager would be embarrassed by that and yet it was deemed good enough to be recorded as an actual song that would get played on the radio! Even their videos were terminally tedious. Just the band performing the song on black and white film. Mr.Big? Mr.Big Log more like.

“Just Take My Heart” peaked at Number No 26. They were never to be seen on the UK Top 40 again.

And now for something completely different…and far more interesting. For all the talk of the rise of grunge rock in the early 90s, we haven’t actually seen that much of it in TOTP. Look at this show for example – it’s like a bloody rave is going down in the studio! To rebalance that, here comes an all female band that were definitely and defiantly here to play some grimy, kick ass, heavy punk rock.

Although not actually from Seattle (they were from LA in fact) L7 seemed to be inextricably linked to grunge possibly because some of their early material was released on legendary label Subpop home of grunge protagonists Soundgarden, Mudhoney and of course Nirvana. That link was strengthened by the fact that their third album “Bricks Are Heavy” was produced by Bitch Vig, the man nicknamed ‘the never mind man’ for his work on Nirvana’s stellar second studio album.

From that album came this single “Everglade” a high speed riot of their brand of punk infused heavy metal. To think that within four years, the concept of all female band would have morphed into the template that allowed the Spice Girls to dominate planet pop.

Of course, along with their music there was an uncompromising attitude and approach that would lead to a number of unforgettable controversies. I was among the disbelieving TV audience that Friday night watching anarchic Channel 4 TV show The Word when lead vocalist Donita Sparks whipped down her jeans and knickers to finish performing “Pretend We’re Dead” nude from the waist down. This incident occurred on the same show that they had a secret camera in Oliver Reed’s dressing room which Donita thought was pretty shitty so she thought she’d add her own brand of f****d up anarchy to the chaos. Watching it back I felt sorry for the bass player who thinks she’s stealing the show by mounting the drum rider only to trim around and see Sparks with her fanny out! As one of the user comments in the clip below just so succinctly puts it – ‘Gash!’ How nice.

This week’s ‘exclusive’ performance comes from Lisa Stansfield who’s flown in from Berlin to be on the show according to presenter Mark Franklin. I’m not sure it was worth the flight. Lisa has a fine voice but this single (“Set Your Loving Free”) didn’t have a lot going for it to my ears. I’ve only just watched Lisa’s performance of it and already I’ve forgotten how it goes. Bland doesn’t cover it. No it really doesn’t- I’m going to have to find another word. Dreary? No. Lacklustre? Nope. Vapid? Yes, vapid is the word.

It was the fourth single taken from her “Real Love” album. If you’re going to release four tracks from an album, by the time you get to the fourth it needs to be a memorable tune I say. Unfortunately “Set Your Loving Free” wasn’t. The daft thing is that there was a great song on the album that went unreleased…

“Set Your Loving Free” only made it to No 28 but Lisa returned at the end of the year with a track that must have made her a fair wad over the years; not because it was a chart topper…ahem…all around the world (it peaked at No 10 in the UK) but due to the fact that it was included on the best selling soundtrack of all time. I refer to The Bodyguard of course with Lisa’s contribution being “Someday (I’m Coming Back)”. Nice work if you can get it.

And so to the No 1 which again is a dance tune of sorts though nothing to do with that mad ‘raving’ nonsense. KWS are into their fourth week at the top with their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go”.

I said in a recent post that there was some legal controversy over this record and so there was. A very similar version had been recorded by German dance act Double You who had big hit with it all over Europe. Wanting to get a slice of the action, indie label Network Records sought distribution rights for the single in the UK but failed to secure them. Their solution was to get an act of their own to record it and put that out instead. Enter KWS. It proved to be a winning move with a UK No 1 disc and US Top Tenner. Pushing their luck, it was released in Germany and went to No 7 before legal action from Double You forced it to be withdrawn from sale. It fell out of the charts the following week making it the single with the highest position to drop out of the national charts ever. Does any of this sound familiar? For Double You read Marc Cohn and for KWS read Shut Up And Dance. 1992 was a good year to be a lawyer in the music industry.

Ghjj

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Future Sound Of London	Papua New Guinea	Certainly not
2	The Cure	Friday I’m In Love	Not the single but I have it on a Greatest Hits CD of theirs
3	Shut Up And Dance	Raving I’m Raving	Hell no
4	Kris Kross	Jump	It was fun but not a purchase
5	Bassheads	Back To The Old School	I literally rather would have gone back to school – no
6	Don-E	Love Makes The World Go Round	Nah
7	Cud	Rich And Strange	Liked it, didn’t ‘t buy it
8	Mr. Big	Just Take My Heart	No no no….
9	L7	Everglade	See 7 above
10	Lisa Stansfield	Set Your Loving Free	No chance
11	KWS	Please Don’t Go	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0014j5w/top-of-the-pops-28051992

TOTP 21 NOV 1991

Posted on November 25, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where we are deep into November 1991 and the UK charts seem to be swamped by dance tunes of every hue. Over the last few weeks we’ve had the likes of Altern-8, K-Klass, Rozalla, Control, SL2 , 2 Unlimited and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping with nearly half of the acts on tonight’s show of the same flavour. As for the rest of the twelve artists, three could possibly be categorised as metal bands, there’s two Michaels, a cover version of a 70s disco classic and some mainstream Scandinavian rock pop. There’s also another new TOTP presenter who seem to be turning up as frequently as a Boris Johnson saying “Forgive me”.

We start as we mean to go on though with the first of those dance anthems from Bizarre Inc and “Playing With Knives”. The disembodied voice of the aforementioned new presenter tells us that this is the follow up to their previous hit “Such A Good Feeling” but also describes them as ‘the Stafford ravers’. Hang on, aren’t Altern-8 also from Stafford?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes they are! What are the chances! It turns out that Bizarre Inc founding member Mark “Aaron” Archer had already defected and was part of the Altern-8 set up by this point so it all sounds a bit incestuous. I guess this was the rave equivalent of the Stourbridge indie three of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who were all having chart hits at this time as well. Still, five chart acts from two West Midlands towns beginning with the letter ‘S’ – it was all a bit bizarre (inc).

As for the track, it sounded very much like its predecessor to my un(rave)-cultured ears but not as good and what was with the weird vocal effects at the start? I’ve checked out the original recorded version and it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like she’s singing over the top of a backing track or something. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

"We used a singer called Yvonne Yanney… She sang live and when we watched the playback it was absolutely awful, they'd put loads of delay and reverb on the vocal and it was a complete mess." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 12, 2021

Ah, that explains it. Poor woman must have been devastated watching the playback. Her big moment and she ends up sounding like she’s singing underwater. Why did the TOTP producers do that to her? Were they trying to beef up the performance a bit? Sure, by now the established template for a dance act of having the studio boffin blokes on keyboards wearing puffa jackets in the background behind a singer trying to combine a live vocal with some slick dance moves was wearing thin but this?! Still, it didn’t harm the single’s chart performance as it climbed all the way to No 4. Bizarre Inc would top that the following year when “I’m Gonna Get You” (featuring UK soul singer Angie Brown) went to No 3. As with most of these rave artists though, when it came to selling an album it was a different matter and their “Energique” long player stalled at No 41.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmjwM5adUjg

We then switch to co-host Mark Franklin (by now and old hand at this TOTP lark) who, in his segue to the Top 10 countdown, also welcomes back Terry Waite, the Anglican Church envoy who had been released by his Lebanese kidnappers after 1,763 days in captivity three days before this TOTP aired. Whilst we were all relieved for Terry and his family that he was finally free and admittedly it was a massive news story, it does sound a bit incongruous when highlighted in a pop music programme.

A first view next of a dance act that would manage to sell albums throughout the 90s and bucket loads of them too. M People would breakthrough the barrier segregating dance and mainstream pop music in spectacular fashion over the course of the decade, racking up 19 Top 40 singles (including 10 Top Tenners) and 3 Top 3 albums. They also won the 1994 Mercury Music Prize for their “Elegant Slumming” album.

However, it all began with this single “How Can I Love You More?” which, despite the promotional push of this TOTP appearance, would peak at No 29. If this has immediately made you think that you were sure that it was a bigger hit than that, rest assured that your memory is not playing tricks on you. A remix by renowned DJ and producer Sahsa was released just over a year later in February 1993 and it duly went Top 10 peaking at No 8 under the guise of “How Can I Love You More (Mixes)”.

It’s that disembodied* presenter voice again which tells us that M People are Mike Pickering, Paul Heard and Heather Small in the intro. Pickering was a DJ at legendary Manchester club The Haçienda (despite having lived in Manchester for over a year by this point, I still hadn’t ventured anywhere near the place) who had also signed Happy Mondays to Factory Records where he was an A&R person. His first name supplied the inspiration (if you can call it that) for the band’s name – I always thought it was a bit of a crummy moniker for a band to be honest.

*Why did they keep doing this when introducing a new presenter on the show, not putting their fizzog on screen until a third of the way through the show?

If I thought that their name was a bit rubbish, I couldn’t argue with Heather Small’s vocal which blows most of their dance act peers out of the water when it came to doing it live. So recognisable would her vocal stylings become that she would eventually become famous all over again 20 years later via the sitcom Miranda…

So that’s the new presenter! His name is Steve Anderson and sadly, his story ends tragically. A stand up comic, after his brief stint on TOTP, Steve worked on the shopping channel Price Drop TV and appeared as a trust coach on the BBC Two dating show Would Like To Meet before returning to comedy in 2007, opening the Portable Comedy Club in London the following year. However, he died unexpectedly in his sleep aged just 49 in 2012. As with The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself, he must have had a connection with Stourbridge as he was buried there. RIP Steve.

Back in 1991 though, he was introducing Bassheads and their smash hit “Is There Anybody Out There?”. Although this is another dance act, there’s not an actual ‘singer’ on this one to front the whole thing although there are the obligatory males (they always seem to be blokes don’t they?) scratching away on mixing desks in the background. What the track does have though is a small section of rapping in it so, in an attempt to mix it up a bit, the show producers have positioned the rapper within the front row of the gawping crowd to make it appear as if he is just a part of the studio audience. Then when he starts rapping, it’s got some sort of surprise value. Genius! Except it isn’t really is it? It doesn’t work that well and it’s not even an original trick is it, a studio plant? So pleased are they with this staging though that the TOTP producers repeat the trick by placing Mark Franklin in that same front row. He is clearly seen as the camera pans round before Bassheads have even finished performing and is in position to go straight to camera for the next segue. To be honest, I think they’ve overplayed their hand on this one and it’s all becoming a bit tedious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mE8I6P_vCE

Talking of tedious….here’s Michael Bolton! Bollers was onto his fifth UK hit with this, his version of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” which was also his second US chart topper after “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. Taken from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album, he wouldn’t score quite as big a success with it over here but it did make the Top 10 all the same.

This seemed like so much cynical, money for old rope to me. Having seen a poor return in the UK on his past two singles (neither of which made the Top 20), Bolton resorted to a cover of a song that was already well known (it had been a No 2 hit as recently as 1987 over here thanks to its use in a Levi’s advert) just in time for the Christmas market. It should have been renamed “When A Tosser Needs A Hit”. Michael was still well cocooned in his monstrous mullet phase and it seems like his backing band were recruited on their ability to grow their hair the same. Check out the guitarist and drummer!

The follow up single was something called “Missing You Now” which was a collaboration with Kenny G which gives me terrifying flashbacks to when I saw Bolton in concert and the support was “The G Man” as he called him. And no, I’m not retelling that story all over again! It’s in many a previous post on the blog if you really want to know exactly what happened!

And back with the dance tunes! This is just getting ridiculous now! Who the chuff were Love Decade?! I have zero recollection of either them or their track “So Real”. Whoever they were, they seemed intent on breaking the record for the amount of faceless blokes on keyboards you could have on the TOTP stage at any one time. Unusually, this time the singer isn’t a woman and to be fair, the guy does a better job than some of his peers.

As far as I can make out, they were from Manchester and were also known as Decadance. The singer was a bloke called Jerome Stokes who sounds like he should be playing up front for a Championship football club whilst his oppos included Rob Van Winkelen…wasn’t that Vanilla Ice’s real name*? Also, what was with “THE NORTH HAS RISEN’ banner behind them. The Twitter consensus seemed to be that it was a retort to the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu performance of “It’s Grim Up North” the other week – go on you Manc lads!

“So Real” peaked at No 14.

*No, no it wasn’t but it was close.

The Exclusive act tonight is a bit of a let down. Scorpions? Did they really qualify for a section which had recently been filled by the likes of Steve Wonder and Queen? I get that they were a bigger deal in mainland Europe and especially in their native Germany and that you had to admire their longevity (they had been formed when The Beatles were in their chart eating pomp) but “Wind Of Change” had been their only worldwide hit. Were they a band or a song?

“Send Me An Angel” was the follow up to that Cold War busting, Berlin Wall toppling anthem and was very much in the same vein but without the hook of that whistling bit. It was a big hit in countries like France, Sweden, The Netherlands and of course Germany but it caused very minor ripple in the pools of the UK and US charts where it peaked at Nos 27 and 44 respectively. I can imagine many a lighter having been waved in the air when the band performed the track live but it’s a fairly unremarkable soft rock ballad otherwise.

There’s hardly time for Steve Anderson to get through his next ink before his face is wiped off screen by the Breakers section starting with…who? Anticappella? Was that really their name? Yet again, this one must have passed me by but apparently they were the brainchild of Italian producer Gianfranco Bortolotti who was responsible for a load of shite dance hits in the UK throughout the 90s as he was also the guy behind the similarly titled Capella. Remember them? They had a slew of hits in the mid 90s with tracks like “U Got 2 Let the Music”, “U Got 2 Know” and “U & Me”. He seems to be a tad limited creatively I would suggest if his band names and song titles are anything to go by. Oh hang on, Anticapella’s debut hit here does have a different and indeed unconventional title – “2√231”. The record was still as rank as old arses though.

That Scandinavian rock pop that I mentioned earlier now from, of course, Roxette with the fourth single from their “Joyride” album called “Spending My Time”. Now I may have not been able to recall a fair few of the songs in the show tonight and this one is no exception but I won’t have been the only one. You see, the single was not one of their bigger hits and indeed only peaked at No 32 in the US where their previous five single releases had been either No 1 or No 2. The reason that hit underperformed and therefore became one of their least known songs was because of record company shenanigans, at least that’s what the band’s Per Gessle said to the songfacts.com website:

“I’m sure it would have become a Top 5 song in the US if EMI wouldn’t have scrapped the entire company and sacked 122 people in the middle of marketing this one. People loved it but radio never got the chance to catch up. The Music Business. You win some, you lose some.”

Yes apparently, at the end of 1991, EMI merged with other record companies to form EMI Records Group North America. The merger resulted in the new company firing over a hundred members of staff and saw Roxette receiving little support from the new label (that’s what it says on Wikipedia anyway).

It was either that or the fact that it was a very dull song that did for it. “Spending My Time” peaked at No 22 in the UK.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised any more by the frequency with which metal bands have sneaked onto TOTP courtesy of an inflated chart position instigated by a loyal fanbase but somehow I am. Again. In the middle of all this raving comes Skid Row and a little ditty called “Wasted Time” which would make the UK Top 20. This was from their “Slave To The Grind” album and is supposedly about Steven Adler, the original drummer of Guns N’ Roses. The song was was written by lead singer Sebastian Bach, guitarist Dave Sabo and bass player Rachel Bolan. Despite his input, Bolan is on record as describing the track as “The biggest piece of shit we ever recorded.”. Yeah, I’ll leave it there. Really nothing else to say.

Now, here’s a bunch of rockers I did quite like. Although undoubtedly part of the rock family tree as it were, Extreme made a name for themselves off the back of the acoustic sub section of that genre. Their previous and biggest hit “More Than Words” was definitely in that vein and music fans went wild for its spare, brittle nature making it a US No 1 and a UK No 2 song. Although they reportedly came to see “More Than Words” as an albatross around their collective necks, it didn’t stop the band from releasing another acoustic single as its follow up, albeit a more fast paced track. Written by Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt on his newly acquired first ever 12-string guitar, “Hole Hearted” had a strange gestation though as he described in an interview with Songfacts.com:

“I wrote it on the toilet! I got kind of excited that I had my first 12-strin, and it made me want to go to the toilet. I sat down, took my time, and dare I say, the ideas just came out. They came pouring out.”

That tale reminds me of the time when I was a first year student at Sunderland Polytechnic. Back then, I truly believed that I had a shot at a career in music journalism. How so? Well, I was the co-editor of the music section of the poly newspaper and I had secured an interview with a bona fide chart band who had recently been in the Top 10 and had scored a US No 1! Who were they? Cutting Crew of course! They were playing a gig at the poly and I interviewed them backstage beforehand. In reply to my question about how long he thought the band would last, lead singer Nick Van Eede replied that they would have a lengthy career as they had “songs coming out of our arses”. The quote made it into the published article with an addendum from the paper’s editor which read “that explains a lot”. Smart arse (ahem).

Anyway, back to Extreme, and although nowhere near as big a hit as “More Than Words”, “Hole Hearted” did a decent job as a follow up peaking at No 4 in America and No 12 over here despite never actually being shown on TOTP in full.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Sonia – no really, she was still plugging away at it in late ’91 – with her version of The Real Thing’s “You To Me Are Everything”. Now that there’s a live vocal policy on the show, the diminutive scouser has cut down on any dance moves to concentrate on, you know, actually singing. To be fair, I’ve heard a lot worse on TOTP in recent weeks but although she was undoubtedly small, she was no Heather Small.

The track was taken back into the charts in ’95 when Sean Maguire (remember him?) recorded it during his time on the soap star turned pop star conveyor belt. Get this – he had 8 (EIGHT!) Top 40 hits! “You To Me Are Everything” was the fifth of those. Oh god! That means we’ll be seeing loads of him in future TOTP repeats on BBC4 if they get that far!

Sonia’s version peaked at No 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K0M3Rdb4XQ

And so to the No 1 which is the third different chart topper in four weeks after having the same song at the top of the pile for 16 weeks straight. Yes, after the (not so) ‘exclusive’ premiere full length video for “Black And White” on last week’s TOTP, Michael Jackson has assumed his place at the chart throne. Sticking with the theme of royalty, it was around this time that ‘The King Of Pop’ title started to be banded around and apparently it was instigated by Jacko himself. Supposedly, any TV network that wanted to have the rights to show the premiere of the “Black And White” promo had to agree to refer to the singer as ‘The King Of Pop’. Well, Mark Franklin doesn’t do so this week but did they comply in the last show?

*quickly checks BBC iPlayer*

No they didn’t! Maybe that story was a load of bollocks then…

As for the song itself, well the subject matter of racial tolerance was certainly a noble one though I do recall some incredulity from the critics of the day at the lyrics ‘don’t matter if you’re black or white’ given the argument that was raging in the public domain about what was happening to the colour of Jackson’s own skin. A theory of skin bleaching took hold in the media and I have to admit that when he took to the Oprah Winfrey show to explain that it was down to a skin disorder called vitiligo that causes a loss of pigmentation in patches on the body, I was one of the doubters. I think we can now all accept that he was telling the truth about that at least.

So how did “Black And White” sound? I think on first hearing I thought it was a bit overblown and all over the place but it didn’t take too many hearings for it to lodge itself in my brain. It was certainly catchy enough. It was a musical smorgasbord though with elements of pop, dance, hip hop, rap and rock all stuck in the mixer. On the rock strand though, the much peddled story that the song’s metal guitar riff was provided by Slash from Guns N’ Roses turned out to be a myth . He did play on the album but on the track “Give In To Me”.

The album was of course “Dangerous” which at the time seemed to be weighed down by its own expectations (Mark Ryden’s over the top cover art work didn’t help with that). It was meant to eclipse “Thriller” as his magnum opus both artistically and commercially. In the end it fails on both accounts for me but its reputation has grown after some revisiting of it by critics and the press. It would spawn 9 (NINE!) singles equalling “Bad”‘s haul and sell 32 million copies worldwide. Within those 9 singles, I think “Black And White” stands up pretty well.

After the 10 and a half minutes afforded to the premiere of the video last week, it is severely curtailed tonight with the Macaulay Culkin intro and the controversy courting ‘panther dance’ coda both stripped out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Playing With Knives	Nope
2	M People	How Can I Love You More?	No but I think my wife may have had the album
3	Bassheads	Is There Anybody Out there?	Negative
4	Michael Bolton	When A Man Loves A Woman	Hell no!
5	Love Decade	So Real	I did not
6	Scorpions	Send Me An Angel	Nah
7	Anticappella	2√231	I’d have rather have done some maths equations – no
8	Roxette	Spending My Time	I didn’t spend any time listening to this – no
9	Skid Row	Wasted Time	I didn’t waste any time listening to this – no
10	Extreme	Hole Hearted	Quite liked it, didn’t buy it
11	Sonia	You To Me Are Everything	Never happening
12	Michael Jackson	Black And White	No but I did have a promo copy of the “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” album with it on

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011f4w/top-of-the-pops-21111991

TOTP 14 NOV 1991

Posted on November 18, 2021 by 80stastic

Mid November 1991 – what were you doing? Me? I was gearing up for a second consecutive retail Christmas with Our Price having been working for the company for just over a year now. I didn’t know it then but it was probably one of the more stable years of my working life. A permanent job working with an exciting ‘product’ (I’d take music over baked beans any day) and I’d even been given some ordering responsibility in the form of being the chart cassettes buyer. Yes, there was that time earlier in the year when it looked like the shop would be sold off and some of us might lose our jobs (gulp!) but that likelihood had withered and withdrawn and things were back on course. For TOTP though, things were not quite as smooth. The show was six weeks into a new format courtesy of new producer Stanley Appel and it was still finding its feet. The new presenting duo of Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin seemed functional rather than flourishing and the live vocal policy was definitely catching some artists out. More seismic changes were afoot in the football world as on the day of this broadcast, the Football Association confirmed that the Premier League would start next season with 22 clubs. What would that mean for all us footy fans? Was it a good thing? Would we get to see more matches on TV? Like the new TOTP revamp, it was uncharted waters.

What we needed was some faith and happily for us, it was provided by tonight’s opening act Rozalla with her latest single “Faith (In the Power of Love)”. Having hit big with her previous single “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, Rozalla clearly felt the the best thing she could do to maintain her momentum was to stick to the exact same formula that had brought her initial success. Consequently, “Faith (In the Power of Love)” sounds very like its predecessor and even mimics its inclusion of brackets in the song title. I’ve never really understood the need for brackets in song titles. Does their presence really add anything to the song title or are they just an affectation to add an element of perceived depth and mystery to the song? Anyway, Rozalla has decided to come dressed as…well..what has she come dressed as? It’s like some sort of mash up of Princess Leia from Star Wars and the red Power Ranger. Were people dressing like that back in 1991? Maybe it was just to distract us all from the fact that (as with a few before her), Rozalla’s singing wasn’t quite on point. Not far off but not actually on it. “Faith (In the Power of Love)” peaked at No 11.

As Tony Dortie emerges seemingly from nowhere out of the throng of the studio audience (he seems to do that a lot – he was the TOTP equivalent of the shopkeeper from Mr Benn), he says something that I’ve had to rewind three times before I’ve understood what it was. I think it was that Rozalla wanted to do a duet with Seal. The first two times I heard it as wanting to do a duet with Cyril but Seal makes more sense (especially as he’s on the show next). Before that though we have the Top 10 rundown or as Dortie says, “Let’s check those crisp biscuits which are slamming in style inside this week’s Top 10 boiii like this…” Did he really say that?! He’s such a mumbler it’s hard to tell but I think those were his actual words. Crisp biscuits? Was that slang for something? I checked it out on the urban dictionary. It’s either a very thin reefer or… something else entirely which you’ll have to look up yourself to find out. Either definition was surely not what Dortie meant. And what was the ‘boiii’ thing about? I’m guessing that was also an urban along thing but the only time I’ve heard it used is by those white posh boy twats on Made In Chelsea. Anyway, Dortie then does an actual voice over for the Top 10 countdown which we haven’t had in this new era before when it’s just been the new theme tune payed in the background. Head producer Stanley Appel must have reacted to feedback that the countdown had become an abomination and tried to restore some tradition to it. Even though it was now mid November, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams is still in there at No 6 despite being released back in June.

As with last week’s show, we get a new disembodied voice doing the next intro. Last week it was Elayne Smith and this week we get another new presenter in the form of Claudia Simon. We don’t actually get to see Claudia’s ‘form’ though until two whole performances later. I didn’t really get what the TOTP producers were hoping to do with this voice first policy for its new presenters. Build tension? I don’t think we were that bothered about the presenters, it was the music we were after! The act that Claudia introduces is Seal (definitely not Cyril) who has released this own solo version of the hit that announced him to the pop world the year before when he and Adamski took “Killer” to No 1. To try and convince record buyers to purchase it all over again, record label ZTT have wisely made it into the “Killer EP” with a William Orbit remix of the track added alongside some live versions. Does Seal’s re-recording of the song sound that different to the original? Not to my ears I have to say. To try and emphasise the point that it is a different version, Seal is wearing (and occasionally strumming) a guitar which I’m pretty sure he never did back in 1990. Maybe the whole exercise was all about claiming some justice for Seal who was not actually officially credited alongside Adamski on the original. It’s still a great track but I don’t think the re-release in his own name was really warranted. Case dismissed.

In any other week, Tina Turner would no doubt have been bigged up in the ‘exclusive’ feature of the show but this wasn’t any other week. There is a huge exclusive coming up (no spoilers) so Tina has to make do with being…what is this section? The US chart? There’s an American flag graphic next to her name so I’m guessing so. She’s singing a song called “Way Of The World” which is a new track added to promote her first greatest hits compilation “Simply The Best” (which is what the TOTP title graphic goes with rather than the name of the single which is a bit confusing). We’d already had a horrible 90s reworking of “Nutbush City Limits” to help sell the album recently so surely anything released after that would be an improvement? Well, just about I guess. “Way Of The World” directly pinches the intro from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” (which, of course, Tina herself covered back in ’83 to relaunch her singing career) but then just sort of meanders off into an unexceptional mid tempo soul ballad. Hardly living up to the “Simply The Best” tagline it was meant to promote. In the end, the album would do pretty well anyway going 8 (EIGHT) time platinum in the UK! For some reason, there’s no backing band up there behind Tina so when the sax solo arrives in the middle eight she has to improvise and rely on her famous legs and her new shaggy hairdo to compensate. Tina’s nothing if not an old hand at this sort of thing and does a professional job of filling. “Way Of The World” peaked at No 13.

There she is! Yes, we finally get to see Claudia Simon as she awaits her cue to do the next link. She literally is waiting, tensed like a cheetah ready to pounce at the optimum moment. Is it just me or does she come across like the female version of Pat Sharp here? I think it’s the hair. So who was Claudia? Like Tony Dortie, she had a background in children’s TV having worked for CBBC and after her stint on TOTP she moved into the world of sports with Sky TV. She moved to the US and was a Fox Sports anchor until the early ’00s but there’s little else about what she’s up to now on the internet. She seems a bit over eager to please here and ends up shouting a lot of her links, the first of which is into Altern-8. These Staffordshire ravers had already had a Top 40 hit earlier in the year with “Infiltrate 202” but it was this single “Activ 8 (Come with Me)” that really made their name. Infamous for wearing face masks (with an A imprinted on them) and Hazmat suits, they also had a penchant for including the number 8 in their song titles (they would release a further three singles with this theme).

On reflection, “Activ 8 (Come with Me)” seems very much to be jumping on the bandwagon that the The Prodigy had set rolling with their “Charly” single and its samples of the 1970s BBC Public Information Film Charley Says. The Altern-8 boys bypassed any copyright restrictions by getting the three year old daughter of the boss of their record label Network to record the ‘top one, nice one. get sorted’ bit which would prove to be the track’s hook. Were people already using those phrases in real life? By people I guess I mean ravers. Certainly the phrase ‘top one’ was in everyday use in Manchester where I was living at the time. Also, was this the point where the phrase ‘hardcore, you know the score’ came into being as per the legend emblazoned above the stage for this performance or was it already in existence? I’m pretty sure that the major labels pickled up on it and ran with it as a tagline to advertise various rave/dance compilation albums at this time. OK, so I guess we have to address the live vocal again here. Without wishing to be harsh, I think it’s fair to say that the female singer here doesn’t give her very best performance though having to follow Tina Turner probably didn’t help her nerves. “Activ 8 (Come with Me)” peaked at No 3.

I’m not sure what the mumbler supreme Tony Dortie says at the end of Altern-8’s performance but it’s something about ragga or rave pressure or …oh God knows. Anyway, it’s the Breakers now starting with Sonia and her version of The Real Thing’s “You To Me Are Everything”. You have to hand it to Sonia, this was her ninth consecutive Top 40 hit in just over two years, all but one of which made the Top 20. None of them came anywhere near replicating the success of her debut single “You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You” though which went to No 1 in 1989 of course. Still, it’s an impressive run all the same. On closer inspection though, three of the last four hits (including this one) had been cover versions which suggested that she was running out of steam and her record label out of ideas. Her next single would also be a cover; Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights”. “You To Me Are Everything” was the third and final single to be released from her eponymous sophomore album and would peak at No 13. She would have to resort to the Eurovision Song Contest to secure one final chart hit in 1993 with “Better The Devil You Know” (not the Kylie Song) in 1993.

The next Breaker was basically record company Warners reminding us that their artist REM had one of the most successful albums of the year in “Out Of Time” and that if we hadn’t already bought it then Christmas is just around the corner you know? To that end, they saw fit to release a fourth single from it in “Radio Song”. This must have been one of the songs that I heard most in 1991 as it was the opening track on “Out Of Time” meaning that even when we’d all got tired of it being played in the Our Price store I was working in and somebody finally pulled it off the shop stereo, this track probably would have had a spin in full. It’s OK but certainly not up there with some of my personal favourites from the band. Even after all those plays, I’d still somehow forgotten about the closing rap from KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions.

A fourth release of the album proved one too far and the song peaked at a lowly No 28 but I guess sales of the single came second in priority for Warners after the album which no doubt benefited from the extra exposure. Unbelievably, ‘Radio Song” wasn’t the last REM single of 1991 as “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” was re-released in December by former label I.R.S. to cash in on their “The Best Of R.E.M.” album that had been released in September, itself a cash in on the success of “Out Of Time”.

Can a single be classed as a Breaker when it’s already inside the Top 10? Well, that’s what happened here with “Is There Anybody Out There?” by Bassheads. Following near geographical neighbours Oceanic into the charts, this Wirral-based house duo went to No 5 with this dance tune. I don’t remember thinking it at the time but there’s definitely some steals from Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” and The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses” although they weren’t sampled as they weren’t copyright cleared by the original artist and were in fact recreated by session players. There’s also a bit of Afrika Bambaataa’s “Just Get Up and Dance” in there for which he received 25% of the publishing as a result.

It all sounds like a strange brew that should be interesting but then that familiar Italia house piano riff kicks in and it reverts to sounding like all those other dance ‘anthems’ to me. The track’s title is just about a mash up of two Duran Duran songs – “Anyone Out There” and “Is There Something I Should Know?”. I think I’d rather have the Brummie lads to be honest.

And so we arrive at the moment the whole show has been building up to…so much so that we even had a mini advert for it at the start before we’d even had the first act on. I suppose some context is required here. Michael Jackson hadn’t had an album out for four year since 1987’s ‘Bad” which was a lifetime in pop and hadn’t even had a single in the charts since 1989. Therefore any new Jacko material was bound to cause a stir in the music industry. And so it did. “Black And White” was the lead single from his ‘Dangerous” album and the anticipation for the much heralded video for it was heightened by the simultaneous worldwide broadcast of it across international platforms. So whilst Tony Dortie’s claim that the video hadn’t been shown anywhere before was true, I’m not sure the ‘exclusive’ tag that he adds to it holds water. TOTP weren’t the only broadcaster in the world showing it. The promo actually premiered simultaneously in 27 countries with an audience of 500 million viewers. Maybe he just meant in the UK then.

So, what was the new video going to show us. There’s a lot to unpack here so for starters it was directed by John Landis who also made the “Thriller” video so no doubt big things were expected of it. Could that ground breaking promo be topped in terms of its legacy? It starts with a heavy rock guitar solo soundtrack before locating the action in the home of one Macaulay Culkin who’s loud playing of said music on his stereo has upset his Dad who is Norm from Cheers (who knew?). After a rebuke from Norm, Caulkin’s character sets up some gigantic speakers in the room where his parents are watching TV, hooks them up to an amplifier, turns the volume up to the setting ‘Are You Nuts?’ (no really – that’s what it says – I guess the ‘this one goes to 11’ joke had already been done by Spinal Tap), utters the words “Eat this” and blows his Dad (still in his chair) into orbit with one play of a power chord. It’s quite an opening but on reflection, it’s also all a bit silly. I recall a lot being made of the fact that Caulkin was in the video. He’d been in the film Uncle Buck with John Candy and then had achieved superstardom via Home Alone in 1990. Around that time he became friends with Jackson and would get caught up in the child sex abuse trial that engulfed the singer in 2005, testifying that he had slept in a bed with Jackson but that no molestation had ever taken place and dismissed the allegations as “absolutely ridiculous”.

Meanwhile back in the video, Norm and his chair have landed in Africa where the song proper starts and we see Jackson at last who begins performing surrounded by African warriors. From there, the action moves quickly through multiple scenes with Jacko dancing with people of various nationalities and cultures. After alighting on an image of a black baby and a white baby sitting on a representation of planet earth, Jackson re-emerges through a scene of flames before we get to the rap part of the song which Culkin returns to lip sync. The part of the video that everyone remembers is up now, the face morphing. The collective reaction of the audience to the faces of people of different nationalities and skin colour changing seamlessly into each other before our eyes was one of dumbstruck awe. One big huge wow! It was certainly impressive but hadn’t it been done before by Godley and Creme for their 1985 video fro ‘Cry”? Had people forgotten that already? Yes, the effects in “Black And White” were far superior but the idea was surely stolen by Landis.

For many of us I’m guessing this is the point that our memory tells us that the video ended but in its full, original form, it didn’t. A black panther emerges from the set and morphs into Jackson who pulls out all of his moves before embarking on a dancing rampage of destruction smashing windows, destroying a car and causing a building to explode whilst all the time grabbing his crotch repeatedly. He then morphs back into the panther before the video is finally drawn a close by Bart and Homer Simpson when the latter turns off the TV. These final four minutes caused great controversy with accusations made against Jackson that he was promoting violence and vandalism. Subsequently, this footage was removed from the video to make it more palatable for younger audiences but as this was the global premiere, it’s shown in full here.

Phew! All in all, the video was allocated approximately 10 and a half minutes of the TOTP running time which seems extraordinary but I guess this really was a big deal and the type of event TV that the show’s new producer Stanley Appel would have been looking for. Watching it back in its entirety 30 years on, it all seems like one big mess to me. Very little cohesion and with anything that was culturally popular at the time (Culkin, The Simpsons) thrown in for good measure. “Thriller” is by far the better promo and blows “Black And White” out of the water. Yes, it has some noble intentions but what was all that stuff at the end about? Well, that was the video but what about the song? Ah, it’ll be No 1 next week. I’ll deal with the music then.

Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff hold on to the No 1 spot for a second and final week with “Dizzy”. It’s the video again and for all “Black And White”‘s special effects and drama, I’d rather watch Vic and Bob arseing around to be honest. Supposedly, Vic had approached Mark E. Smith to ask if The Fall would do the record with him initially but the band weren’t sure and so The Wonder Stuff got the gig. That really would have been a collaboration worth seeing and hearing. Vic would achieve one final Top 40 hit when he teamed up with EMF for a cover of “I’m A Believer” by The Monkees which went to No 3 in 1995.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rozalla	Faith (In the Power of Love)	Nah
2	Seal	Killer EP	No but I had the album
3	Tina Turner	Way Of The World	Nope
4	Altern-8	Activ 8 (Come with Me)	Not my bag
5	Sonia	You To Me Are Everything	Oh dear Lord no
6	REM	Radio Song	No and I’d heard the album so may times in store I didn’t even buy that either
7	Bassheads	Is There Anybody Out There?	See 4 above
8	Michael Jackson	Black And White	No
9	Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff	Dizzy	I did not

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011f4t/top-of-the-pops-14111991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 28 MAY 1992

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TOTP 21 NOV 1991

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TOTP 14 NOV 1991

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